Group run by academics from University of Bristol Medical School with an interest in Medical Education Research. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not of Bristol Medical School or the University.
Welcome back to teaching and the start of 2024! In our first blog of the new year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect and celebrate how far BMERG has come since launching just six months ago.
We our hugely proud of the work that staff and students have put into this so far with:
36 blogs
6 staff profiles
4 publishing workshops
3 online writing retreats
3 journal clubs
1 external speaker
Our blogs have been viewed more than 800 times, with over 500 visitors from across the globe.
Looking forward into 2024 we can’t wait to share more blogs with you all on education research, teaching innovation, publishing, events, and much more. Make sure to subscribe to this blog to get all the latest from BMERG!
We would also love to feature more Bristol staff and students as blog writers so if you would like to contribute to the site please get in touch with the co-leads Sarah Allsop (sarah.allsop@bristol.ac.uk) and Steve Jennings (steve.jennings@bristol.ac.uk), or our shared mailbox at brms-bmerg@bristol.ac.uk.
Building on our previous BMERG Publishing in Medical Education blogs, in this post Dr Sally Dowling talks about what to think about when you write your article.
Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash
In the previous BMERG blog, Writing for publication: getting started, I wrote about getting started on your journal article, and all the important things there are to do before you even begin to write. These include being really clear about what you are writing, who you are writing for (your audience) and the specific requirements of your chosen journal. Some useful guidance on this topic is also available from the publishers Taylor and Francis here ‘How to write and structure a journal article’.
In this blog, I talk about taking the next steps, and moving on to writing your journal article.
Where to start?
Titles, abstracts and keywords are very important in making your article discoverable through database and other searches – and ultimately, in ensuring that your work reaches its intended audience. Writing the title and abstract for your article may be something you write/finalise near the end of the process or you may, like me, like to start with this.
Titles
Titles serve a number of purposes – they need to clearly and concisely articulate what the article is about in order to grab attention and lead to someone reading the whole article. A title which is funny or focused on a pun may be enjoyable to write, but may not do the job so well as one which is a clear description. Generally titles should be short – some journals specify word length, often 12 or 14 words. Some like to see the methodology in the title, others are not specific – check the author guidance and review recent publications to check what you need to do for the submission you are planning. Avoid unnecessary words and make sure that key information about why readers should be interested is included.
Abstracts
Abstracts are also very important. Sometimes, when searching databases, potential readers may search using the ‘title and abstract only’ function. Read the author guidelines for your chosen journal to check word allowance (most are quite strict about this) and whether or not you need to structure your abstract using headings. If you are not sure have a look at articles already published in the journal.
Keywords
Some journals will ask you to select keywords from drop-down lists, others will allow you to add your own – some will do both. Make sure that keywords for your article are repeated both in title and abstract (some maybe only once, some repeated throughout). Again, this will maximise discoverability. Some more useful information, from publisher PLOS, about writing titles and abstracts can be found here, ‘How to Write a Great Title’.
Writing the main body of your article – Top tips
Getting down to actually writing your article can be both exciting and daunting. These are some tips based on my experience:
Stay organised: If you will be doing this with others, be clear with each other about who is doing what – will one person write the first draft and then others edit? Or will you each write a section and then one person edit for consistency later?
Be clear about authorship: the journal will usually ask you to confirm each person’s contribution. Read more about the ethics of authorship from the Commission of Publication Ethics (COPE).
Plan carefully before you start writing: How many words are you allowed by your chosen journal? Does this include references? Plan your content to fit with these requirements and try and stick to the word count as much as you can whilst writing – it’s much harder to edit down when you are very many words over!
Consider your headings: Does your chosen journal want you to stick to pre-determined headings? Can you add your own sub-headings? Think about what is needed under each heading and plan what you will include.
Know your referencing style: What is the referencing style used by the journal? If you are unfamiliar with it make sure you follow it exactly. Using a referencing manager will help but you will still need to check carefully.
Consider your writing style: Write clearly and concisely, include explanations of terms if you think they are needed. Think about your audience – if they are international will they understand the context you are writing about? Is the journal readership a specialist or a generalist one? How does this affect what you say – and how you say it?
