Publish or perish?A guide to submitting papers for peer-reviewed publication

Ian Brown

Louise Savory

Erlend Aasheim

A brief history of scientific publication

• First scientific journal was Philosophical Transactions

• published by the Royal Society in 1665

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/publishorbedamned.shtml

• Now more than 2,000 publishers producing more than 1.6 million articles in more than 20,000 journals

• Traditionally subscription-based

• Rise of open access journals since 2000

Source: http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n03/mcguigan_g01.html

A brief history of scientific publication

Source: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/124

The rise of open access publishing

With thanks: http://tinyurl.com/carolinetomes

Why should I

try to publish?To share learning and disseminate knowledge

To build your reputation as an academic

To challenge the accepted scientific view

In response to another publication

To attract research funding

To contribute to the research impact of your department

Because your supervisor has told you to

To achieve KA9 academic PH competences

It looks good on your CV

To improve population health and wellbeing

To reduce health inequalities

To demonstrate something is or isn’t (cost) effective

To share a useful new method

Failure to publish negative findings distorts the evidence base

What could I submit?

• MPhil dissertation

• Service work evaluation

• Case reports – e.g. from health protection placement

• Systematic review

• Comment piece / letter to editor

Some recent examples

Choosing where to submit

• ‘High impact’ general medicine journals e.g. Lancet, British Medical Journal

+ Wide readership+ High impact+ Great for CV

–Only accept a minority of papers–Laborious process of review, revision and

publication–A more specialist paper may be more suited to a

specialist journal

Choosing where to submit

• Specialist public health journalse.g. Journal of Public Health, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

+ More likely to reach an interested audience

+ Tend to accept a greater proportion of papers

–Lower impact than general medical journals

–Less likely to attract media coverage

–Laborious process of review, revision and publication

Choosing where to submit

• Open Access journals, e.g. PLOS Medicine, BMC Public Health, BMJ Open

+ Papers can be published within weeks not months

+ Some OA journals accept all papers so long as they are methodologically sound

+ Full paper available to everyone

–Many have high fees to cover costs

–Variable quality and impact

Deciding on a journal

• Where were the articles you cited published?

• What journals do you read?

• Who are your target audience?

• Use an online tool like JANE

http://www.biosemantics.org/jane/

• Check the Journal’s website for information

• Send an exploratory e-mail to the editors

• Look out for calls for articles on your topic

• Check impact factors

Journal Impact Factor

• A measure of the frequency with which the ‘average article’ in a journal has been cited in a particular year

• Helps evaluate a journal’s relative importance, especially compared to others in the same field

• Impact factor >5 considered very good

• e.g. BMJ - 17, Journal of Public Health - 2, BMC Public Health - 2

Exercise

• On your tables

• As a table discuss the barriers to paper submission (5 minutes)

• Then, in pairs discuss a piece of work that you could turn into a paper• What would be the key PH message? (5 minutes)

• Share with the table, and choose one barrier and one idea for a paper to feed back to the room (5 minutes)

Co-author etiquette

• If it’s your paper, you should be the first author

• Often the main supervisor or principal investigator is last

• Link those positions in between to relative contributions made

• Shared 1st authorship is becoming more common

Co-author etiquette

• ICMJE criteria for authorship:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work

Source: http://tinyurl.com/ICMJEcriteria

Preparing your manuscript

• Contact your academic supervisor for advice, contacts, facilities

• Befriend a tame statistician

• Use reference manager software (e.g. Mendeley)

• Read the journal author instructions

• Refer to STROBE or other relevant guidelines

• Base layout on similar articles from the journal

• Be patient. It can take months or years, even working full-time!

http://www.strobe-statement.org/

Peer review

• Usually two subject experts and a statistician

• Many journals will give authors the opportunity to recommend or veto potential referees

• Once you have registered to submit your paper, you may get requests to review future papers

• Contributing to peer review is part of academic life

• Critical appraisal skills are needed

• Subject expertise helps to put articles in context

What do editors and

peer reviewers look for?

Is the information in your manuscript…

• New? (not published elsewhere)

• True? (conclusions valid)

• Relevant? (to the readership)

Does it have impact, presentation or citation potential?

Is it well-written, conforming to manuscript instructions?

Possible outcomes of submission

• Rejection without peer review

• Rejection with referees’ comments

• Opportunity to submit a revised manuscript addressing referees’ comments

• Unqualified acceptance

A selection of recent StR publications• Aasheim ET. Fan charts. Tidsskr Nor Legeforen 2013;133:196.

• Aasheim ET, Seymour M et al. Acute hepatitis A in an elderly patient after care worker travel to high endemicity country . Hum VaccinImmunother. 2013;9:2480-2482.

• Savory LA et al. Changes in diet, cardiovascular risk factors and modelled cardiovascular risk following diagnosis of diabetes: one-year results from the ADDITION-Cambridge trial cohort. Diabet Med. 2014;31:148-155.

• Shankar AG, Lee A, Reddy H, Seymour M. Bordetella pertussis infection in a child with completed primary immunization: A case report. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2013;9:322-324.

• Yip JL et al. Area deprivation, individual socioeconomic status and low vision in the EPIC-Norfolk Eye Study. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2014;68:204-10.

Questions?