Tips for getting your manuscript to publication

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome to today's episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is a pleasure to be talking with you today. Today I'm talking about tips for shepherding manuscripts through the publication process. I'm excited to announce to you that we are enrolling the next cohort in the Academic Negotiation Academy, which is where we help clinician researchers to negotiate their academic careers so that they can lead research programs and thrive while also making lasting impact.

1:35 So I invite you, if you're interested, to sign up on our website, clinicianresearcherpodcast.com, and we'll put you on the waiting list and let you know when slots open up. All right. Today I'm talking about tips for shepherding manuscripts through the publication process. And I'm excited to talk to you about this because nobody prepares you for shepherding manuscripts through the publication process. You write a great manuscript and you think that should be it. You have great science. It should speak for itself and people should be excited to publish your work. And it's not always the case. And I will say my first shepherding manuscripts experience was while I was a resident.

2:21 So we had done original research during my third year of medical school and I had written up the manuscript and submitted it. And it came back accepted with major revisions. At the time that it was accepted, I was just starting residency. So I was just starting my intern year. And I was very busy and I didn't have the bandwidth to do any of the major revisions. And so I was very fortunate in that I communicated that clearly. I said, I want this manuscript to go all the way to publication, but I don't have the bandwidth to do the major revisions. And so another author came on and really did a number of the major revisions and then resubmitted the paper so that the paper was ultimately accepted.

3:09 But subsequently, subsequently, I had the good fortune of shepherding many manuscripts through the publication process, some of which are still being shepherded, some of which actually didn't make it to publication or at least not yet. It can be a long process and you want to pay attention to the time investment that's needed and recognize how long the process can take. Now in my group of faculty members who meet weekly for writing accountability, they're impressed by how quickly the turnaround is in my field. I'll say, oh yeah, in five months I got the notification and I was able to turn around the manuscript and it was finally published.

3:54 And they're like, what? That is so fast. So different fields have different expectations as far as how long it takes for manuscripts to work their way through the publication process. So just be aware that it can take a long time. Hopefully things are getting better, things are getting faster, but it's not always the case. So even if individual journals are fast, if you are rejected a couple of times, that's a lot of months add up. So know that it takes a long time to submit manuscripts or to shepherd them through the publication process and don't just be waiting for the one paper that's going to change your life.

4:38 This is the one publication that matters. It needs to be accepted. Really make sure that you're doing work that's ongoing such that you have manuscripts at different points in process in the publication pipeline. Okay. So my tips for submitting manuscripts for publication, I have seven today. The first thing you want to do, I am assuming that the manuscript's already written and now you're working to get the manuscript submitted. So the first thing you want to do is to develop a short list of journals that may be interested in your manuscript. Sometimes this is obvious because in your field maybe there are just two to three journals that are most important and you already know what those journals are.

5:23 And maybe if you don't know, the senior author on the paper who's probably submitted a lot more should know, but you don't have to guess, you don't have to leave it to chance. What you can do is go to Scopus and you put in the keywords and you see what shows up. And one of the things that Scopus allows you to do is to analyze your results by journal. And they'll analyze the results based on the highest likelihood of that manuscript having been published before, something similar. And so it will rank the journals in terms of, this journal has published this more often and then there's the next journal and then there's the next journal after that. And that's helpful because then you know who's most likely to accept your work because they've accepted work like yours before.

6:10 So the past tends to predict the future. And so if they've accepted a systematic review without meta-analysis before, it's likely that they'll accept your systematic review without meta-analysis. So that's one way of doing it. Another way is just putting it in PubMed and seeing what journals come up consistently with your keywords. And so you are creating through this a short list of journals that may be interested in your manuscript because what you don't want to do is submit to a journal that has no interest in your manuscript. And so looking in Scopus or looking in PubMed or even Googling it, it's a third option.

6:52 The first is Scopus, second is PubMed, to see who has published before, who has published something like this before, what are similar articles, what journals are they in, and that gives you a sense of a group of journals that's helpful. And so it's also interesting because sometimes I find that I'm like, I hadn't considered that journal, but it's useful to do that. So number one is to develop a short list of journals that may be interested in your manuscript. Number two is you're going to rank the journals. And this is your own ranking, this is not the journal ranking, this is your ranking. And the reason you rank the journals is because what you're going to do is you're going to make this process automatic.

