Writing a Scientific Paper I. The writing process

Based on my direct personal experience as an author, referee, editor, and PhD thesis supervisor, I present in this paper some advice and guidelines on writing scientific papers. This article copes with the preparation of manuscripts, with the handling of copyrights and permissions to reproduce, with communicating with editors and referees, and with avoiding common errors. More than two dozen FAQs are dealt with, among others: who should be coauthor, what is honorary authorship, how to settle the order of author names, may the list of authors change during the review process, who submits the manuscript to the Editor, must one wait for coauthors’ consent to submit, when to submit a manuscript to astro-ph, how to communicate with the referee, with whom to share a referee report, can students be referee, how to cite and quote a straying paper, how to cope with writer’s block, should others be allowed to completely rewrite a manuscript, how to review a paper, how to revise a multi-author paper, when to ask for another referee, why do Editors edit, and why do referees review?