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Playing the Publishing Game: Advice for Would-be Authors Dr Stephanie Dancer Editor Journal of Hospital Infection Have you completed a study which you think deserves to be published? How do you evaluate how useful it might be to others? Who could give you advice? Should it be published locally, nationally or internationally? Choosing the right journal How many journals are there dealing with medical microbiology with or without infection control? Antimicrobial Agents & Chemotherapy; American Journal of Infection Control; British Journal of Infection Control; Clinical Microbiology and Infection; Clinical Microbiology Reviews; Emerging Infectious Diseases; FEMS Microbiology; Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology; Infection & Immunity; International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents; Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy; Journal of Hospital Infection; Journal of Infection; Journal of Clinical Microbiology; Journal of Medical Microbiology; Lancet Infectious Diseases; Microbiology; Microbial Pathogenesis; Trends in Microbiology; etc. Don’t forget: Lancet; BMJ; Nature Medicine; New England Journal of Medicine SO WHICH ONE??? JHI Impact factor trends AJIC 3 ICHE Impact factor 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 2002 2003 2004 Year 2005 2006 Data courtesy of Elsevier 64 64 64 64 63 63 63 63 62 62 62 62 61 61 61 61 60 60 60 60 59 59 59 59 /4 /3 /2 /1 /4 /3 /2 /1 /4 /3 /2 /1 /4 /3 /2 /1 /4 /3 /2 /1 /4 /3 /2 /1 number of weeks Total publication time 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 volume and issue Data courtesy of JHI Editorial Office Journal of Hospital Infection Instructions for Authors Manuscripts must be accompanied by a signed letter indicating that all named authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the paper; all who are included in the acknowledgements section, or as providers of personal communications, have agreed to those inclusions; the material is original, unpublished and has not been submitted elsewhere; any previous or pending publication of the material must be declared; all authors must declare whether there are any potential conflicts of interest and any sources of funding. Do people really copy other people’s work? Papers that are submitted with references or other features that do not comply with these instructions will be returned to their authors. They will not be considered for publication until they have been resubmitted. They may even be rejected without review! Language Editing Services Language Editing Services provide language and copy editing services globally to authors who wish to publish in scientific, technical and medical peerreviewed journals and would like assistance either before they submit an article for peer review or before it is accepted for publication. Fine-tune your grammar and correct your conjugations… Arrangement and format of original articles Title Page Summary/Abstract Introduction Methods incl. statistical methods Results Discussion Acknowledgement References What’s in a title? A. Faecal transplants for C.difficile B. Bottom’s Up! Bug buster drug for superbug! C. Managing Clostridium difficile with faecal transplants D. A new treatment for antibiotic-associated diarrhoea E. Eradicating Clostridium difficile from patients using faecal transplantation; the importance of family donors and systematic monitoring. F. Antibiotic-associated diarrhea and faecal transplants G. A Do-It-Yourself method for hospital-acquired infection Title page: this should show the title, names of all authors and the department where the work was done, as well as the contact details of the author for correspondence. A running title not exceeding 40 characters and spaces should also be provided. Summary: this should explain briefly what was done, what was observed and what was ‘concluded'. Summaries should not exceed 250 words. WHY?! The summary is the most important part of a paper to write well, since it is seen by far more people than the paper itself. It must therefore be concise, clear and accurately reflect the contents of the paper. Introduction: A brief statement outlining the purpose and context of the paper, but leaving discussion for the final section. This is the hard bit! Methods: MIC’s of Pestiococcus to wundermycin, etc. New method; old (may need a reference); established. Results: A statement of results, without discussion of their significance or relationship to those of others. Information may be conveyed by text or in figures or tables but not in both. Editors will count figures and tables in the word count. Discussion: please, please, do not discuss the meaning of life! Acknowledgements: Authors should acknowledge help received in carrying out the work reported, e.g. supply of bacterial strains, permission