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1. Authors: Rules for citing multiple authors

  1. ONE AUTHOR

    Salwachter AR.
  2. 2-6 AUTHORS

    Salwachter AR, Freischlag JA, Sawyer RG, Sanfey HA.
  3. >6 AUTHORS

    Doe JF, Roe JP III, Coe RT Jr, et al.
  4. ONE AUTHOR for OR and A GROUP

    Doe JF; Laser ROP Study Group
    or
    Doe JF; for Laser ROP Study Group
    or
    Doe JF; and Laser ROP Study Group
  5. >6 AUTHORS for OR and A GROUP

    Doe JF, Roe JP III, Coe RT Jr, et al; Laser ROP Study Group.
    or
    Doe JF, Roe JP III, Coe RT Jr, et al; for Laser ROP Study Group.
    or
    Doe JF, Roe JP III, Coe RT Jr, et al; and Laser ROP Study Group.

2. Book

Authorname AA, Authorname BB. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher Name; Year of publication.

  1. Maciocia G. The Practice of Chinese Medicine: The Treatment of Diseases with Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs. 2nd ed. Edinbrugh: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier; 2008.

3. Book: Chapter in a book

Authorname AA. Title of chapter. In: Editorname BB, Editorname CC, eds. Title of Book. Edition (if applicable.). Place of Publication: Publisher Name; Year of publication.

  1. Maitra A, Kumar V. The lung. In: Kumar V, Abbas AK, Fausto N, Mitchell RD, eds. Robbins Basic Pathology. 8th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders/Elsevier; 2007.

4. Case Study / Case Series

A case study (or case report) reports on a single example which is generally an “interesting” or “unusual” patient or situation.
A case series is a study reporting on a consecutive collection of patients treated in a similar manner.

5. COMPETETIVENESS: ACCEPTANCE / REJECTION RATES

Some journals are very competitive and may have very high rejection rates. You can look at the acceptance rate to get an idea of the likelihood of your journal being accepted and if it might be worth looking at a more specialized journal with a higher acceptance rate.

6. Controlled Clinical Trial

Involves one or more test treatments, at least one control treatment, specified outcome measures for evaluating the studied intervention, and a bias-free method for assigning patients to the test treatment. Control measures include placebos, active medicines, no-treatment, dosage forms and regimens, historical comparisons, etc. Methods for assigning patients to the best treatment include: coin flips, odd-even numbers, patient social security numbers, days of the week, medical record numbers, or other such pseudo- or quasi-random processes.

7. COPYRIGHT

Do you want to maintain copyright privileges of your work? Most journals require that you sign over the copyright, but many now have clauses that allow you to upload your work to an institutional repository. Some will charge you a lot of money to get a copy of your own article after publication. If this is important to you, look over the copyright guidelines before submitting to a journal.

8. Cross Sectional Study

An epidemiological study that examines the relationship between diseases (or other health related characteristics) and other variables of interest as they exist in a defined population at one particular time.
The temporal sequence of cause and effect cannot necessarily be determined in a cross-sectional study. This contrasts with longitudinal studies which are followed over a period of time

9. Database

In citing data from an online database, include the following elements, if applicable, in the order shown:

Author(s). Title of the database. Publisher’s location (city, state, or, for Canada, city, province, country, or, all others, city, country): publisher’s name; year of publication and/or last update. URL [provide URL and verify that the link still works as close as possible to publication]. Accessed [date].

Additional notes that might be helpful or of interest to the reader (eg, date the site was updated or modified) may also be included.
 

A Specific Drug / Medical Condition Article in a Reference Database:

  1. PDQ: NCI’s Comprehensive Cancer Database. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute; 1996. http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/pdq/cancerdatabase. Updated December 18, 2001. Accessed April 29, 2004.
  2. Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, OMIM. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2000. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=OMIM. Accessed December 6, 2005.
  3. Natural Standard: Medical Conditions. Somerville, MA: Natural Standard Corporation; [n.d.]. http://ocom.naturalstandard.com/databases/conditions/all/a/. Accessed July 12, 2013.
  4. Smith J, Jones M. Name of Cochrane entity. In: The Cochrane Library, Issue 20, 2010. Chichester: Wiley. Accessed September 22, 2013.
  5. Amino Acid Therapy. In: Natural Standard: Foods, Herbs & Supplements. Somerville, MA: Natural Standard; [n.d.]. http://ocom.naturalstandard.com/databases/conditions/all/condition-alzheimers.asp. Accessed August 13, 2013.

10. GRANT-FUNDED PUBLISHING POLICIES

If you were awarded a grant to conduct research, you will need to check to see if there are any publishing stipulations. For example, the NIH Public Access Policy requires that the final manuscript of all NIH-funded research must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance of publication. If you have been awarded a grant and the awarding agency has publication policies, you will need to check with the journal you are submitting to in order to verify that they can comply with those policies.

