Transcript How to Write a Paper for Publication in a Scientific Journal

HOW TO WRITE A PAPER FOR
PUBLICATION IN A SCIENTIFIC
JOURNAL
HOW TO WRITE A PAPER FOR A
SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL
Kenneth Kaushansky
(soon to be ex-) Editor-in-Chief,
BLOOD
Department of Medicine
University of California San Diego
PROJECTS / TOPICS
Barry Bonds vs. Pete Rose
GETTING THE WRITING STARTED
The Figures / The Results
vs.
The Introduction / Discussion
WHAT TO INCLUDE
LUMPERS vs. SPLITTERS
MPU (Minimum Publishable Unit)
WHEN TO START WRITING
Before Its Too Late
Before Its Done
WHO TO INCLUDE AS AUTHORS
You – the one that did the work
Your Boss
Your Lab Technologist
Your collaborators
AUTHORSHIP
UNIFORM REQUIREMENTS FOR MANUSCRIPTS
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Each author
should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility
for its content.
Authorship credit should be based solely on substantial contributions to (a)
conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to (b) drafting
the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on final
approval of the version to be published. Conditions (a), (b) and © must be met.
Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not
justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for
authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusion must be the
responsibility of at least one author.
Editors may ask authors to describe what each contributed; this information
may be published.
WHO TO INCLUDE AS AUTHORS
Get it straight from the outset
CRITERIA FOR JOURNAL
ACCEPTANCE
Appropriateness
Impact
Quality
Novelty
CHOOSE A JOURNAL
General Interest
Nature, Science, Cell, NEJM
EMBO J, PNAS, JCI, JBC, AIM
BBRC, FEBS Letters
Specialty Journals
Blood, Circulation, JCO
Exp Hematol, BJH
Acta Hematologica, Clin Lab Hematology
CHOOSE A JOURNAL
Goal: Rapid dissemination of interesting basic
scientific or clinical information
How often does target population read that
particular journal?
How often does the readership of the target
journal read your topic?
What is the impact of the journal?
CHOOSE A JOURNAL
Blood Readership Survey
Mailed to all recipients, 14% response rate
No incentive to respond
What other journals do you read as or more
frequently than BLOOD?
NEJM 73%
JCO 51%
Science 34%
Nature 26%
Br J Haematol
Thromb Haemost
PNAS
Cell
23%
17%
16%
12%
CHOOSE A JOURNAL
Impact Factor
Number Citations / Number of Articles
Impact Factors for Blood and Related Journals
Journal
JCI
BLOOD
JCO
JBC
Exp Heme
BJH
1998
9.3
8.4
8.3
7.2
3.5
3.2
1999
10.9
8.8
8.0
7.7
3.3
3.2
2000
12.0
9.0
8.8
7.4
3.3
3.1
2001
14.1
9.3
8.5
7.3
3.3
2.8
THE SUBMISSION PROCESS
Electronic Submissions
Potential Conflicts of Interest
Reagents Sharing Policies
Suggested Editors/Reviewers
THE REVIEW PROCESS
Editor-in-Chief
Associate Editor
Reviewer(s)
Confidential Comments
Comments To The Authors
Associate Editor
Authors
Final Check
Revision
New Journal
THE REVIEW PROCESS
BLOOD Manuscript Statistics, 2002
Submissions:
3959
No. M/S published
1176
Regular Papers
36%
Brief Reports
27%
How I Treat
33%
Review Papers
42%
Correspondence 42%
No. Pages published
8818
Time to First Decision
28.5d
THE REVIEW PROCESS
Major Issues in the Peer-Review System
Why not just publish everything?
Biased reviewers
Stolen ideas
Delaying of papers for personal reasons
Pressure from Department Chairs to work on other things
We all have a lot of things to do
Best reviewers are the busiest of all
THE REVIEW PROCESS
Major Issues in the Peer-Review System
The paper journal is not dead
5% of Blood readers use online only
46% readers expect they will never give up paper entirely
Paper and online versions used for different purposes
Impressive volunteerism
2486 different people have reviewed for Blood this year
17 reviewers handled >10 papers this year
Peer-review adds quality
THE REVIEW PROCESS
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dr Hans Reimer
Rodewald (Basel, Switzerland) for discussions and
for kindly providing WB-W/+ mice; Dr Ana
Cumano (Paris, France) for critically reviewing
the manuscript; and the anonymous reviewers for
their helpful comments.
WHAT TO EXPECT
“Please return the figures when
the manuscript is rejected…”
SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT
Plagiarism
Sentences
Whole sections of text
Readers
Reviewers
Unattributed Figures
Fraudulent Data
Photoshop data
Inverted figures
Gel splicing
Duplicate Publication
Important announcement to authors:
Electronic submission of manuscripts invited
Blood is proud to announce the recent launch of its web-based peer
review system, Blood Manuscript Central.
We invite all authors to submit online any NEW MANUSCRIPTS that
are to be considered for publication in Blood. Use the following URL:
http://blood.manuscriptcentral.com.
For further information, call the Central Editorial Office at 202-776-0548
(e-mail: [email protected]). Please read the revised Author
Guide before submitting your paper online. The Author Guide is
available online at http://www.bloodjournal.org/misc/ifora.shtml.