This article provides an overview of writing for publication in peer-reviewed journals. While the main focus is on writing a research article, it also provides guidance on factors influencing journal selection, including journal scope, intended audience for the findings, open access requirements, and journal citation metrics. Finally, it covers the standard content of a scientific journal article, providing general advice and guidance regarding the information researchers would typically include in their published papers

Barker, Eleanor

Phillips, Veronica

Apollo (Cambridge)

Original Article The Association for Perioperative PracticeWriting for publication: Structure,form, content, and journal selectionVeronica Phillips and Eleanor BarkerAbstractThis article provides an overview of writing for publication in peer-reviewed journals. While the main focus is on writinga research article, it also provides guidance on factors influencing journal selection, including journal scope, intendedaudience for the findings, open access requirements, and journal citation metrics. Finally, it covers the standard contentof a scientific journal article, providing general advice and guidance regarding the information researchers would typicallyinclude in their published papers.KeywordsWriting for publication / Academic journals / Research support / Libraries / Journal selectionProvenance and Peer review: Solicited contribution; Peer reviewed; Accepted for publication 30 January 2021.AimsThis article aims to provide an overview of the form,structure, and reporting standards for different types ofpapers, with a focus on writing for publication in peer-reviewed journals. It will also provide a summary of thedifferent considerations to be made by authors selectingthe right journals in which to publish their research, andoffer suggestions as to balancing these competingfactors. As the specific requirements for structure andcontent can vary quite significantly from discipline todiscipline – as well as from journal to journal – thisarticle is not intended to be exhaustive, nor should it beviewed as prescriptive. Rather, its aim is to providegeneral advice and guidance, to be adapted whereappropriate.Likewise, this article should not be viewed as a guidewhose advice, if followed, will guarantee publication in aresearcher's chosen journal. As the pressure to publishis paramount for researchers seeking to progress theircareers in academia, rejection rates are high –particularly in journals perceived as more prestigiousand impactful – and even a well-written, appropriatelystructured article which fulfils all reporting standards isnot guaranteed acceptance. A recent study whichsynthesised systematic studies of journal acceptancerates found that somewhere between 35 and 40 percent of submitted papers are published, meaning thatthe majority are rejected – although it also noted thatthere is significant variation between disciplines (Bjork2019). In light of these statistics, it is worth emphasisingthat researchers seeking publication in specific journalsshould read those journals' instructions to authors,which frequently include lists of common reasons forrejection (Springer Nature 2020, Stahel & Weckbach2020). This article is intended as a supplement to theseinstructions to authors – offering general guidance thatshould help make the process of writing an academicpaper, and submitting it for publication, morestraightforward and efficient.AudienceResearchers seeking publication in an academic journalshould consider who the potential audience is for theirpaper. This will help ensure that they pick an appropriatejournal to which to submit. Authors should make a list ofjournals that they themselves read regularly, as there islikely to be significant overlap between their own list,and the reading habits of their peers. Another exercise tohelp narrow down potential journals to target is toconduct a structured, systematic literature search on thetopic of the paper. This search should be done onsubject databases. Authors can then make a note of anyrecurring journal titles in which relevant papers on theirtopics appear to have been published, as these journalsUniversity of Cambridge Medical Library, Cambridge, UKCorresponding author:Veronica Phillips, School of Clinical Medicine, University of CambridgeMedical Library, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge CB2 2SP,UK.Email: vmp26@cam.ac.ukJournal of Perioperative Practice2021, Vol. 31(6) 230–233! The Author(s) 2021Article reuse guidelines:sagepub.com/journals-permissionsDOI: 10.1177/1750458921996249journals.sagepub.com/home/ppjare likely to be within the scope of the content of theirpaper, and are hopefully more likely to be commonlyread by other researchers in the specific field. If it iscommon practice within the discipline to regularly readspecial issues of journals, these issues may also beanother potential place to target for submission, as itmay increase the impact and readership of the article.Journal selectionJournal selection is likely