I have published a meager 11 papers in the last 13 years, amongst which there were 2 first-author research and 3 first-author review articles. I have covered here some of the aspects that I found interesting for manuscript submission and my experiences with co-author publications.
During PhD my area of research was leukocyte glycobiology, enzyme biochemical characterization, and analytical chemistry. While a couple of manuscripts were being worked on by fellow PhDs in the lab, I was busy working on my own project. All this while, some specific enzyme overexpressing (OE) HL60 cell lines were developed in the lab. For this paper, I was asked to specifically quantify enzyme activity in the OE cell lines. I came up with an idea to use radioactivity (Already used in the lab) on glycoproteins by immobilizing their terminal via click chemistry onto activated agarose beads. If I remember correctly (read the paper by Lo et al, 2013, JBC), I used fetuin glycoprotein which had a specific glycan profile, and further modified its glycans by using sialidases which cleave sialic acid. This I did after immobilizing these glycoproteins to the beads, later performing enzyme activity experiments. To my astonishment, I was able to reproduce the results that were observed from flow cytometry and other cell biology experiments. My boss even suggested cleaving the radioactive product with sialidase after the final hot product was formed to see if the results were real. Altogether, in a short span of time, I was able to generate a great methodology that worked well for the manuscript and ended up earning me authorship.
Although this doesn’t directly speak about my involvement in manuscript submission as I was involved solely in experimenting, I do remember commenting on another enzymology paper in which I had suggested a “title change” to give it wide attention which was accepted without any revisions.
My first author paper was accepted a few months after my PhD. As I had worked on enzymology I submitted a piece of my work to BBRC. Its impact factor is low but since it provided a quick result, I approached the journal. Initially, the manuscript was rejected due to reasons that I now don’t recall. I modified its text and included a reaction mechanism figure that would provide novel insights into the enzyme reaction kinetics. I used a non-human sialic acid Neu5Gc to study the human sialic acid (Neu5Ac) reaction mechanism, so it gave a new angle to the study which I think now may have increased its weight. I submitted the revised manuscript again to BBRC and this time they accepted it without any revision. Victory!!!
At Nebraska Medical Centre, I had enough data for a paper in a span of 1.5 years. I joined the lab in Feb 2018 and by August 2019, I had already submitted to a journal. Initially, I got rejections from big cancer biology journals as the paper was missing mechanisms. I had 6 genes in my paper, I picked the most important gene and segregated its data. Using insilico and proteomics data, I arranged the figures again giving emphasis to this one gene and explaining its mechanism. I also conducted some more invitro experiments using the gene’s inhibitor, which consolidated the story. After all these corrections and editions, I could have gone for a better journal but I chose a 6 IF journal, British Journal of Cancer. I had already moved back to India by the time the manuscript was submitted, so when we received the comments everyone was elated. The editors said something like, “Thank you for submitting a complete story”. This paper had all the ingredients required to be submitted to a prestigious cancer biology journal. My boss called me from Omaha and we decided to do the minor revisions and submit again. The paper was later published in the BJC journal which has a current IF of more than 7. I also co-authored multiple papers in IF journals which was mainly from maintaining interest in several other projects as the PI allowed me to collaborate with others.
At CCMB, I worked on a project (unpublished) and got myself a published review article in the glycobiology journal. “Glycobiology” is a well-respected journal in the field of glycosciences and also since it’s free to apply to the journal, I thought of submitting my review article there. My PI at CCMB had given me the freedom to take full charge of the review article as she couldn’t find time to work on it. This worked in my favor as I first submitted the paper in mid-2022 but got rejected. Reviewer 2 had many corrections which I think were genuine and the journal had asked to revise the manuscript reasonably and submit it again for consideration within 6 months. Later, I included another author from the lab who helped me address some of the queries and was familiar with the review article. He contributed handsomely and finally in mid-2023 I again submitted to the journal with all the necessary corrections. Finally, glycobiology accepted the manuscript. This time around I didn’t try anything creative, just followed what reviewers wanted and got accepted as the first and corresponding author.
Researchers in the field will be able to learn from my experience by connecting it.