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Medical PhysicsBoard of Editors:

Editor (Chair): William R. Hendee

Deputy Editors:Andrew Karellas (Imaging)Emory UniversityRadiology Department

David W. O. Rogers (Therapy)Carleton UniversityPhysics Department

Writing and Reviewing Medical Physics Papers

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Sam BeddarJ. Daniel BourlandJay W. BurmeisterCarlo CavedonIndrin J. ChettyJoel Y. C. CheungGeoffrey D. ClarkeIndra J. DasCarlos E. de AlmeidaRebecca FahrigB. Gino FalloneJonathan B. FarrMaryellen L. GigerMitchell M. GoodsittDavid J. HawkesMichael G. HermanKenneth R. Hogstrom

Edward F. JacksonGeorge C. KagadisPaul J. KeallElizabeth Anne KrupinskiX. Allen LiChang-Ming Charlie MaGig S. MagerasCynthia H. McColloughBen J. MijnheerEduardo G. MorosLech S PapiezBrian William W. PogueBalasubramanian RajagopalanChester R. RamseyEike R RietzelMark J. Rivard

David W. O. RogersJohn A. RowlandsStephen RudinEhsan SameiJan P. SeuntjensChris C. ShawJeffrey V. SiebersJeffrey H. SiewerdsenRandall K. Ten HakenBruce R. ThomadsenDirk Louis Joseph VerellenGe WangLawrence E. WilliamsMark Bennett WilliamsEllen D. YorkeTimothy C. Zhu

Associate Editors

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Department EditorsCarter B. Schroy(Department Editor, Calendar)

Dimitris N. Mihailidis(Department Editor, Books and Publications)

Colin G. Orton(Department Editor, Point/Counterpoint Moderator)

Penny Slattery, Journal Manager

Bruce H. Curran, Chair, Journal Business Management Committee

Maryellen L. Giger, AAPM Treasurer

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Medical Physics is the scientific journal of theAmerican Association of Physicists in Medicine

http://www.medphys.org/

http://www.aip.org/pubservs/style/4thed/toc.html

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Discussion on the Major Components of a Manuscript

1.Title2.Authors3.Abstract4.Key words5.Introduction6.Methods7.Results8.Discussion9.Conclusion10.Acknowledgements & Disclaimers11. References

Title

Example: “A novel imaging method for three-dimensional mapping of seed implants in the prostate.”

Novel?New?Improved?Faster? Computationally efficient?

Challenges in finding the appropriate term.

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Authorship

All authors are expected to:

1.Have made substantial contribution.2.Have participated in the composition of the article .3.Have approved the final version.

Reference: Ann Surg. 2006 June; 243(6): 713–714.

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Abstract

From Latin “abstrahere” “to drag away” (1)

The abstract should be a summary of the work and must summarize important results and conclusions.

1. Merriam Webster dictionaryhttp://www.m-w.com/dictionary/abstractAccessed on 7/14/2007

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Selection of words

TitleAbstractKey words

Select key words carefully if you wish your work to be easily found and cited.

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Evaluation of linear and nonlinear tomosynthetic reconstruction methods in digital mammography. Acad. Radiol. 2001 Mar;8(3):219-24.

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to comparatively evaluate digital planar mammography and both linear and nonlinear tomosynthetic reconstruction methods. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A "disk" (ie, target) identification study was conducted to compare planar and reconstruction methods. Projective data using a composite phantom with circular disks were acquired in both planar and tomographic modes by using a full-field, digital mammographic system.

Example:

Note that the now common term “tomosynthesis”does not appear in the title, or abstract below. A search on in PubMed on “tomosynthesis” does notretrieve this publication.

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Introduction

1.Background: Factual and concise with references …but .. not too lengthy.

2.Specific aims: Nice to know in advance what this work is all about.

3.Significance: There must be scientific significance and it must be of interest to the readership.

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Theory

1.Provide only what is relevant to the work in the manuscript.

2.Avoid lengthy derivations unless they are an essential component of the manuscript. Consider including non-essential derivations in an appendix.

3.If the theoretical background exists elsewhere, provide a reference and do not repeat it in the manuscript.

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Methods1.Provide a clear and logical description of what was done.

2.An expert scientist in the field should be able to follow your instructions and reproduce your results.

