Title: Strategies to improve the impact of your papers and the probability of publishing in top level journals

Abstract: The impact of your paper depends on many factors, including the journal that you publish it in, your "name", the relevance of your work within and outside your area of expertise, the institution that you work at, the fame of your co-authors, the paper title, how you word your abstract, the language you publish in, the wording and clarity of the writing, and the current interest in the topic you have chosen. Improving the chance of publishing in top level journals and the impact of your paper in terms of recognition by the lay and scientific communities can be accomplished by careful planning of the research and the manuscript. Good research can be rejected by top journals even if it is very relevant and well done, if the authors are not careful in how they prepare their submission. An important detail is the title. A title can make or break a paper. That is what potential readers will first see when they search for research of interest. The title also will impress (or not) editors and referees. If your title is not well prepared, readers will not immediately recognize your work as important and interesting. Think about what you choose to read when you make a literature search. Many titles appear and you cannot read all of them. How do you decide based on a list of titles which papers you will examine? After the title, comes an abstract. If the abstract is clear, well written and interesting, the reader is captured. Remember also that editors and referees normally decide very quickly whether a submission is worth a thorough and favorable review. If they like what they read in the first minutes, then they will look for information to support an initial favorable impression. If they do not, they will make a quick decision that the paper is not worth publishing and will only read on to find details that support a decision they have already made. There are many other details involved in preparing good papers, but the title and the abstract certainly stand out as critical and essential. Another important and often overlooked detail is who you cite. Authors who have published on a similar subject in the same journal are often selected as referees and will probably be favorably impressed by citations to their works. Of course the main criterion for top journals is papers that have something important to reveal. However, authors need to learn how to make this clear in their submissions. Be aware that rejections are part of the process and the feedback from editors and referees should be respected and taken advantage of in order to improve the paper for submission to other journals. This process of feedback and revisions can be laborious, but it helps authors to learn how to write better papers.