Writing and submitting a research article to a journal are two closely connected stages of the same academic process. A good article gives clear form to a problem, defines a question, develops a thesis, and guides the reader through a persuasive sequence of steps. At the same time, an article belongs to a wider ecology of academic publishing: it is written with a possible readership in mind, takes shape within the conventions of a discipline, and is submitted to a journal whose aims, scope, standards, and practical conditions are appropriate to the work.

This guide brings these multiple dimensions together. Part I considers how to design, structure, and refine a research article. It then explains how to prepare a title, abstract, and keywords, and how to manage references and bibliography. Part II discusses how to choose a suitable academic journal, submit the article, and navigate the peer-review process.

Although this guide is organised around the research article, much of the advice contained in Part I applies directly to a BA thesis as well (and not only them). A thesis is normally longer than an article and requires a broader reconstruction of the literature and a more explicit presentation of its own structure. Yet the underlying principles remain the same: formulate a precise problem, organise the argument into recognisable stages, distinguish sources from interpretation, and make every reference traceable.

The research article is one of the fundamental units of academic writing. Its limited length forces us to isolate a problem, formulate a precise question, and defend a circumscribed thesis within a controlled space. The same argumentative logic often reappears in book chapters, research proposals, and sections of larger works. Learning to write a good article is therefore an effective way to learn how to organise research more generally.

Writing an article normally unfolds through distinct stages that cannot and should not be standardised. Very often, one begins with the introduction, whose drafting helps clarify the context and limits of the article one is about to write. The body of the article and the conclusion follow. Only at a later stage, once the article has been properly revised and is ready for submission, does one prepare the abstract and select the keywords. Finally, as the last step before submission, it is always advisable to carry out a detailed check of footnote references and the bibliography.

The main components of an article perform different functions:

• The title and abstract make the article visible and give the reader a reason to open it.
• The introduction, body, and conclusion organise the argument and seek to persuade the reader that the proposed interpretation or solution deserves to be accepted.
• Keywords, notes, and bibliography make the research findable, verifiable, and reusable by other scholars.

Hence, research articles constitute a recognisable genre. Like any other genre, they are governed by conventions concerning structure, style, and method. More specifically:

• Structure concerns the internal organisation of the article and the relation between its parts.
• Style concerns register, sentence structure, terminology, and the devices used to guide the reader through the argument.
• Method concerns the procedures through which the research question is addressed. It varies much more substantially across disciplines and research traditions.

Structure and style are relatively general features of academic writing in the humanities. Method depends more directly on the object of research and on the kind of thesis one intends to defend. Historical reconstruction, textual interpretation, and formal argument may require different procedures. The reader should be able to recognise what kind of text she is reading and what function each part performs without this implying mechanical conformity.

When writing an article, a few pieces of advice are particularly useful.

• Use signposts when they help the reader understand the argumentative sequence.
• Keep the terminology adopted throughout the text stable.
• Use verbal tenses consistently: the present often works well when reporting what a text or argument claims, while the past is appropriate for historical events and completed research procedures.
• Avoid redundancy, unnecessary technical language, and sentences so long and complex that they obscure the thesis.
• The passive voice can be useful, but it should perform a precise function rather than become an automatic choice.

THE INTRODUCTION

Following LaPlaca, Lindgreen, and Vanhamme (2018), an introduction should make four things clear: the research question, the relevant frame of reference, the contribution of the article, and the reason why that contribution matters.

In a philosophy article, these elements can normally be organised into three steps. First, establish the context of the problem. Once this has been done, formulate the research question and state the thesis and/or aim of the article. Finally, explain the procedure through which the thesis will be argued. These steps often correspond to a movement from context, to problem, and finally to the structure of the argument.

The first step is therefore to provide the context the reader needs in order to understand the problem. Two questions are particularly useful here: which debate, text, or conceptual difficulty gives rise to the article? What remains unclear, controversial, or insufficiently explained in the existing literature? This opening section should be concise and selective: the introduction should not turn into an exhaustive literature review or state-of-the-art survey.

The second step formulates the research question as clearly as possible. The research question is the interpretive issue that drives the research discussed in the article. Naturally, it need not be presented in interrogative form: what matters is the function it performs rather than its grammatical form, which may depend on specific argumentative and rhetorical choices. The reader should be able to identify what the article seeks to establish and why the question is worth asking. In many cases, it is useful to state the answer, or at least its general direction, already in the introduction in order to make the article easier to understand.