to study patients, molecular or biotyping of strains, and so on. When the work included in a paper has been supported by a grant from any source this must also be indicated. Any previous oral, poster or published material originating from the data in this paper? Make sure you provide full details. Any potential conflicts of interest must be declared; some journals request a separate signed letter. References References should comply with the ‘Vancouver’ style. For a full explanation of this see the Br Med J 1988; 286: 401–405. Fallon RJ. Nosocomial infections with Legionella pneumophila. J Hosp Infect 1980; 1: 299–305. Some journals stipulate that www addresses must not be used as references. Put them into the text or use an annotation for a footnote. The best way to check the reference style is to get hold of a copy of the journal to which you want to submit. Bacterial nomenclature: Organisms should be referred to by their scientific names according to the binomial system. When first mentioned the name should be spelt in full and written in italics. Afterwards the genus should be abbreviated to its initial letter, e.g. ‘S. aureus' not ‘Staph. aureus‘; you can use ‘staphylococci’ as a generic term, but not ‘Staphylococci’. Treat the abstract and the main body of the test as separate! Doctors’ style of writing is nothing more than ‘decorated municipal gothic’……. Michael O’Donnell And it is! ‘It is full of wind and pomposity and designed to make the author look important, rather than let the reader understand. Journals also tend to look awful, with pages and pages of unbroken prose.’ Richard Smith Writing and Editing ‘Throughout the study period, there was no obvious change in nosocomial pathogens, except for Candida spp. in 2003.’ ‘Throughout the study period, there was no obvious change in the isolation rate of nosocomial pathogens, except for Candida spp. in 2003.’ ‘UTIs were the most frequent NIs in the authors’ hospital over the fiveyear study period and similar findings have been reported by others.2-4’ ‘In common with previous reports, UTIs were the most frequent NIs in the authors’ hospital over the five-year study period. 2-4’ ‘National health authorities consider the typing of multidrug-resistant bacteria using molecular techniques a high priority. In 2005 we started routinely to type meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). ’ ‘Typing multiply-resistant bacteria using molecular techniques is high priority for national health authorities. Routine typing of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was initiated in 2005 and was ….’ Write it as it is; write it as if you were explaining it to a friend Then, put it away in a drawer and read it through carefully at least one week later before submitting 100 75 1999 2000 50 2001 2002 2003 25 İm ip en em C ip ro fl o xa ci n ef ep im e C ef tri ax on e C ef az ol in C M SA en ta m ic in G Am ika ci n 0 Figure 1: Five-year changes in antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in nosocomial strains of Escherichia coli. SAM, sulbactam-ampicillin. Electronic submission – time to pull out your hair? ‘Manuscripts should be submitted to the journal online via the Editorial Manager website.’ What is ‘open access’, and is it the right way forward for 21st century scientific publishing? ‘Quick and dirty’ vs the traditional…….. Check out the future of medical publishing using Google and Wikipedia! Editorial decision making: how much is pure luck? Revise and resubmit Accept after revision Reject……what can you do? Accept as is Resubmit as a brief report/letter Remove submission Remove after acceptance! The ‘black box’ of peer review………… The Trouble with Medical Journals by Richard Smith What does everyone want? ‘Authors want longer papers with more data, more references, more explanation and more reflection on what the study might mean (often nothing in reality but the moon to the authors). Readers, in contrast, want papers that are shorter and sweeter. One of the important talents of the editor is to balance the needs of both authors and readers, but the arrival of the electronic world potentially means that both can be fully satisfied.’ Richard Smith ‘Write, write, write! Read, read, read! Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite! Share it with a few people you trust, who can give feedback you'll respect. Send it out. Don't be afraid of rejection. Everyone gets rejected and will be rejected throughout their lives at one time or another. Do it because you must, because you want to, need to, couldn't live with yourself otherwise. If you do it for the fame and glory, you may fall hard on your face.’ Ana Castillo And finally…. ‘Please don't be one of those people who just talk about writing an article... BE an author. Write something! And never give up --never, never, never, never.’ Laurie Halse Anderson