preparing your article and submitting to a journal is a unique organization driven by a diverse,...

Preparing your article and submitting to a journal

Hilary Logan, Editor, BMC Health Services Research

Liz Hoffman, Journal Development Manager, BioMed Central

07.04.2017

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Webinar 1: Preparing your article and submitting to a journal

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Health Systems Global

HSG is a unique organization driven by a diverse, global membership of researchers, decision-makers and implementers who are dedicated to promoting health systems research and knowledge translation.

HSG now has over 1500 members from 96 countries.

http://healthsystemsglobal.org/

BioMed Central

For over 16 years, BioMed Central has been making scientific research freely accessible and discoverable through partnerships, innovation and collaboration with the scientific community. Dedicated to open research, we now publish over 290 quality peer-reviewed journals including BMC Health Services Research, which is affiliated with Health Systems Global.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/





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Liz Hoffman

Journal Development Manager for the health services research journals at BioMed Central.

Hilary Logan

Editor for BMC Health Services Research and BMC Nursing

Diana Marshall

Publisher for the BMC-series journals

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Agenda table

1 Planning your publication from the start

2 The different sections needed in an article

3 How to write an effective title and abstract

4 Reporting standards

5 Choosing a journal

6 Getting the editor’s and reviewers’ attention

7 Hints and tips

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1.0

Planning your publication from the start

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A good research article starts long before you start writing

Before you start your research, think about:

• What is your hypothesis or research question?

• What study design do you need to investigate this?

• What are the appropriate methods to answer your question? (controls, sample size)

• Do you need ethics approval?

• Do you need consent?

• Do you need to register your study? (clinical trials)

Plan ahead

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• Large sample size

• Strong study design (e.g. long follow-up, good adherence from participants)

• Novelty (keep up-to-date with literature)

• Thorough statistical analysis

• Impact (negative data can also be important)

• Consider the appropriate reporting standards

Plan ahead

Image: Sparkle Motion on flickr

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2.0

What sections are needed in an article?

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Sections of a scientific paper reflect the scientific process:

• Background

• Methods

• Results

• Discussion

• Conclusions

• Declarations

Writing your manuscript

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Background: keep up to date with the literature

Image: Wikimedia Commons Omarfaruquepro

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Report your methods clearly

• Enough detail so that someone could repeat your experiment

• Important for editors and reviewers to understand what you did

Report your results clearly

• Needs to be clear to editors, reviewers and readers what you found

• Don’t interpret at this stage

• Each figure should be able to be understood in isolation

• Supplementary materials to provide more detail

• Be careful about patient information which could identify individuals

• Do you need to deposit your raw data?

Methods and results

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When writing think about:

• What do your results really show?

• How does this fit with existing knowledge?

• What is new about the findings?

• What are the limitations?

• What can be concluded from your data?

Discussion: interpreting your results

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Keep it brief

Conclusions

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Journals vary on exactly which declarations are required and where in the manuscript these should be found, the following are the ones that BioMed Central requires.

• Ethics approval and consent to participate

• Consent for publication

• Availability of data and materials

• Competing interests

• Funding

• Authors' contributions

• Acknowledgements

• Authors' information (optional)

Declarations

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3.0

How to write an effective title and abstract

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Why are these so important?

• First thing the editor sees

• Generally the reviewers decide to review based only on these, a good abstract makes reviewers want to review the manuscript

• What other researchers use when they’re deciding whether to read your article

What should they look like?

• Specific information about the aim(s) of the study

• What are the important questions to answer?