Keep a checklist of key information: Identify important details to include and make sure that you do! These can include ethical approval numbers, information on recruitment and participants, any limitations on what you did, and so on.
Show your decision making: Your reader needs to clearly understand the background and context to your work and your motivation for undertaking the study. They need to know about the methods you chose and why you chose them. Data collection should be clearly explained and results outlined (the format for these will depend on the methodology of your paper). A discussion should relate your findings to what was already known about the issue, highlighting and discussing what you found in relation to this
Thinking about structure
It might be helpful to think of the earlier parts of the paper, like the introduction and background, as an inverted triangle or funnel – starting out broad, setting the scene and context before narrowing down to your specific focus. The conclusion is the opposite:
Finishing your article
When you have finished your article and you (and co-authors are happy with it), there are still a number of cross-checks to move your manuscript towards submission:
Double check the journal’s requirements – do you need a separate title page?
Do you need to anonymise all references to authors in the main text (including to previous publications)?
Have you followed all style and formatting instructions (have they asked for a specific font, or do you need to add line numbers, for example)?
Finally, write a brief letter to the editor, explaining why your article is a good fit for the journal and why they might be interested in publishing it. Now you are ready to submit! More on this next time.
More about the blog author
Sally is a Lecturer at Bristol Medical School, working both for the Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals programme and the MSc Reproduction and Development (Co-Director). She also runs a series of writing for publication workshops for the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Bristol and helps to facilitate the BMERG ‘Shut Up and Write’ sessions. Sally has experience of publishing journal articles as sole author and with others, publishing with students and writing book chapters. She has co-edited one book and is currently co-authoring a second. She has acted as a peer-reviewer for many submitted papers and worked as an Editorial Team member for two journals.
Watch out for Sally’s next blog in the new year on how to navigate the process of submission, including responding to reviews.
In this wonderfully insightful blog, Dr Sarah McLaughlin reflects upon a recent journal article rejection and suggests looking back at the journey travelled to put academic setbacks into perspective.
How many of us have shared this experience – the article you poured your heart and soul into, and submitted to a journal is returned and has not been accepted?
You are thanked for your submission and it is their pleasure to inform you that the referee’s responses are contained in the email. The referees are unable to accept your article for publication in its current form, but if you are willing to substantially revise according to their requirements and resubmit it, they will reconsider your article.
At this point your heart drops and you feel like you are never going to get any further in academia. Does this sound familiar? It happened to me this week. I know I am not alone in this experience.
At first you may hear that this is a rejection of your work. Maybe you hear – you are not good enough, you are not as good as the others or maybe you should give up.
This time I have approached this set back differently and want to share my thoughts with you. How about looking not at where you want to be: published and accomplished – but you look back. You look back at how far you have come to get to this point. You focus not on what you have yet to achieve, but you focus on the journey travelled.
Let’s take our first look back.
To get the point of submitting an article to a journal, you have spent hours writing and completing an article ready for submission.
To get to the point where you write your first sentence, you have conducted some research.
Maybe this was for your Masters or doctoral qualification where you worked your way from your proposal, poured over the literature, worked through your ethics application, to recruiting participants, gathering your data and spending hours writing up your research in order to submit your dissertation or thesis. That is one big achievement in itself.
But let’s look back a little further.
How did you get to the point where you commenced your current studies? There was a time when you were applying to university to commence your undergraduate degree, wondering if you would be accepted. Would you pass your entry requirements? Would you even make it to day one of your undergraduate degree?
Maybe look back even further.
Did you walk into the exam hall for your GCSEs or school exams wondering if you had done enough revision, worked hard enough and would you be able to answer all the questions within the tight time given to sit your exam. Maybe you did not pass your exams first time and had to resit them.
Maybe you didn’t enter university through the traditional A level route and returned to education as a mature student through an Access course or an equivalent. Can you even remember as far back as your school exams? How many years have passed, how many times have you submitted an assignment or sat an exam since then? How many other times have you received disappointing feedback or felt like giving up… but you didn’t?
