Writing for Publication – Bristol Medical Education Research Group

Publishing in Medical Education: Harnessing Open Access to Communicate your Research Effectively

Posted on February 16, 2024February 16, 2024 by sarah.allsop

This latest blog in our publishing series is a must read for all researchers, not just those in medical education.

In this blog research support librarian Kate Holmes will introduce you to Open Access publishing, why it matters, a few handy tools, and how it might influence where you decide to place your article.

You’ve decided you want to write an article. You’ve thought about your structure, maybe using some of the support and advice from this blog. Maybe you’ve even begun to think about where you’d like to place it. So, how might publishing Open Access influence the process?

What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) is free, unrestricted online access to research outputs.

This means that anyone with an internet connection can read your work because it is available without someone having to go through a paywall or log into a system.

There are two common routes to Open Access:

Gold: where the library pays the publisher to make the article available on the publisher’s website free of charge to readers, with their formatting and copyediting.

Green: where you upload the Author Accepted Manuscript to an online data repository such as Pure for anyone to read. (This is the last word document you sent the publisher prior to copyediting and typesetting.)

The UK Reproducibility Network have a great introducing the open research practice of open access and why it is important:

Why do it?

Research Culture

Paywalls prevent people from reading your research because not every institution can afford to pay for subscriptions to every journal. This means that much of the research conducted is inaccessible to researchers who don’t have access to libraries with large budgets, such as those in the global south, or to patients who want to learn more about their own conditions.

Unsurprisingly, Open Access articles are read and cited more, allowing them to make more impact in the academic community and to interested parties, such as patients.

Choosing to publish Open Access means that you are participating in open research practices and a movement that aims to improve research culture. These practices improve research rigour by being as transparent as possible about how research is done.

Publishing Open Access is one element of open research; you can see it as the front door to wider open research practices.

Funder requirements

Publishing Open Access is required by some funders like the UKRI’s Medical Research Council, British Heart Foundation, Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK. These organisations provide funds to cover Gold Open Access costs for the research they have funded. You can find out if you can request these funds by contacting your institutions library and filling out an open access form (see also University of Bristol Article processing charge guidance).

If this is the case, your funder will commonly ask you to:

apply a CC-BY licence,
acknowledge your funding by quoting their name and the grant number in the article
provide a data access statement for any data you created to write the article.

It is important that you include this information and that you publish your article Gold Open Access because this is a condition of their funding your work. Seek advice from your institutional OA team for the specific details of funder requirements so that they can help you understand them more (see also University of Bristol Open Access Policies). Note, not complying may lead to a funder blacklisting an institution or imposing financial penalties.

Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UKs system for assessing the quality and impact of UK research. We’re still waiting to hear exactly what the Open Access requirements are going to be for REF 2029. However, we currently need to ensure that we upload the Author Accepted Manuscript to Pure within 3 months of its acceptance for the article to be eligible to be submitted as part of REF.

Many institutions, including Bristol, have developed policies to support researchers to make their work more accessible. At Bristol this is the University’s Scholarly Works Policy, which supports researchers to post the accepted version of articles to the online repository (Pure) in a way that meets REF and funder requirements. If you do not manage to upload your article in time, then there are sometimes ‘exceptions’ that can be applied, and your library team can help you with this.

What might this mean for choosing where you place your work?

Publishing Open Access benefits society and is part of your duty as a good researcher. The good news is that you can choose how your work appears by making choices about where you publish.

Although Green Open Access publication is great and can be cited in the same way as a journal’s formatted article, most people prefer to have a free version of their article available on the publisher’s website.

If you want this to happen, there are a couple of different routes you can take:

Diamond Open Access: no fees to authors or to readers, making all research free to read and free to publish. These journals are typically funded by libraries and scholarly organisations.

Gold Open Access: final published version of the research is made open access on the publisher’s webpage in exchange for a fee. If you don’t have funding, you can often still publish Gold Open Access (where the library pays a fee). As part of the journal packages your library buys for you to read, OA teams can make articles in certain journals Gold Open Access. These are known as ‘Read and Publish’ agreements. Your library will often have a directory where you can check whether the journal you are interested in is covered, e.g. UoB Read and Publish deal finder tool.

If you want to make the most of your research, then incorporate choices about Open Access into your journal selection process. That way, it can support you to communicate your research as widely as possible!

More author the blog author:

Dr Kate Holmes advocates for Open Access as a Research Support Librarian. She uses her experience in research to help academics understand more about the benefits of Open Access and the requirements they need to fulfil.

Hot Topics: The Journey Travelled

Posted on December 5, 2023January 26, 2024 by sarah.allsop

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.

Switching from looking back to moving forward

Firstly, take a break.

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.

You got this.

More about this blog author

Sarah is a Lecturer and the MSc. Co-Lead (Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals) and Foundations in Medical Education Programme Lead. She is part of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations research centre (CHET) and tag them (@chet_for)

Publishing in Medical Education: Writing for Publication – Getting Started

Posted on October 27, 2023January 4, 2024 by sarah.allsop

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.

