VCOM Faculty Development Session:Primary Care and Community Outreach Research Seminar

“Publishing and Presenting”September 10th, 2015

Live from Spartanburg, SC with Video Conference to Blacksburg, VA and Auburn, AL

P. Gunnar Brolinson, DO, FAOASM, FACOFP, FAAFP

Vice Provost for Research

Discipline Chair for Sports Medicine

Team Physician Virginia Tech

Director of Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship

Why publishing and presenting your research is important…

• Biomedical research has grown into a competitive global enterprise that influences patient care, population health, public policy, corporate profits, and the global economy.

• The marketplace of medical information is essential, not only to those who produce it—the researchers, authors, editors, reviewers, publishers, and funders—but also to the consumers, practitioners,

patients, and policy makers, who need to trust that published research is sound science, reported accurately and clearly.Publishing Medical Research: A Marketplace on the Commons John J. Frey, III, MD, Associate Editor1

and William R. Phillips, MD, MPH, Senior Associate Editor2 Ann Fam Med. 2013 Mar; 11(2): 104–105.

Why Scholarly Activity is Important…

• The pace of producing and publishing biomedical science is picking up and the stakes are rising

• The popular press reads journals more regularly than most clinicians.

• Physicians often hear about the newest research from patients before they are able to read it themselves.

Scholarly Activity in Residency Training

Three Important Things…

• Your research paper should be in an area of current interest and importance

• There should be clear motivation for the paper (and this should be made very clear early on in the paper)

• Thorough review of other work should have been conducted

Choosing a research area of current interest or importance

• Do as much background research as you can before choosing your potential project

• Choose a topic that will be interesting in the future - not one that was interesting in the past

• Attend conferences in your area of research. What topics were covered in last year's conference? What are the research interests of the technical program chairs?

• Speak with your professor/mentor and/or colleagues

Provide a Clear Motivation for your paper

• You should be able to answer yes to at least one of the following questions:– Do I have significant new results to present?– Do major assumptions made in previous research by

other groups need to be challenged and changed? If so, why?

– Does my paper cover significant new aspects not covered before?

Conduct a thorough Literature Review

• Provide a comprehensive, up-to-date and critical assessment of what research has been done before

• Cite an adequate number of references (at least fifteen)• Ensure that the majority of references are from the last five years

– Cite high-quality papers (in order of importance: journals, conferences, book chapters, symposia, workshops);

– Cite work by other groups and not just your own work;– Cite recent work by the editor-in-chief and editorial board of the journal

you plan to publish in.

Utilize our Library Staff…they are awesome!

• Our medical librarians serve as liaisons to your academic area of interest and can help you:– Identify databases for searching in your field of interest.– Learn to use databases to find out how often you've been

cited.– Set up article alerts and customized searches– Manage information (e.g., RefWorks, EndNote)– Verify citations before publication.

Access to VCOM Library

Access to VCOM eLibrary From the VCOM home page in the

upper right choose either “VCOM’s Electronic Public Library” or from the “Quick Links” tab-Library

Other links to the Library page are found throughout the VCOM web pages

URL VCOM home page: http://www.vcom.edu/ Library home page:

http://www.vcom.edu/vcomlibrary/index.html

How to Log In Old system logins no longer valid

If you have VCOM email, use your VCOM login

username and password [May see a second prompt for EZproxy login] If no VCOM account, e-mail Elaine Powers:

epowers@vcom.vt.edu Clinical site users have organizational accounts

Access to eResources From Library home

page Click on “Library

Catalog” This takes you to main

search page Advanced Search

expands options

VCOM Library Contacts

Virginia – Elaine Powers 540-231-3763epowers@vcom.vt.edu

Carolinas – Bill Nichols864-327-9852 wnichols@vcom.edu

Auburn – Jana Schellinger334-442-4051jschellinger@auburn.vcom.edu

“Big Data” and your research

Structuring your research paper

• Abstract• Introduction (including related work)• Experiments• Results• Discussion• Conclusion and future work• Acknowledgments• References• Appendix

Abstract• The abstract is a one paragraph

summary (150-200 words) of the entire work described completely in the article.

– should be a self-contained unit capable of being understood without the benefit of the text

– it should contain these four elements in brief:

• Motivation (The problem and why it is important);

• Methods (What was done);• Results (what was found);• Discussion (what was concluded).