So, now let’s come back to our current feelings.
What was your journey to the point where you uploaded your article to the journal and crossed your fingers? How was the journey you travelled to get there? How long did it take you? How many setbacks did you overcome? How many times did you feel like giving up? These reflections may help put this current feeling of rejection and your article into perspective.
Come back to the feedback with fresh eyes and see it for what it is – some advice on how to make your article more aligned with the journal’s aims or make your arguments clearer, or analysis more aligned with theory. It is an opportunity to improve.
Read the feedback carefully to understand why it was not accepted. What you can do to improve your article, and importantly, increase your chances of your revision being accepted and published?
Don’t take it personally.
Rejection is common, and it demonstrates that these journals have high standards to maintain, which is a good thing. It does not reflect your worth as an academic. Most importantly, don’t give up.
Keep going.
You are one of many scholars who have had an article sent back to amend. This is a normal and common part of the journey towards article publication. Receiving what feels like a rejection may feel like a blow, but it is part of your journey. Looking back at how far you’ve come may help you see that this is just one more step along the way. Don’t give up. Keep going. It’s all about the journey travelled.
The BMERG team have been busy in the last few months giving some of the BMERG pages a bit of a makeover to improve content and navigation around the site.
What is new on the BMERG pages?
Home page: We have redesigned our homepage to include new easy to follow links to find out more about our news, events, profiles and more
About page: We have added a new about us page to let you know more about BMERG mission, objectives and the current team
Blog page: We have added a search bar to allow you to more easily find content relevant for you as well as the blog categories list in the left hand menu
Events page: We have added a number subpage for sharing abstract calls and deadlines for interesting workshops, seminars and conferences along with the links to the relevant submission portals
Research projects: We have added a list of the latest publications and a link to to Bristol Medical Education outputs in the University of Bristol Research Portal
Want to hear more from BMERG?
Subscribe to the blog using the link in the left hand menu ->
BMERG publishes a new blog every Friday on a range of topics of interest to both medical and other educators involved in higher and postgraduate education, including publishing, building community, conference and event reports, professional development opportunities, hot topics in #MedEd and more.
You can search for keywords below, choose from the categories list in the left side bar or check out the latest blogs linked below
BMERG publishes a new blog every Friday on a range of topics of interest to both medical and other educators involved in higher and postgraduate education, including publishing, building community, conference and event reports, professional development opportunities, hot topics in #MedEd and more. You can search for keywords below, choose from the categories list in…
The BMERG blog series on building community continues to grow, with a review of our recent journal club publication. Our BMERG Journal Club lead Dr Claire Hudson reflects on the discussion from our May journal club on the establishment of medical education research labs. Paper reviewed: Gisondi, Michael A. et al. The Purpose, Design, and…
In this blog, Dr Grace Pearson reflects on her recent TASME Mentorship Prize from the Association for the Study of Medical Education. She describes how this award has supported her work in collaboration with the University of Zimbabwe Medical School. I was absolutely delighted to receive the 2024 TASME Mentorship Prize, which I’ve put towards…
The latest blog is a conference report celebrating the work of clinical teaching fellows across our region. Ed Luff reflects on this event and shares exciting plans for TICC 2025. On Friday the 5th of April, the University of Bristol, in collaboration with BMERG, hosted TICC 2024: The Inaugural CTF Conference. TICC 2024 provided an…
For the first in our new ‘In conversation with‘ Series*, our BMERG co-chair Dr Sarah Allsop invited Dr Megan Brown to join BMERG for an online webinar to share her experience as an educator. Here we share some of the topics from the discussion and Megan’s top tips for embracing potential in medical education research.
We started the conversation talking about career journeys. Megan shared her own journey into Medical Education, starting in a clinical role as a doctor, and moving through a PGCert in Medical Education and then a PhD, before continuing on to research associate roles. She described her journey as feeling initially ‘pick and mix’ or serendipitous, a sense that many of us in the medical education discipline have come to know and feel, but that actually every experience has things we can take away, things we can learn, and can ultimately shape who we are and what we do.
