Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So welcome to the Augs FPMRS webinar series. I'm Dr. Lauren Stewart, moderator for today's webinar. Today's webinar is Publishing Your Research, How to Write a Scientific Manuscript, presented by Dr. Victoria Handa, with an interactive panel discussion from Dr. Catherine Bradley, Dr. Linda Brubaker, and Dr. Stephen Swift. Dr. Handa will present for 20 minutes, followed by an interactive panel discussion. The last 10 to 15 minutes of the webinar will be dedicated to audience Q&A. Please feel free to put your questions in the Q&A box below at any time during the webinar. And now to introduce our panel, Dr. Victoria Handa is Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She currently serves as the Chair of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, and she's the Deputy Director or Vice Chair for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Dr. Catherine Bradley is Professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, with secondary appointments as Professor in Urology and Epidemiology. She's Division Director of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery, and Fellowship Program Director in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. She's also the Editor-in-Chief for Gynecology for the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Linda Brubaker is a Board Certified FPMRS Specialist at the University of California, San Diego. Her current research focus is the human urobiome, recurrent UTI, and bladder health. She is an Associate Editor for JAMA and the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of FPMRS. And last, Dr. Stephen Swift is Professor and Division Director of Urogynecology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. He's also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Urogynecology Journal. Before we begin, I'll just review a few housekeeping items. First, as this webinar is being recorded and live-streamed, please use the Q&A feature below to ask the speakers any questions, and again, you can put the questions in at any point during the webinar. And use the chat feature if you have any technical issues. AUG's staff will be monitoring the chat box and can assist you. And that's all. You can take over, Dr. Handoff. All right, thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me to lead this group. As you heard, I'm going to give you first my perspectives on this question about how to write a scientific manuscript, my personal philosophy, and then you'll have the benefit of hearing from these distinguished editors who not only are accomplished authors but also can provide that valuable perspective of a journal editor. So here are my disclosures. And essentially, here are the learning objectives in my talk. I'm going to talk about what I would say are strategic issues related to manuscript preparation and give you my recommendations regarding how to approach writing a scientific manuscript and also how to prepare a response to a critique of your submitted work. And then we'll switch over to a panel discussion where you'll get to understand some of these leading editors' perspectives on what makes a great manuscript. So we'll have two parts. So first of all, I think there's four criteria for developing an excellent manuscript. Good research, good writing, a good fit in terms of the journal where you try to publish your work, and of course, persistence is really important as well. But of all of these, the most important is good research. And so that's why I would urge you, if you're a novice researcher, to spend a fair amount of time getting feedback and peer review of your research idea. For example, at Johns Hopkins, when we have our fellows developing their thesis, we spend a fair amount of time working with them on a formal thesis proposal, which they submit in writing and present at a meeting for critique, because really, good research is the foundation for any manuscript that you would write. Some things before you start to write your manuscript. I think it's not always necessary to complete the research before you start writing. And in fact, I'll give you some suggestions for why I think there are certain sections that you should write before you do the research. Also before you start to write, I recommend that you establish authorship. I'll talk a little bit about that. And that you really know the journal that you're going to be submitting to. So a few words about my recommendations for identifying the right journal. You really want to match the focus of the journal to the type of work you're doing and understand the audience of that journal. What have they published on this topic? Are they interested in the topic that you're writing about? And then I'll say a few words also about impact factor. But a good way, of course, to understand which is the right journal for your work is to read a lot of journals. And reading a lot of journal articles will make you a better researcher and also a better author. But you can also go to the homepage here. I've used Neuro-Urology and Neurodynamics. They're not represented, I guess, tonight on this webinar. So you can go to their homepage and they'll tell you on the homepage what they consider to be the scope of their journal and who they consider to be their readership. And so you can really get a sense of whether or not you're a good match for the journal you're considering. For those of you who are not familiar with impact factor, impact factor is a kind of a grade that every journal has. And it's supposed to represent the scientific impact of that journal. And it's essentially calculated based on roughly the number of times the articles they publish are cited by other publications. So the more your paper is cited, the more impactful it is in this regard. And so this has all just been reorganized this year. So some of the numbers I'm showing aren't correct anymore. But here's an example of the impact factor of some of the journals that may be familiar to you. So again, this is a little bit old, but New England Journal, 75, JAMA, 45. And then I've listed down below some of the more impactful or familiar journals in our field of FPMRS. And you can maybe mentally imagine what you think their impact factors are if you don't know for sure. And here they are, or at least this is what they were last year. So the reason I bring