publishing your research in international journals · •understand the peer-review process...

Andrea Melendez-Acosta, MSc

Journal Development Manager, BioMed Central

Publishing your research in international journals

Overview of Workshop

• Open access and BioMed Central

• Experimental design – plan your publication from the start

• Choose the right journal

• Understand the peer-review process

• Prepare a ‘good’ manuscript

• Questions

The changing landscape of open access publishing

2000 2013

And many more…

http://cellreports.cell.com/

What is Open Access?

Distribution is different

• No subscription barriers

• Universal access

• Openly licensed to allow reuse (CC-BY)

Same quality and standards

• Peer review

• Editors-in-chief

• Editorial boards

• Indexing

Are open access journals different from subscription journals?

Traditional journals

Researchers transfer their copyrights to the publisher Publisher covers costs by selling access to the content

Open access journals

No exclusive rights retained by the publisher Publisher is paid for the service of publication (article processing charge).

What is different for authors?

Advantages of open access

• Continuous publication

• No limits on size, number of colour figures, videos, additional files

• Very focused on author satisfaction

• High-quality peer review

• Focus on increasing visibility of articles

• Articles can be widely reused

• Allows text mining of data and literature

High visibility for your work

Number of BioMed Central journals with Impact Factor

0 1 3 6

10 15

25 27

42

57

77

101

122

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Total submissions and publications to BioMed Central

journals

Total Number of submissions and publications from South

Korea

Submissions from Yonsei University (YTD April 2013)

19

42

82

111

34

2

9

25

33

9

17 19

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Nu

mb

er o

f arti

cle

s

No. of submitted No. of published No. of under peer review

Top 10 BioMed Central journals

Journals Submitted Published In peer review

BMC Cancer 18 4 2

Nanoscale Research Letters 16 13 2

Radiation Oncology 15 3 1

Breast Cancer Research 15 2 4

BMC Infectious Diseases 14 7 1

EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing 13 6 1

BMC Public Health 13 4 2

EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 10 5 1

Critical Care 10 1

Cardiovascular Diabetology 9 4

Open access publishing

We covered:

• Open access is growing!

• Differences between subscription and open access journals

• General advantages for authors and readers

Edanz Group | 16

Get your research published: Planning ahead

Key sections in research articles reflect scientific process:

Background

Methods and materials

Research/data

Discussion/interpretation

References

...

Get your research published: Before you start writing…

What’s a valuable contribution?

•New and original results or methods/tools

•Reanalysis or reinterpretation of published data

•Systematic reviews (clinical studies)

•Reviews of a particular subject

•Negative results can be of value too

You should not knowingly publish:

•Work that is out of date

•Flawed or manipulated data

•Duplication of previously published work


Publication and research ethics

Do NOT…

•Multiple submissions

•Plagiarism

•Improper author contribution

•Data fabrication and falsification

•Improper use of human subjects and animals


Publication and research ethics guidelines:

•ICMJE: International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

•CONSORT: Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials

•COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

•WMA Declaration of Helsinki

Planning your publication

We covered:

• Things to consider for experimental design and during result collection

• Publication and research ethics and how to avoid problems

Get your research published: Choosing a journal

What are the most important factors for most authors?

•Prestige of the journal

•Target readership

•Visibility

•Speed of peer-review process

•Open access


What do editors and reviewers look for?

•Does the work fit within the journal’s scope?

•Is it sound science?

•What’s new and useful/interesting?

•Is it a big enough step forward for this journal’s readership? Note: some journals are more selective than others

Novelty Significance

Aims and Scope Impact Factor

• High threshold: - Significant advance - Results and insights of

wider interest/can be generalised

- Resources, methods need to be widely useable

- Conclusions must be strong

Interest levels varies between journals – journal pyramid

High threshold

Low threshold


Interest levels vary between journals:

• Low threshold: - Advance can be small - Results and insights of interest to a

specialised group - Conclusions can be ‘weaker’ – e.g.

statistical less strong, caveats about limitations of a study, missing controls etc.


Choosing the target journal: how

• Honestly evaluate your findings: How big an advance are your findings? How high can you realistically aim?

•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

The journal selector tool


How to choose the right journal

We covered:

• Journals have different aims, scopes and thresholds

• How to find journals in your field

Get your research published: peer review

Understanding the peer-review process

• Who makes the decisions

• Step-wise process

• Frequent reasons for rejections

Key steps in the peer-review process

Step 1: Manuscript submission:

• Online only

• Read Instructions for authors and journal policies before submission

• Submitting author takes responsibility for ‘agreeing’ to terms and conditions




What information do you need during submission?

