1. Me and Wolters Kluwer

2. Journal publishing trends impacting health

3. Top strategies for writing a good paper

4. Resources for authors

5. Peer review process

6. What editors and reviewers look for

7. Increasing your chances for acceptance

Agenda

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Background

▪ 15 years in editorial, publishing, and production for Medical, Nursing, and Allied Health journal publishers

▪ Management of top impact factor journals in orthopedics, obstetrics and gynecology, cardiology,

neuroscience, ophthalmology, and pediatrics

▪ WK representative for International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers

▪ Professor of English, Centro de Educación Continua, Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ecuador

▪ Communications Manager, Hispanic Business, Inc

Sarah Becker Carrera, MBAAssociate Director, Medical Journals

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▪Our Vision:

We’re driven by a shared purpose for every patient to benefit from the best knowledge and evidence

Our Mission:

To help clinicians deliver better patient outcomes by ensuring

they are as prepared as possible when they see a patient

Wolters Kluwer has an exclusive focus on healthcare with products for researchers and healthcare professionals at all stages of their careers

Journals, Books, Educational Tools and

Resources

Wolters Kluwer: Providing lifelong learning for today’s healthcare professionals through improved content delivery

▪ 145 journals – 80 society, 65 proprietary

▪ Leading publisher in several specialtiesSurgery, Cardiology, Orthopedics, Neurology, and Gastroenterology

▪ In-House editorial services

▪ CME department

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Key changes in the market continue to have an impact on the publishing landscape and how we plan for the future

▪ Accelerating growth in STM research output

▪ Shifting global dynamics

▪ Authors needs are changing

▪ Proliferation of open access mandates

▪ Innovation in Peer Review – Open peer review models and

rise of preprint servers

▪ Librarians seeking greater flexibility institutional access

models and subscription packages

▪ Advertising – Total advertising pages across the healthcare market have decreased 36% since 20034

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▪ 7.1M researchers globally, growing 3-4% annually1

▪ 3.0M articles published annually, increasing by 4-5% per year 2003-17 (previously growing at 3%)2

▪ 33K active peer-reviewed English-language journals, increasing 5-6% per year (previously growing at 3.5%)3

1 The STM Report 5th Edition , October 20182 US Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development3 Ulrich’s Web Directory

Accelerating growth in STM research output

Source: Adapted from AJE Scholarly Publishing Report: Brazil

Brazil saw a 10% increase in publication output vs 7% worldwide

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▪ China overtakes the US to publish 19% of all papers globally; United States 18%, India 5%, Germany, UK, Japan 4%1

▪ At WK, in terms of submissions, the US #1, China #2 (211% increase since 2011, Turkey +85%, Brazil +81%)

1 The STM Report 5th Edition , October 2018

Shifting global dynamics

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Articles Published from Brazil

Open access has been driven by funder policies

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Open Access mandates are impacting the space but more slowly than predicted, particularly in the medical space

“A qualified guess is that we will have to live in this landscape of gray zones for quite a while, for good and bad.”Rasmus Fleischer, 2008. “The Future of Copyright” Cato Unbound https://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/06/09/rasmus-fleischer/future-

copyright

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▪ It is important to continue to provide a range of options for authors and their funders, particularly those in the European Union

▪ Expect to see some shift from hybrid to Gold over the next 3-5 years

▪ Continue to monitor the absolute percent of open articles in a Journal to adjust price as necessary

Medical journal perspective on open access

▪ Read and publish agreements with institutions and consortia bundle subscription and APCs together and increase the number of open access articles published in hybrid journals

▪Why put in the work

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▪ To remember (permanent record)

▪ To understand better (sharpen thoughts and gain perspective)

▪ To improve critical thinking

▪ To communicate thoughts, ideas and techniques

▪ To stimulate discussion and validation

▪ To advance scientific knowledge and change practice

▪ To protect intellectual property

Why write?CUT?