3.Provide a good balance between the essential elements and non-essential details.

4.Describe any problems worth noting (don’t let other investigators find out the hard way, particularly on any safety issues).

5.Provide a brief rationale and purpose of each experiment.

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Methods (continued)

7.Have respect for statistical significance and conduct statistical analysis where appropriate.

8.Do not include results in the methods.

9.Pay attention to IRB compliance issues(human subjects and HIPAA).

10.Pay attention to IACUC compliance issues.

11.Describe any non-obvious but important safety issues or hazards.

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Methods (continued)

Example: “Computer simulations of the scatterradiation were performed.”

Provide brief rationale. Mention if thiscomputation was compared with yourexperiments (if any).

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Results

1.The results must correspond with the methods.

2.All tables and figures must be mentioned in the text.

3. Follow a logical and simple sequence.

4.Stay with the facts (your results) only and do not include discussion and other comments such as future directions in the results.

5.Do not include methods in the results section.

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Discussion

1.The discussion should focus on the topic (methods, results, comparison of findings with those of others).

2.Keep it clear and concise.

3.Use caution with statements like “…this is the first time..” or “…this is the first report …..”, “..nobody has ever measured…”

4.Do not include new results in the discussion section.

5.Avoid introduction of new figures, tables, or other information that should be in the previous sections.

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Conclusion

1.State your conclusions; preferably a number of concise statements are most effective to deliver the message.

2.Conclusions must be supported by the results.

3.The “take home” message must be clear.

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Acknowledgements and Disclaimers

1.List any grants that supported this work (this is a requirement for most federal grants and private funding agencies).

2.Provide a disclaimer if your institution or funding agency requires (many federal funding agencies require a disclaimer).

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References

1. Give attribution to the work of others as it relates to your work.

2. Page limit is never a valid excuse for not citing important and relevant article(s).

3.If your work follows the original work of others, cite specifically that work and how your work has evolved from the work of others or your previous work.

4.Avoid unnecessary self-citation but do not omit to cite any of your previous publication(s) that are closelyrelated to the submitted manuscript.

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General Advice (a)

1.In most cases, the main message of a figure should be clear from the figure and legend.

2.Use line numbers in the manuscript (every 5 lines is sufficient).

3.Answer point-by-point the comments by the referees.

4.Do not underestimate the importance of effective communication in your manuscript. Revise carefully and responsibly.

5.Seek editorial assistance if the English language is not one of your great strengths . With practice, your skills will improve.

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General Advice (b)

5.High-impact papers do not have to be long.

6.Be extremely careful in making statements that may be unfair to individuals, institutions, or companies.

7.It is acceptable and often commendable to report on controversial issues …. but do your homework first and be prepared to have the data to defend your conclusions.

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8. When dealing with difficult controversial scientific or legal issues, seek advice before submission from the appropriate official in your institution (such as dept. chair, vice chair, IRB, intellectual property office, or legal counsel).

9. The length of a paper is not a good measure of its importance and potential impact.

10. Long manuscripts are acceptable if the material is justified.

11. Let’s examine the following paper:

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P.C. LauterburNature, 242: 190-191, 1973

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This is the entire Lauterbur’s seminal paper that won him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003(shared with Peter Mansfield).

“Despite its frustrations, the peer-review process seems to have worked well, as two rejections have made that manuscript much stronger. Those rejections were based not on the science, but on our inability to tell the story clearly……Good science, I think, is as much about lucid communication as about proper pipette technique. In an ideal world, there would be other, simpler ways to disseminate one’s findings than laboriously writing journal articles. Maybe one day, self-assembling data will be downloaded directly into interested scientists’ brains, bypassing the need to construct an elaborate tale on paper. Until that fiction becomes reality, I’d better keep working on my storytelling skills.”

The above quotation is from Peter Jordan, a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive in a letter to Nature.

Nature, Vol. 448, p.222, 12 July 2007

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Writing and reviewing Medical Physics papers: part II

D. W. O. Rogers, Carleton Laboratory for Radiotherapy Physics.

Physics Dept, Carleton University,

Ottawa

http://www.physics.carleton.ca/~drogersAAPM Annual Meeting Minneapolis

16:00-17:30 Mon 07/07/23

in conjunction withBill Hendee, Andy Karellas

and Penny Slattery

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Outline of talk

• thoughts on proper graphs

• Dave’s rules for figures

– (as imposed on my own students)

• Guidelines for authorship

• Random advice on refereeing well

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1) labels should be lower case

-except where capitals are mandatory (eg MeV, Gy)-experts agree: lower case is far easier to read

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2) always use axes and tick marks on all 4 sides

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4 axes with ticks

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3) # ticks commensurate with accuracy

What is the ratio at 1 cm?

