EDITORIAL
Writing Skills and Review Articles: “Walking the Path
from Idea to Print”
I recently came across a wonderful book titled The Clinician’s
Guide to Medical Writing written by Dr. Robert B. Taylor [1].
As the title suggests, this book is primarily meant for writers
in the medical profession. Dr. Taylor has published extensively
and has a long professional experience. He admits that he has
committed several mistakes as a writer, like many of us do
while writing papers. In this editorial, I want to highlight a few
ideas, including those from Dr. Taylor’s book, on “basic writing
skills and writing review articles” so that we can try to avoid the
­commonly made mistakes.
1. Basic Writing Skills
When you want to write an article, you must have an idea on
which to build. Ideas may come from different sources: A dis-
cussion with your colleague, a scientific problem that you think
is of great interest to many people but has not been understood
properly, or an accidental exposure to an interesting topic while
you are doing literature survey, and so on. For example, the
idea to write this editorial came to me when I chanced upon
Dr. Taylor’s book on Springer’s website.
Once you have an idea, jot it down somewhere so that you will not
forget it. It is important to keep the focus of your article limited.
For example, if you plan to write on climate change, perhaps
you can limit it to “the role of IT industry in various aspects of
climate change.” It now becomes easier for you to build a struc-
ture for your article, which may include (i) introduction on the
concept of climate change and its consequences, (ii) industrial
activities that cause climate change, (iii) IT industry’s contribution
to climate change, (iv) minimizing IT industry’s contribution to
climate change and (v) conclusions. As your understanding of
the topic improves, you may change the structure slightly, but it
is useful to begin with a structure and allow it to evolve.
You also need to organize your article into neat paragraphs, each
focusing on a theme. After developing the theme in a paragraph,
make sure that you conclude the paragraph meaningfully. To illus-
trate your point within the paragraph, provide simple examples,
as I have given above for building the structure of your article.
Try to break your paragraphs by looking for logical breaks so
that the paragraphs are not longer than about 10 sentences [1].
Having several paragraphs on a page also provides a pleasant
appearance, with white spaces between the paragraphs. However,
make sure the paragraphs are not unusually short. How you write
the sentences in a paragraph is another skill that you must learn.
IETE TECHNICAL REVIEW | Vol 26 | ISSUE 4 | JUL-AUG 2009
Avoid writing long sentences. This makes reading a pleasure for
the reader and provides ease in understanding the message meant
to be conveyed. Proper punctuation in the sentences will provide
breathing space as you read. “Commas, semicolons, periods and
question marks are called stops. They improve sentence cadence
and clarity, and thus make reading easier.” [1]. Minimize the use of
verbosity, i.e., using more words than required to convey the same
meaning. Why write “In only a small number of cases,” when
you mean “Rarely”? To avoid confusing the reader, use words
that are precise and clear. Understand the difference between
similar sounding words. For example, “presently” is not the same
as “currently.” Flowery and poetic words should be avoided. To
write a good paper, therefore, one must improve the basic writ-
ing skills, which include (i) choosing an appropriate topic with a
focus, (ii) developing a structure for your article, (iii) composing
meaningful short paragraphs, (iv) writing short sentences with
appropriate punctuations and (v) selecting the right words [1].
2. Writing a Review Article
There are journals such as Proceedings of IEEE or IETE ­Technical
Review that publish, mostly, review articles. Occasionally, many
journals also publish review articles written by eminent authors.
Usually, review articles make a broad survey of a given area
and provide original analysis of the known information already
published in literature. The authors of such articles are often
­active researchers themselves, as is evident in the excellent ­review
article written by Charles Lieber of Harvard University  [2].
A typical review article has a theme; logical expansion of the
theme using appropriate figures, tables and comparisons for a
critical analysis; conclusions; and a list of references. Although
a review article is not an original scientific work, it does provide
a ­different perspective and a feeling to the reader — that he has
learnt something new about a given area. When you want to do
research on a new topic and you do not know where to start,
the best bet is to read some review articles on that topic. Many
people, such as busy scientists and policy makers, also read review
articles to keep themselves updated on a topic. Therefore, review
articles do serve an important purpose in our professional work.