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For academics:

▪ “Publish or perish” for tenure, advancement, and grant applications

▪ Contribute new knowledge and techniques

▪ Establish precedence and permanent public record of their work

▪ Increase visibility and reputation

▪ Increase professional contacts and collaborations

▪ Attract graduate students

▪ Invitations to speak

▪ Win awards

Why publish?CUT?

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For clinicians:

▪ Sharing skills, knowledge and outcomes

▪ Change practice

▪ Increase visibility and reputation

▪ Increase professional contacts

▪ Attract residents and fellows

▪ Increase patient referrals

▪ Invitations to speak

▪ Win awards

Why publish?CUT?

▪Top strategies for writing a good paper

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▪ Think of a clinical or research question that you want answered

▪ Decide what you want the paper to achieve

▪ Get people with relevant expertise involved

▪ Do a literature search on the topic

▪ Will your research fill a gap in knowledge or is it totally novel?

▪ Decide on the type of study to do

▪ Decide where to publish

▪ Write the paper according to the guidelines of the journal

How do I start? Choose your Topic

Lit Review

WritingReview/

Revise

Publish

▪ Obtain approval for study

– institutional review board or hospital ethics committee (required by top journals)

▪ Register if randomized clinical trial (required by top journals)

– establish protocol and primary/secondary outcomes

– registration important before starting research

Considerations for publication

ClinicalTrials.org is most common site in USA but global

▪ Pose a clinically relevant hypothesis

– Your work should answer a specific question

– Best if one hypothesis is tested, not multiple hypotheses

▪ The selected methodology must be appropriate to answer the research question

▪ Describe methodology in detail

– Accuracy of the methods must be validated

– Patient acquisition should be addressed in detail

– Clarify how appropriateness of the study group was established

– Presence of a control group is of critical importance

Top strategies for writing a good paper

▪ Consult statistician to know patient numbers needed

– lack of statistical power common in studies

– chance of erroneous conclusion higher with low power

▪ Perform a careful analysis

⁻ Having asked a novel question and applied appropriate methodology, some papers provide a

flawed analysis

▪ Describe what your results yielded or what you found in the research

▪ Provide data to support the research question

What does your data really mean?

▪ Craft the discussion

– Present the most important result in the first paragraph

– Provide a brief scholarly review of the literature and place your findings in perspective

– Acknowledge limitations

– Provide potential explanations and clinical implications of your work

▪ Create good figures and legends

– Illustrations should be used to draw the readers attention to important findings

– Illustrations should clearly display the findings

– Use arrows, asterisks and other designations to make the figures easy to follow

– The message of a good figure can commonly be summarized in a single sentence

How do your findings fit with what we already knew?

▪ Carefully read instructions for authors

▪ Outline full structure of article before start

▪ Reference accuracy is important

– Read and cite primary source, do not rely on review article as source

▪ Use simple and concise language

▪ Use of correct grammar and syntax strengthens the paper

– seek help from a native or good English speaker

Remember

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▪ Prepare

▪ Write

▪ Submit

▪ Publish

▪ Promote

▪ Journals

ResourcesWolters Kluwer Author Resources http://authors.lww.com

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Resourceshttps://jphmpdirect.com/elearning-module/

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Resources Wolters Kluwer Editing Serviceshttp://wkauthorservices.editage.com

Manuscript Development

•Manuscript editing•Journal formatting

•Artwork, graphs, tables

Reporting Solid Research

•Rapid technical review •Plagiarism check

Journal Selection/Submission

•Journal recommendation tools and services

•Manuscript submission support services

Resubmission /Revisions

•Manuscript re-editing•Peer review response check

•Re-submission

Author Education

•Localized content•Workshops

•Webinars

▪Submission and Peer Review

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▪ Increasing number of journals and rise of

predatory journals

▪ Increase in author misbehavior

▪ Increase in published retractions

▪ Explosion of scientific activity China and India

▪ Experimentation with post-publication review

▪ Proliferation of new publication metrics

The new norm for editors and authors

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SOURCE: Figure 7 from “New Journal Publishing Models-An international survey of senior researchers.” 22 Sept 2005. A CIBER report for the Publishers Association and the International Association of STM Publishers

How do authors select a journal in which to publish?

