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Below is a sample cover letter you can write to the editor when submitting your manuscript for the first time, and also some sample sentences you can use:

Download the sample cover letter as a word file.

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Dear Editor,

Enclosed, please find our manuscript entitled “Effects of a novel substance A on blood pressure of hypertensive geriatric patients” written by Grinwis GC, van Garderen E, and Dorrestein GM. In this study, we investigated the blood pressure decreasing effects of a novel Substance A in hypertensive geriatric patients. Dramatic decreases were observed when compared with the control group. Substance A also had significantly fewer side effects than the control Substance X, one of the most commonly used antihypertensive medications in geriatric patients. Additionally, Substance A has a lower cost than all the currently available antihypertensive drugs. We, therefore, believe that our manuscript has scientific merit and deserves publication.

The manuscript has been written according to the guidelines of Journal of XXX, and has been read and approved by all the authors. The findings have not been presented or submitted elsewhere.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely yours,

Prof.Dr. Guy C. Grinwis

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Alternative sentences you can use in your cover letter:

Dear Editor,

Here you can also address the editor by name if you wish. E.g.:

Dear Prof.Dr. Smith,

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Enclosed, please find our manuscript entitled “Effects of a novel substance A on blood pressure of hypertensive geriatric patients” written by Grinwis GC, van Garderen E, and Dorrestein GM.

This is the part where the title and authors of the manuscript are indicated.

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In this study, we investigated the blood pressure decreasing effects of a novel Substance A in hypertensive geriatric patients. Dramatic decreases were observed when compared with the control group. Substance A also had significantly fewer side effects than the control Substance X, one of the most commonly used antihypertensive medications in geriatric patients. Additionally, Substance A has a lower cost than all the currently available antihypertensive drugs.

After specifying the title and authors of the manuscript, the part that makes the cover letter important comes: emphasizing the most important findings of the study. In this section, talk about the important results of your work in a few sentences. Some other example sentence patterns you can use in this section are:

In addition to what is known, our study proves that …

In this study, we, for the first time, demonstrated that …

The present study is the first to …

Results generated from this study will hopefully contribute to our current understanding of …

You can find many more sentences that you can write in this section in Part 3: Writing Parts of a Manuscript under the Discussion heading.

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We, therefore, believe that our manuscript has scientific merit and deserves publication.

After mentioning the most important findings of your study, you can emphasize that your study deserves to be published for these reasons.

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The manuscript has been written according to the guidelines of Journal of XXX, and has been read and approved by all the authors. The findings have not been presented or submitted elsewhere.

You can find the information you need to write in this section in the Instructions for Authors section of the journal’s website. Other sentences you can write are:

All authors contributed equally to the preparation of the manuscript:

The manuscript has not been submitted or under consideration elsewhere.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Some journals demand information about the contribution of each author to the manuscript. Sample expressions you can use for this purpose are:

Author A planned the study and created the study design. Author B and Author C performed animal experiments. Author D performed the laboratory tests and the statistical analysis. Author A, Author B, and Author C prepared the manuscript together.

The conception of the idea and study design

Animal experimentation

Performance of the experiments

Statistical analysis

Writing the manuscript

Critical review and editing of the manuscript

Language editing

More sample sentences are available in Part 3: Writing Parts of a Manuscript.

Some journals ask authors to suggest potential reviewers (and sometimes names they do not want as reviewer) who might evaluate their manuscripts in their cover letters. For this purpose, you can write sentences like:

We believe that Dr. Arthur Green (University of Michigan, e-mail: a.green@……), Dr. Michael Black (University of Leeds, e-mail: m.black@…..), and Dr. John Red (University of Kentucky, e-mail: j.red@……….) would be suitable names to review our manuscript.

We would like to suggest Dr. Arthur Green (University of Michigan, e-mail: a.green@……), and Dr. Michael Black (University of Leeds, e-mail: m.black@…..) as potential reviewers to evaluate our manuscipt, whereas we would kindly request Dr. John Red (University of Kentucky, e-mail: j.red@……….) not to be appointed as a reviewer due to our similar research areas and interest conflicts.

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We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely yours,

Prof.Dr. Guy C. Grinwis

This is the closing part of the cover letter. 

