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

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