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So you want to be published? Pearls for journal publishing

2017; Elsevier BV; Volume: 124; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.oooo.2017.04.001

2212-4411

Lauren L. Patton,

Meta-analysis and systematic reviews

Your engagement in advancing the scientific evidence base for our dental specialties through scholarship and publication is essential to effect improvements and innovations in our practices in the twenty-first century. The process of writing for publication can be new and challenging for many young scholars. With the concept of “publish or perish” being an increasingly important aspect for career progress of dental academics, scientific writing is a critical skill that can and must be developed. I am fortunate to be on the faculty of a school of dentistry that has an active faculty development mentoring program for junior members, and through this experience, I have become more aware of the lack of mentorship for scientific writing in many of our graduate specialty programs. This creates a handicap for junior faculty members, who are expected to come prepared to be productive in publication. I do not want to imply that publishing is only for academics, as some of our most impactful writers who present scientific analyses with the intention of making the science useful for practicing clinicians are private practitioners. In the tradition of our distinguished former Oral Medicine section editor, Dr. Craig S. Miller, who shared his insights to assist authors in the development of their manuscripts,1Miller C. A good manuscript—an excellent journal.Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2009; 107: 149-150Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (1) Google Scholar I would like to add some of my thoughts on how you—our readers and potential contributing writers—can improve your chances of success in publishing, from the stages of planning and writing through submission and publication. The purpose of your study and your goal of communication of your observational findings will help you decide what type of article you will write. Keep in mind the hierarchy of publication types that comprises the evidence pyramid. The foundation or base of the pyramid contains editorials (like this one), expert opinions, and commentaries. As you move up the pyramid, you will find observational studies, experimental studies, critical appraisals, and systematic reviews, with meta-analyses at the top of the pyramid (Figure 1). Dr. Stephen R. Covey offered a philosophic approach to goal setting in Habit 2 of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People2Covey S.R. Habit 2. Begin with the end in mind. The principles of personal leadership.in: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon and Schuster, New York1989: 95-144Google Scholar: “Begin with the end in mind.” Having a clear vision of your end product allows you to better plan and execute the task of writing and communicating with your audience. When embarking on a research project, I find that drafting or outlining the future publication's Results tables right at the beginning, in the design phase, often ensures that data points that will be needed for the ultimate publication are not omitted. When designing the study, the methods that will be used should be well thought out and described, and the necessary standardization, description, calibration (if multiple examiners are involved), and an appropriate statistical analysis plan should be created. For clinical studies, this detailed description of the study methods can be formulated with publication in mind, in concert with the description required for the institutional review board application or for the review process of the human subjects committee. First, ask yourself: Is my work publishable? What do my research findings add to the literature? What is novel about my study? What expands the science? What can improve clinical practice? What is the purpose of my study? With the answers to these questions in mind, plan a single article so that you can focus on the outcome of the study. Remember, you are trying to tell a story that will interest and educate others. If you are a novice at publishing, you may want to begin working in a team or with an interesting, well-illustrated, and well-documented case report that includes a long-term treatment outcome. Be sure there is something “unique” about the case being reported so that the reader will learn from your experience. This will require you to have a good understanding of past publications on the topic. Several nonprofit organizations that aim to improve research study reporting also provide checklists and flowcharts to help create some transparency and standardization in reporting. Use the checklist and flowchart that are relevant to your research design. If you are reporting on the outcome of a clinical trial, use the 25-item checklist and flowchart of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) 2010 statement.3CONSORT statement. Available at: http://www.consort-statement.org. Accessed March 24, 2017.Google Scholar Do not forget to register your U.S.-based clinical trial on clinicaltrials.gov. If you are reporting the outcome of a systematic review or meta-analysis, use the checklist and flowchart provided in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement.4PRISMA statement. Available at http://www.prisma-statement.org/Default.aspx. Accessed March 24, 2017.Google Scholar If you are reporting on an observational study, the Strengthening The Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement will help you to ensure that you have included all of the necessary elements to best describe your study.5STROBE statement. Available at: http://strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=strobe-home. Accessed March 24, 2017.Google Scholar Reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies should follow the Standards for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) 2015 statement and use its checklist and flowchart.6Bossuyt P.M. Reitsma J.B. Bruns D.E. et al.STARD 2015: an updated list of essential items for reporting diagnostic accuracy studies.BMJ. 2015; 351 (Available at:) (Accessed March 24, 2017): h5527http://www.stard-statement.org/Crossref PubMed Scopus (1549) Google Scholar Systematic reviews should be designed to answer a health care research question or to help resolve a controversy. These reviews commonly use the PICO format; that is, they address a Patient Problem/Population with an Intervention/Indicator and Comparison/Control to determine an Outcome. For example, “Among adults with total joint prostheses undergoing dental procedures, does use of prophylactic antibiotics compared with not using prophylactic antibiotics reduce the incidence of total joint infection?” The Patient Problem/Population here would refer to adults with total joint prostheses undergoing dental procedures; Intervention/Indicator is the use of prophylactic antibiotics; Comparison/Control would refer to not using prophylactic antibiotics; and Outcome is the incidence of total joint infection. Follow the standard structure of a biomedical research article. