 Hello my name is Roger Watson and I'm the Editor-in-Chief of North Education and Practice which is published by Elsevier. I want to talk to you today briefly about what editors are looking for when a manuscript is submitted. And doing so I hope to help you to avoid some of the common pitfalls that prevent your manuscript getting into the review system. If a manuscript is not addressing what the editor wants when he or she sees it initially, it's likely to be desk rejected. That means it will come back to you, probably without any explanation as to why it has been rejected, but just with a note to say that it's not suitable. This is because especially in very busy journals, editors don't have much time to read articles in detail if they don't meet the guidance. So in fact it often depends less on the substance of the article than on the way that it's presented. So what editors are expecting when they see a manuscript is quite simple. They're expecting it to follow the guidance for the journal. And I have to say that nearly half of the articles that busy editors receive, certainly in my case, are rejected simply on the basis that they do not meet the guidance. So it's very important to get this right at the submission stage. And there is no real excuse for not doing so because the guidance is all published online. All journals are online these days. If you go to the landing page, the most important thing that you can look at is the link to the guidance for authors. And I always strongly encourage people before they even begin to write a manuscript to be absolutely clear which journal it's going to be going to initially. In that way you can check the guidance and you can write the article according to the guidance. Clearly if your article is rejected you may have to rework it using some new guidance, but again be clear what that guidance is before you start reworking the article and submitting it again. So what does the guidance tell us? Well the guidance ranges from some fairly superficial things, which is what the editor in chief is looking for initially, down to some more detailed aspects which will probably be checked by someone at the journal desk afterwards. And again in some cases they may also be able to reject your manuscript if it doesn't meet the guidance. But at the most superficial level we're looking clearly for articles that fit the journal. So for example my journal is about education so we're not looking for clinical articles and some journals are purely clinical so they won't be looking for educational articles. So do make sure that you know what the journal is about and what its mission is about and what its aim is about. That will be given in the guidance. At the next level you need to structure your article properly in accordance with the way that the guidance specifies. So the manuscript needs to be of the appropriate length and it needs to be divided into the appropriate sections. In other words it has to have the structure that the guidance specifies. So for example all journals will ask you to submit an abstract with your article and in the vast majority of journals now these days the article abstract should be structured and it has to be structured using exactly the headings, subheadings that the journal specifies. So for example if the abstract asks you for a name and background, design, method, results and conclusion and then keywords make sure that all of these things are included. Don't put objectives if it asks for aim for example. Don't put the background before the aim. Have all the headings and subheadings that the journal guidance requires and have them in the correct order. Now the same applies to the main manuscript that will be similarly structured probably with an introduction and a background, methods, results, discussion and conclusion and perhaps one or two other subheadings like limitations or future research or implications. These things will all be given in the guidance. And another useful thing that you can do is to go to a recent issue of the journal and take a look at how articles are structured and make sure that the kind of article that you want to submit is structured correctly. For example empirical articles may be structured differently from review articles. Again all this is given in the guidance. So that's at a fairly superficial level getting the length and the layout correct and having a title which clearly indicates that your article fits the journal. Most busy journal editors will not have time to read more than the abstract and if the abstract isn't correct they probably will not read any more and they may well desk reject your article. So it's crucial especially that you get the abstract right and at least the paper may then get into the reviewing system no guarantee that it will be accepted but of course if it doesn't get into the reviewing system it will have no chance of being accepted. So I'm repeating myself but just make sure that you get these initial fairly superficial things correct and at least show the editors and the editor-in-chief and other people working on the journal that you've paid them the compliment of looking at the guidance. Now beyond that of course the guidance will have many more details. For example the specific referencing system to be used to make sure that you get that right. It'll have a lot of detailed guidance about how to present abbreviations and things like that. I'm saying that these are not important but many of these things can be fixed afterwards if you get them right but do try to get them right at submission. The more you get right the more likely your article is to go into the review system.