Philly

The view of the city
from the famous “Rocky Steps”

I am in Philadelphia for the Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Journal Symposium, where I am mingling with dozens of editors from a variety of health care journals.  I’ve already attended a couple of productive sessions, one topic of which I’ll describe shortly.

Philly,  home of cheesesteak, scrapple, and legendary sporting teams:  the NFL’s Eagles, the NBA’s 76ers, MLB’s Phillies, and the NHL’s Flyers.

I think if you’re an American of a certain age (50 and counting), Philadelphia conjures up some famous sporting memories:  Dr. J and the ’82 – ’83 76ers beating the Lakers in the NBA finals; Mike Schmidt and the Phillies winning their first World Series; and the city’s most famous ‘athlete,’ Rocky Balboa, bravely battling in an epic loss to Apollo Creed in the first “Rocky”!!

Is there an American my age who likes sports who didn’t try once to drink raw eggs or do one arm pushups like Rocky?  I won’t have time this visit, but on my last trip to Philly I made the pilgrimage to the Art Museum to run the famous “Rocky Steps,” which have become one of the city’s most famous tourist attractions.

Well, the sessions at the Symposium may not be quite as thrilling as these sporting memories, but I’ve been inspired nonetheless.  A session I particularly enjoyed was hosted by the Publisher of the CJSM, Kivmars Bowling, entitled “Engaging Authors as Advocates:  Simple Digital Solutions.”

For all you prospective authors wanting to see your published studies rise to the top of Google search engines, here are a couple of tips  1) your title should ideally be seven words or less; 2) you should have at least one keyword in your title; 3) you should have three to five keywords in the first 100 words of your abstract.  These sorts of simple techniques lead to “SEO,” or “Search Engine Optimization”:  getting your studies to the top of searches, so your work can be found, used and cited.

A good example of this technique can be found in a paper I just blogged about, one which is included in the most recent CJSM:  “The Prevalence of Undiagnosed Concussions in Athletes.”  Seven words; one big keyword in the title: ‘concussions’; and I’ll let you review the abstract to determine if the authors enriched their abstract in an “SEO-friendly” way!

I wish I could get to those steps on this visit!!!!  But it’s time to head to some more meetings, and scrapple.  We’re working harder than ever to improve the CJSM.  Let us know how we’re doing!