From spam emails to Twitter (now X) bots impersonating politicians and celebrities, the Internet is rife with bad actors, and it is important to exercise a certain level of caution in our online interactions. The same is true in the academic publishing world as well. In some cases, journals may not always be what they appear. In this article, we offer some practical tips on how you can avoid publishing in “highjacked” journals (also known as "cloned" journals), where...

As authors, we are operating in a highly competitive environment where we want our research findings to have the most impact they can. By impact, we mean getting people’s attention on our research so that we can communicate our findings to them. Traditionally, this has meant attracting readers’ attention by writing clear and effective abstracts for research papers published in scholarly journals or conference proceedings or posted on preprint servers...

As researchers, it is critical for us to master how to summarize our work in a clear, concise, and accurate manner. This applies not only to how we describe our research when speaking with others, but also to how we summarize it for readers in research papers and other documents...