She talked of how the different aspects of her work, whether on identity, equality or creativity, have all come together to create an interesting portfolio of work about how we look at practices within medical education, and how this translates to workforce issues like wellbeing and staff retention.
Top Tip: Consider not only your current research project, but the body or programme of research that you are doing and how this fits together. All of us need to consider what our story is: what matters to us, what impact we want to have and ultimately what we want to be known for.
Megan also talked about the way in which networking, both in person and social media has been influential in her making connections. Social media can be a really helpful way to get exposure both to others in the discipline and exposure for your own work, but the drawback is it takes time and energy.
The landscape in social media is also changing and is not for everyone. Megan encouraged us that whilst networking is important and can help to make connections that open doors, this can be done in a number of different ways, via emails, list servers, meetings and conferences to name just a few.
She also impressed on us not to get tied up in hierarchy. It is really important to connect with your peers in the discipline; those much further ahead may be really interesting to talk to, but these conversations may not yield collaborations.
Top Tip: Connect with those peers who show similar interests, and ambition to create impact in the same area as you. We are stronger when we work together.
We then talked about publishing and if Megan had any advice for those wanting to publish their work. She started with the advice to think about impact and outputs early on the the research process. All research is done to try to solve a problem, uncover truths or to empower change for the better, and so will usually have an important audience. By thinking about who might want or need to know about your results in order to influence the change you want to see, you can think about which journal, book or other medium is the best place for your work. We also talked a little about the publishing ‘game’ and the inevitable rejection that comes with trying to disseminate our work, and not to get put off by this.
Top Tip: Think broadly about how and where to disseminate your work and how to make it translatable to others. It’s not just empirical research that can be shared through publication, but commentaries, innovations, evaluation and methods, so make sure to consider carefully the best match for your work.
Finally we talked a little about role models, and Megan shared that whilst she thinks her mentors have been really important for supporting her in her career goals, she does not really have specific role models. She explained that as she is not trying to replicate another individual, she takes inspiration from wide sources, both people and environments, and through her own creativity. This has inspired her to use creative methods within her research and led to a project using poetic enquiry, “Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn: poetic inquiry within health professions education“.
Top Tip: Take inspiration from everywhere, and don’t be afraid to try new things and look for ideas outside medical education to drive new and exciting innovation.
Part of Megan’s work is being involved with the NIHR Incubator for Clinical Education Research. The Incubator’s mission is support and promote careers in clinical education research and build a multi-professional community of practice in this space, including offering free events for educators.
The next free online event and discussion, “Getting Started In … coming up with an idea and writing a research question” will be held 12.45-1.45pm Wednesday December 20th, 2023. You can sign up for this webinar and others here.
Guest Speaker Biography
Dr Megan Brown (she/her) is a Senior Research Associate in Medical Education at Newcastle University, Director of Communications and Social Media at ASME, Co-chair for Dissemination at the NIHR Incubator for Clinical Education Research, and Vice-chair of the MedEd Collaborative.Megan trained as a doctor but made the transition to full-time academic practice. Megan’s research focuses on translating and applying educational theory to practice; workforce issues within the NHS; creative approaches to research; and EDI, particularly relating to improving the support and experiences of disabled healthcare professionals, as Megan is a disabled, and neurodivergent academic herself.
* BMERG ‘In conversation with’ Series. This series of events will bring some amazing speakers to speak and share their experiences in medical education and research. Please note some sessions are only accessible to University of Bristol Staff and Students.
Adding to the BMERG blog series on building community, our BMERG Journal Club lead Dr Claire Hudson reflects on the discussion from our recent BMERG journal club session focussing on Self-regulated Learning.
Paper reviewed: Zarei Hajiabadi, Z., Sandars, J., Norcini, J. and Gandomkar R, 2023. The potential of structured learning diaries for combining the development and assessment of self-regulated learning. Adv in Health Sci Educ. pp1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-023-10239-6
As the first journal club hosted by BMERG, I wanted to choose a research topic that focussed on medical students, but also assessed teaching and learning strategies applicable to other student groups. As someone who predominantly teaches MSc students within the Bristol Medical School, I have my own interest in student autonomy of learning, whether this is self-regulated learning (SRL) or self-directed learning (SDL) – there is a difference, explained by Gandomkar and Sandars in their paper, “Clearing the confusion about self-directed learning and self-regulated learning“[1].