7:34 You're going to think, okay, what is the highest tier journal we want to get into? And yes, this is where Impact Factor comes in. So Impact Factor should not drive your manuscript submissions, though they can't be ignored, because Impact Factor is really about to what extent do people read this journal consistently. Impact Factor is about this journal is a go-to journal that people are reading and citing articles from. And so it's a high Impact Factor journal, it's more likely that your manuscript will be seen and probably cited. And that's why Impact Factor is helpful to pay attention to. And people use it in the promotion and tenure process to say, well, your work has high impact because it's in a high impact journal.

8:18 And I would just say that the rankings of the journal are not as important as your own rankings, but definitely consider Impact Factor. The second thing you want to consider as well is your own timeline. So yeah, the journal has a great Impact Factor, but what is your timeline for publication? Because sometimes what you're doing, for example, let's say you have preliminary data that you've submitted in a grant and you want to have the data published before the grant is reviewed, you have a little bit of a shorter timeline. And so you're not necessarily wanting to go from high tier journal to then, okay, over time a lower Impact Factor journal, and then maybe that's taking you seven or eight months and then your manuscript may not come out on time to serve the purpose.

9:02 And so if you have a short timeline, then you're really just looking to get it published. You're not thinking as much as to, okay, what's the impact factor? So then you might go to a journal that's a lower Impact Factor, because then perhaps it's just, you know, it's the main journal of your field and you have a reasonable expectation that it will be published in a timely manner, and that's really your goal. So in ranking, you are looking at Impact Factor, you're looking at the audience that you want to pursue, but you also are thinking about your own personal timeline relative to the timeline of the journal. So some great journals, if for whatever reason takes them a long time to respond, you don't want to submit to them.

9:45 And then on the flip side of that is sometimes the higher Impact Journals are very quick with desk rejections. To be honest, I really enjoy that. It's like, thank you for rejecting my manuscript within a week. That really helps me because now I can move on. And if they send it out for review, at least there's a sense of like, okay, now it's sent out for review. Okay, not a desk rejection. But sometimes the highest Impact Factor journals will do that. They'll give you a desk rejection, which for me, it's great. Because I'm like, okay, you're not interested, now I know. I don't have to wait four months to find out. Anyway, so you rank them based on all these criteria. At the end of the rankings, you should end up with a minimum of three journals. But at most, I would say five. So you want to end up with three to five journals that you're going to submit to.

10:28 And you're going to commit to this list. And the commitment to this list is, okay, I'm going to go to number one, I'm going to submit. And then if it gets rejected, I'm going to number two, and then I'm going to submit. If it gets rejected, I go to number three. And then I'll submit. If it gets rejected, I go to number four, and go to number five. Now depending on when it comes back, you may change your mind about the order. You may say, you know what, let's get number two. Because number two is like number one. And if number one rejected it right away, let's not even waste time with it. So you may. But at least what you do is you take the decision making out of the process. You made the decision upfront. You know what these top five journals you're going to submit to are. And then you're prepared for what's going to happen in the future. You're not going to try to do this process all over again.

11:09 So now you've developed your shortlist. You've ranked them. You have a list of three to five. And then you're going to submit the manuscript. And then submitting the manuscript, you're going to look at the journal specifications, tailor your manuscript to the journal specifications. You're not really changing your content. You're not making any drastic revisions. You may have to consolidate a table or two or take out a figure, depending. But at the end of the day, your manuscript is your manuscript. It's not changing much, but you are formatting it for the specific journal. And maybe sometime in the future, we won't have to do that. We can just have a generic submission template. And then eventually, if it's accepted, format it for the journal.

11:51 But right now, many journals have different expectations. And so you're going to format for the journal expectation. And then you're going to submit the manuscript. OK. Once the manuscript is submitted, yay, it's out of your hands. Celebrate, celebrate. And then go to other work. So please, don't let this be the only manuscript in your life. And you're like, OK, well, let's wait and see what happens, because you'll be waiting a little bit. If it's not one of those high impact journals that just rejects something right away. Anyway, in general, let's say the manuscript goes out for review. You know that you're going to have a couple of months on your hands. And you hope that you have work to do. So don't just total your thumbs.