that up is because, you know, the impact, there is different impact factors for some of these journals. But, you know, if you had a yardstick or a ruler, most of the journals in FPMRS are down in this lower tier. And that's really because we're very focused. We don't have, you know, most of the topics we're interested in have a pretty focused audience. So just keep that in mind when you consider impact factor. I'll also say a few words about authorship. That can trip people up, particularly because so many projects do involve a group. So much of our research is accomplished as a team. So in terms of what, who can be an author, there will be journal specific requirements. There are also ethical considerations. And people oftentimes struggle a little bit with order of authorship. So in terms of who should be an author, this is the ICMJE criteria. Most of our journals will request that you fulfill these criteria if you're going to be an author on the paper. One from the first category, one from the second category, one from the third category. So the reason that this is important is because I think most of you are probably familiar with this, but back in the old days, there was oftentimes a feeling that if someone was your mentor, you needed to put them on all your papers, even if they weren't really involved or if they maybe gave you a reagent or recruited patients for you. But it's really important that people fulfill these authorship criteria. That said, I always say that you should be as generous as possible with authorship. I always say authorship is like chlamydia. Just because you give it to someone else doesn't mean you don't also have it yourself. So try to include people who are deserving. In terms of order of authorship, I've always thought this paper was interesting. This is from a number of years ago from an orthopedic journal where they created a fictitious manuscript with five fictitious, very Anglo-Saxon authors. And they told people that the author five was the corresponding author, and then they asked people who read medical literature what the various authorship positions meant. And essentially, most people felt that the authorship order represented the amount of work done and writing the manuscript with much less assumptions about these other criteria listed here. Most I would say, conventionally, typically, the first author is the person who really writes the paper, and the last author is probably the person who is in a supervisory or advisory role for the team, although that really varies. It is important to think about these different positions because they do signify a certain level of recognition. You know, the first author is usually the one whose name is associated with the paper. And it may matter for promotion. Early in your career, you're probably going to be expected to be first author. And then as you transition, you'll eventually be expected to be a senior author or the last author. And for example, at Hopkins, for academic promotion, it honestly really only matters if you're the first or last author. Those are the ones you get kind of credit for in terms of promotion. So think about that and talk with your team before you start writing. So now I'm going to talk about actually writing the manuscript. So I'm assuming you've got your hypothesis and your study design. I'm assuming you've identified your authors, you've selected the journal, and then really the next step is understanding the required format for that journal. And the way to do that is to go to the instructions for authors or author guideline page of the website for your journal, where you will find the guidelines. And sometimes these are extremely specific, and sometimes they're more general. But these guidelines you absolutely must follow to be compliant with the requirements of your journal, the journal, the target journal. So essentially, this is like your roadmap that helps you get to your destination, which is the paper you're writing. So I always recommend, and this is how I write papers, to start with the middle. Start with the methods and results, those are the first two sections I recommend you write. And with respect to the methods, I think you should actually write the methods before you do the research, and then refer back to the methods in case any of your methods change. You really want the methods to represent what you're doing. And sometimes at the end of the study, it's actually harder to put that together. So I recommend you put that together before you start the study. And the detail level should be sufficient that the reader can understand the methods and generally recreate the study that you did. Many of you may be familiar with certain journal-specific requirements for guidelines for different types of papers, depending upon the type of research you're doing. One of these may be relevant. So the CONCERT guideline is the one for randomized trials, which talks not only about the methods section, about all the sections, but most importantly about the methods and results. This is the STROBE checklist, which is for observational research like case control and cohort studies. So look at the instructions for authors and see if you're expected to follow one of these checklists. After you've written the methods, I recommend that you write the results. Some people are able to write the results before the study, and there is some value to that. You don't write the results pretending like you know what you found, but you could write something like, we found that treatment A was superior to treatment B, and then fill in the results that you find later on. The one advantage of doing this is it really makes you make sure in your own mind that you're collecting all the data that you really need, that you didn't forget to collect something about maybe people who aren't enrolled or something like that. So it can be valuable to try to outline the results section before you do your study. In terms of writing the results, probably you should start with the tables and figures. The tables are really critical to the paper and will help you organize your results. In general, put something in a table if it explains the result better than it would to put it in text. That's a good rule of thumb. But regardless of whether you have something in a table, you're going to describe it in the text. Just like you would refer to a figure, you