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMEJ) has tips for manuscript preparation, providing excellent guidance to novice and expert writers alike.7The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMEJ) recommendations. Available at: http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf. Accessed March 24, 2017.Google Scholar The typical recommended organization of a research article is as follows:1.Title, Authors, Sources of Support: Be sure that the title is descriptive.2.Structured Abstract: Provide a short synopsis of your article.3.Introduction: Include a clear statement of the purpose or hypothesis of your study at the end of the Introduction section.4.Methods: Be thorough in the description of the methods employed in your study (standard, referenced), keeping in mind that the article may be later abstracted for someone else's systematic review. This section should contain:i.Selection and description of participantsii.Technical informationiii.Statistical tests5.Results: Do not repeat in the text the information provided in tables and figures.6.Discussion: Include your study's limitations within the Discussion section (all studies have limitations).7.Conclusions: This section must directly relate to the Results section.8.References: Follow the standard format of the journal in which the article is intended to be published.9.Tables/Figures/Clinical images: Do not clutter these with too much data or split these into too many parts unnecessarily. When you sit down to put fingers to keyboard, the following order is suggested to approach your writing: Methods, Results, Introduction (you should know the background information for your study), Discussion/Conclusion, and finally, Abstract. Above all, keep the article concise. Figures and tables are critical and should be self-explanatory. Many readers read only the abstract and look at the figures and tables. All abbreviations should be defined in the figure/table legends and follow standard abbreviation nomenclature. For figures, ensure that all graph axes are labeled, and include standard error bars. Clinical images should be of high quality. For tables, include statistical results if you are presenting analytical data, and ensure that all columns and rows have the proper headings. Be knowledgeable about and use PubMed, a free service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, which allows access to MEDLINE through any Internet-connected device worldwide. If you cannot access original articles, do not cite them as references. If your library does not carry the journal, try using ResearchGate.net to ask for a PDF reprint of the article directly from the author if the article has not already been posted by the author on this research social media website. Do not plagiarize. This is an illegal act that includes copying published material verbatim or with minor alterations, with or without reference to the original source. Many journals run submitted articles through electronic cross-reference programs, such as CrossCheck by Ithenticate, used by Elsevier. A high similarity index score indicating similarities to other publications, especially a large percentage of word matches with a particular article, even if it is your own prior work, raises a red flag and may lead to rejection of your submitted article on that basis alone. Acknowledge grants and other funding support. If your project described in the article has been supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) or other federal government agencies, ensure that there is registration of the article with PubMed Central in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. Elsevier directly sends articles accepted for our journal to PubMed Central to maintain author compliance with this policy. Carefully select the keywords for your article by using MeSH words for indexing so that your publication will be accessed when the next researcher in your field conducts a systematic review on the topic of your publication. Know the journal's mission and the audience you are trying to reach. Each journal has an established mission and indicates what type articles the journal is seeking to meet the needs of its readership. As your target journals, consider those that have published the articles you have cited in your report. If you are still uncertain regarding to which journals you want to send your article, try the website Jane.biosemantics.org. This website provides a novel journal/author name estimator that will reveal where similarly titled articles have been published in the past. Consider whether it is important to you to have your article published in print format or if an electronic publication is adequate for communication to other scientists and clinicians in your article's area of study. In this era of online self-publishing, thousands of new journals are in existence with the sole aim of profiting from charging the author for the privilege of publishing. If the journal is not indexed in MEDLINE, the U.S. National Library of Medicine journal citation database, then it will have limited visibility, and authors will not be able to easily access the content from the PubMed search engine. The 2 main ranking systems or metrics to assess the quality of journals and journal articles, the Journal Impact Factor and the Eigenfactor, have been discussed in our journal previously by Dr. Craig S. Miller.8Miller C.S. Impact versus impact factor and Eigenfactor.Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol. 2012; 113: 145-146Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (7) Google Scholar Both indices, produced by the Journal Citation Reports of Thomson Reuters ISI, are quantitative evaluation tools. The Journal Impact Factor assesses journals and determines how prestigious it would be to have an article published in a particular journal. This is a measure of the frequency with which the “average article” in a given journal has been cited in a particular year. For example, the impact factor in 2016 for a journal is X/Y, where X = number of times articles published in that journal in 2014-2015 were cited in indexed journals in 2016 and Y = number of articles, reviews, and proceedings published by that journal in 2014-2015. This metric favors journals that publish few articles per year that are frequently cited in the next 2 years. Among all health journals in 2016, the highest Journal Impact Factor was 131.723 for CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.92016 Journal Citation Reports. Journals in the 2016 Release of Journal Citation Reports. Thomson Reuters, 2016. Available at: http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/imgblast/JCRFullCovlist-2016.pdf.Google Scholar In contrast, the Eigenfactor score measures the total number of article citations over 5 years since publication in a given journal and determines the value of having this journal in your library. In times of limited resources for funding of print and e-journal subscriptions for libraries, this score is valuable in a library administrator's decisions regarding retention of journal subscriptions. The Eigenfactor rewards journals that publish numerous articles each year on a variety of topics, such as Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol. The Eigenfactor score reflects a journal's importance to and influence on the scientific community. Once you have identified your target journal, be sure to follow that journal's instructions to authors. If you are reprinting material from other journals, you will need to obtain the appropriate permissions from those source journals. If you are publishing an identifiable image of a patient, you will need to get that patient's written consent for use of the image in your print and electronic publications. It is often helpful to set aside your article for a week or two and come back to review it one last time before submitting it; this will help you take a fresh look at it and correct ambiguities and mistakes. Have a colleague read your article to evaluate ease of understanding and to help identify typographical or grammatical errors before submission for publication. If English is not your first language or if you lack fluency, have a native English speaker review your article to ensure that it makes sense. Verify that the components of your listed references, such as spelling and order of author names, article titles, abbreviated journal name, year, volume, and article pages, are accurate and in the format required by the target journal. This can be done by taking the first 3 to 4 author names from each reference in your list and placing the author names individually and sequentially in a PubMed search. The letter of submission should describe why you believe the article is important to the field and to the journal's readership. The letter should contain any required statements about prior presentation of the material and confirmation that the article is original, not previously published, and not under consideration by any other journal. Editorial decisions vary from journal to journal, but typically, journal editors may accept the article, ask for minor or major revisions, reject the article, or provide a referral to another, more appropriate journal of that publisher. Journal editors seek the assistance of peer reviewers who are content experts in the area of your work. If you are asked to suggest peer reviewers who are in the same field and may provide a useful critique, do so; however, be sure to provide the full name of the reviewer, the address of his or her institution, and the academic e-mail address to assist the journal editor in verifying the reviewer's credentials. Peer reviewers for journals volunteer their time for the review process and aim to help you make your research study as useful as possible to the readers and future clinicians/scientists. Make it easy for the busy peer reviewer, who will be an example of your target audience, and the journal editor to understand and to appreciate your work. Expect to do at least one revision, but aim for immediate acceptance for publication at your initial submission by making the best possible “first impression” of your manuscript. Be respectful of the peer reviewer, and respond to the peer critique with line-by-line responses to suggestions and questions. Use the critique as a guide for modifications, if possible and reasonable. If it is not possible or feasible to revise particular elements of your article, explain your rationale in the “response to critique” included as part of your submission of the revised manuscript. All journals aim for as short a review period as possible, but publishers have different electronic manuscript review systems that set specific timelines and prompt or remove reviewers at different time intervals when they are unresponsive or late in their response or submission of their critiques. Typically, a quick response time from the publisher may indicate a rejection. If you receive a rejection, rethink your submission strategy, and consider changes needed for publication or perhaps submission to another journal that may be a better fit for your article. If your article is submitted to the peer review process, it may be weeks to months before an initial decision is rendered and the peer review critiques are sent to you. Once your article is accepted, you will likely be asked to submit the copyright release for the work while the article is sent to the copy editor for editing of language and form and for “typesetting.” The “page proofs” will be sent to you with any queries with a request of a 24- to 48-hour turnaround time. It is important to give your full attention to this part of the process, as this is the last chance you will have to correct any minor errors before the article is electronically published. Happy writing!