Reasons for choosing last journal (n = 5,513)

▪ Is your paper basic science or clinical?

▪ Is it of a general nature or very specific?

▪ Look at the journal’s aim and scope, previous issues

▪ Read the instructions to authors, if your paper does not fit the instructions then revise

or submit elsewhere

▪ Consult your peers and mentors for advice

▪ Does the journal have the right readership, indexing, impact factor?

Which journal do you submit to?

▪Be realistic about the journal you want to publish in– JAMA (rejection rate of 92%)

– The Lancet (rejection rate of 90%)

– NEJM (rejection rate of 92%)

– BMJ (rejection rate of 93%)

Submission process

Tips for smooth submission• Read and follow author guidelines and instructions• Provide all the required paperwork first time round (manuscript, figures,

declarations, copyright or licence form)

▪ Is the journal Publisher a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics?

▪ Reputable journals follow ICMJE Recommendations and CSE Editorial Policy Statements, which

will be visible in the Author Instructions

▪ Is there a statement regarding the peer-review process or that the journal charges an article-

processing charge (APC) for Open Access manuscripts?

▪ Is the journal indexed by genuine indexes such as Ulrich’s Web, DOAJ, Scopus or Web of Science?

– Newly launched journals by reputable publishers will take time to get indexed in a scholarly

database or directory

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Submission processThings to consider about the Journal and Publisher

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▪ Clarivate Analytics

Web of Science has 12,000 journals as of 2018 Journal Citation Reports

▪ MEDLINE (PubMed, National Library of Medicine)

Includes 5,600 scholarly journals. A journal must meet rigorous criteria from the

National Institutes of Health and Literature Selection Technical Review Committee.

▪ Elsevier’s Scopus

Covers 22,000 peer-reviewed journals

▪ Directory of Open Access Journals

Includes 12,000 (9,172 published in English) fully open access journals

Abstractors and indexersCUT?

▪ Are there grammatical errors on the journal’s website and emails?

▪ Is the Editorial Board non-existent, or is the same person named as editor of multiple journals?

▪ Is the “home office” located in a small, old storefront or listed as a post office number? Or does

the name of the journal not reflect its origin (or does not reveal its location)?

▪ Are any of the names/institutions of the journal board members fictitious?

▪ Does the publishing opportunity sound too good to be true?

– Is immediate publication promised in exchange for an Article Processing Charge?

Predatory Journals

Beall's List of Predatory Journals and Publishers https://beallslist.weebly.com/

CUT?

Submitting your manuscript

On our Journal homepage hover over the ‘Journal Info ’ tab and click on Author

Resource Center to get to the Instructions for Authors

Click on the link, ‘Submit / Manage Manuscript’ to take you to the

Editorial Manager site for manuscript submissions

Instructions for Authors

Submit a Manuscript

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▪ Submission

✓ In house evaluation/processing

▪ Editor assigned to manuscript

✓ Send to 2-3 reviewers

✓ If reviewer decision is conflicting, there is an adjudication process, additional review

▪ Decision options

✓ Accept

✓ Accept with revisions

✓ Reject

✓ Additional review

▪ Methods/statistics review

▪ Editing/copy editing

▪ Publication

Editorial Workflow

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▪ Importance of topic

▪ Is information on this topic widely sought?

▪ Relevance to readers

▪ Data widely appreciated by readers

▪ Better suited for a subspecialty journal?