The general premise of SRL is a cycle of planning, performing and evaluating, but in the context of a specific task; at least that’s my very simple interpretation.
What was the research?
The purpose of the main research study was to determine whether an SRL intervention could help academically low-achieving medical students perform better in a specific exam. The SRL intervention consisted of Structured Self-Regulated Learning (SSRL) diaries accompanied by SRL training over a 4-week period, delivered to 20 students who subsequently sat the exam. The SSRL diaries consisted of 21 questions based around constructs aligned with the SRL model proposed by Zimmerman (2002) [2]. The scores in this exam, and a broader measure of academic attainment across the year, were compared to a matched group of students from a previous year, who did not receive the intervention. In an earlier publication, Zarei Hajiabadi et al (2022), they reported that the exam grade was higher in the intervention group compared to the ‘quasi’ control, but overall attainment (GPA score) was not different [3].
In the 2023 publication, the authors sought to determine:
whether the SSRL diaries can act as a reliable measurement of SRL development over time
what the efficacy of the intervention (SSRL diaries + training) was for developing SRL skills
They determined 1) by conducting internal consistency and generalisability analyses of the SSRL entries and 2) by taking the mean scores for different SRL attributes from the SSRL diaries and determining their change over time using ANOVA.
To summarise, the authors documented good generalisability scores, and they conclude that their intervention increased the students self-reported SRL abilities.
What did we think?
Firstly, the complexity of the aforementioned consistency and generalisability analyses went over the heads of most in our discussion group, and we felt that the paper was overly complicated. We wish we’d read the 2022 paper first (linked below), which is a simpler, more interesting and more pertinent publication, so I advise doing that!
The ‘quasi’ control group from a previous cohort was a study limitation, however this is a common study design when trying to measure the efficacy of a teaching intervention. There are issues with a classical experimental design, i.e., a control versus intervention group; if you hypothesise that your intervention will benefit the students then the control group may be unfairly disadvantaged.
We also questioned the authors’ conclusion that the intervention increased the students self-reported SRL abilities. Students rated their SRL abilities via the SSRL diary over a 4-week timescale, however, since the students were also studying for the exam during this period, these skills may naturally have increased leading up to the exam, in spite of the SRL training and diary. It’s very hard to determine cause and effect in this instance.
Overall reflections
This paper provoked some interesting discussion; with the diversity of our student populations it is natural that some students require additional support more than others. However, we questioned whether it is appropriate to ‘target’ lower-achieving students, and how labelling students in such ways could be demoralising. Providing additional support as an optional resource also has its limitations, since the students who don’t engage are often the ones who would benefit most. I think most educators are familiar with this problem. However, for students that have performed poorly, for example failed an assessment at first attempt, then interventions to help them study more effectively for a second attempt should be encouraged.
The SSRL diaries provide good suggestions for questions/prompts that encourage goal setting, self-monitoring and self-evaluation practices; these could be incorporated into a diverse range of learning activities such as clinical skills training, exam revision or to provide momentum during MSc research projects. Overall, I enjoyed reading about this study, and it has sustained my interest in nurturing SRL and structured reflections in my students; the more ideas, the better!
References:
Gandomkar R, Sandars J, 2018. Clearing the confusion about self-directed learning and self-regulated learning. Med Teach. 40:8,862-863, DOI: 10.1080/0142159X.2018.1425382. Epub 2018 Jan 12. PMID: 29327634.
Zimmerman B, 2002. Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: An Overview, Theory Into Practice, 41:2, 64-70, DOI: 10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2
Zarei Hajiabadi Z, Gandomkar R, Sohrabpour A & Sandars J, 2022. Developing low-achieving medical students’ self-regulated learning using a combined learning diary and explicit training intervention, Medical Teacher, 45:5,475-484, DOI: 10.1080/0142159X.2022.2152664
In BMERG’s latest report from 2023 conferences, Dr David Hettle reviews the Developing Medical Educators Group (DMEG) Annual Conference which was held online in October 2023.