Introduction• Identify the problem and

explain why it is important• Summarize your method(s)

and results• Summarize how other

research groups have tackled the problem

• Summarize the structure and approach of your paper

Work related to your research

• It is often important that you include a section on related work. Papers with inadequate references are often rejected. By citing an adequate number of recent and high quality references you show the editor that:

– You are working in an area of current interest– You have researched the area thoroughly and put your paper in the context of

recent work– When citing conference work, cite relevant work from the last two or three

conference proceedings– When citing journal work, generally cite journal papers published in the last two to

five years• Occasionally you may need to cite older work to provide some “historical” perspective or

reference “seminal” work in a particular field

Choosing a peer reviewed journal to publish your

research in• Identify the research interests of the editor-in-chief• E-mail/speak to the editor-in-chief and ask them what topics

they would particularly like to see published in their journal• Identify the research interests of the editorial board• Look at the most recent issues of the journal

– What sort of papers has it published?– What have been the subjects of recent special issues of the

journal?

The “Basics”…publishing 101

• Check the author guide of the journal you are submitting to. All journals are different, and all publish their author guide on their homepage. – You will help your cause by adapting the format and style of your paper to

the journal in question. • For example, is there a word length restriction? Does the journal have a preference

for US or UK style English? Is there a house style for quantities and measurements? Do figures need to be to a certain resolution?

• Spell check your paper. There is no excuse for not doing this. A spelling mistake, especially in the abstract or early in the paper, will create a poor impression.

Author guidelines

More “Basics”….• Check your grammar and punctuation. It should make the paper

easier to read, not more difficult. Simplify whenever you can.– Referees are more likely to recommend rejection if it is very difficult to read

the paper.

• Read the paper through without thinking about the science. – Treat it almost like a story. Is it well written? If you're not sure, ask a

colleague (ideally one who studies language or English), to review it.

• Your paper is an argument, designed to convince the reader of the importance of what you have done. – Is the argument convincing and does it flow well?

Journal “platforms”…

• “Traditional” Journals– The “gold standard” for many years

• “Open Access” peer reviewed Journals• “Predatory” Journals

Traditional Journals and the “peer review” process

• Peer review and publication are time-consuming– frequently involving 3-6 months between submission and publication. – The process is highly competitive.

• The highly-regarded journal Science accepts less than 8% of the articles it receives • The New England Journal of Medicine publishes just 6% of its submissions

• Advantages of peer review– A trusted form of scientific communication– Provides significant criticism with the intention that scientists can revise and enhance their papers

before publication.– Enables Journal Editors to select the most important research findings for publication in their

journals, based upon the subject matter and independent reviews of an expert group.– Many fields outside of science use peer review to ensure quality

• Wine makers judging wine; artists judging art, etc

Open Access Peer Reviewed Journals

• Revolutionary changes in publishing over last 10-15 years– Changes the business model of some top publishing companies

• “Free and fair” distribution of scientific knowledge– Especially important in resource poor environments– Provides space for reporting research in areas that were traditionally

underrepresented• Systemic inequality for researches from resource rich versus resource poor environments• Tropical health, Public Health, Mental Health, Global Health, etc• In Psychiatric Health only 6% of the published articles represent 90% of the world’s

population

• Most on line journals require a “publishing fee” from the authors ranging form $500-1500

Predatory Open Access Journals

• A newly emerging trend– Very destructive to the scientific credibility of research reporting

• These journals mostly emanate from South Asia and Africa• Try to lure early career, unsuspecting researchers to submit articles with false

promises of fast reviews and low fees – The peer review process is flawed or nonexistant– Editorial board members with “fake” profiles– Well known authors may receive several emails daily from these journals offering editorial

board memberships and discounted or free publication of materials

• Always check “The Directory of Open Access Journals”– An on line guide for high quality OA journals– “Best Practice” guide for OA publishing

Resources

• http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep02/publish.aspx]

• http://www.canberra.edu.au/library/research-gateway/research_help/publishing-research

• http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.community.html

• http://www.ijser.org/howtopublishpaper.aspx

• http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/briefingpaper/2010/bppublishingresearchpapersv1final.pdf

Thank You!