refer to a table in the text. So you have to strike the right balance of putting the results in the table, but then pointing out the important results in the text as well. And the table should be organized so that it could also stand alone. If someone pulled your table out of the paper, it would give people a reasonable understanding of what the results, how the results are. Most papers in clinical research will have what's called a table one, which is, of course, the first table, but it's also typically a description of the population. And it's not only a description, but it's a comparison at the same time. So depending upon the type of research you're doing, it might be a comparison of cases and controls. It might be a comparison of the exposed or unexposed or the treatment versus placebo. So I'll give you an example. Here's a table from a, I don't remember what paper, but you can see there that it has one column for people that represent the amniocentesis group and one table for the no procedure group. And then some of the characteristics include age and gestational age and race. And so not only are you describing the population, but you're comparing in this case, the amniocentesis and the no procedure group. And in a randomized control trial, we would expect all the P values to be non-significant. So that's also a function of table one in a randomized trial. After I've written the methods and results, it's then that I'll write the introduction. I don't write the introduction until I've written the other sections because it helps me frame the introduction. The introduction is not a review of the literature. I oftentimes find that first time authors will write something like in 1908, Kelly introduced the Kelly placation or something like that. It's not a review of the literature. And if there is a review of your literature, of the literature in your paper, it will be in the discussion section, not the introduction. The introduction is just to introduce your study. It should be as brief as possible. Usually three paragraphs or less in a very typical format for the introduction will be three paragraphs where the first paragraph kind of introduces the problem provides the context I guess I would say for the research. The second paragraph is what is unknown. So for example, the first paragraph might talk about how dyspareunia is an important problem for women after reconstructive surgery. Paragraph two might be surgery A and surgery B are equally effective for treatment of rectocele. But what we don't know is how those might impact postoperative dyspareunia. And then the third paragraph will describe your hypothesis or your aim or will frame the question. So you might introduce your method there. You might say, we in this study, we took advantage of the NHANES data set or we did a randomized control trial or something like that. It just kind of frames the scientific question and aim for the reader. So then after I've written the introduction, I'll write the discussion and the most important paragraph of the discussion, of course, is the first paragraph where you want to lead with your headline. Don't, as they say, bury the lead. You want to put your headline out there at the beginning of your discussion. And I talk about this kind of Aunt Helen test. I always think of this hypothetical Aunt Helen who you see every year at Thanksgiving. And when you see her at Thanksgiving, she says, oh, honey, that study you told me you were doing, what did you ever find? And when you did that study and you say, oh, Aunt Helen, let me tell you what we found. And those two or three sentences that you tell Aunt Helen, maybe written in a slightly different type of prose, is what you want to put in this first paragraph. So not so much restating the results. You don't want to restate the results. But what do your results tell you? What are the important findings and what's the meaning of the findings? The second to last or penultimate paragraph is traditionally the limitations. Every study that's ever been done has limitations, things you could have done better, things that you really weren't able to do with your study. And then the ultimate or last paragraph is kind of the next burning question. What are the implications for policy or practice or research? That's kind of how you would probably end your paper. And keep in mind that for the discussion section as well, a specific format may be required. Some journals are very constrained and other journals will give you a lot of leeway. After you've written the discussion, that's when you write the abstract. I cannot say enough times. Do not write the abstract until you're done with the paper. And the reason is that things will change and you don't want to write the abstract until you really know what your paper says. And so you don't create any conflict between what you say in the abstract and what you say in the paper. Again, there are journal specific formats. So look at the instructions for authors. Make 1000% sure that the abstract and the paper agree. And I like this little summary from the IUJ. Readers should be able to understand the question asked in the study and why and how it was done. That's basically the purpose of your abstract. So then there'll be some, you've written the manuscript, there'll be some other sections you need to complete. Tables, figures, disclosures, and maybe agreements or other things you have to do. All the authors should approve the submission and give you permission to send in the manuscript as you present it to them at the very last minute. Verify once again that the format is consistent with the journal requirements and then hit submit and congrats. Then you'll be having about 6 to 10 weeks of waiting till you hear back from the journal. That's typical turnaround. And then there's three possibilities. Either your paper is rejected, it's accepted with revisions, or it's accepted, but it's never accepted. So usually we're lucky if we get accepted with revisions. So there's really only two possibilities. So what if your paper is rejected? Well, read the comments you get back. Hopefully you did get comments back and think about what did you do wrong. Maybe it was the wrong journal. You had the wrong audience in mind, basically not of interest to the readers of this journal. Or maybe you aimed a little too high in terms of impact. You went for a really