Five keys to publish a scientific article

It is very difficult to supplement the excellent review and instruction written by Dr. Graciela (Chela) Alarcón, a mentor and friend of many of us, in the previous issue of "Five keys to publishing." Therefore, I will try to give this a more informal aspect, with personal experiences and I will try to emphasize some aspects that seem important to me or to highlight even more some of those that Chela highlighted.

Plasticity

This chapter discusses the landmark paper ‘Neuronal plasticity: increasing the gain in pain’, published by Woolf and Salter in 2000. Excellent review articles not only give a concise overview of a topic but also provide a framework for future research. In 2000, Clifford Woolf and Michael Salter joined forces to write one of the most highly cited review articles in the field of pain research and thus provided a conceptual framework for the plastic changes that occur in nociceptive neurons in response to chronic pain. With over 2,700 citations, this review is one of those rare articles that is still appreciated by pain researchers across domains.

Made for Muslims: Konsum und Distinktion im zeitgenössischen Syrien

With the beginning of Bashar al-Asad's presidency in Syria, new fields of the market were opened -- and increasingly filled with commodities "made for Muslims". In this master thesis, the author tracks down these commodities with a special focus on their design and function for social distinction. Through the commodities, the social landscape of Damascene quarters is being analysed and a typology of sale places and realms is being developed. Added to "normal" academic footnotes are visual footnotes, resulting in a large number of illustrations by the author, unique material from Syria before the war. The master thesis had been supervised by Prof. Gudrun Krämer and with its excellent review been starting point for the author's dissertation "Commodity World Islam" to be published soon.