12:33 Go to the next writing product. Because your goal in your scientific work is to keep communicating your science as best as you can. So don't wait for the one paper. Make sure that you're kind of consistently communicating your science. So have other writing projects that are moving forward. And that's number four. Now number five is what to do if you're rejected. If you are rejected, you immediately have a plan. Remember, you have this list of five. Number one's rejected the paper. This is not a personal rejection. This is not about you. This is about your paper. Maybe they rejected the paper. Maybe it doesn't fit their priorities. Maybe they feel like they published one too many this month. There are many reasons. And it's not a judgment on you.

13:15 And it's not always a judgment on your work. Sometimes it's just what happens at the time that your manuscript is submitted. So you're going to just go to the next one. Because you already have a plan, right? You just move to the next tier. You're not asking, oh, where do we go now? And sometimes you are. Because you're like, we really expected it to be accepted here. And that's OK. You have a plan. And you're like, just one. OK. That's if it's rejected. If it's accepted outright, well, congratulations. You get to celebrate. And that rarely happens. It can happen. I've experienced it, but it's a very rare event. So what's more likely is that you're going to be accepted with revisions. And they'll be major revisions, but they'll be minor revisions.

13:58 And you're going to work with your senior faculty member to do the revising. you're going to respond and for everything that the reviewer says you're going to say, well thank you that was so awesome and we have now changed the sentence to read XYZ. Or you can say, well that was so awesome, however when we look at this data we see that there is this difference that we didn't expect and that's why we want to highlight it and therefore we revised the sentence blah blah blah and you've changed nothing. You just kind of adjusted things a little bit. So at the end of the day you do want to answer every question the reviewers have and you want to show that you've made a change even if the change is not a significant change and that depends.

14:41 So again it just takes time to figure out what's the best way to do it but you want to change as much as possible to improve and enhance the paper but sometimes reviewers may not have a great understanding of what's happening in the paper and so they're making recommendations that actually don't make sense for the paper that is assigned to you not to despise the reviewer and say you have no idea what I'm doing but to recognize that it may be that what you've written is not clear and so that's why it's always an opportunity to change because what you can do is make the statement more clear. If the reviewer is like you didn't say anything about the significance of this and you're like wait a minute it's in line three what are you talking about? People say oh wow the reviewer makes a great point that this is not clearly written in our paper for this reason we revise the sentences follows and we've added the following qualifying sentences so that the reader can tell xyz.

15:37 So there's always opportunity to respond to the reviewer and not necessarily disagree so don't disagree with the reviewer just always say yes this is a really great comment and we think this is the opportunity to clarify xyz and so you're not necessarily making significant change but you are you are responding so you want to be responsive because I've also experienced a manuscript that was accepted and that was later rejected so it can happen your accepted manuscript can become a rejection so you do want to accommodate the reviewer to the best of your ability. Okay and then number seven is once finally you're through the whole revisions process your manuscript is accepted celebrate celebrate celebrate and move to the next manuscript because as a clinician researcher you're always communicating your science and it's great when you have one manuscript that's published it's a seminal manuscript but it's only one part of your work and your work is for life your work is for the duration of your career should you choose to be a clinician researcher long term and so you're not going to get stopped at one manuscript that's accepted you're going to go keep doing the work keep moving your work forward keep making sure that your amazing and great science is being communicated to many and you definitely want to do that.

16:59 Alright so these are my tips for shepherding manuscripts through the publication process I know that there is another clinician researcher who needs to hear this or at least it needs to be a point of discussion and maybe you could leave a voicemail on our clinician researcher podcast website clinicianresearcherpodcast.com leave us a voicemail about your thoughts or your additional tips and we will publish it in a future episode if there are many we will select one or two so not a guarantee that if you leave a voicemail it will be on a future episode but you may be the first to leave a voicemail about this and that increases the chances that I will publish it in a future episode.

17:40 Alright it's been a pleasure talking with you today please rate our show if you haven't already especially if you feel like somebody else should find it we're excited about it we're excited to bring you tips to help you negotiate your clinician researcher career so that you can be more effective in your role and make the difference that you came to medicine to make. Alright it's been a pleasure talking with you today I look forward to the next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the clinician researcher podcast where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program whether or not they have a mentor.

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