Finally, the third step of the introduction explains how the argument proceeds, that is, the analysis developed in the article. The description of this path should always correspond to the actual sections into which the article is organised. For this purpose, simple signposts such as “first,” “second,” and “finally” are often useful when they clarify the sequence of the analysis and of the article. Every step should perform a function: it should explain why the following section is necessary for the argument as a whole.

THE BODY OF THE ARTICLE

The body of the article develops the research question through the steps announced in the introduction. Its precise structure depends on the philosophical field, the method adopted, and the kind of thesis one intends to argue for. Three general principles nevertheless remain useful.

First, one should try to maintain argumentative correspondence between the introduction, abstract, and body of the article. If the introduction promises three steps, the body should make them visible and preserve their logical relation.

Second, one should make sure that every section has its own argumentative function. A section, subsection, or paragraph should justify its presence by contributing directly to the main question. Interesting material that performs no clear function in the article should be limited as much as possible. Even adding it in a footnote may not be the right choice, especially when it could be used elsewhere as the basis for another article.

Finally, it is essential to control the local movement of the argument. Each section should work as an argumentative unit in its own right: it should formulate a claim, provide evidence or reasons, explain their significance, and connect the result to what follows.

Good academic practice requires the body of the article to provide the reader with enough orientation to understand its content easily and appropriately, without forcing her to reconstruct its architecture and internal analytical movements on her own. Short transitional sentences can be very effective in recalling what has already been established, explaining which problem gives rise to the next question, and clarifying how the new section contributes to the general thesis.

THE CONCLUSION

The conclusion closes the argumentative movement of the article. A simple summary is usually insufficient because the reader has just finished the text. The conclusion should instead make explicit the intellectual result that has been achieved. Two tasks are particularly important:

1. state the main gain: explain what the argument has established, clarified, modified, or made possible.
2. return to the debate: explain what follows from the result with respect to the problem introduced at the beginning and, where appropriate, to adjacent questions.

Conclusions should be assertive without becoming theatrical. Avoid claims that exceed what the article has actually demonstrated. A strong conclusion often identifies the precise scope of the result and indicates where it may lead. Articles normally open further work even when they resolve a circumscribed question.

METADATA AND POSITIONING

Title, abstract, and keywords are easy to treat as accessory elements. Yet they are among the most decisive parts of an article: they are the first elements encountered by editors, reviewers, databases, search engines, and potential readers. As a rule, it is better to define their final form only after completing the article, when the thesis and structure are already stable.

These three elements perform different functions. The title identifies the article and attracts possible readers. The abstract represents the argument in miniature, providing a kind of guide that allows a possible reader to decide whether to read the article. Keywords, finally, place the text within systems of retrieval and classification and thus make the article findable for an interested reader. Given their close functional relation, title, abstract, and keywords should be designed together while avoiding unnecessary repetition.

THE TITLE

LaPlaca, Lindgreen, and Vanhamme (2018) describe the title as a kind of “invitation” to enter the article. Two requirements follow. On the one hand, a title should be clear enough to identify the object of the article. On the other hand, it should be distinctive enough to attract attention.

Clarity and distinctiveness can be combined in many ways. The title-subtitle format is particularly useful in philosophy because it allows a shorter and more memorable first part to be paired with a precise description of the article’s object. In any case, a subtitle should be used only when it adds precision, for example by identifying the author, text, period, or problem addressed in the article. The first part of the title should nevertheless remain meaningful and clear even when separated from the subtitle. In general, it is always better to opt for short, clear, incisive titles: a title that occupies several lines usually contains information that belongs in the abstract.

The words that make up a title should be chosen carefully. Technical terminology is useful when it identifies the field precisely, while decorative jargon rarely improves a title. A similar principle applies to quotations. Using a quotation, or a term in another language, in the title may initially appear effective, but it can also produce awkward visual results when the article is cited through some of the different referencing systems commonly used. In general, while there is room for individuality and creativity in choosing a title, the focus should remain on the findability of the research. In other words, the title should facilitate the identification and retrieval of the research by an interested reader, who should be able to recognise the article’s topic from the title.

