Getting published
Robert West
University College London
February 2009
1
Topics
1. Choosing a journal
2. Publication ethics
3. Good citation
practice
4. Communicating the
importance of your
findings
5. Power calculations
6. Doing the right statistics
7. Qualitative research
8. Acknowledging
limitations
9. Interpreting and
responding to editors’
letters
10.Reasons for rejection
2
Choosing a journal
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Coverage
Impact factor
Efficiency of manuscript handling
Fees
3
Publication ethics
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Double publication
Conflicts of interest
Salami slicing
Duplicate submission
Authorship
4
Good and bad citation practice
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Purposes of citation
Citing in support of the obvious
Not citing where important
Choosing the right citations
Avoiding bias
5
Communicating importance
• Citable statements
• What is known and what this study adds
6
Power calculations
• When to do power calculations
• What figures to use
7
Doing the right statistics
• Every substantive statement should be directly
supported with inferential statistics
• One-tailed and two-tailed tests
• Parametric and non-parametric statistics
8
Qualitative studies
• Appropriate and inappropriate conclusions from
qualitative research
• What type of qualitative analysis?
9
Acknowledging limitations
• What limitations to acknowledge
• How to acknowledge limitations
10
Interpreting and responding to editors’ letters
• What counts as a rejection
• Point-by-point responses
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Common reasons for rejection
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Unsupported conclusions
Lack of theoretical foundation
Trivial or well-known findings
Limited generalisability
Failure to review relevant literature
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The main thing ...
• Have you got something important to report?
• If so ... persevere
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