When do you decide to write a review article? To emphasize my
point, let me digress here a little bit. When transistor dimensions
are reduced to nanoscale, they start behaving erratically because
of short-channel effects. These effects will make the design of
low-power circuits extremely difficult, and hence many groups are
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 Jagadesh Kumar M: Writing skills and review articles: “walking the path from Idea to print”
working on minimizing the short-channel effects. A couple of my
students have worked on this issue, and we came up with certain
simple solutions. While doing this work, we also became aware
of several other methods for circumventing the short-channel
effects in nanoscale transistors. Then it occurred to us that it
would be useful to a new researcher if we could put together
all these methods in a review article and provide a ­critical com-
parison [3]. Coming back to where we digressed — you see, the
idea to write a review article germinates from your own research
experience. Whenever I receive a review article for IETE Technical
Review written by someone who has no prior publication record,
I become suspicious. A majority of these submissions turn out
to be poorly written and also highly plagiarized.
2.1 Points to Remember While Writing a Review
Article
Once you have decided on a topic for the review article, do a
careful literature survey to make sure no one else has written
a similar article. Even if someone has written, you can still
write  a  review paper by appropriately choosing your article’s
theme and structure, and by including more recent literature on
the topic. I usually search for literature on the websites of Web
of Science [4], IEE Explore [5], Elsevier’s Science Direct [6] and
Scopus [7]. Access to these websites is only through membership
or institutional subscription. Pay attention in choosing the right
source for collecting your information; or else, you will be lost
in the elusive search for literature.
Visit the website of the journal where you plan to send the
review article. Look at the previous review articles published in
the journal; learn about the style, page-length restrictions, etc.
Most review articles in our profession contain both a survey
of the past work and also a comparison of several studies to
provide future trends or anticipated bottlenecks in the evolution
of a given technology. Pick up a topic that is of current interest
to many researchers. It will be a futile exercise to write a review
article which no one will be interested to read. Make sure you
do not leave out publications that are considered important
in the context of your paper. Usually these are the most cited
publications or papers by eminent authors. Otherwise, a reviewer
can easily identify this deficiency, thus exposing your lack of
experience in the area. Also, include as many recent references
as possible. The editor, in all probability, will send your paper
for review to one or more of the well-known authors listed in
your references. This ensures that a poor-quality review article
is not published in the journal.
To be able to write a good review paper, you must have worked on
the chosen topic for years and must have been well established in
academic circles through your previous publications. Otherwise,
do not attempt to write a review article. The other option is to
write the review article in collaboration with a co-author who is
well known and is also an active researcher.
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2.2 Seeing Your Review Article in Print
Your ultimate goal in writing a review article is to see it in print
so that your intellectual exercise reaches a large number of read-
ers. Many factors will decide whether your paper will finally be
accepted by a journal. The rejection rate in IETE Technical Review
is high. One major reason for this is that many authors fail to
adhere to the basic writing skills described above.
In addition, there are minor but important issues that you need
to take care of:
1. Your manuscript should be organized properly in the
­following order:
• Title page (also giving authors’ names, affiliations, contact
email, etc.)
• Abstract
• Key words
• Body of the text
• Acknowledgments (if any)
• References (follow the journal’s format)
• Tables with legends, each on a separate page
• Figures with legends, each on a separate page [1]
2. Make sure the figures are prepared in high resolution. The
font size of letters and numbers in the figures should be
big enough so that when the figure is reduced to the single-
column size in the journal, the letters and numbers are clearly
visible.
Read your manuscript several times and make changes, with
­ articular attention to the spelling mistakes that may not be ­detected
p
by your word processor. Do not strive to make your ­manuscript
perfect. Beyond some point, you cannot make it any better.
If your paper is rejected, do not resubmit it to the same journal
unless the editor has asked you to revise and resubmit. If your
paper can be reconsidered after revisions, make every effort to
revise your manuscript at the earliest. Write each comment of
the reviewer and provide your response to each of the reviewer’s
comments. If you disagree with the reviewer’s comments,
be ­polite in your response. In your reply, point out on which page
what corrections can be found. Identify all the corrections in the
revised manuscript in color so that the editor can easily see what
changes have been made. Editors and reviewers do appreciate if
you are meticulous and to the point in your responses.
