It’s not a good idea to annoy the ref­er­ees of your paper. They make rec­om­men­da­tions to the edi­tor about your work and it is best to keep them happy. There is an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion on stats​.stack​ex​change​.com on this sub­ject. This inspired my own list below.

• Explain what you’ve done clearly, avoid­ing unnec­es­sary jargon.
• Don’t claim your paper con­tributes more than it actu­ally does. (I ref­er­eed a paper this week where the author claimed to have invented prin­ci­pal com­po­nent analysis!)
• Ensure all fig­ures have clear cap­tions and labels.
• Include cita­tions to the referee’s own work. Obvi­ously you don’t know who is going to ref­eree your paper, but you should aim to cite the main work in the area. It places your work in con­text, and keeps the ref­er­ees happy if they are the authors.
• Make sure the cited papers say what you think they say. Sight what you cite!
• Include proper cita­tions for all soft­ware pack­ages. If you are unsure how to cite an R pack­age, try the com­mand citation("packagename").
• Never pla­gia­rise from other papers — not even sen­tence frag­ments. Use your own words. I’ve ref­er­eed a the­sis which had slabs taken from my own lec­ture notes includ­ing the typos.
• Don’t pla­gia­rise from your own papers. Either ref­er­ence your ear­lier work, or pro­vide a sum­mary in new words.
• Pro­vide enough detail so your work can be repli­cated. Where pos­si­ble, pro­vide the data and code. Make sure the code works.
• When respond­ing to ref­eree reports, make sure you answer every­thing asked of you. (See my ear­lier post “Always lis­ten to review­ers”)
• If you’ve revised the paper based on ref­er­ees’ com­ments, then thank them in the acknowl­edge­ments section.

For some applied papers, there are spe­cific sta­tis­ti­cal issues that need attention:

• Give effect sizes with con­fi­dence inter­vals, not just p-​​values.
• Don’t describe data using the mean and stan­dard devi­a­tion with­out indi­cat­ing whether the data were more-​​or-​​less sym­met­ric and unimodal.
• Don’t split con­tin­u­ous data into groups.
• Make sure your data sat­isfy the assump­tions of the sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods used.

More tongue-​​in-​​cheek advice is pro­vided by Strat­ton and Neil (2005), “How to ensure your paper is rejected by the sta­tis­ti­cal reviewer”. Dia­betic Med­i­cine, 22(4), 371–373.

Feel free to add your own sug­ges­tions over at stats​.stack​ex​change​.com.

Related Posts:

• Estab­lish­ing priority
• Writ­ing a ref­eree report
• Becom­ing a referee
• Should you make your work­ing papers public?
• Writ­ing responses to ref­eree reports