impactful journal and your work is really not that impactful. So that's OK. That just means you maybe picked the wrong journal. Or maybe you made some errors in describing the research. That's where the reviewer's comments can really be clear because they don't really know what you did. And if they didn't know what you did after they read your paper, then you didn't describe it very well. So look at their comments. The last one, errors in conducting the research. Of course, that's really a bummer because you're not going to probably be able to go back and correct those. So that's why it's so important to not make any errors in conducting your research and to start out with a good plan because it's really hard to publish flawed research. It can be published, but it's just much harder. So what about, on the other hand, if you get accepted with revisions? Well, then you've got to hit the ground running. Action time, because doing the revisions take longer than you think, and the journal will almost always give you a very short deadline to revise and resubmit. So read the comments. You'll need to respond to each of the comments by all of the reviewers. Usually, you will modify the manuscript as suggested by the reviewers, but not necessarily. It's your paper. You need to decide if you feel like the changes they're suggesting really don't make the paper better or clearer, then you have the opportunity to explain to the editor why you didn't make some of the changes that were suggested. So when you submit the revised manuscript, you will send in a cover letter. The cover letter will address every single comment raised by the reviewers and the editors. You will also reference each change you made in the text, usually using a line number or something like that. And when you send your manuscript in at this point, it should really be perfect. When I sent my first manuscript in, I actually thought someone was going to correct grammar or punctuation or something like that. I don't think I made any errors, but that just doesn't happen. Send it in. It's perfect because hopefully it's going to get accepted and published as is, and you want to really make sure you're proud of what you sent. So here's a potential timeline for those of you who haven't done this very much. It takes, I would say, at least four weeks to write a manuscript draft, particularly if you're a collaborator, if you have collaborators or if you're a little bit of a rookie. Then you've got to wait for comments back from all your co-authors. You've got to give them some time to look at the paper, send back the comments, and give you revisions. And then you're going to spend a week or two, or hopefully not more, incorporating their suggestions and preparing these other sections for submission. Then you've got this period of waiting for reviews, and then you've got to revise and resubmit, and you only have a few weeks for that. But if you add this all up, it's five months. You did the research. You'd think it wouldn't take that long, but it does take at least five months. So if you're a fellow and you're doing your research right now, I very strongly, very strongly suggest that you start writing your paper in the fall, no later than the fall of your senior year, because you really want to finish this whole process before you leave your fellowship, I would recommend. But I think set a timeline, try to stay on track, and here are some time sinks. Don't get caught with these. Don't let it sit on your desk. Stay on time. Don't send it around too many times. You need to send it around, but the more times you send it around, the more time it'll take, and there's a decreasing marginal value. Don't go back to your results and fish for results until you find something. Hopefully, you had a hypothesis and you either prove or disprove your hypothesis, and set a timeline so that you can stick with it. Hopefully, with all of this, you'll be a successful award-winning author. So that's the end of my prepared remarks. I'm going to ask the panel to rejoin so that I can ask them some questions, because I have some questions about some other things that their perspectives as editors will, I think, really enlighten us. So let me start with you, Dr. Bradley. I'm going to ask you to comment about some writing mistakes that you think people should avoid because they increase the chances of rejection. Give us your perspectives on that. Thank you. That was a great summary, and I think a lot of what I may have to say you covered, but I can just pull out a few details. I would highly recommend that authors, as you said, read the author instructions for the journal where you're sending the manuscript. Some journals allow you to send in kind of just a basic structured manuscript, and it doesn't have to meet every formatting requirements. I read some author instructions recently for a journal who said just that, and then they require it, if you're submitting a revised version, that it meets all their formats. But most journals expect you to be pretty close to the format that they require at the time of your initial submission. And I think that if your manuscript is submitted and it's clearly in another journal's format, that's always a bit of a downer for the editor to look at it and wonder, the author really mean to send it to me? Because I can see that this is actually formatted for another journal I'm familiar with. Or it may have gone through that journal and been rejected. And then I'm like, huh. We were the second choice. So format your journal or your article for the particular journal. And then Dr. Handa said, make it perfect on your final submission. And that is true. But boy, I would urge you to try to get it to be perfect, at least in terms of grammar and proofreading on your initial submission. Because I will say that when editors receive a manuscript and it just looks messy without even reading the content, it's got typos, it's not ordered very well, it's not structured very well. It just makes you wonder how carefully the author was with their research and with their results. And it's a negative factor in their initial review, what are they going to do with that paper? And so make it look outstanding to start with. And even if there are some flaws, I think that you're more likely to go farther. And it's more likely to get sent for review if it looks like the authors are very