Planning a study requires attention to detail. I have broken these down into 10 steps which I call the 10 commandments. These are:
 
Introduce and Familiarize yourself with the steps in performing quality research 
Review literature using PubMed, read Journals regularly and work on Hypothesis building. 
Interact with a statistician before starting your study/thesis 
Data collection and maintenance is Critical. Use tips for data entry in Excel sheets. 
Give clear-cut guidelines to the statistician for data analysis and interpretation 
Use a methodical approach with CHECKLISTS for Writing up the manuscript.  
Choose a journal of choice carefully keeping in mind its indexing and your target audience  
Use reference managers to efficiently maintain references.  
Be aware of the Common causes of rejection of a manuscript and avoid these mistakes  
Be positive even with rejection, be persistent and vow to come back stronger.You can also read about this on the SRA blog.