11. IMPACT AND RANKING

If you are looking for a journal that is influential in the field, you may try looking at the level of influence and ranking. Here are some tools to help you note a journal’s impact and ranking:

  • eigenFACTOR
  • SCImago

12. INDEXING IN DATABASES

If you want people to read your work, one of the best ways of getting your work out there and available to researchers is by publishing in a journal that is indexed in a major database. In order for people to read and reference your article, they need to be able to find it. Having an article indexed by PubMed or Alt HealthWatch means that there is a higher chance of people referencing your work.

13. JOURNALS USED BY THE COMMUNITY

You may want to select a journal that you actually like! Which journals keep popping up in your research? What do your colleagues read? Which journals does our library subscribe to?

14. LENGTH OF REVIEW PROCESS

If you are on a time constraint, you may want the length of the review process to weigh into your decision. Some journals are monthly, but others may only be published twice a year. Your chances of getting published by a journal with more frequent publications may be higher because they are publishing way more material than quarterly or bi-annual publications. By contacting the editor, you can also find out how long it takes the average submission to get to publication (or rejection).

15. Literature Review

A type of secondary research that examines the body of literature on a topic, including published material, grey literature, and clinical research or case studies.

16. Meta-Analysis

A statistical technique that summarizes the results of several studies into a single estimate of their combined result. It is a key element of many systematic reviews. It is also what is meant by the phrase, “pooling data.”

17. Newspapers & Magazines

Print

  1. Gottlieb M. A free-for-all in swapping Medicaid for managed care. New York Times. October 2, 1995:A1, A4.
  2. Online

  3. Markoff J. Voluntary rules proposed to help insure privacy for Internet users. New York Times. June 5, 1996. http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/yo5dat.html. Accessed April 1, 1998.

18. OPEN ACCESS FEES

Many journals now allow you the option of paying a fee to make your article “open access,” i.e., freely available to the public. Some journals are completely open access, so publishing with them at all will require that you pay a large open access fee (normally between $750 - $1500 for an institution of OCOM’s size).

19. PEER REVIEW

Peer-review is a process in which your paper is evaluated by peers in your field, demonstrating the strength, quality, and credibility of your article. OCOM does not participate in the tenure process, so there is no requirement of being published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, OCOM’s faculty evaluation system does require faculty to create portfolios, which are reviewed by their faculty peers; publishing in peer-reviewed publications is a great addition to your professional portfolio.

20. Peer Review

An editorial process used by certain journals to evaluate research articles or studies submitted for publication. A panel of experts (peers) anonymously assesses the methodological quality, pertinence, value, etc. of submissions, often offering suggestions for revision before making a final decision to reject or accept them. Journals using this process are called peer reviewed (or refereed).

21. Primary Resources

An investigation that collects original (primary) data. In scientific and medical research, the study data are then published in a scholarly journal as a primary research study. The authors of the article reporting the study results are also the principal investigators who conducted the research. One example of a primary research study is a randomized controlled trial.

22. Qualitative Research

“[D]erives data from observation, interviews, or verbal interactions and focuses on the meanings and interpretations of the participants.” Qualitative studies, such as case studies or case reports, are conducted with no control group involved.

23. Quantitative Research

Studies things that can be counted, and often uses statistical manipulations to process data and summarize results. The main types of quantitative research are: descriptive; correlational/predictive; quasi-experimental/experimental; single-subject; and meta-analysis.

24. Randomized Controlled Trial

The same as a controlled clinical trial, except more rigorous mathematical techniques, such as the use of a random-numbers table or computer- generated numbers, are used for randomization of study participants.

25. Secondary Resources

Presents a discussion, summary, analysis or review of primary research. Examples of secondary research from the medical field are systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

26. SELECT A JOURNAL THAT IS APPLICABLE TO YOUR WORK

Do you want to publish in a conventional or alternative medicine journal? If your paper is about teaching or educational policy, an education journal may be more appropriate than a medical journal.

27. Systematic Review

Begins with a clearly formulated question and uses systematic methods to identify, select and critically appraise relevant research studies; data from the studies that are included in the review are then collected and analyzed. Statistical methods, such as meta-analysis, may or may not be used in the analysis of results.

28. TARGET AUDIENCE

Who do you want your article to reach? Acupuncture practitioner? International audiences? Or is your target audience conventional doctors and researchers? Reading the journals scope and mission statement

29. TYPE OF MANUSCRIPT

Is your paper an original study? Case study? Literature review? Be sure to check the journal requirements to verify that the journal you are submitting actually accepts the type of paper you are submitting.

30. Website

Author, if given. Title of the specific item cited. Name of the web site. URL. Published date. Updated date. Accessed date. (If no title is given, use the name of the organization responsible for the site. Include as much publication information as is available.)

  1.  Rainie L. The rise of the e-patient. Pew Research Center Internet and the  American Life Project website. http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2009/40-The-rise-of-the-e-patient.aspxOctober 7, 2009. Accessed January 11, 2012.
  2. Air pollution and respiratory health. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website http://www.cdc.gov/Environmental/. Updated January 9, 2012. Accessed March 2, 2012

31. Writing Tips

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