When you submit your manuscript to a journal, it may take weeks to months before you get a response from the journal about the results of its review. Of course, in cases of desk-reject when the editor does not find your manuscript suitable for publication, you may hear the displeasing news in as short as hours.

If you have not heard from the journal in a time you consider reasonable after submitting your manuscript, you can request information about the evaluation process of your manuscript by sending a message to the journal or, if e-mail addresses are specified, to the editor/assistant editors.

Example message:

Dear editor,

On January 7, 2022, we submitted our manuscript entitled “Effect of Substance ABC on glycemic status, lipid profile, and total antioxidant capacity in hyperlipidemic type II diabetes mellitus patients: a randomized controlled trial” written by the authors Yilmaz R, Dagdeviren C, Aktay N, Cangul IT. So far we did not receive any information about the result of the evaluation process. We would be glad if you could kindly inform us if any progress has been made in the evaluation of our above mentioned manuscript.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Rahsan Yilmaz

You submitted your manuscript to a journal and it was accepted for publication, but the reviewers requested some changes/corrections. In such a case, you have to send an informative file to the referees about the changes you made on the manuscript together with your revised manuscript. You can highlight the relevant places in the manuscript with another color or write them in different font color for the changes to be easily understood by the referees. In addition, you can prepare a response file in which you write the criticism/question/comments of the referees item by item at the top, and your answer under each item.

Below you can find an introductory text that you can use in a response file (you can call such a file “Authors’ Response to Reviewers”) and also alternative sentences you can use.

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AUTHORS’ RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS

We would like to thank the reviewers for their meticulous efforts in reviewing our manuscript. Their constructive criticisms and valuable comments helped us improve our manuscript. We performed all the suggested changes on the manuscript and marked them green. Below please find our point-by-point responses to other questions and comments of the reviewers.

Our response to Reviewer 1:

TITLE

I suggest the authors include the study type in the title. The title can be: “Effect of Substance ABC on glycemic status, lipid profile, and total antioxidant capacity in hyperlipidemic type II diabetes mellitus patients: A randomized controlled trial”.

The title was changed as suggested by the reviewer.

…

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To thank the referees:

We would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable comments/meticulous efforts/constructive criticism.

An introductory sentence you can write before you start responding to reviewers’ criticisms:

Below please find our point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments.

To express the opinions of the referees:

The reviewer believes/claims/proposes/suggests that ….. (since/as) …..

The reviewer disagrees that ….

Conjunctions you can use before writing your own opinion:

But

However,

On the other hand,

To indicate that you partially agree with the reviewer’s opinion:

The reviewer claims that …… While this/this statement/this suggestion/this observation may be true, …

The reviewer has a point in thinking like that. However, …

The reviewer objects to the idea that …… This is an understandable concern. However, ….

To a certain extent, the reviewer is correct in claiming that …… But/However, …

We agree with the reviewer that …… But/However …

While it might be/is true that …, still …

To indicate that you disagree with the referee:

In our opinion, the argument claimed by the referee is not valid because …

Unfortunately, we disagree with the referee’s idea/opinion/suggestion. We believe that …

We disagree with the reviewer on this topic. We believe that ….

We have to say that …

The reviewer … However, that is not the case here. In our opinion/experience …

To point out that the reviewer’s comment is irrelevant:

Unfortunately/However, the argument/point raised by the reviewer is irrelevant to the topic.

To indicate that you think the referee did not fully understand what you meant:

We believe that the reviewer did not conceive our intent …

We believe that the referee misunderstood/misinterpreted ….

To defend your opinion:

We believe that …

As we see …

Our results indicate that …

Our results are still valid as …

To support your opinion with literature:

Evidence from the literature indicates/suggests that our proposition is true. In Dorrestein et al. (2019), the authors have found …

The literature supports our opinion. In Gul et al. (2019), the authors have found ….. similar to our study. Also, Topal et al. (2021), in their study performed on diabetic rats, found that ….., which is consistent with our findings. Therefore, we believe that …

Example sentences you can use about the changes made:

The sentence was rewritten for better understanding.

Suggested change was done.

We revised the text as requested.

The suggested part was omitted.

Detailed information was added as requested.

More recent literature was added.

Example sentences you can use to express the markings you made in the text:

Changes in the manuscript are indicated/marked/shown in bold and red font.

Changes in the text are highlighted in yellow.

We highlighted the changes in yellow.

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