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).

Hot topics: Students as Researchers

Posted on September 1, 2023 by sarah.allsop

In the latest ‘hot topic’ blog, BMERG introduces one of our Bristol second year medical students, Rahul Kota. Rahul talks about their experience of being involved with research as an undergraduate, including some great top tips for getting started.

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Being involved in research is something that the modern medical careers have made feel almost compulsory for career progression and is often sold to students as something they ‘have to do’ to get to where they want to be. I’m here to tell you otherwise. Whilst undertaking research for your future career may be important, the skills and experience you gain in the process are just as valuable in the present.

My research journey started right at the start of medical school, during my first year in 2021. I had an idea that I wanted to be a surgeon before I came to medical school and knew that if I wanted to have a competitive surgical career application one day, I would need to get extra experience. I looked to find a surgeon who would allow me to come to theatre and shadow them.

Going in with the attitude of “if you don’t ask, you don’t get”, I found the email of Professor Gianni Angelini and emailed him asking if I could shadow him in theatre. I was thrilled when the reply came back as a ‘yes’. If you ask me now why I emailed Prof. Angelini, he was a cardiac surgeon, a career which I find incredibly inspiring and he also had a very impressive description of what he had done in the past online; probably not as important was that he came up on the first page of the ‘Bristol Our People’ website so I didn’t have to look very far.

During my first day shadowing Prof. Angelini, I was inspired by his work and the magic of cardiac surgery; and perhaps most importantly that day, I met Prof’s Angelini’s registrar. Mr Daniel Fudulu is single-handily responsible for inspiring me to start researching; without him, I would not be in the position I am in today.

It was quite lucky how my research journey started. I had been shadowing the team for about 3 months, and one day a researcher who worked with Daniel was in theatre as well, and I got talking to him about how I was keen to do some research. So, we asked if there were any projects I could help with and Daniel suggested I should attend their research group. Once I joined the research group, involvement in a project soon followed. I was supported to research and write my first paper.

I find research quite enjoyable due to its collaborative nature – it is a team sport in a way; you are interacting with many different people from many different specialities, and I like the team spirit and comradery in uniting to achieve a common goal. I also really enjoyed actually writing the paper. It may sound an odd thing to find enjoyable, but for me it as quite satisfying and rewarding to write a paper and then step back and look at the completed product. It really gives a strong sense of achievement.

It is also amazing to be able to say you have contributed to the advancement of medicine. I enjoy reading about the history of medicine and where we have come from, and it is those previous researchers who have been able to advance medicine to where it is today, so to say that I have also contributed to advancements in medicine is rewarding and fulfilling.

Personally, whether correct or not; I do also think research is a marker of success in a career. I would like to do a PhD or an MD one day and aspire to hopefully become a professor in my chosen field. Research is a core part of that dream and journey, so I can one day be knowledgeable enough to be seen as a leader in my chosen field.

My publishing journey did have ups and downs, but I had an excellent mentor in Mr Daniel Fudulu. The first journal we submitted to returned a rejection, so we had to rethink our target. I had never been involved in research and publishing before, so I was confused as to why our paper had been rejected. Daniel helped to explain that it was very rare that a paper gets accepted the first time and we should stay calm and think of another target. This advice is something which will stick with me, and made me feel that it was a team effort to get the paper published. When we got the paper published in Frontiers in Surgery, this was an incredibly proud moment, the culmination of over a year of hard work. I cannot overstate Daniel’s role in supporting me getting the paper published; I think it would have been a very different experience without his support.

Research can be quite time-consuming, so as a student, balancing it with my studies is very important. There is a misconception that medical students do not have any free time, but in truth, there is free time, it is just how you decide to use it. I personally block out a few hours in a week to concentrate on research, maybe on a weekend or on a weekday after I have finished my uni work; and I find that this has been very effective for me. I am also lucky to have an incredible support network around me in terms of my family, friends and mentors.

Rahul’s top tips for getting involved in research as a student:

Find a mentor: it is essential to find a mentor who will support you and understand your career goal – finding the right person can be transformative in promoting your research journey.
Be proactive: Nobody told me how to get research or how to do it, you have to seek opportunities out yourself and make the most of them.
Don’t be scared of rejection: Often nothing happens the first time, so don’t be scared if a paper gets rejected or a consultant has no research for you; dust yourself off and pick yourself back up and carry on.
Enjoy the journey: Share your wins and losses with your peers, friends and family, because they can be people to take stress off your shoulders or people to celebrate with, they are just as excited to be on this journey as you are.

You can read Rahul’s paper here:

Kota R, Gemelli M, Dimagli A, Suleiman S, Moscarelli M, Dong T, Angelini GD and Fudulu DP (2023) Patterns of cytokine release and association with new onset of post-cardiac surgery atrial fibrillation. Front. Surg. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsurg.2023.1205396

Publishing in Medical Education: Matching

Posted on June 30, 2023July 9, 2023 by sarah.allsop

In this blog, Sarah Allsop discusses the challenge of navigating how to choose and ‘match’ with your perfect publisher.