careful about it. It's more likely to be reviewed seriously by the editor. It's more likely to be reviewed seriously by the reviewers if it's very well written and organized. And I would just say one other thing, and that's make sure now we're mostly talking about original research articles. And you want to format your journals. Sometimes journals have specific article types for other types of papers, whether it's a newspaper or a simple thing like a case report. Many journals might not accept case reports. So make sure that you're looking at the article type and whether the journal's interested in that specific type of article. I think those are the main things I can think of. OK. Dr. Brubaker, let me ask you a question. Maybe you can explain a little bit about the process of the review from the journal perspective, kind of what happens behind the scenes after the paper is submitted. I'd be happy to. So after you've done what Dr. Handa said and hit submit, and your manuscript goes off to the journal, it's received in the editorial office and different journals have different processes, but broadly they fall into these categories. A member of the editorial staff, a non-physician typically is checking that manuscript to make sure that it's been submitted in compliance with the requirements for that journal. So this is where if they say you should submit separate files for the text of your manuscript and all your figures and tables should be in separate files and they all need to be uploaded separately, which can be a bit of a surprise sometimes when you're in the submission process. But if you ignore that and send one old big old file, that manuscript then won't proceed to even be considered for review until the submission process is compliant. So you can just save yourself some time by trying to understand if you're going to need those things upfront. And then once the editorial staff recognizes that this is in a compliant format, it will be forwarded to a member of the editorial team and assigned to someone to further evaluate the manuscript. So for our journal, FPMRS, I see all the incoming manuscripts and I will make a decision whether this manuscript is in scope for the journal. If it's not, I send it back to the author, letting them know that it may be wonderful work, it's just not in scope. Or should I spend our reviewers time to have them review this? Is this a potential enough quality for us to use our reviewers time for review? There are times when we simply decline something at the editorial level because the quality is just clearly below what we would consider for the journal and I suspect most journals do this. Once it's past that hurdle though, it goes out to reviewers with a request to respond with their willingness to partake in the review. Once the reviewers are established, they're usually given somewhere between two to three weeks depending on the journal. And most reviewers are pretty good about getting their reviews in that time. And then the editor that's handling that manuscript will review those reviews and make a disposition, an initial editorial decision to invite revisions, to decline further consideration or extremely rarely to accept as is. So that's pretty much how most journals work broadly. The timelines and the specific individuals might be a little bit different. But I had a author the other day say, well, our manuscript was rejected from your journal and all it was was the editorial staff saying, no, you need to submit this figure in this format. So it hadn't even been seen by any member of the editorial team. So just was a staff member handling that. So it was a misinterpretation about what was happening at the time. So happy to answer any other questions about that when we get to the question and answer period. Okay, well, kind of speaking of that issue, Dr. Swift, can you tell us a little bit about what people should assume if their paper is rejected without a review? You're muted, Dr. Swift. Sorry, I agree with Linda. Usually if it's rejected without a review, it's either out of scope or it's the improper format. For instance, if you submit a case report and a journal doesn't accept a case report, then the editor is gonna send you back saying, I'm sorry, we don't accept case reports and that's just outside of our scope. That's a rarity. If you're a urogynecologist and you're submitting to one of the urogynecology journals, it is rare that you will be rejected out of hand. That's because we wanna give everybody the opportunity to get their research looked at. I also agree with Linda and I'm sure Catherine and Vicky will agree with me. There's no fame and fortune in being a reviewer. It is the thankless job in research. You do it because you want to make the journal that you're reviewing for better. And so we don't want to give reviewers something that we know is not going to pass muster, but that's pretty uncommon. Most of the time there's something there and it's just getting the kernel of it out so that it's in a format that is acceptable for publication. So thank you so much, Dr. Bradley. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about this, what it really means when you get an invitation to revise and resubmit. Does that mean the paper is accepted? How should the author interpret that? I think that's a good question and it probably varies a little bit by journal, but I think most of the time, if you receive the opportunity to revise your paper, there's a pretty good chance that your paper will eventually be accepted for publication if you put in a good faith effort at making changes that have been requested by the reviewers and editors. But it does depend on the journal. Some journals will send the paper back to the original reviewers who reviewed it the first time to see if they feel like you revised it adequately in their opinion. Others, once in a while, will send it to a new reviewer. Other journals, more typically, just the editor will review it. And that may also depend on how many changes are thought to be required. If it's thought that really major changes had to be made, it's probably more likely that it'll be reviewed a second time and that you will have to do a second revision. I think it's rare that you put in a good faith effort to really address the comments. And if you don't make changes, just providing the rationale on why you didn't make that change. I