Getting Published — a “Junior’s” Perspective

The newly published, Dr. Dawn Thompson

A regular contributor to this blog is Dawn Thompson, who most recently wrote a very well-received post on gender and our profession of sports medicine.  She is a Sports Medicine physician in training and one of our Junior Associate Editors.

I had several CJSM tasks for the day, including preparation for an upcoming podcast with Dr. Lyle Micheli and doing some CJSM peer review, and so I was delighted to find Dawn was ready and able to volunteer her time to share with us this post, penned shortly after her success of having her first manuscript accepted for publication.  Congratulations Dawn:  keep the publications (and the blog posts) coming!

____________________________________________________________________________________

Dawn Thomposon

Yes! I can finally say I have a genuine original article published in my name! More than 2 years in the making and I have to say it has been a fairly frustrating experience! However, thanks to good colleagues and perseverance we have got there.

Back in April 2016, CJSM wrote a blog post following the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine conference on getting published and peer review. This blog provides some excellent further resources, however for those new to the world of research and getting published, here are my top 10 hints and tips to try to make it slightly less of a frustrating experience!

1. Choose something you are passionate about – you will be devoting a significant amount of time to this topic!
2. Choose a good supervisor to guide you and a colleague/peer to work with – things are better shared!
3. It doesn’t have to be something huge or groundbreaking but if fairly novel or of importance it is worth pursuing
4. Select your journal wisely. Be realistic and target your papers strength to that of the journal you choose. It’s probably worth considering whether or not you want to aim for open access which will likely encounter a fee.
5. Follow the submission instructions of the journal – sounds simple but all journals have slightly different instructions and may reject your paper if these are not followed.
6. Check, re-check and triple check your manuscript before submission!
7. Be prepared to rework large parts of your paper if needed in response to reviewers comments.
8. If not accepted initially, try to work out why and make appropriate amendments. It may be that the reviewers give comments which you can act upon or it may be that your paper wasn’t right for the selected journal.
9. If despite best attempts your paper doesn’t get published consider writing it up as a presentation for a conference or as a letter to the editor. It will still look great on your CV and get you points in job applications!
10. Develop broad shoulders! Don’t take it personally if you do not get accepted right away – journals have set criteria for accepting papers and it might just be yours doesn’t fit these or their current direction. You will get there eventually and likely the finished product will be better for it!

Happy researching!