ABSTRACT

An abstract is a compact representation of the article: a kind of microcosm outlining the salient aspects of the article’s macrocosm. In this sense, the abstract has two functions. First, it should allow editors, reviewers, and readers to understand which problem is being addressed, which thesis is being defended, how the argument proceeds, and why the result matters. Second, the abstract also has a fundamental promotional function: it completes the invitation made by the title by persuading the reader that the contents of the article are worth reading.

For this reason, LaPlaca, Lindgreen, and Vanhamme (2018) describe the abstract as a kind of advertisement for the article. The metaphor is useful, but accuracy should remain the priority. An abstract that promises more than the article delivers may attract attention, but it will also produce disappointed readers and suspicious reviewers. Consider the limiting case of a reader who buys the article online after being persuaded by its title and abstract. If the article does not align with what the abstract promises, the reading experience will quickly turn into frustration.

In philosophy, an effective abstract often follows a simple sequence: context, problem, thesis, procedure, and contribution. Scientific disciplines may instead require a more explicit structure based on methods and results, sometimes following the IMRaD model. It is always advisable to check the conventions of the journal and field for which the article is intended.

In light of this, when writing an abstract it is essential to align it with the actual contents of the article. This is precisely why the abstract is usually written after a final draft of the text has been prepared. Every promise made in the abstract must find a real counterpart in the article. This also means that if the article changes during later stages of revision, the abstract must be checked and updated where necessary.

At the stylistic level, the abstract should be clear and persuasive. The main thesis of the article should be stated as early as possible, following a concise discussion of the relevant context. A common mistake is to devote too much space to context, wasting the reader’s time and making it harder to identify the information she is looking for and that, in principle, the article provides. For this reason, the clarity of the abstract takes priority over stylistic beauty. A very useful test is to ask a colleague or friend to read the abstract and assess whether the topic, question, and argumentative development can be identified after a careful reading.

KEYWORDS

Keywords are intellectually significant metadata. They help databases classify the article and allow readers to find it. They should accordingly be chosen strategically. The general rule is to be specific without becoming idiosyncratic. A good set of keywords normally moves from the broader domain towards the distinctive object or problem of the article.

One or two more general terms help place the article within its main field or debate, while more specific concepts can identify the central problem, method, or textual object of the article. In this sense, the names of philosophers should not be overused and should normally be reserved for cases in which that philosopher is a primary object of the article rather than an occasional interlocutor. Likewise, the most common forms of terms should be prioritised, and terms in the original language should be used with great caution.

A very common mistake is the mechanical duplication of the title in the keywords. This is a stupid and dangerous mistake because keywords can extend the findability of the article by naming related concepts that do not appear in the title. Giving up this expansive function means limiting the range of potentially interested readers. From this perspective, one should always think from the reader’s point of view and ask which terms a scholar would actually type into a catalogue, database, or search engine in order to find the research presented in the article.

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

References are an essential part of a scholarly contribution. They allow the reader to verify claims, reconstruct the debate, and identify the texts on which an interpretation depends. The bibliography therefore plays a crucial role in the structure of the article. For this reason, it needs to be carefully prepared in terms of both selection and justification, as well as formal presentation in notes and in the final bibliography.

Every journal, publisher, and department has editorial guidelines, or a stylesheet. These specify the citation system adopted and other stylistic and formal rules, including those governing quotations in the main text, punctuation, the presentation of diagrams, and much else. The purpose of a stylesheet is twofold: to create stylistic consistency across scholarly contributions and to make sources identifiable and traceable. For this reason, editorial guidelines should always be followed very carefully. Only when genuinely necessary should one consider renegotiating them with journal editors or the relevant staff at a publishing house.

Although bibliographic management software such as Zotero can be useful for managing bibliographic databases and producing references in different styles, manual checking by the author remains essential. Generative AI can also be extremely useful as an additional checking step, but the author remains responsible for carefully verifying that everything is in order and that the AI has not introduced new references through hallucination.

There are many referencing systems, probably too many, given that continually moving from one to another requires a completely unnecessary investment of researchers’ time and effort. Two systems are particularly common in philosophy and the humanities, and it is useful to become familiar with both. The first is the author-date system, widely used in the social sciences and in many areas of contemporary philosophy. The second is the notes-and-bibliography system, common in historical and philological work and still widespread in the humanities of Continental Europe.