think it's rare that having gone through the trouble to revise and resubmit that people are rejected at that submission of the revised manuscript, although I will say it has happened to me. So it does happen. It's painful. Yeah, very painful. Yes. Now we all want you to name the journal. You don't have to, I'm just kidding. Well, yeah, it was a urology journal, I'll say that. Okay. But yeah, lots of revisions and then it was rejected. So it happens. Well, Dr. Swift, maybe, what would you say to the author who doesn't really wanna make some of the changes that were suggested by the reviewers? You're muted again. There we go. Hopefully, thank you. Hopefully the editor has already looked at the reviewer's comments when it comes back the first time before it goes back to the author. And he said, okay, I don't agree with you on this one. I'm not gonna make him do that or et cetera. If you decide you don't wanna make the change, you have to be able to justify it. And if you write a short justification, it doesn't have to be another study. You just have to basically say, I understand what that reviewer is asking. However, a lot of times it comes to statistics. So you gotta go back to your statistician if you have one helping you and you have to understand, all right, well, we did this statistic this way because, and if you can justify that, great. Sometimes they'll want you to do something is somewhat trite as changing the title of the paper because they don't like how you maybe turned a phrase to make your paper title seem a little interesting. As an editor, I'm not gonna stand on, saying, oh, well, they can't say, is operation A better than B because we're trying to make sex better for American women on it? That might be a little bit of an overstatement, but I'm not gonna really make them make changes to titles unless they've really said this is a randomized control trial and it's not. That's one of the few times you would have to. So if you can justify it, that's fine. If you can't, don't ignore the comment. You've got to address those comments because that is one time when an editor will definitely say, you didn't address all the comments. So I'm gonna reject you at this point. So you need to address those individually and I can't stress that enough, but you are certainly welcome to give your input. And editors and reviewers will make their comments, but they're not necessarily sacrosanct, but make sure you can justify the change or the non-change, I guess. Okay. Dr. Brubaker, something that comes up for the listeners who are in academic roles is the role of a journal club in terms of making us better writers and honing our writing skills. Do you have some recommendations in that regard? I sure do. So for many years, people have attended journal club and they tend to be fairly critical discussions of why they did the study this way and I would have done it this way and boy, didn't they think of this? And they really focus on design and conduct. And I encourage people in the journal club that they're doing is to also think about how well those authors describe their study and discussed their results, including their transparency and honesty about limitations. At some point, you have to stop spinning that papers get been accepted. So you don't have to keep spinning that this is such the best papers, the best research ever, Nobel prize winning, whatever. Just say, but we only know, we only can learn this much from this paper. We still don't know this. We still don't know this. And I think journal clubs are a great opportunity to sit back and say, how did the editors do with this paper? How did the authors do with this paper? Did these results come across clearly to me? Is it easy for me to understand what their research question is? Was it easy for me to see that given their question, they use the right study design and any limitations? Am I able to put this in perspective within our literature? And I think journal clubs should devote five or 10 minutes of that conversation somewhere along the session. Okay, well, Dr. Stewart, I don't know if you want to bring up any questions that you've received from the audience. I think the panel would be happy to answer any questions that have been submitted. Sure, I don't think any have been submitted yet in the Q&A section, but I'm sure that some of the participants will have a few. I actually had a couple just of my own, if that's okay. The first is, do any of you have any advice for drafting and writing that response letter when you're responding to the reviewer comments? I know we discussed briefly like how to address it. If you disagree, are there other components of the response letter we should be thinking about including? Any advice? I'll just, I'll note that some of the journals do have requirements for that letter. So for example, in some cases, you need to verify that all the authors have participated in the revisions. I always make a point of saying that anyhow. You know, I also make a point to thank the editor because of course I'm usually pretty grateful at that point to have a chance to revise and resubmit. And I guess those, I don't think I have any other suggestions, but Dr. Swift, what were you about to say? I was about to say, if you agree, like let's say it is a misstatement, it is something, you're like, you're right, you, yeah, that was improperly done. All you have to do is say done. You can reference, we change the sentence, don't go in and say, yes, we agree with the reviewers, we thank them very much, yada, yada, yada. Because as editors, we have to review all of those, we have to read all of those comments. So if you just say agree, done, that makes our job just a little bit easier for that comment. Spend your verbiage and spend our time reading that on justifying not making changes because those are the ones we really wanna hear about. If you agree, agree, all said and done. Great, thank you so much. And along the same lines, is it helpful? I've received conflicting advice about this, but is it helpful when you're writing that response letter to copy and paste to like include the revisions that you made in the letter or just reference the line in your paper or do specific journals have preferences about like smaller things like that? Yeah, I might take a slightly different approach, Steve. So done is really quick and easy. Unfortunately, sometimes people