How close can you be to get 1% accuracy?

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4) labels have a uniform # digits

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5) choose axis limits/forms to use area effectively

Use ratios to compare two nearly equal quantities

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5) choose axis limits/forms to use area effectively

People often use ranges which are 30% too large=> 50% of space is useless

wasted space

wasted space

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6) use arrows and labels rather than legends if possible

These are far too busy for use in a talk and possibly even in a paper

Added advantage: labels make the above work in black and white too.

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7)make symbols & lines work in B&W, even if colour used for on-line version(referees use B&W printers)

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7) make symbols & lines work in B&W, even if colour used for on-line version(referees use B&W printers)

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8) make sure all lines and font sizes are thick enough after reduction: figure will be 8.5 cm wide

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9) use a consistent, clear font (I prefer helvitica or arial)

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10) roughly square figures work best in the journal

Maximum width is about 8.7 cm = column width

Height is adjusted as needed, but a tall narrow figure will be shrunk laterally.

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11) do not use titles/legends outside the axes

Graph on left makes far better use of the space

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12) axis labels: quantity / units (SI) (personal preference)

Whatever style you use, make sure the quantity being plotted is clearly labelled and the units clearly specified.

The ICRU points out that we can only plot numbers, so what the axis should be is the quantity divided by the unit.

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13) Captions should be self-contained

People skim a paper by looking at the figures.

Make the captions as self-contained as reasonable, but don’t repeat things.

This will make your paper have more impact.

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Authorship guidelines

• all authors must warrant being authors

• all those who warrant being authors, must be authors

• all authors carry responsibility for the content of the paper (so they must have at least read it!)

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Authorship guidelines (NRCC)

• substantial involvement in the concept, design and planning of the project

• substantial involvement in the performance of the research

• substantial involvement in the interpretation of the data• substantial involvement in the writing or review of the

manuscript

At least two of the following must be fulfilled to warrant authorship.

Implications: -people only helping do the experiments are not authors (named in acknowledgements);

- not all authors are involved in data collection

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Authorship guidelines

• from Intl Committee of Medical Journal Editors: “Acquisition of funding, collection of data or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship”

• from Ann. Surgery consensus statement on authorship: “Acquisition of funding, collection of data, contributing cases or general supervision of the research group, of itself, or just being Chair of the department, does not justify authorship if the criteria are not fulfilled”

• from NRC: Being the manager responsible for a research group or research project does not, of itself, justify authorship.

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Some random thoughts on refereeing

• refereeing is a critical part of our responsibility as scientists

• please turn down a request to referee a paper – if you do not have time to do it in the requested

3 weeks– if you have a conflict of interest

• eg working on a similar paper and it would be to your benefit if this paper was slowed down

• personal animosity with one of the authors (after all, doing a good refereeing job will help the author, so why do it for an enemy?)

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Some random thoughts on refereeing (cont)

• one role of a referee is to determine if the work is scientifically sound

• it is not your role to force the author rewrite their paper the way you would write it– but it is fair game to make non-mandatory

suggestions on how to improve it• it is not your job as referee to correct English.

Send it back to the authors if it is really bad, and ask them to get a native English speaker who can write well, to rework the paper (correcting occasional errors/style mistakes is fine, of course)

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Some random thoughts on refereeing (cont)

• make your referee’s comments clear and precise– distinguish clearly between suggestions and

mandatory changes– avoid vague statements like “It is well known that…”

Give explicit references.• if the authors make a statement about what paper X

does or does not say, it is your responsibility as a referee to ensure this is what paper X actually said– especially if the author goes on to disprove paper X– or if the accuracy of the present paper relies on what

paper X is reported to have said.

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Some random thoughts on refereeing (cont)

• remember to make your comments as impersonal as possible– authors have a great deal tied up in their

paper and it is your job to help them make the paper better, not to show off how sharp your criticisms can be.