THE AUTHOR-DATE SYSTEM

In the author-date system, a short reference appears in the main text, normally in parentheses. It contains the author’s surname, the year of publication, and the page number when a specific passage is cited. Full bibliographic information appears only in the final bibliography.

• Example in the text: (Burnett 1997, 32–37).
• Example of a book in the bibliography: Burnett, Charles. 1997. The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England. London: The British Library.
• Example of an article: Rampling, Jennifer M. 2012. “John Dee and the Sciences: Early Modern Networks of Knowledge.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43/3: 432–436.
• Example of a chapter: Jolivet, Jean. 1988. “The Arabic Inheritance.” In A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, edited by Peter Dronke, 113–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This system has two advantages. First, it keeps references compact and makes the date of the cited literature immediately visible. It also works particularly well when an argument repeatedly engages with a large body of secondary literature. Yet it has disadvantages as well, especially in historical-philosophical work. On the one hand, dense parenthetical references can interrupt the text. On the other hand, there is the awkward question of how to cite modern critical editions of premodern texts. This often produces references such as (Thomas Aquinas 2010), where the name of the historical author becomes attached to a date at which, quite obviously, he could not have written anything.

Despite its simplicity, there is no single universally accepted author-date style. Chicago author-date, Harvard, APA, and the styles adopted by individual journals differ in punctuation, capitalisation, and the treatment of edited volumes. For this reason, the version required by the journal always takes priority and should be checked carefully.

PRIMARY SOURCES, SECONDARY LITERATURE

In historical-philosophical work, it is essential to distinguish clearly between primary sources and secondary literature. Primary sources should identify the edition actually used. If the text has a canonical reference system, for example questions, articles, and so on, this should be used consistently so that the reader can locate a passage across different editions and translations.

Published translations of primary texts require the same care, and the translation being used should always be identified. The same principle applies to translations produced by the author while writing the article or thesis: personal translations should be declared in a note, normally the first relevant note, or in the methodological preliminaries. With respect to modern-language translations, it is good practice to present the modern-language translation, for example in English, in the main text and place the original passage, for example in Latin, in a footnote if and only if (1) the translation has been produced by the author for the article or thesis, or (2) the Latin text, despite the existence of a published modern translation, contains points that are fundamental to the discussion.

Secondary literature, by contrast, consists of studies that interpret, discuss, and reconstruct the primary sources under examination. These studies may be recent or older: the fundamental point is the function they perform within the article. When secondary studies are included in the bibliography, they should provide all the information necessary to identify the cited work exactly.

FOOTNOTES

Footnotes are very important tools for providing additional information and references without overloading the body of the article and obscuring its argumentative structure. Effective use of footnotes is a skill that develops over time through repeated practice.

One of the most common mistakes is to make notes hypertrophic by including excessive and disconnected material, long strings of bibliographic references, and accidental digressions. At the same time, a second mistake, less common but equally problematic, is to move information that is important to the development of the argument from the main text into a note. This can weaken the argumentative force of the article’s thesis.

A good starting point for becoming proficient in the use of footnotes is to consider carefully the four main functions they perform:

1. identify a primary or secondary source cited in the main text through an unambiguous bibliographic reference
2. provide a brief qualification of the argument or data presented in the main text: this may concern a secondary problem implied by the discussion, a possible alternative reading, provided that it does not affect the interpretive architecture of the article, a textual variant, and so on.
3. refer the reader to further secondary literature or additional texts by historical authors
4. present material that is relevant but accessory to the economy of the text, for example a passage in the original language that would interrupt the main argumentative thread if placed in the body of the article.

Naturally, if an author-date referencing system is used, the role of footnotes changes substantially. In this system, references to primary sources and secondary literature are given directly in the main text. For this reason, footnotes are limited to functions (2) and (3) in the list above.

It is always worth asking whether a note is really necessary. One should remember that if the reader needs to know something in order to accept the central thesis, that material normally belongs in the main text. Notes should primarily be treated as tools of support and documentation rather than as decorative margins in which unnecessary digressions accumulate.