The DMEG* conference provides a great opportunity for early-years educators (students, CTFs, or anyone else beginning their medical education journey) to meet others, feel inspired by a conference and presenters looking out for those at the early stage of their educator career and hear about the work of the Academy of Medical Educators and its Developing Medical Educators’ Group.
This year, the DMEG Annual Conference 2023 once again took place online, to promote access to such a conference to developing educators from across the UK and further afield. While the conference’s focus is primarily at developing medical educators and those in parallel training (medical, dental, veterinary or other healthcare science), everyone in medical education continues to develop and so there was something for everybody.
This year, keynote speakers included Dr Phil Xiu and Dr Linda Prescott-Clements, sharing their stories and journeys through healthcare education They inspired attendees to consider their next steps and all the different avenues to pursue this through, as well as recognising that medical educators are the “bridge between skill and passion” in delivering education to students, colleagues and patients.
There were also a number of excellent workshops, focussing on multiple aspects of medical education, such as clinical education scholarship, tips and tricks of teaching critical appraisal as well as developing and delivering workshops, and considering developing your career as a medical educator. View the DMEG 2023 conference programme here and the DMEG 2023 abstract book here.
DMEG also hosts both oral presentations and video pitches during their conferences, sharing novel work and innovations from participating medical educators. This year, the University of Bristol was well represented.
Last year’s University of Bristol lead Clinical Teaching Fellows (CTFs) Dr Alice Middleton (in collaboration Dr Gabriella Agathangelou), gave an oral presentation discussing their new role as lead CTFs and the wins and challenges of building a community of practice amongst CTFs, ‘Herding Cats’. They were highly commended in the oral presentation category.
Former Clinical Teaching Fellows, Dr Jacqueline Roy and Dr Tirion Swart from the North Bristol University of Bristol Teaching Academy were awarded first prize in the Video Pitch category for their work on development of a podcast to support clinical years’ medical student learning on ‘Geri-Pods’, using Podcasts to Broaden Learning on the MDT’s Role in Practice for Medical Students. You can view Jacky and Tirion’s winning pitch on Twitter(X).
Screenshot from Jacky and Tirion’s DMEG video pitch presentation
Well done to Alice, Gabby, Jacky and Tirion!
It is expected that DMEG 2024 will again be hosted online, and would be a great opportunity for anyone from the University of Bristol or further afield to meet with other beginning educators looking out for what they’re interested in, seeing what is out there in medical education and look to meet some like-minded individuals from across the world. It is anticipated that the conference will be held early October next year again, but keep an eye on the links above nearer to the time for information and abstract calls.
* The Developing Medical Educators Group (DMEG) is a subgroup of the Academy of Medical Educators and aims to promote the development of early career educators including doctors, medical students, dentists, physician associates and veterinary educators. It is open to all early career educators who are Student, Associate or Full Members of AoME.
Did you know that November is Academic Writing Month? In this blog Sarah Allsop invites you to join this international initiative to commit to writing this November and build a writing habit for the future.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
What is Academic Writing Month?
Based on National Novel Writing Month, since 2011, Academic Writing Month (also known as “AcWriMo”) has run as an annual internet-based writing event during which participants challenge themselves to meet a self-set writing goal during the month of November. AcWriMo was set up in 2011 by Charlotte Frost (founder and director of PhD2Published). Several institutions now have annual writing months or ‘WriteFests’ and you can follow the movement on social media using the hashtag ‘#AcWriMo’ or ‘#AcWri’.
PhD2Published highlight 4 main aims of the month:
To think about how we write,
Form a valuable support network for our writing practice,
Build better strategies and habits for the future,
And maybe – just maybe – get stuff done!
How do you get involved?
AcWriMo is a personal journey and commitment to writing, so how you get involved is up to you. The concept is that you set yourself a writing goal and then can access advice and support from others also taking part.