• Make it absolutely clear to the AE and to the author, what constitutes a “show stopper” issue vs less critical ones.

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Thank you for your attention

Good luck with your next paper

WRITING AND REVIEWING MEDICAL

PHYSICS PAPERS

William R. Hendee, PhDMarquette University

Medical College of Wisconsinwhendee@mcw.edu

SIX ELEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATION ETHICS

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2006)

AuthorshipEditorshipConflict of interestPrivacy/confidentialityPublicationOverlapping publications

© WRH, MCW (July, 2007)

ELEMENT ONE: AUTHORSHIP

Substantial contributionConception/designData analysis/interpretation

Article drafting/revisingFinal approval

© WRH, MCW (July, 2007)

ELEMENT TWO: EDITORSHIP

Contractual relationshipEditorial freedomScientific contentPeer review

© WRH, MCW (July, 2007)

ELEMENT THREE: CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Author commitmentsProject fundingEditorReferees

© WRH, MCW (July, 2007)

ELEMENT FOUR: PRIVACY/CONFIDENTIALITY

PatientsStudy participantsAuthorsReferees

© WRH, MCW (July, 2007)

ELEMENT FIVE: PUBLICATION

Negative studiesCorrectionsExpressions of concernRetractions

© WRH, MCW (July, 2007)

ELEMENT SIX: OVERLAPPING PUBLICATIONS

Duplicate submissionRedundant publicationAcceptable secondary publicationCompeting manuscriptsCorrespondenceAdvertising

© WRH, MCW (July, 2007)

Workshop for 2007 Annual Meeting Good afternoon. My name is Penny Slattery and I am the Journal Manager for Medical Physics. Laurie Hayden, who is sitting down front, is the AAPM customer service representative and also my helper with the work on the journal. I have been asked to explain a bit about the process of submitting a manuscript and what happens once a manuscript is submitted for publication. I will be going through this process as if all of you are brand new, never before submitters to the journal. I am often teased by my Board of Editors because I am very possessive of the journal. I call it MY journal, MY Editorial Board, MY authors, MY Deputy Editors and MY Editor. I guess after working on the journal for 11 years, I feel a sense of ownership. I am very proud of the journal and I want your work to be included in the journal. Ok, you’ve just spent the last year of your life working on a paper and you’ve decided to submit it to Medical Physics. You’ve gone on line to Medphys.org and clicked on the Submit your manuscript now button. You’ve signed up for a user name and password (I know, yet another user name and password to remember!) You’ve filled out all the information, and you’ve uploaded all of your files. You’re ready to hit that submit button. Now what? Go through the process Our on line submission process is known as The Peer Express System or PXP. This is the on line submission that our publisher, the American Institute for Physics, or AIP, uses. The system sits on AIPs platform. Should you ever click on the Help button, it is the AIP tech people whom you are emailing. But, what happens once a manuscript is put into the PXP system? Once you click that Submit button, the manuscript does not get lost in cyberspace. Your manuscript appears on my website as awaiting Initial QC. I or Laurie, take a look at your paper. We aren’t looking at the science, or checking to see if you mention each figure in the text. We are checking what I call the presentation of the paper. We are checking to make sure there is a cover letter (addressed to the correct Editor, I know it sounds silly, but I have sent papers back if the cover letter is addressed to another Editor), that the article file is in the correct format, double spaced, single column, (some papers come in layed out very nicely as they might appear in the journal. I appreciate the work that it took to do that, but for ease of reviewing, the paper must be double spaced and in a single column). We make sure that each of your figures are in separate figure files, and that if the figure is labeled Figure 2, that the figure number on the figure is Figure 2. I want your paper to look it’s very best for the reviewers, because if the reviews come back that your paper is ready for publication without any revision (which doesn’t happen often, but has been know to happen) I want your paper to be ready to go, and to have all of it’s parts. If you are submitting a revision, we also make sure that there is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments. And let me tell you, the reviewers are looking for that point-by-point response to their comments. If any of these items is missing, we will send the manuscript back to you for completion. Once Initial QC is complete, the manuscript is sent to the Editor’s website for selection of a potential Associate Editor. Once a potential AE is identified, an email is sent out asking if the potential AE would like to serve on the manuscript. If the paper is a revision and the original AE has asked to see the revision, they receive an email letting them know that we have received the revision. If the potential AEs say yes, then we ask the AE to identify potential referees and emails are sent out to those people. If no, then the Editor selects another potential