say it's done and it's not done, somehow they get the revision messed up. So your goal of your revision paper is to make it really, really easy for the editor to see you made a change that addressed this comment or you didn't make a change and here's why. And if you go through, oh yeah, we made the changes in the first couple, say, oh yeah, see line 23, line 57, and the change isn't there, you're in serious trouble because you've probably submitted the wrong version. You know, you probably did it and somehow you got the versions mixed up or the line numbers mixed up or something. So double-check that before you send in your revision, but being able to point the editor to where it is and depending on the journal, whether you decide to include it, they may or may not decide to do it, but I recommend that you actually say a little bit more that the manuscript was changed or was not changed in response to the comment. Okay, and one other question, maybe this one can be for Dr. Brubaker. If a manuscript is rejected from a journal, is there ever any situation where it could be edited and resubmitted to the same journal or should you always move on to a different journal? You never say never, just like in medicine, but that's a difficult path. So there's gotta be really strong, compelling reason for you to go back to that same journal with the same study. So unless there was some big miss that is completely remediable, it's probably best to move on to another journal. If you do decide to resubmit, I would probably do a pre-submission inquiry with that editor to say, you know what, we forgot to include our control group and we can't believe we did that, but it was a really bonehead thing to do, but now we got the control group. Would you reconsider this as a new submission? And then at least upfront, you know, yes, we would consider that or no, we wouldn't. So before you just cold submit it and then somebody finds out like, boy, this looks just like the one that they submitted before, that's not a good surprise for an editorial team. So be real upfront about that. Orna, I wanna address something you asked a minute ago about copy and pasting as far as that's, I agree with Linda. You have to say done, line 23 in the manuscript was corrected to reflect this kind of thing, but I would not take that section of a paragraph and then copy and paste it and put it under the statement that yes, it was done and here is it, because that's where your response letter gets very, very big and difficult to get through. So yes, I would not do that. Great, that's helpful. One other question is maybe for Dr. Bradley, do you have any advice for structuring the title of your paper? Another thing that there is sort of conflicting advice about is how you should title your paper. Some people I've heard have strong opinions that a declarative title is better where you sort of succinctly state the main result of your paper in your title. Does it matter? This is a good question. So first of all, I will say that journals have different requirements and most journals, many journals may say the title should be less than 25 words or less than, that'd be too many, 12 words or something like that. And they may give you some guidance on that. I think there's actually some evidence that more declarative, so I think it's a bit of a style preference kind of thing. Some evidence that more declarative titles may be cited more frequently. Having said that, I'm not a huge declarative title person, but, and our journal used to say specifically not to have a declarative title with your conclusion kind of in the title, although we've removed that, we don't specify that. So, I don't know. I mean, I'd be interested in the other panelists thoughts on that. I think it's a little bit more of a personal style thing. I will say that follow the journal's format. And also, if you look at the guidelines for certain types of studies, for instance, the concert guidelines that Dr. Handa brought up, you're encouraged to put the study design in the title for certain types. So for a randomized control trial, observational cohort study, I think case control study, more and more it's helpful to have that in the title and it helps, I think, kind of index it in PubMed. As somebody who reads a lot and looks through tables of contents, it is nice to know what the study is about, more so than it is to know what the findings were. So is this a randomized control trial comparing treatment A to treatment B? Because that's more what I'm looking for than is treatment A is better than treatment B as a statement for a title. So, and I think that also helps you with reference, with citations, because when people go to look for articles to cite for their research, they're looking for articles that are similar to theirs that they can use to either sort of refute their argument for their findings or not, or agree with them. And so that's where I like, I much prefer to have sort of what is the study doing in the title? I tend to be a little bit more of that, but again, I also agree with Catherine. I think it's very personal. Some people love to have a fun statement in the title because they want to catch people's eyes. Kind of funny, titles matter kind of in the moment, but if you just stop and think without looking at any of your journals on your desk, how many titles can you remember? They're really few and far between. So they're really kind of this, like before social media was fleeting concept, titles were predating social media as this flash in the pan thing. So they don't have a big purpose. After it starts to be Vicki Handa's study or Kate's RCT on blah, blah, blah, or Steve's simplified pop Q study, that's how people refer to these papers. They don't really use the titles down the road, right? So make it good, but don't spend most of your life energy on the title. Just pick really good research questions. They generate really good papers. Agree, totally. Thank you. Great. There aren't very many other questions in the Q&A, but there were a couple other questions I think that we had prepared ahead of time. One is, do you have any advice on sort of pacing your writing? I know you talked about Dr. Handa, the timeline for writing and how long you should anticipate your writing taking and sort of what sections you should plan to write ahead of time versus once your research is done. Do you have