There are 6 basic rules:
Decide on your goal – a paper, thesis, project etc.
Declare it – write it down to help to stay accountable
Draft a strategy – have a plan of how much time and when you are going to commit to writing
Discuss your progress – let others know you are doing writing month, again to help your motivation and accountability
Don’t give up – stay focussed to achieve your goal and don’t get side-tracked. If you miss a session you had booked for writing, that’s ok, but don’t let one missed session derail your whole commitment.
Declare your results – share your successes however small – every step is a step further in your writing journey, and importantly announce your final result. Why? The writing community benefits not only from sharing successes but also knowing and learning from what did or didn’t work and being reminded that, we’re all human!
Where can I find out more?
Lots of institutions have writing events during November. Here are just a few to get you started:
BMERG also offers short writing support sessions that run through the year as ‘Shut up and write‘ sessions for all University of Bristol staff and students. For more information on these please contact brms-bmerg@bristol.ac.uk.
Why don’t you make a commitment today to writing throughout November, and add it to the comments below?
Building on our previous BMERG Publishing in Medical Education Blogs, in this post Dr Sally Dowling talks about the exciting, but often challenging process of getting started with writing for publication, and the things that are important to do before you start writing.
Sally is a Lecturer at Bristol Medical School, working both for the Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals programme and the MSc Reproduction and Development (Co-Director). She also runs a series of writing for publication workshops for the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Bristol.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
Many of us have pieces of work that we’d like to publish. This might be an idea from your area of expertise, a completed audit or evaluation, an innovation from your medical education practice, the outcomes of a study/research project/dissertation – or maybe an opinion piece, commentary or book review. Whatever this might be, there are several things that are important to do before you start writing. Many of these are in the form of questions you might need to ask yourself, or things that you might need to find out. It’s a good idea to do this type of preparation before you actually start to write as this will really increase the chance of your paper being sent for review.
So, how do you get started?
Ask yourself:
What am I trying to communicate – what is my aim?
What writing style/who is my audience?
Why is my message important/relevant?
What type of article do I want to write?
When you are clear about what you want to do, there is still more research needed before you start writing.
Should you write with others – or are you planning to write alone?
It depends! Have you undertaken the work with others (including as part of a doctoral or masters project)? Understanding publication ethics is important, as is thinking about authorship (see www.icmje.org/). Things to consider include what contribution each author has made to the manuscript, remembering that authors are accountable for the rigour, accuracy and integrity of the content – and don’t forget to agree the author order from the beginning! Usually these issues can be talked through straightforwardly (after all, you have probably been working together for a while) but they can sometimes be tricky to resolve.
Where do you want to publish your work?
Now you can start to think about where you would like to submit, and how that influences what and how you write it. Sarah Allsop covered some of this in her BMERG blog Publishing in Medical Education: Matching. Explore journal websites and look at author guidelines – these will very specifically tell you about word length, abstract format, general formatting, including use of sub-headings, referencing style (and, sometimes, number permitted), the layout for tables/graphs, digital artwork etc (and how many you can include). It’s always much easier to write your article as the journal want to see it, rather than retrospectively make it fit to the guidelines.
Have you fully informed yourself about your target journal?
It’s also a good idea to read some papers published by your chosen journal, as well as looking at who is on the editorial board (do you know their work? Are they from a range of countries?). Is the potential journal open to a range of methodologies. Does it have an Impact Factor (a mark of quality, international standing)? Is this important to you? (or your department!). Can you find out what the time lag is between acceptance and publication – and is this important to you? Does the journal require an Article Processing Charge in order to publish your work, or is this optional? Yes, this is a lot of questions, but checking out all of these things before you start is really worthwhile and highly recommended.
Taking the time to work through this process at the start of your writing journey may seem onerous at first, but in the long term it not only helps your writing process, but it might just improve your chances of publishing where you want in the long term.
If you’d like to have an opportunity to explore these issues more, consider coming to one of the Medical Education Research Writing for Publication and Conference workshop sessions (contact Sally Dowling or see full programme here).
