Publishing a research paper in a peer-reviewed journal is an important activity within the academic community. It allows you to network with other scholars, get your name and work into circulation, and further refine your ideas and research. Getting published isn’t easy, but you can improve your odds by submitting a technically sound and creative yet straightforward piece of research. It’s also vital to find a suitable academic journal for your topic and writing style, so you can tailor your research paper to it and increase your chances of publication and wider recognition. The process of academic publishing, which begins when authors submit a manuscript to a publisher, is divided into two distinct phases: peer review and production. The process of peer review is organized by the journal editor and is complete when the content of the article, together with any associated images or figures, are accepted for publication. The peer review process is increasingly managed online, through the use of proprietary systems, commercial software packages, or open source and free software. A manuscript undergoes one or more rounds of review; after each round, the author(s) of the article modify their submission in line with the reviewers’ comments; this process is repeated until the editor is satisfied and the work is accepted. The production process, controlled by a production editor or publisher, then takes an article through copy editing, typesetting, inclusion in a specific issue of a journal, and then printing and online publication. Academic copy editing seeks to ensure that an article conforms to the journal’s house style, that all of the referencing and labelling is correct, and that the text is consistent and legible; often this work involves substantive editing and negotiating with the authors. Because the work of academic copy editors can overlap with that of authors’ editors, editors employed by journal publishers often refer to themselves as “manuscript editors”.