예시 1 — 논문을 두루뭉술하게 소개하는 커버레터
교정 전
“We are pleased to submit our manuscript entitled ‘Sleep duration and cognitive decline in older adults’ for consideration in your esteemed journal. This paper reports the results of an important study in our field, and we believe it will be of great interest to your readers. The manuscript has not been published elsewhere and all authors have approved the submission.”
교정 후
“We submit ‘Sleep duration and cognitive decline in older adults’ for consideration as an Original Article. Earlier work has linked short sleep duration to cognitive decline largely in cross-sectional samples; we followed the same measure prospectively in a community-dwelling cohort and found that the association attenuates once baseline cognitive status is accounted for. Because the journal has recently published on measurement error in community cognitive studies, we believe the finding speaks to a question your readership is already engaged with.”
이렇게 고친 이유: 편집장은 하루에 수십 편의 커버레터를 읽으며, “important”나 “of great interest” 같은 형용사는 판단 재료가 되지 않습니다. 커버레터가 해야 할 일은 두 가지, 즉 이 논문이 기존 문헌에 무엇을 더하는지, 그리고 왜 다른 저널이 아니라 이 저널인지를 각각 한 문장으로 보여주는 것입니다. 수정문은 선행 연구와의 차이를 구체적으로 지목하고, 저널이 최근 다룬 주제에 근거해 적합성을 설명합니다.