Every direct quotation must be traceable to a precise source. This means that page, section, proposition, question, article, line, or any other standard locator required by the text and discipline should be provided unambiguously and consistently with the relevant editorial guidelines. If those guidelines are unclear on this point, it is good practice to contact the journal and ask for clarification.

A final point to consider is that some journals and publishers adopt a referencing system that uses endnotes instead of footnotes. In this case, the main difference concerns the reader’s experience. While footnotes allow readers to check references and clarifications immediately, endnotes require a more complex process in which readers must move back and forth between the pages of the text. This makes the notes themselves less visible, a factor that should be taken into account when writing them.

THE FINAL CHECK

Before submitting the article to a journal, or to a supervisor in the case of a thesis, carry out a separate check of all references. This step should be kept distinct from the stylistic revision of the main body of the article: do one first and then the other. In both cases, the formal apparatus should be checked systematically. More specifically, it is always advisable to make sure that in the final version:

• every direct quotation has a precise reference.
• every shortened citation can be linked unambiguously and consistently to a single complete bibliographic entry.
• every work cited in the text or notes appears in the bibliography when the journal style requires it.
• bibliographic entries that are no longer cited have been removed.
• names, titles, dates, volume numbers, page ranges, and diacritics have been checked against the sources used.
• abbreviations for primary sources and canonical references are consistent throughout the article.
• self-references and acknowledgements have been anonymised (obviously, this does not apply to a BA thesis).

A clean referencing apparatus is one of the fundamental conditions of serious academic writing. For this reason, underestimating its importance can create a number of serious interpretive problems that should always be minimised as far as possible.

CHOOSING THE JOURNAL

Submitting an article to a journal should be planned before the article is completely finished. Once the research question and general strategy are clear, one should identify journals for which the work could plausibly be written. This makes it easier to control length, audience, terminology, and the amount of contextual explanation required. Good articles are usually developed with a possible venue in mind. This makes it possible to understand in advance the community to which the work is addressed. When evaluating possible journals, four elements are particularly important: fit, audience, reputation, and practical conditions.

The first criterion concerns journal fit, that is, the actual alignment between the article and the journal. To assess it, it is essential to read the journal’s aims and scope and to consult articles published there recently. Indeed, the material a journal actually publishes may reveal its real interests more clearly.

Once the journal’s scholarly profile is clear, it is useful to consider its audience, that is, the readers of the journal in question. One should therefore ask who is most likely to encounter the work in that venue. An article may be suitable for more than one discipline, but its framing and the amount of contextual explanation can, and often should, change according to the intended audience.

The third criterion concerns the journal’s reputation and evaluation. Indexing, national classifications, citation metrics, and journal rankings can matter for careers and funding. SJR and similar tools can provide useful information, but no ranking should be treated as a complete measure of scholarly quality.

Finally, practical conditions should be assessed: word limit, language, open-access policy, acceptance rate where available, peer-review model, publication frequency, and expected timeline. Review and publication times vary enormously from one journal to another, ranging from a few months to well over a year, and in some cases even longer.

When evaluating a journal, one should also be deeply suspicious of unsolicited invitations to submit an article. Very often these come from predatory journals, especially when the invitation is generic, flattering, unrelated to the recipient’s field, or promises implausibly rapid publication. If the invitation appears legitimate, the journal should still be assessed as a whole: editorial board, publisher, peer-review policy, indexing claims, archiving, costs, contact information, and the quality of recently published articles.

Publishing in a journal does not normally require publication fees, especially in philosophy. Some journals have recently begun to require an article processing charge (APC), that is, a fee paid for publication. Although this does not make a journal predatory as a matter of classification, such journals should be avoided because, from an ethical and professional-conduct point of view, they raise serious questions about the publication process, at least in my view. For the purpose of classifying a journal as predatory, however, what matters is transparency and the actual scholarly service provided.

Some open-access models involve publication fees in order to make a scholarly contribution freely available to read and download. Many journals offer open access without charging authors, while others do require a fee. Open access can take several forms:

• gold open access makes the final article freely available through the journal, but an APC may be charged.
• diamond open access makes the article freely available without costs for the author.
• green open access allows an authorised version, often the accepted manuscript, to be deposited in a repository according to the applicable policy.
• hybrid open access offers an open-access option within a subscription journal, normally for a fee, although some funders restrict the eligibility of such costs.

