Review, Revise, and Refine

At this point in the program, you have a rough draft of the main body of your manuscript.  It is now time to review, revise and refine your manuscript and add the finishing touches, including the Abstract.  You should begin by going back to the journal that you selected and carefully reviewing the manuscript guidelines for specific instructions and requirements.  It will be important to keep those guidelines in mind as you review and revise your manuscript.

Begin by reading through the manuscript in its entirety and consider where or not the content meets the guidelines for each section. You should also be thinking about whether or not you meeting the overall manuscript guidelines.  Once you have completed a big picture review of content, it is time to get busy reviewing, revising and refining at the paragraph and sentence level.  In this module, you will use the following editing resources from the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) to systematically review your paper.

1. Begin by focusing on wordiness and being concise.  Most academic writing calls for clarity, brevity and conciseness.  Use the following OWL resources to prune and edit your manuscript.
   • Conciseness
   • A Lesson in Writing Concisely
2. The style of your writing is very important and may depend on your discipline.  The preferred style for the journal you are targeting will be in the manuscript guidelines. One important aspect of the style is the voice.  Some authors struggle with using the appropriate voice (active vs. passive) in their manuscript.  Use the following resource to help you evaluate your manuscript.
   • Active and Passive
3. Finally, your focus will be at the word level.  You will need to consider your level of language formality, use of slang and jargon, euphemisms, biased language and other types of issues that may occur.  Use the following resources for advice.
   • Appropriate Language Overview
4. Now that you have pruned, edited, and revised your manuscript into a more refined draft, step back from it and read it over again in its entirety.  Then continue to review your writing and further polish your manuscript. Feel free to use the other writing resources at Purdue Owl if you need additional assistance.

Writing Your Abstract

The Abstract is typically written last because it will summarize the contents of your entire manuscript.  Following are several guidelines to follow when writing an Abstract:

• An abstract should be one paragraph of typically 300 words or less. Do not go over the word count limit you are given or it may be rejected.
• It should contain all the major parts of your manuscript in order, including:
  • the purpose of the research and the research problem
  • the basic design of your research methodology
  • the results including major findings or trends
  • a brief summary of your conclusions including the significance and implications
• It should be written in an active voice using past tense.
• It should not contain unnecessary background information, tables, graphs, pictures, jargon, slang, or references to other literature.
• Online search databases often only contain the Abstract, so it is important to write a clear, concise description of work that provides readers sufficient information.
• Incorporate key words or phrases into your Abstract that others might use to search for information about your research topic.  In fact, some publications will request a list of key words that can facilitate the use of keyword index searches.

The following resources provide additional tips and guidelines, as well as sample Abstracts for you to review.

• Research Guides:  The Abstract
• The Writing Center: Abstracts
• Abstracts:  Examples

The final section of your paper for you to complete is your Literature Cited.  If you have been using RefWorks as was recommended in Week 2, this part is easy.  RefWorks will help you ensure that all of your sources in the proper format for the style requirements of the journal.

Seeking Feedback

The feedback in this program has been general in nature in regards to your overall writing and content.  It has not been discipline-specific however and therefore, has not provided you with feedback about your specific research.  It is time to have your manuscript draft reviewed by others in your own discipline who can provide you with more specific feedback.  Find at least colleague in your discipline and ask them to review your manuscript as part of this week's assignment.