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Writing for publication


Essentials

  • 1

    Check and follow the journal’s suggested format and length. Pay particular attention to the abstract, text and references.

  • 2

    Make sure that the objectives, methods, results and conclusions are logically consistent.

  • 3

    Be clear and concise.

Introduction

Sharing of research findings through publication is an important way of improving clinical practice. Publication may be by an original research manuscript, systematic or narrative review, brief report, case report or letter to the editor. Each of these has different requirements in terms of content, format and length, and these requirements may vary between journals. It is useful to choose the intended journal for publication early. Choose a journal that has the appropriate target audience for the subject matter of your paper. The impact factor should be a secondary consideration. It is important to check the Instructions for Authors to ensure that your submission matches that journal’s requirements. Failure to do so reduces the chances of acceptance considerably.

Journals prefer clear and concise communications. In particular, it is important for the content to be arranged logically so that clear relationships can be seen between the objective, the results/evidence and any conclusions drawn.

Important principles

Authorship, acknowledgement and competing interests

There are defined requirements for qualification as an author. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors state that authorship credit should be based on:

  • substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data

  • drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content

  • approval of the final manuscript.

All three conditions must be met. Contributions that do not meet these criteria can be recognized in an Acknowledgement. To avoid misunderstandings, authorship should be decided as early as possible in the research process.

Journals require authors to disclose competing interests. This is to assist readers in deciding if those interests have a potential bearing on the conduct or reporting of the research. Competing interests may be financial (e.g. external research funding, support from a company for activities potentially related to the project) or personal (authorship of guidelines, editorship of the journal of submission). Further information and a template for reporting can be found at http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/ .

Duplicate publication

Duplicate submission and duplicate publication are unacceptable. An exception is secondary publication of material with the express approval of both editors of the relevant journals. This only occurs under special circumstances.

Sometimes studies generate large amounts of data that are difficult or unsuitable for reporting as a single paper. Authors should strike a balance between including data about a large number of secondary outcomes in a single paper (potentially causing confusion about the research question and distracting from the main messages) and splitting data into a large number of small papers. In principle, separation of data into meaningful groups for separate papers is acceptable but should be acknowledged in the submission process.

Readability

To get your message across, it must be accessible to the reader. This is best achieved by avoiding long sentences, using simple words and avoiding jargon. Abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and always defined in the paper at their first use.

Publication types

In the ‘traditional’ model of publishing, journals require transfer of copyright from authors, and the journal’s revenue is through fees charged to readers to access journal content, most commonly subscription fees or pay-per-article charges. Open access publishing, in contrast, typically allows for authors to retain copyright, and is combined with a license that enables free and immediate access to published content. Some open access journals and many hybrid journals (i.e. those with some open access content and some non-open access content) rely on publication charges paid by the author or funder to permit immediate and free access.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of on-line ‘junk’ or ‘predatory’ medical journals. These typically actively solicit manuscripts and charge a publication fee without providing robust peer review and editorial services (such as licensing, indexing and perpetual content preservation). These journals should be avoided. Further information and a journal checking tool are available at http://thinkchecksubmit.org/ .

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