to be influenced by a numberof competing factors – some specific to the content ofthe individual article, others relating to structural,disciplinary or institutional concerns. Authors will needto determine how to weigh up these various factors,depending on their aims in seeking publication. Forexample, if an author's concern is solely in sharing thefindings of their research with the scholarly community,they may be able to afford to be more selective in theirchoice of journal. In contrast, an author who needs aminimum number of publications in order to contributeto the research profile of their institution by a set datemay need to place more emphasis on a journal's swiftpublication schedule.Authors may wish to consider the significance of theirfindings or argument – the more significant, the moreprestigious a journal they can select as a place topublish. Individual researchers may not be the mostobjective judges of the significance of their own work, soif possible it is worth getting a second opinion from acolleague who is not involved in their research.Researchers should also carefully read the journal'sguidelines and instructions to authors. These willnormally include information about the subjects andresearch methodologies that the journal accepts. It is awaste of authors' and editors' time to submit an articlewhich is out of scope, and far better to submit to ajournal whose aims and content align with that of anauthor's research. Finally, authors may find thatsubmitting to a journal which publishes special issuesincreases the impact of their work, as it may mean moreresearchers in their field seek out that special issue andread it (Conlon et al 2006, Olk & Griffith 2004). For thisreason, seeking out such special issues may be a goodchoice when selecting a journal.Many authors may need to consider the open accesspolicies and costs at the journals to which they choose tosubmit. Open access is the 'free availability on the publicinternet, permitting any users to read, download, copy,distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of thesearticles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data tosoftware, or use them for any other lawful purpose,without financial, legal, or technical barriers other thanthose inseparable from gaining access to the internetitself' (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 2003). Publishingresearch open access is increasingly required by fundingbodies, and, at universities in the United Kingdom,research outputs must be open access (or, in somecases, self-archived on an institutional repository) inorder to be counted towards the Research ExcellenceFramework. The website Sherpa Romeo – an 'onlineresource that aggregates and analyses publisher openaccess policies from around the world and providessummaries of publisher copyright and open accessarchiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis' – is asearchable platform enabling authors to clarify the openaccess policies of any journal in which they seek topublish (JISC 2020). Authors can use Sherpa Romeo toascertain whether their choice of journal will enablethem to comply with their funder's open access or self-archiving policies. It is important to note that articleswith multiple co-authors may also be the result of workby researchers funded by multiple funding bodies. Anypublications by such groups of authors must comply withall authors' funders' policies. In addition to being arequirement of an increasing number of funding bodies,there is some evidence that open access publicationleads to an increase in citations compared to restrictedaccess publication (Gargouri et al 2010, Morillo 2020,Piwowar et al 2018, Sotudeh 2020).Unfortunately, some publishers do not have authors'best interests at heart. These so-called 'predatorypublishers' target authors unfamiliar with standardacademic publishing practices. Jeffrey Beall hassummarised the common features of predatorypublishers, concluding that such publishers tend to havea combination of some, or all the following features:• A general lack of transparency in terms of operations,author fees, and even geographical location;• Editors who lack appropriate educational qualifica-tions and institutional or relevant industry affiliations;• They make false claims regarding impact factors andpeer review of submitted articles, and provide mini-mal or no copyediting;• They send unsolicited spam requests to potentialauthors;• They operate in an unscrupulous or unethical mannerregarding copyright (for example republishing authors'articles without consent, or publishing images towhich they do not hold the copyright) and retractions(Beall 2015).Authors seeking to avoid such publishers should neverrespond to unrequested solicitations to publish receivedvia email. They should also make efforts to investigate ajournal's website and publication schedule – are itseditors named individuals with relevant credentials andexperience in the discipline, and is the journal publishedaccording to a regular schedule? These indicate that