Style guides tend to disagree about whether there should be a comma before the final ‘and’ or ‘or’ in a list. This is known as the ‘serial’ or ‘Oxford’ comma, and it is a subject of some debate. This article gives an overview of the Oxford comma and provides some guidelines about its use.

Selecting keywords after some careful deliberation can bring you multiple benefits as a researcher trying to get noticed in your academic community, not least by making your paper more discoverable. This article gives you some tips on how to choose the right keywords, what to avoid as keywords, and, once you have chosen the appropriate keywords, how to format them.

Researchers often suffer from a conundrum: you need data to get funding, but you need funding to get data. Indeed, this is a very real roadblock many face. This is where exploring alternative routes to funding can help. This article discusses some such avenues.

A post-hoc analysis refers to a statistical analysis specified after a study has been concluded and the data collected. A post-hoc test is done to identify exactly which groups differ from each other.

When writing your research paper, it is important to state the broader parameters and boundaries of your research. This forms the scope and delimitations of a study and helps to contextualise the research for the reader so they can better anticipate the extent of the details to come. This article explains the two concepts with examples.

Academic writing has its own style and conventions, and is often regarded as a dry retelling of the facts. However, this does not mean that you can’t make it easier for audiences to engage with your writing. This article discusses how developing a particular, personal voice or style can help improve your writing, and therefore, your audience’s engagement.

A search strategy is a means of organising your search and helps you to plumb the many sources of information for truly meaningful references. It will also help you filter out low-quality sources. This article discusses some strategies you can adopt to get the most out of your search, and to ensure a high-quality literature review.

When developing a plan of action for tackling a systematic review or a meta-analysis, one of the most important steps is developing a standardised and meaningful way of deciding which pieces of work to include and which not to. This article discusses what to think about when developing these criteria.

Carefully crafted language will take you only so far in describing data, lab procedures or surgical technique. Including carefully selected, high-quality images can elegantly and quickly show data, demonstrate a technique or make a point clear. This article explains the significance and provides some tips for including high-quality images in your scientific paper.

An original and well-defined research question gives your work direction and is a crucial factor that determines publication success. This article discusses how you can develop and frame a research question for different types of studies.

Well-developed and focused research objectives go a long way in ensuring the success of a research project. This article explains how to develop and frame your research objectives.

Dry labs occur in many disciplines, including biology, computer sciences and engineering. There are some things to be aware of when it comes to working in dry labs. This article provides some important considerations for usage and maintenance of dry labs.

Working in a wet lab is a potentially dangerous undertaking. It's therefore important that you know how to safely and productively work in a wet lab. This article offers some best practices to follow in a wet lab.

Few researchers are awarded the opportunity to build a lab from the ground up. In this article, we outline some things to consider if you are setting up your own lab.

To many early-career researchers, their supervisor can appear difficult or unprofessional to deal with. This article discusses how you can deal with these situations.

This article discusses formatting the various elements of a paper according to journal guidelines.

A well-written abstract should provide readers with all of the information they need to understand why the study was performed, how it was performed, what it showed and what it means, without any extraneous information to distract them from these points.

A PhD by publication is a mode of submission that allows the candidate to submit their body of published work created during their PhD as a thesis. This article discusses various considerations and challenges for preparing and submitting your PhD this way.

A thorough literature search in the early stages of research holds the key to formulating a worthwhile research question. To hone in on the best sources for your literature search, it is important to use established bibliometric databases, such as Web of Science (WoS). This article discusses how to use the power of WoS for your research work.

High-quality biomedical research seeks to provide answers to clinically and experimentally relevant questions. To get the best out of their research, researchers need to engage a biostatistician in their research design. However, a biostatistician can also be of great help during the remaining stages of research.