Thinking about how, when and where you are going to publish and disseminate the findings of your medical education research is an important step in your research journey. In fact, it should probably be a really early step, as consideration for how you are going to share your work can influence the type of journal or publisher that you look for.

Ask yourself right from the start,

What is the reach of this work, what audience am I trying to communicate with?
What is the value of this work, who will benefit from seeing the results and how can I make this most accessible to my target group?
What do I want the impact of my work to be, who am I hoping to influence?

By considering these types of questions, it can help you to consider where you want to publish your work. You can then try to match this with the aims and objectives of selected medical education journals.

Always cross-check the aims and author guidelines of your chosen journal to check the scope matches with your manuscripts content, design and emphasis
TOP TIP

The challenge will be that if you don’t match your work to the journal or publisher, this can be a swift road to rejection – and this is hard. It doesn’t however mean that your work is not good enough to be published. In fact a rejection at a very early stage is far more likely simply to mean that you have not matched the scope of the journal. Don’t be disheartened, as there is a place for all good work to be shared.

One of the things that can really help you when thinking about how to navigate the publishing journey is to make a list of your top five journals or publications where you would most like to publish your work. To start with do this really spontaneously and go for what you really want.

Then take a step back and carefully consider and critique these choices. Does my work match the scope of this journal? Is my work likely to be written up or is written up in the style that suits the readership of the journal? Is my work realistic for this publisher? You need to be honest – for example, if a particular journal states in its aims that it only publishes international collaborative work, if you have undertaken a small single-centre study, this is unlikely to get published in that particular journal.

Revisit your list and see if there are any journals that don’t match the work. Make sure you still have 3-5 options, so that you know from the start when your next submission will be if you get rejected from the first, it not only saves time but reminds you that the process might include rejection and that’s ok.

Next take a look at the manuscript types on offer from each of the journals on your list. These can usually be found in the ‘Author Guidelines’ section. It will describe in details all of the manuscript types, which are commissioned, which are accessible to all authors. It will also highlight formatting and referencing requirements, word lengths and open access agreements. Check again that your work matches closely to one of the manuscript types listed. If it does great, if not do you need to rethink your journal list.

Hopefully, by the end of this second step you have a list of journals that firstly, publish the type of manuscript you are writing to an audience you want to reach, and secondly you now know the word count, style and formatting you need to use to move forward.

Good luck with your writing and watch out for more blogs on publishing coming soon.

You may find the list of journals written by Olle ten Cate shared in our blog on journal lists useful: BMERG Blog: Publishing in Medical Education: List of Journals.

Publishing in Medical Education: List of Journals

Posted on June 2, 2023July 9, 2023 by sarah.allsop

This blog is shared by Sarah Allsop as a place to start for those wanting to find out about where to publish medical education innovation and research.

Whether you have been working on a fantastic educational innovation or have undertaking a great piece of education research, the likelihood is you will want to share this with the wider medical education community. But, where so you publish it and how do you find out which journals publish medical education research?

Fortunately, Professor Doctor Olle ten Cate has produced an open access list of journals where it is possible to publish medical education research. Version 4 of this list (released in August 2022) comes complete with links to the journal websites and includes those related not only to medical education, but across the health professions and those written in languages other than English.

Access this really helpful list at: JOURNAL OPTIONS TO PUBLISH HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION

To cite this dataset: ten Cate, Olle (2022), “JOURNAL OPTIONS TO PUBLISH HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION ARTICLES”, University Medical Centre Utrecht, V1, doi: 10.17632/rf29ym3bpw.1

Publication Call: Submit to the Inspire Student Research Journal!

Posted on May 11, 2023May 11, 2023 by sarah.allsop

This publication call is one for all the Medicine, Dentistry, Veterinary and Biological Sciences students out there who are looking to publish their work.

INSPIRE posters about publication submission calls 2023

The Inspire Student Research Journal is written, peer reviewed and edited by students. The journal is a great opportunity to experience science publishing and have your name in print. This year’s editorial team are looking for Med, Vet, Dentistry and Biomedical articles for the 2023 issues. These could be: research papers from your course; opinion pieces; reviews; features on intercalation, events or electives; cover art; creative writing and more…

They are also creating a special edition on One Health – the concept of human, animal and planetary health being interlinked. It is up to you how to interpret the theme, for example whether it’s the impact of single use plastics or antibiotic resistance and factory farming to cross species infectious diseases or food system failures.

Deadline for the Autumn issue: 12 June

Deadline for the One Health special: 11 September

If you are a Medicine, Veterinary or Dentistry student and would like to act as a peer reviewer then please send us your details.

Read back issues and find out how to submit/get involved at: inspirestudentjournal.co.uk