• Co- authors names, email addresses and institutions

• Suggested and excluded reviewers; names and email addresses

• Covering letter

• Manuscript file and (usually) separate figure and additional files



Step 1: Manuscript submission: Cover letter

•Important first impression!

•Address to the editor personally

•Provide manuscript title and publication type (research, review etc)

•Background, rationale, description of results

•Explain importance of your findings:

Why would they be of interest to the journal’s

target audience?

•Provide corresponding author details



Step 1: Manuscript submission: Cover letter




Recommending reviewers:

Experts with good publication records – in areas covered in the manuscript

From your reading and references

Do not recommend your collaborators or close colleagues

Excluding reviewers:

Not compulsory

Provide good reasons for excluding: e.g. Close competition

Do not exclude more than 2-3 people



Step 1: Manuscript submission

Step 2: Initial manuscript assessment

• Journal scope

• Potential interest level

• Policies (ethics, data availability etc)

• Novelty, including plagiarism/duplication

• Basic quality of language and presentation (mostly abstract, figures etc)

Initial decision:

- send for peer review

- reject as not suitable for this journal





Step 3: Peer review stage

Usually 2-4 experts, depending on expertise required (specific methods, statistics, knowledge of literature and field)

Often many experts need to be invited; good experts are busy.

Peer reviewers provide recommendations and advice on

- Novelty

- Soundness (appropriate methods, controls, support for conclusions)

- Interest levels



First part summarises what the study is about to show that the reviewer understands the work

Only appears in open peer review journals

Followed by a numbered list of major and minor revisions that they think need to be addressed before publication





Step 3: Peer review stage

Step 4: Editorial decision:

The editor integrates the information received from different experts.

First decision:

-Accept manuscript – manuscript goes to Production

-Invite revisions (major/minor) – revised manuscript may need to go through steps 1-4 again

-Reject



If you are asked to revise your manuscript you must:

• Address all points raised by the editor and reviewers

• Describe the revisions to your manuscript in your response letter; make sure it’s polite and scientific

• Perform any additional experiments or analyses the reviewers recommend

• Clearly show the major revisions in the text of the paper • Meet the deadline!


Transparency through open peer review

Peer-review process

We covered:

• Step 1: Manuscript submission

• Step 2: Initial assessment

• Step 3: Peer reviewers

• Step 4: Decision to publish or not

Frequent reasons for rejections


Reason 1: Results are not sound • Further controls needed: positive and negative • Further statistical analysis needed: different tests,

bigger sample size

• Methods used are inappropriate: not state-of-art, limitations



Reason 2: Interpretations are wrong or overstated

• Key references/relevant previous studies ignored:

work not novel, limitations of methods not mentioned

• Arguments/models not supported by data: findings don’t fit established model or go against previous publications



Reason 3: Findings are not a big enough advance

• Previous publications showed similar results: already

reported in organism, method is not better • Conclusions are not strong: small sample size,

controls not comprehensive and results are overstated.



Reason 4: Findings are ‘not interesting’ enough

Not of broad enough appeal, doesn’t meet the journal’s

threshold. For example: • Only of interest to a small group of researcher and/or a specific community •Journal is highly selective in certain areas



Reason 5: Ethical concerns • Lack of ethical approval: patient consent, human studies

comply with Helsinki declaration, animal research follow guidelines

• Plagiarism and duplication: never copy wording or publish something that is published before

• Reporting guidelines not followed: e.g. trials regsitered before the start of the study



Reason 6: Badly presented manuscript Referees and editors cannot understand the work. For

example: •Unclear descriptions of why the study was conducted, what analysis methods were used and what new results were obtained •Figures and tables are difficult to follow •Badly referenced •Poor English (reject prior to peer review)

Rejection ≠ Rejection: Separating ‘scientific soundness’ from ‘interest levels’


Results are not sound

Interpretation is fundamentally flawed

Ethical concerns

Manuscript cannot be published (in its current form)

Not in scope for this journal

Not a big advance

Not of interest to this journal’s readership

Manuscript suitable for a more specialised journal

Transfer offered

Scientific soundness

Interest levels

Peer-review cascade (example)

Moderate rejection rate

Low rejection rate


High rejection rate

Transfers of reviewers’ reports:

• Avoids delays for authors

• Avoids wasting the time of peer reviewers

• Separates scientific soundness of research from level of interest


We covered:

• Reasons for rejections

• Journal cascades and transfers of reports

Get your research published: writing a good MS

Finally… Tips for writing a good manuscript


Check journal-specific policies and instruction for authors!