• Main methods and materials used

• Key results presented

• Key conclusions drawn

• Use keywords that will attract readers and are searchable

Title and abstract

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Title

Who Variable

Outcome measure Methods

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Abstract

Clear aims

Key results summarised

Concise, recommendations are specific

Methods, specify which methods, the study population, variables measured and when

Keywords, improving visibility

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• Read the journal’s Instructions for Authors

• Read the journal’s editorial polices

• Format your article correctly

• Write clearly and concisely – ask colleagues for feedback

Final steps

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4.0

Reporting standards

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Reporting standards are guidelines agreed by the community which specify how certain studies should be reported and are usually published in one or more journals

• Can help you ensure that you have covered everything in your study design

• Can help guide your write-up

• Helps editors and reviewers know what you have done

• You should take these into account when planning your study, they can help you avoid common mistakes

Reporting standards: why should you care

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Reporting guidelines: EQUATOR Network

http://www.equator-network.org/





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STROBE

• Guideline for observational studies


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PRISMA

• For systematic reviews and meta-analyses


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Penelope Research EQUATOR Wizard: http://www.peneloperesearch.com/equatorwizard

Not sure what reporting guideline you need?

http://www.peneloperesearch.com/equatorwizard

http://www.peneloperesearch.com/equatorwizard

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5.0

Choosing a journal

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• First look at your article!

• Your results – what readership do you want?

• Scope – specialist or general?

• Areas of interest (e.g. thematic series)

• Visibility

• Check the journal information pages

Choosing a journal

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Journal prestige:

• Impact factors

• SciMago rankings

• Editorial board

•Which journals do you use?

Identifying a journal: SCOPUS and rankings

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Identifying a journal: Jane

http://jane.biosemantics.org/



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Choosing a journal

Choosing the target journal: how

• Honestly evaluate your findings: What is the impact of your findings? Which journal is realistic?

• Check aims and scope of several journals: Who reads them? Who publishes in them? What type of studies have they published recently?

Novelty Significance

Aims and Scope Impact Factor

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Choosing a journal

Selective threshold: • Select on the basis of interest or potential

impact

• Results and insights of wider interest/can be generalized

• Resources, methods need to be widely useable

Inclusive threshold: • Do not select on the basis of interest or

potential impact

• Results and conclusions must always be scientifically valid

• Often consider null results

Broad/generalist scope: • Considers a broad range of topics

• A range of thresholds

• May recommend a transfer to a more suitable subject-specific journal

Specialist scope: • Considers a narrow range of topics

• A range of thresholds

• Rejection pre-review for ‘out of scope’

• More frequently recommend transfer to another subject-specific journal or to a broader scope journal

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Do you want to publish open access?

• Make your research accessible to everyone

• Can increase the visibility of your research

Speed

• Of the editorial process

• Of publication following acceptance

• Some journals give their average time for peer review on their website

• Some journals promise rapid publication on acceptance

• Ask your colleagues for their experience

Peer review model

• Single blind peer review – reviewers are anonymous

• Double-blind peer review – reviewers and authors are anonymous

• Open peer review – author and reviewer names are revealed; reports posted online

Other points to consider when choosing a journal

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If in doubt…

You don’t need to send your whole manuscript. You can send pre-submission enquiries to more than one journal.

• Send a pre-submission enquiry

Include:

The title and abstract of your manuscript

A summary of the main findings

Why you think your work could be considered for the particular journal

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6.0

Getting the editor’s and reviewers’ attention

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• Cover letter

• Journal-specific policies

• Instructions for authors

• Abstract

• If you need to, use a professional copy-editing service, such as language editing from Nature.

Preparing to submit your article

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• Online submission form

• Submitting author takes full responsibility for agreeing to terms and conditions

• Ensure all co-authors have approved the manuscript before you submit

• Remember to make sure all your authors have given you their details (names and affiliations) as they want them to appear in the manuscript

• Ensure authorship agreed

Submission process

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• Assesses manuscripts submitted to the journal

• Selects which articles should be considered for peer-review

• Manages peer review

• Makes final decision to publish or not

• Determines aims and scope of journal

• Commissions reviews, commentaries

• Works to maintain/improve journal quality

The role of the Editor

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One chance to make a good first impression

At submission:

• Thoughtful cover letter

• Well written abstract

• Think of what Editors are looking for

• Put results in context of current literature

• Adhere to relevant reporting guidelines and provide all necessary information on ethics and consent (where applicable)

• Providing all the required information will avoid delays while the Editor comes back to you for missing information or clarifications

Getting the Editor’s attention

Image: Flickr Keith Williamson

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• Was this manuscript commissioned by the Editors?

