Getting Published & Peer Review

Journal editors (L to R): Chris Hughes (CJSM), Eugene Hong (BJSM), Irfan Asif (Sports Health)

This weekend I’ve been catching up after the week I spent catching up after the recent American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) conference in Dallas saw me catching up with colleagues from around the globe.

‘Catching up’ after ‘catching up’ after ‘catching up’–does that sound like your life too?

Well, at last I have the time to compose some thoughts I have been meaning to share since I returned from Dallas, and they are focused on the session at AMSSM our journal held conjointly with BJSM and Sports Health: “Faculty Development: Getting Published in Sports Medicine Journals.”

For the attendees of the live event, I think it was a very useful panel discussion among the editors from three of the premiere journals in our profession.  Our instructions for authors are available on-line, but it was a rare opportunity for anyone contemplating sending us a manuscript to hear our Editor in Chief Chris Hughes talk about the submission process.  He and his colleagues on the panel, Drs. Asif and Hong,  gave insightful advice on how to choose which journals one might want to approach with a completed manuscript. The nuances of uploading a work and associated content to editorial manager were also discussed; and there were several questions and answers about the transit of a work through the peer review phase of things.  All in all, from the comments I heard during and after the event, the session was well received.

For many of you who couldn’t be there live, I’m happy to say that CJSM’s parent company, Wolters-Kluwer, is offering a couple of resources relevant to the budding author, and the budding reviewer, that are freely available on-line.  For instance, Wolters-Kluwer is hosting a free webinar on April 28 entitled ‘Language tips for academic writing: Helping you communicate your science,’ which I highly encourage you to catch if you can.  And there is an enduring on-line resource many of you may be interested in reading: Improving scholarship by improving peer review.  This would be extremely valuable both for those of you already doing peer review as well as prospective authors:  for the latter, it would help you learn more what the process looks like, and before you know it, most especially if you are published, you’ll be tapped on the shoulder to do peer review yourself.

We are in the process of preparing a podcast on peer review which we’ll be releasing soon, where once again anyone who could not catch Chris Hughes live at AMSSM can hear his thoughts on the ‘best practices’ of that process from the CJSM point of view.  We hope to have you tune in soon!