thejournal is flourishing and reputable. The website Think,Check, Submit also provides a comprehensive summaryof potential red flags which may indicate a predatorypublisher (Think Check Submit 2020).Phillips and Barker 231Finally, authors may wish to consider impact as a factorwhen selecting a journal in which to publish. There arecitation indices such as the InCites Journal CitationReports provided by Clarivate Analytics, or the JournalMetrics feature in Scopus, both of which will give anindication of a journal's citation metrics. It is importantto be aware that each platform will give slightly differentmetrics, and that a high number of citations does notnecessarily imply that a journal publishes good qualityresearch – authors could be citing articles in order tocriticise their findings or methodology, for example. Forthis reason, while it is possible to obtain citation metricsfor a journal, these should not be the sole factordetermining an author's choice to publish in that journal.Types of papersMost types of scientific research methods have setguidelines for their form and content. This means thatresearchers' study design will to a large extent dictatethe type of paper they write, and the information they willneed to include when writing up. Most of the standardscientific research methodologies – includingrandomised controlled trials, observational studies, casestudies, diagnostic/prognostic studies, qualitativestudies, and systematic reviews – have standardguidelines available to consult on the EQUATOR Networkwebsite. The website currently has 446 reportingguidelines, as well as extensions of most of theseguidelines (EQUATOR Network 2020). It is recommendedthat researchers consult these guidelines during theplanning stages of any projects, as this will help ensurethat they are aware of the information they will need toreport in their published papers, and enable them toprepare to record and document this information overthe course of their project's completion.Not all researchers will be seeking to publish in anacademic journal. If the intended audience is thegeneral public, a more accessible platform and format ismore appropriate. Researchers seeking publicengagement with their research should consider whereit is likely to make the greatest impact. This might meanwriting an article to be published in the commentsection of a newspaper or media website. TheConversation, 'an independent source of news andviews, sourced from the academic and researchcommunity and delivered direct to the public,' is anotherpossibility (The Conversation 2020). These types ofpapers aimed at a non-specialist readership have theirown style and structure. Researchers seeking this typeof publication should read comparable articles –preferably those from their own discipline, published ontheir chosen non-academic platform – in order to gainan understanding of the stylistic conventions and typicalcontent they will be expected to include.StructureThe structure of a published article, particularly medical,healthcare and scientific research, is to a large extentdictated by the research methodology, and the reportingstandards expected for that particular methodology.However, while different disciplines and journals mayhave some variation in terms of form and content, thereis generally a common structure and flow to publishedpapers. Each component of the paper generally hassome core content which it should contain, and this canbe confirmed by checking the appropriate reportingguidelines available on the EQUATOR Network website(EQUATOR Network 2020).The introduction of the article should contextualise theresearch. This section should situation the findings ofthe paper in the existing research landscape, anddemonstrate that the authors are aware of relevantstudies in their field. It should provide some indication ofhow the findings of the paper have built on previousstudies, and how they diverge. The introduction is alsothe place where authors should state the hypothesis orcentral question of their research.Writing of the methods section can begin whileexperiments are still in process, while data collection isstill being undertaken, or otherwise prior to the researchbeing completed. This is also the point at which ethicalapproval – for animal use or human participants, ifrelevant – needs to be finalised, as this information willneed to be included in the published paper. Themethods section of the paper needs to be detailedenough for others to follow, due to the requirement thatscientific research should be reproducible.The results section should be clear and brief, and iftables, figures, graphs or charts are used, these need tobe straightforward and easy to interpret. Detailedanalysis can be left for the discussion section.Researchers should use the discussion section to reflecton weaknesses, problems and discrepancies in theirresearch – these should not be left out or ignored. Thediscussion and conclusion sections are also used toexplain the significance and implications of researchers'findings, and