Funding requirements should be checked separately from the journal’s own policy. Under Horizon Europe, for example, beneficiaries must ensure immediate open access to peer-reviewed publications through a trusted scholarly repository and under the applicable licensing conditions.

SUBMISSION AND ASSESSMENT

If the schedule allows, it is a good idea to let the article rest for a few days and then read it once more as a complete argument. Before submission, however, one should always carry out a final technical check. The journal guidelines should be checked carefully, including length, file format, bibliographic style, figures, and any supplementary material. Finally, the manuscript should be anonymised by checking acknowledgements, self-references, file properties, and other metadata that could reveal the author’s identity.

After submission, the journal editors normally carry out a preliminary assessment, usually called a desk assessment. At this stage, they may reject a manuscript through a desk rejection if it falls outside the journal’s scope, does not meet basic scholarly or formal standards, or does not appear sufficiently competitive to be sent to external reviewers. A desk rejection often says more about fit and editorial priorities than about the intrinsic quality of the article.

If the manuscript is sent for external review, or peer review, independent scholars assess its originality, argument, evidence, relevance, and presentation. Peer review provides information and recommendations to the editors, who nevertheless remain ultimately responsible for the final decision about whether the article should be accepted.

Peer-review models vary. In single-blind review, reviewers know the identity of the author while their own identities remain concealed. In double-blind peer review, author and reviewers are mutually anonymous. Some journals adopt open, transparent, collaborative, or post-publication models. In some open-review models, the names of reviewers are included in the final version of the article. The number of reviewers also varies. It is always better to check the journal’s policy than to assume that a single standard model exists.

A review report normally combines an overall evaluation, detailed comments, and a recommendation to the editor. Some parts may be visible only to the editor, and the reviewer’s recommendation is merely advisory: editors may give different weight to the reports received, request an additional assessment, or make a decision different from the one suggested by the reviewers.

The decision categories vary from journal to journal, but the following are common:

• acceptance without substantial changes: cases of direct acceptance are extremely rare
• minor revision, when only limited changes are required
• major revision, when substantial changes are necessary before a final decision
• revise and resubmit, when the manuscript in its current form is rejected but the journal is willing to consider a substantially reworked version
• rejection, when the journal does not intend to proceed further with the manuscript.

Review reports should be read diagnostically and with a growth mindset. It is good practice for reviewers to provide constructive feedback, but unfortunately this often does not happen, and the way an evaluation is presented can, in some rare cases, even be rude. Whatever the form in which feedback is presented, the only productive way to interpret it is through epistemic openness: criticisms and suggestions should methodologically be treated as sincere advice offered by a colleague to improve the contribution of the research. In this sense, one should focus on self-reflection and self-criticism. Both are fundamental tools for becoming good philosophers and good researchers. This does not mean, of course, that every criticism is well founded. It means only that before criticising the criticism, we should criticise ourselves with a good measure of epistemic humility.

Some reviewers’ criticisms will probably reveal genuine weaknesses, while others may reflect disagreement, misunderstanding, or a different conception of the problem. Even a rejection can be useful if it shows where the argument, framing, or exposition failed to persuade a competent reader. It is always better not to publish a bad article than to publish it and regret doing so afterwards. In any case, a review report should never be treated as a verdict on the author’s personal or scholarly value. The report should be read and used for self-criticism, but useful criticisms should then be separated from idiosyncratic preferences.

If an article is rejected, it is good practice to ask what kind of rejection was received. A desk rejection for reasons of scope may require little more than a different contextual framing before submission elsewhere. A detailed rejection after peer review deserves more substantial revision.

Although early in an academic career one may be tempted to submit elsewhere an article rejected after peer review without changing it, this is invariably a poor strategic choice. Obviously, in cases of desk rejection for reasons of scope, submitting to another journal is normal and entirely expected, but this should not happen when the manuscript has been rejected after external assessment. It should also be kept firmly in mind that simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is normally prohibited and is treated seriously by editors and organisations concerned with publication ethics. Finally, plagiarism is a scholarly, professional, and ethically unacceptable practice that can lead to serious reputational damage, retraction of publications, revocation of academic qualifications, including degrees and doctorates, and, in the most serious cases, exclusion from academic life.