Check Journal’s Editorial Policies

Title

• Specific and descriptive

• Broad appeal: avoid unnecessary detail

• Avoid abbreviations as they can be mistaken

• Write out scientific names in full

• Do not refer to chemicals by their formulas, use the common name


Title

• Ensure title reflects the content of paper

• Consider keywords!

• A good title will help attract readers and citations!

E.g. Serum biomarkers for neurofibromatosis type 1 and early detection of malignant peripheral nerve-sheath tumors


Abstract • Why is it important?

A badly written and unclear abstract might mean - that the editor misses the importance of the work - that invited referees decline to review the manuscript • Broken down into sections:

- Background 30% - Methods 10% - Results 40% - Conclusions20%


Abstract

• Must not exceed 350 words.

• Use simple language

• Include synonyms for words and concepts that are in the title.

• Try not to cite references and use minimal

abbreviations.


Background/Introduction • This should outline WHY you did the study and provide

readers with enough information to understand your paper.

• This is NOT a literature review

• Balanced: if there are previous conflicting studies, cite both!

• Current: nothing older than 10 years


Background/Introduction • Relevant information only

• Useful to think of it with a beginning, middle and end

• Beginning – this is where the previously known

information about the field should be

• Middle – rationale for asking the question; why did you do the research

• End – clear aims of the study and methods you’ll use to find these out


Methods

• This section provides the reader with information on how you conducted the study

• Use subheadings to separate different methodologies • Describe what you did in the past tense

• Describe new methods in enough detail that another

researcher can reproduce your experiment


Methods

• Describe previously published methods briefly, and simply cite a reference where readers can find more detail.

• Accurately describe any modification that you have

made to established methods. State all statistical tests and parameters


Results

• This is what you found out!

• Use subheadings to separate the results of different experiments.

• Results should be presented in a logical order

• Use the past tense to describe your results; however, refer to figures and tables in the present tense.


Results

• Do not duplicate data among figures, tables, and text.

• Include the results of statistical analyses in the text, usually by providing p values wherever statistically significant differences are described.


Figures, tables and other data presentation

• A picture is worth a thousand words!

• Tables, videos and additional files are all important ways to present what your data.

• There are a lot of guidelines on the author academy so please visit the website for further information


Figures, tables and other data presentation

• Figure layout clear and logical (e.g. top to bottom or clockwise arrangement of components)

• All components in the figure labeled and described in the legend. Scale bars included if relevant

• Enough detail in the legend for readers to understand what type of data and analyses are presented and what the key results are


Figure legends (a BioMed Central example)

Figure 7. Effect of nocodazole and ammonium chloride on PCSK9-mediated degradation of the LDLR. HepG2 cells were cultured in media supplemented with nocodazole (20 μg/ml) or ammonium chloride (NH4Cl, 10 mM) for 30 min. The media were then replaced with conditioned media from HepG2 cells transiently transfected with D374Y-PCSK9-FLAG plasmid or with empty plasmid, already containing ammonium chloride or nocodazole, and the incubation was continued for 3 h.


Be careful of image manipulation

• Includes using photoshop to make the best of your images

• Cropping images to make them neater

• Used responsibly these are ok but do not introduce new artefacts or misinterpret the data

• Editors can ask to see your original images


Discussions/conclusions This section is where you explain what your results mean.

• Discuss your conclusions in order of most to least important.

• Compare your results with those from other studies.

• Mention any inconclusive results and explain them as best you can.


Discussions/conclusions

• Briefly describe the limitations of your study.

• Discuss what your results may mean for researchers in the same field as you, researchers in other fields, and the general public.

• State how your results extend the findings of previous studies.


Discussions/conclusions

• If your findings are preliminary, suggest future studies that need to be carried out.

• At the end of your discussion and conclusions, state your main conclusions once again.


References Why are they important?

• Establish where ideas came from

• Give evidence for claims

• Connect readers to other research

• Provide a context for your work

• Show that there is interest in this field of research


• Methods and Results – whilst doing your research

• Background/Discussions– once journal has been chosen

• Title/Abstract– last


The right order to write in?

Getting the English right

• Science is often complex: use simple language (e.g. ‘more’ instead of ‘additional’)

• Ask your colleagues for feedback

• Get a native English speaker to read over your submission

• Copyediting/Author services



BioMed Central author academy

http://www.biomedcentral.com/authors/authoracademy

Questions?

Andrea Melendez-Acosta, MSc

Journal Development Manager, BioMed Central

[email protected]

최은영

Tel : 02-3142-9660

Email : [email protected]

Local BioMed Central contacts:

mailto:[email protected]

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