Question

Using the research article selected for DQ 1, identify three key questions you will ask and answer when reading the research study and why these questions are important. When responding to peers, provide other questions and answers that could be considered in relation to the peers' studies.

Answer 1

This can include overview, contribution, strengths & weaknesses, and acceptability. You can also include the manuscript's contribution/context for the authors (really just to clarify whether you view it similarly, or not), then prioritise and collate the major revisions and minor/specific revisions into feedback.

Lets say you know very well the basics about writing, contents, formatting and style. Right before submission (your research is complete), do you focus only on the instructions for authors of the selected journal? Do you try to make the best/catchy title ever? Select a specific editor? do you contact the editor/journal before you submit? In short, Do you have a formula/method you apply? would you share it?

1. Pick a journal that best aligns your paper in terms of topic and interest. Has the journal publish related topics before? Is the impact of the journal at the same level as your paper? Is the audience correct? We are often asked to rate how relevant the topic is. Looking at recent issues can help to see if your paper fits.

2. Pick a journal that covers your study type. Instruction for authors usually has this info. This seems particularly true for reviews, case studies, observational studies, and meta-analyses.

3. Cover letters put your work in context… why is it important? Does your work continues the story told by a recent paper in the same journal? Does this work answer big questions raised during the last national conference/meeting? Does the paper further the aim of the journal in some unexpected way? If you don’t know why your paper is important, why should anyone else?

4. Recommending reviewers and handling editor is a hit or miss. Recommending a handling editor seems to only help if your topic is not clearly in the realm of one of the editors… which is already problematic. Some journals appreciate reviewer recommendations, others will ask for them then ignore them. Recommending reviewers seems to do better for smaller journals that may accept them and help streamline the process. Won’t hurt either way.

5. Contacting the editor. Not the norm for my field and rarely done. Exceptions are when you are writing an unsolicited review or interesting case study kind of thing. What would you say? Difficult for editor to judge the merit of your study without data/manuscript. I would put whatever is important in the cover letter instead.

6. Title should be clear and helpful. Avoid turning your title into a click-bait. Trying to make the title catchy and cute often only makes the content very unclear. Worse, if your title does not match your findings, we will write “conclusion not supported by actual results/findings.”

7. Authorship should be reasonable. A paper with 20+ authors that can be done with 3-5 makes the authors and paper look bad. Subconsciously, a paper with more authors is often judged more harshly due to higher expectations.

8. Language editing- have someone who speaks the language check your manuscript. If we can’t understand your work, we can’t review it fairly and have no choice but to click “requires major language editing.” Sometimes the writing is so bad that you can’t tell what it says. Do you have international collaborators who can review your paper for both content and language?

9. Be concise- avoid mentioning things you do not know anything about. We see this in biomedical papers quite a bit, where authors try to make their papers more “clinically relevant” by randomly mentioning specific diseases without backing their claims. Usually this is done badly that it distracts from the study.

10. Avoid citing papers unnecessarily and incorrectly and don’t plagiarize… including yourself. Sometimes the reviewers are identified from your references. We do not take it kindly when you cite us for things we did not say. We like it even less when you plagiarize us. Key and review papers are often very well known, and obvious when you copy them.

11. Consider reviewer comments even if your paper is rejected. Human beings spent their time reading and reviewing your work for free (usually)... use it. The academic world is a very small place… sometimes we get the exact same manuscript to review that we have previously read for a different journal.

12. Publish for quality not quantity... sadly a sentiment not endorsed by some academic environments in terms of promotion opportunities