AE until we have someone who will serve as the AE. You as the author will receive an email once we have an AE for your paper. Once reviewers have accepted, they are given three weeks in which to submit their reviews. Ideally, we like to have two referees for each paper. Reminders start to go out approximately one week before the review is due. Sometimes you may see that you only receive comments from the AE and one referee. It is possible that the second referee never turned in his review. After three reminders, we ask the Associate Editor to send in his recommendation. My goal is to get you the reviews of your paper as quickly as possible so that you can begin work on your revision. And so that ultimately your paper can be published as quickly as possible. What level of proofreading is done by the reviewers? Reviewers are not supposed to copyedit the paper, although some do. If you have submitted multiple papers to Medical Physics, you have probably noticed a difference in reviewer’ styles. Some go through the paper and make lengthy copyediting changes, which they are not asked to do, but which they believe it is important to do. Some reviewers look only at the science. Reviewers’ responsibility IS to check the science. Because the reviewer of your paper is an expert in the subject of your paper, the science of the paper is what they will be looking at most. Selection of reviewers How are reviewers selected? Once you are in the PXP system, the keywords that you entered into the system are connected to you. An Associate Editor can search the database for keywords that match a manuscript to find reviewers, or they can search on reviewers who have reviewed papers that the authors had previously submitted. What happens after the manuscript is accepted for publication? Your paper has gone through the submission process, you’ve revised the paper and now it’s ready for publication. The manuscript is assigned to the next available issue, which is usually two months in the future. For instance, I just finished the September issue. The manuscript is electronically sent to AIP for copyediting. These copyeditors aren’t looking at the science, they are looking at the grammar and making sure that if you mention five figures in the text, that there really are five figures. Once the copyediting and production is done on your manuscript, you receive galley proofs via email. Once those galley proofs are returned to AIP, the paper is prepared to be put on line, and then put in the line up for the next issue. A paper appears on line approximately 21 days before the printed journal comes out. The mailing date for each month is considered to be the 15th of the month. Next upgrade, multimedia AIP is always looking at new upgrades for the PXP system. One item that they are currently working on is the ability to upload multi-media into the PXP system. We will have more guidelines on multi media.

Tips: If you’ve never submitted to Medical Physics before, take a look at the journal, look at the on line journal. Read over the Instructions to authors, found on the home page of the submission system. There is also a Help click through button. You can email PXP Help with technical questions and they will email you back. You can contact my office with submission questions. Run Spellcheck before submitting. It sounds like a simple thing to do, but remember to do it. If you are an author for whom English is not your first language, and I am very proud to say that our submissions from non-English speaking countries continue to rise each year, have a native English speaker look at paper first just to see if the paper flows smoothly. We do send papers back to authors with the request that before the review process can begin, they have a native English speaker look at the paper. Point-by-point response. I know I mentioned this before, but make sure these are clear and concise as possible. Reviewers don’t like having to decipher your corrections. Our reviewers are all volunteer and they have spent a good amount of time on your paper. They want to feel as if you spent just as much time, if not more, on your revision and answering the concerns that were brought up in the reviews. I’ve had people ask me, “What’s the best time of the year to submit a paper to Medical Physics?” Well, I think any time of the year is a great time to submit to Medical Physics. But, the slowest review times are in the summer around the Annual Meeting times and from RSNA to the end of the year. And I know, that those are times when authors really want to get that paper they’ve been working on off of their desk. They want to get their paper submitted before they leave on vacation and also before the end of the year. Does that mean that you should not submit during those times? No, it just means that there is a possibility that the review times will be delayed at bit. And finally, as I said in the beginning of my talk, I am very proud of Medical Physics and I want all of you to be proud as well. The journal has gone from a Quarterly Bulletin in 1970 to a bi-monthly in 1974, to a monthly in 1994. We went on line in 1999. And we continue to grow. I’ve estimated that this year we will publish over 4,000 article pages. And I hope that in those article pages is a paper that you have authored. Just as this association values all of it’s members and is very proud by all the work that you do, I want you, as an author published in Medical Physics to be proud to see your work in MY journal. Thank you, and I wish all of you a very productive rest of the meeting.