• Is this being submitted as part of a series?

• What is the scientific question you are addressing?

• What is the key finding that answers this question?

• Why would they be of interest to the journal’s target audience?

• Is there additional information that we should take into account?

Cover Letter – provide brief answers

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Example of a good cover letter

Dear Dr Logan,

I would like to submit this study describing the use of guidelines to improve neonatal health to BMC Health Services Research.

This qualitative study uses a behaviour change framework and compares the experiences in China and Vietnam.

Recent studies on this topic have been published in the BMJ, Lancet and JAMA (see references 1-3 below).

These findings should be of interest to anyone working on quality improvement in health care and guideline implementation.

We can confirm that the manuscript is not under consideration by any other journal at this present time. The raw data supporting our findings have been uploaded to…. This trial has been registered with….

We look forward to hearing from BMC Health Services Research in due course,

Detailed, clear, explains why people will be interested in findings, supporting data available, trial registration number (if applicable).

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• Reviewers receive many invitations from journals to review articles every day

• What would get your attention?

• Remember that the reviewer will only see the title and the abstract before they decide whether they want to spend their time reviewing your manuscript

What about the reviewers’ attention?

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7.0

Hints and tips

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Tip 1

Read, and read, and read….

• Join a journal club

• Read outside of your area to develop broad scope

Image: Flickr Selena N. B. H

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Tip 2

Don’t write and edit at the same time

• Decide what the main message is early on.

• Write the parts of the paper you’re most excited about first.

• Quality vs quantity.

• Get a colleague to feedback on your draft.

Image: mrs myrtle brewer

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Tip 3

Don’t forget about your figures and tables

• Ensure these are high quality and clear.

• Figure legends need to be descriptive.

• Get a colleague outside your field to feedback on your graphics.

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Tip 4

Be objective about your work

.......Editors and reviewers will be

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• These are the first things that editors, reviewers and readers see.

• Remember to get the keywords into the abstract.

• Make sure that the abstract and title reflect the manuscript.

Remember the title, abstract and cover letter

Tip 5

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Tip 6

Become a reviewer

• Get used to how to critically assess other authors work.

• You’ll become familiar with issues that reviewers raise as you see other reports.

Image: Max Pixel

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• Webinar 2, 28th April: The peer review process – what happens when you send your manuscript to a journal Presented by Hilary Logan, Editor for BMC Health Services Research and Diana Marshall, Publisher for the BMC-series journals. http://www.healthsystemsglobal.org/webinars/24/The-peer-review-process-what-happens-when-you-send-your-manuscript-to-a-journal.html

• Webinar 3, 19th May: Publication models and open access Presented by Liz Hoffman, Journal Development Manager for the health services research journals at BioMed Central and Diana Marshall, Publisher for the BMC-series journals.

• Webinar 4, 9th June: Research and publication ethics Presented by Stephanie Boughton, Medical Editor, Research Integrity Group at BioMed Central.

• Webinar 5, 23rd June: Being a peer reviewer – guidance and how to approach your first review Presented by Hilary Logan, Editor for BMC Health Services Research and academic editors from BioMed Central journals.

Future webinars

http://www.healthsystemsglobal.org/webinars/24/The-peer-review-process-what-happens-when-you-send-your-manuscript-to-a-journal.html





























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53 Updating footer To update the footer: • Click into the text box on the slide


Checking updates • The text updates will not flow

through to all the slide layouts as some have been placed manually. Therefore you may need to manually update other text boxes such as the divider slides etc

Thank you

preparing your article and submitting to a journal is a unique organization driven by a diverse,...

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