any other advice for us about pacing that? I could just make a few comments or Vicki, do you wanna? No, I was just gonna say, I think I've given you my comments. I'm interested in hearing it. I think early in your writing career, it's important to figure out when you do your best writing. And some people are morning writers. Some people are nighttime writers. It's rare that I've met noontime writers, but there are one or two. And figure out when that is and then make sure you clear time. So don't do it with leftover brain time. Do it when you're in your peak writing time because once you get into the flow there, you'll write really well and you'll get more done per unit time. And so it'll take you less time to get the paper. And no matter when you finish it, know that you will have fallen in love with what you've written. So set it aside and come back to it in a couple of days. Do not send it the day you finish it because there's something wrong with it and you just haven't figured it out yet because it's like your first date and you fell in love. So set it aside and then review it critically. And you did so good the first time that when you review it for sure, you'll make it better. So if you do it in chunks, like Dr. Handa described, I do it slightly differently, but still use that chunk method. It really comes together quickly and easily. Just give it time to marinate and review it carefully before you send it. I agree strongly with that is putting the paper down when you think you're done with it and then picking it up a couple of days later and reading it through again. And I see everybody's heads are nodding. We've all done that. We've all read it back and, oh, good, I can't even believe that I wrote that. Oh, that's terrible. I need to re change that or it's not what I meant to say there. And that's incredibly important. Great, that's so helpful. And then the last question is just about the ICJME author form and how sort of authorship is determined and how you can use that form to clarify authorship roles. And I just would like to hear from some of the others too about their advice about this question of deciding who's an author and order of authorship. Because I think particularly if you're more of a rookie writer, you sometimes can get tripped up in that, so I'm interested in those comments as well. Yeah, I can just say, I think that can be tricky, particularly as a more junior author. And I would, I think that your recommendations in the slides of kind of figuring that out actually at the beginning makes a lot of sense. It also means that you will be kind of cluing the other authors into the project as it's going along rather than sending them a paper at the end where they really haven't contributed any kind of creative thinking or intellectual contributions to the development of the study, which they would like to do actually. So this is something I usually like with fellows, talk to them at the beginning. And if they have a question, I think it's a good question probably to talk to you, to your mentor about, or the person maybe who's gonna be the senior author. Usually you're maybe planning the nuts and bolts of the study with that person. It's a good talk. It's a good thing to discuss with them to get their advice also more at the beginning of the process. I like what Kate said because you really want to give people an opportunity to participate as an author. So when you're starting together and you've got three, four, five, six of you sort of talk about people's roles so that they have a chance of completing ethically the ICMJE form. And just as you go through, you don't have to keep like, oh, you're not gonna qualify for authorship, but gently, you know, broad things periodically if somebody is kind of falling off the radar or not pulling their weight. That needs in fairness in ethically, as a senior person, you don't wanna have to testify that someone who is completely missing in action is an author. That's a problem too, because it's a disservice to the other people who were authors. But you really wanna manage this upfront. And as you go on early in the process, you don't wanna lose friends over authorship. Authorship and money are two of the biggest dividers in academic medicine. And you really wanna stay ahead of both of those. You don't wanna ruin personal relationships over this. So stay way ahead of it. I'm curious if any of the other editors have ever gotten request letters from corresponding authors after they submitted to change the authorship. And there is nothing that we don't, once it's been accepted, it's not gonna get changed. Once it's been published online, that is the order that it will always have. So I agree completely. Make sure you understand that upfront and you're not gonna get it done. I don't know if any of the other journal authors have done it for your journals, but we've gotten many requests over the years that we've never acceded to one. Whether it's removing, whether it's changing order, whatever, we just say, sorry, this is how we received it. This is how you approved it. This is how it's published. This is the end. I think that's true. And I know that if an author wants to change something about, if the first author, assuming wants to change something about the order of the authors or if there's a problem with authors during the submission revision process, that's something that I know the editor has specifically asked about, like the, you know, why it's happening and they ask for the editor to approve that change. So it's a big deal. You wanna make sure you get all of your authors correct in the right order and all, you know, included correctly at the beginning, if at all possible. Thank you. Great. Well, I think that's all of the questions that we had for tonight. So we're, it looks like we're gonna wrap up right on time. Thank you guys so much for such a great discussion. On behalf of AUGS, I'd like to thank each of you, Dr. Handa, Dr. Bradley, Dr. Brubaker and Dr. Swift and everyone else for joining us tonight. Our next FPMRS webinar will be held on September 15th at 7 p.m. Eastern time, and you can sign up on the AUGS website. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Publishing Your Research

Scientific Manuscript

Dr. Victoria Handa

Dr. Catherine Bradley

Dr. Linda Brubaker

Dr. Stephen Swift

Manuscript Preparation

Peer Review

Journal Requirements