Abstract

This year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to be Published in English, which were first released online on our website in May 2010. They provide simple, practical advice to help researchers understand the standards of scientific writing in English and, consequently, write better manuscripts. The document aims to make international scientific communication more efficient, but simultaneously draws attention to ethical issues, such as authorship criteria, plagiarism, and conflict of interests. Non-commercial printing of the guidelines is allowed, so they can be used as handouts for courses in scientific writing and publication ethics.The first edition was the fruit of long discussions on the EASE forum and at the EASE conference in Pisa in 2009, followed by consultations within the EASE Council. Since the very beginning, the document has explained that scientific publications should be COMPLETE, CONCISE, and CLEAR (3 x C for quick memorization), so the main part of EASE Guidelines was divided into three sections focused on these characteristics. It was supplemented by a list of contributors, references and further reading, as well as five appendices (Abstracts, Ambiguity, Cohesion, Plurals, and Spelling), which described the selected topics in greater detail. In June 2010, one more appendix was added (Simplicity) and seven translations were freely downloadable as PDFs: French, Spanish, Italian, Estonian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Key words: EASE guidelines