3. Conclusion
In my view, novices should not attempt to write review articles.
If you are an experienced researcher, to be able to write a review
article, you must have an idea with the right focus. You need to
carefully develop an outline and structure of your article. Make
sure you have read the “guidelines to the authors,” available on
the journal’s website, and formatted your manuscript correctly.
In addition to putting the right technical content in your article,
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 Jagadesh Kumar M: Writing skills and review articles: “walking the path from Idea to print”
you must pay attention to the basic writing skills. The chosen
topic for your review article must be current and should be based
on sufficient literature survey from appropriate sources. Your
article should provide a comprehensive and different perspective
by comparing and analyzing the known information. Following
these simple guidelines will enhance the possibility of getting a
favorable reply from the editor. To conclude, as Taylor says in
his book, “Now it’s time to Write It Up. Have fun!”
As always, I would be glad to get your feedback and comments.
References
1. R. B. Taylor, The Clinician’s Guide to Medical Writing, Springer Science+Business
Media, Inc., New York, 2005.
AUTHOR
M. Jagadesh Kumar was born in Mamidala, Andhra
Pradesh, India. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Madras, India.
From 1991 to 1994, he performed postdoctoral
research in modeling and processing of high-speed bipolar transistors
at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
Waterloo, Waterloo, oN, Canada. While with the University of Waterloo, he
also did research on amorphous silicon TFTs. From July 1994 to December
1995, he was initially with the Department of Electronics and Electrical
Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur,
India; and then joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian
Institute of Technology, Delhi, India, where he became an associate
professor in July 1997 and a full professor in January 2005. His research
interests are in the areas of nanoelectronic devices, modeling and simulation
for nanoscale applications, integrated-circuit technology, and power
semiconductor devices. He has published extensively in the above areas, with
three book chapters and more than 130 publications in refereed journals
and conferences. His teaching has often been rated as outstanding by the
Faculty Appraisal Committee, IIT, Delhi.
DOI: ????; Paper No TR 112_09; Copyright © 2009 by the IETE
IETE TECHNICAL REVIEW | VoL 26 | ISSUE 4 | JUL-AUG 2009
2. W. Lu, P. Xie, and C. M. Lieber, “Nanowire Transistor Performance Limits
and Applications,” IEEE Trans. on Electron Devices, Vol. 55, pp. 2859-76,
November 2008.
3. A. Chaudhry, and M. J. Kumar, “Controlling Short-channel Effects in Deep
Submicron SOI MOSFETs for Improved Reliability: A Review”, IEEE Trans.
on Device and Materials Reliability, Vol.4, pp.99-109, March 2004.
4. Available from: http://isiknowledge.com/. [Kindly provide date of citation].
5. Available from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/. [Kindly provide date of citation].
6. Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/. [Kindly provide date of
citation].
7. Available from: http://www.scopus.com/. [Kindly provide date of citation].
M. Jagadesh Kumar
Editor in Chief, IETE Technical Review,
Department of Electrical Engineering,
IIT, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110 016, India.
E-mail: mamidala@ieee.org
Dr. Kumar is a Fellow of (i) Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and
(ii) the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE),
India. He was a recipient of the 29th IETE Ram Lal Wadhwa Gold Medal for
distinguished contribution in the field of semiconductor device design and
modeling. He was also the first recipient of ISA-VSI TechnoMentor Award
given by the India Semiconductor Association, an award given to recognize
a distinguished Indian academician for playing a significant role as a mentor
and researcher. He is a recipient of 2008 IBM Faculty Award in recognition
of professional achievements.
He is an editor of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices and editor in chief of
IETE Technical Review. He was the lead guest editor for the joint special issue
of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices and IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology
(November 2008) on Nanowire Transistors: Modeling, Device Design, and
Technology. He is also on the editorial board of Journal of Computational
Electronics; Recent Patents on Nanotechnology; Recent Patents on Electrical
Engineering; Journal of Low Power Electronics; and Journal of Nanoscience and
Nanotechnology. He has reviewed extensively for different international journals.
Dr. Kumar is an IEEE distinguished lecturer at the Electron Devices Society.
He is also a member of the EDS Publications Committee and EDS Educational
Activities Committee.
E-mail: mamidala@ieee.org
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