offer suggestions as to how the researchshould be followed up.Most published papers will have a bibliography orreference list. Authors must take steps to ensure thatthe references are relevant, recent, and citedconsistently, according to the journal's citation style.There may be a valid reason why there is no currentresearch on the topic (and thus no recent articles cited),but if so, this should have been explained in the text ofthe article.The title and abstract of the article are in many ways themost important components: they are the part which the232 Journal of Perioperative Practice 31(6)majority of people will read, and so they need to providean accurate description of the full text of the paper.Some journals have requirements for length and contentof titles and abstracts, and these must obviously beadhered to. Beyond this, the title should indicate theresearch methodology and topic of the paper. Theabstract should provide a summary of the objective,methods, results, and significance of the research. Mostresearchers are likely to find published papers throughan electronic search (either via subject databases, orsearch engines such as Google). For this reason,ensuring that the title and abstract contain the kinds ofwords likely to be included in a keyword search will helpto increase the chances of other researchers finding thearticle.ConclusionPublishing papers in academic journals is themechanism by which scholarship moves forward, and isalso important to researchers in terms of its impact ontheir career progression. Therefore, researchers seekingpublication should carefully consider all relevant factors– including journal scope, open access policies, andcitation metrics – when selecting a journal in which topublish. Academic publications should adhere toestablished reporting guidelines, and convey therelevant information about a study's findings with clarityand effectiveness. Following the advice provided in thisarticle should not be viewed as a guarantee ofacceptance for publication. Rather, it is intended asgeneral guidelines, a starting point to be adapted andreframed where appropriate.No competing interests declared.ORCID iDVeronica Phillips https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4383-9434ReferencesBeall J 2015 Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-AccessPublishers. Available at: https://beallslist.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/criteria-2015.pdf (Accessed 19November 2020)Bjork BC 2019 Acceptance rates of scholarly peer-reviewedjournals: A literature survey Profesional De La Informacion28Conlon DE, Morgeson FP, Mcnamara G, Wiseman RM, SkiltonPF 2006 From the editors: Examining the impact and role ofspecial issue and regular journal articles in the field ofmanagement Academy of Management Journal 49857–872Equator Network 2020 Study Designs. Available at: https://www.equator-network.org/?post_type=eq_guidelines&eq_guidelines_study_design=systematic-reviews-and-meta-analyses&eq_guidelines_clinical_specialty=0&eq_guidelines_report_section=0&s=+ (Accessed 23 September 2020)Gargouri Y, Hajjem C, Lariviere V et al 2010 Self-selected ormandated, open access increases citation impact for higherquality research PLoS One 5 e13636JISC 2020 Sherpa Romeo. Available at: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ (Accessed 19 November 2020)Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 2003 Berlin Declaration on OpenAccess to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.Available at: https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration(Accessed 1 January 2021)Morillo F 2020 Is open access publication useful for allresearch fields? Presence of funding, collaboration andimpact Scientometrics 125 689–716Olk P, Griffith TL 2004 Creating and disseminating knowledgeamong organizational scholars: The role of special issuesOrganization Science 15 120–129Piwowar H, Priem J, Lariviere V et al 2018 The state of OA: Alarge-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of openaccess articles PeerJ 6 e4375Sotudeh H 2020 Does open access citation advantage dependon paper topics? Journal of Information Science 46696–709Springer Nature 2020 Common Rejection Reasons. Availableat: https://www.springernature.com/gp/authors/campaigns/how-to-submit-a-journal-article-manuscript/common-rejection-reasons (Accessed 19 November 2020)Stahel PF, Weckbach S 2020 Patient safety in surgery:Practical tips for authors to circumvent the journal's highrejection rate Patient Safety in Surgery 14 39The Conversation 2020 The Conversation: Who We Are.Available at: https://theconversation.com/uk/who-we-are(Accessed 26 November 2020)Think Check Submit 2020 Think. Check. Submit. Available at:https://thinkchecksubmit.org/ (Accessed 19 November2020)Phillips and Barker 233

Writing for publication: Structure, form, content, and journal selection

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Writing for publication: Structure, form, content, and journal selection

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