Formatting Guidelines for Initial Submission
As of January 2022, all new submissions to JEI must be submitted on our manuscript template. This template is designed to help our student authors address commonly seen mistakes in manuscripts before they have even submitted!
Sections of a Manuscript
Title Page
The title page should include:
- A title with a character count of 110 or less (including spaces)
- The title should succinctly describe your research.
- We suggest using your title to paraphrase either the question you asked or the main results of your research
- Titles should be written in sentence case, with only the first word and proper nouns capitalized. For example, “Water from Lake Lowell contains greater levels of common contaminants than the Snake River”
- All of the authors listed in the order in which they contributed, with the teacher or college/university mentor listed last
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Each authors’ institution/school affiliations
- School, city, state or country if outside the United States
- A number should appear before each affiliation, corresponding with the superscript appearing by author names affiliated with that institution
Summary (Abstract)
An abstract should be a short (under 250 words) summary on a separate page, after the title page but before the remainder of the manuscript. This should include:
- The problem that prompted the study or the reason why the study is valuable
- The research question or purpose of the study
- The main hypothesis
- A summary of the results with some context on the methods but not too much detail
- Conclusions and implications of the findings
Introduction
The article must provide an appropriate and sufficient background on the subject matter and must include references. The introduction provides context for the manuscript. The introduction should:
- briefly describe the overarching scientific topic of the paper
- provide background information on that scientific question (including references) such that the audience understands the question being asked AND why this question is of interest
- contain a clearly-stated purpose/hypothesis related to a scientific question
- briefly summarize the conclusions drawn from the authors’ research
Results
The authors must describe in paragraph format how they test the scientific question with well-designed scientific experiments. It is important to discuss experimental controls and statistical analysis when appropriate and to draw appropriate and reasonable conclusions from experimental data. For each experiment, the authors must:
- describe the rationale for the experiment
- briefly explain how the experiment was performed (additional or lengthy details should be included only in the Materials and Methods section)
- interpret the scientific data, referencing the figures that contain the results (graphs, charts, tables, equations, etc).
Please review our stats guide for helpful advice on performing statistical analysis, including links to free online calculators that can be used
Presenting figures, tables, and statistics in the Results section
Data figures/tables and statistical analysis are important for making the argument for the conclusions of a manuscript. Through these things, the reader can see the data and information that led to the conclusions, and they can make decisions about whether they believe the conclusions the authors make.
First-time authors often make mistakes in how they present this information in the results section by putting too much focus on the figure or statistic itself and not putting the result in the context of the study. Instead, we recommend that authors reference their figures and statistics similar to citing literature in the introduction to support the claims or conclusions drawn from the data.
Examples:
- On average, plants grown in X-containing soil grew to be 10∓2 inches tall compared to 5∓1 inches for control plants (Figure 1).
- Seeds planted in soil containing X grew significantly taller than plants in regular potting soil (p = 0.01).
Additional information on figures/tables and referencing them in text can be found in the Figure/Table Formatting section of the submission guide.
Discussion
In the discussion section, the authors should discuss the results and their interpretation of the results. It is important that the authors draw appropriate and reasonable conclusions from their scientific data. The authors should:
- summarize the experimental results and draw conclusions from the experimental data
- All results discussed here should be mentioned in the Results section first
- Be careful not to overstate conclusions (i.e. make conclusions beyond what your experiments show). Authors can speculate or propose reasons for the observed results, but if the experiment did not specifically address that concept, it must be clear to the reader that such statements are speculation
- discuss factors or limitations that could have influenced the results, such as sources of error or bias in interpretation
- Human error is assumed and does not need to be the primary focus of the discussion of limitations. It is important to point out if a particular type of error was more likely than others and why.
- address the significance of the results
- discuss remaining scientific questions and/or potential future experiments. Have fun with this! Future directions is where you can propose essentially limitless experiments. It is also important to address what further studies would be needed in order to apply the findings from the current study. For example, studies testing novel pharmaceutical drugs as treatment for a disease should describe what would need to be done to get such a drug into clinical trials (in vitro studies demonstrating mechanism of action, in vivo studies demonstrating safety and efficacy in animal models, etc).
Materials and Methods
The authors should describe the methods in enough detail such that a different scientist could perform the same experiments and obtain the same results. Materials should not be listed out but should be mentioned within the context of the respective experiment that the materials were used. For example, when explaining a method within this section, the author could state the materials used: “bacteria were grown in standard LB media (FisherSci) for 24 hours at 37°C while shaking.”
References
Information on choosing and citing references can be found here.
Acknowledgements
This is a section to acknowledge people who have made minor contributions to the manuscript. For example, people who have read and commented on your manuscript before submission should be acknowledged. This is also the section to state your funding sources (if any).
Authors (such as the mentor, teacher, or professor) should not be acknowledged as outside help because they help write the manuscript. Authorship on the manuscript is in itself an acknowledgement of the work each author put into the project and manuscript.
All information about formatting figures, tables, and their respective captions can be found in the Figure/Table Formatting section of the submission guide.
Equations and variables require special formatting that depends on where in the manuscript they appear (and what stage of the review process you are in). Please see our comprehensive Equation Guide for further information.
Appendix
JEI allows appendices on a case-by-case basis depending on the type of research being presented in a manuscript.
- Any code/programming scripts should be included as an appendix or uploaded to a GitHub page (we do not accept links to GoogleDrive or similar cloud-storage services).
- If you conducted a survey-based study it is common to provide the full-text of your survey questions in the appendix as it allows readers to review the questions asked to participants and their phrasing
- If the material you wish to include in an appendix falls outside of the two situations mentioned above, you may submit your manuscript with an appendix; however, you must provide a statement with the appendix telling the editors why you believe the inclusion of the material is needed in the appendix rather than the main manuscript text.