▪ Originality

▪ New idea preferred over confirmatory study

▪ Will it lead to better patient care? (Important for clinical journal)

▪ Validity of reported findings

What do editors look for?Novelty, Relevance and Quality

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Novelty

- Information about a new drug, new patient population, new problem

- Definitive data in a controversial area

- Extending previous findings

- Large study population (confirmatory data)

- Impact on clinical practice (new answer to old problem, consolidating evidence)

- Validate a method of diagnosing or quantifying severity of disease

- Establish a mechanism of disease

- Generate a ‘hypothesis’

- Sound methodology

- Comprehensive and analytical

- Well presented and well written

Relevance Quality

Purpose of peer review

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▪ Assess the quality of the research and the paper

▪ Quality may be defined in a number of ways

▪ Check for “soundness”: whether the research has been performed to appropriate

▪ Standards so that the findings and conclusions may be considered valid

▪ Help authors improve the quality of their research and/or its presentation

▪ Assess originality, significance, and broader interest

▪ Assess the ‘fit’ between a paper and the journal

Peer Review is a process of subjecting an author’s research or ideas to the scrutiny of experts in the field

What reviewers look for...

▪ Focus on the Methods first

⁻ Have the authors asked the correct question?

⁻ Is information on this topic widely sought?

⁻ Will it lead to better patient care?

⁻ Is the answer already known?

▪ Relevance to readers

⁻ Data widely appreciated by readers?

⁻ Better suited for a subspecialty journal?

▪ Originality

⁻ New idea preferred over confirmatory study

⁻ Thorough literature search on the topic

⁻ Even if not new, may be larger study cohort or methodology may be better than prior study

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What reviewers look for...Validity of reported findings

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▪ Study passes the feasibility test (adequate patient numbers, long enough follow-up, etc)

▪ Is study design appropriate for question?

▪ Strengths and weaknesses of study identified

⁻ Constructive comments and questions

▪ Are conclusions supported by data?

⁻ Overreaching conclusions common

▪ Data collection and methods commented on

⁻ Underpowered studies common

▪ For Methods/stats editors

⁻ Review study design and proper use of statistics

▪ Unrealistic target journal

▪ Paper is nothing new

▪ Overlap with other work — ‘salami publication’

▪ Paper is not clinically relevant

▪ Study design is fatally flawed

▪ Peer reviewer comments are inadequately addressed

▪ Paper has been rejected before but problems have not been addressed before resubmission

▪ ‘Fraud’ — most often plagiarism

Peer review process

Common reasons for rejection

▪ Unclear number of patients/specimens

▪ Better submitted to a basic science journal

▪ An anatomy study only from cadavers

▪ Model too simplistic

▪ Does not replicate a clinical condition

▪ No (or inappropriate) controls

▪ Unclear hypothesis or objectives

▪ Lack of quantitative or objective results

▪ In vitro only; not relevant enough

▪ Authors overlooked recent literature

▪ Authors ignored important limitations

▪ Misleading interpretation of results

▪ Duplicate Publication

⁻ May be same article in 2 languages

⁻ Same data but different authors

▪Plagiarism

⁻ Use published material without attribution

Peer review process

▪ Don’t hide things

– Declare conflicts, funding (institutional or commercial)

– Make sure you know the criteria for authorship and that everyone meets them

– Declare the role of other contributors

▪ Don’t try to break the “rules”

– NEVER submit to more than one journal at a time

– Adhere to deadlines and communicate any changes of plan

– If rejected? OK to try another journal – but make suggested improvements first

Avoiding a negative outcome

▪Final thoughts

▪ Plan your choices of journal – be realistic

▪ Consider what editors look for in their journal content?

– Editors want good papers that will be read and cited

▪ Follow the process

– Be honest and professional

– Never withhold information

– Don’t break the rules

▪ Take heed of comments from the editor and peer reviewers

▪ Be aware you may not be successful – but don’t give up!

▪ The process takes time

– On average, expect 2-3 months for peer review

– 3-12 months for publication after acceptance (depending on the journal), but often articles are published as non-final versions online before print

Publishing is about following the rules

Thank You

Questions?