Publishing an article on Health Professions Education

Advice for authors from the editors of Perspectives on Medical Education : Getting your research published.
Varpio L, Driessen E, Maggio L.
Perspect Med Educ. 2018 Dec;7(6):343-347
doi: 10.1007/s40037-018-0483-0 ; PMID: 30488264; PMCID: PMC6283776

Do you find doing a health professions education (HPE) research difficult? And getting the paper published even more difficult? The editors of “Perspectives on Medical Education” share some great advice to help you.

Here are some of the key points for Authors to remember for getting their research published in journals given by editors of Perspectives on Medical Education

1. Begin at the beginning: Know you target audience and make sure you submit your paper in the right manuscript category
2. Position your context: Do write about your study within a broader context for readers outside your own institution/field
3. Let the reader relate to your study: Provide sufficient details about the content as to what was done, where, why, and to whom so that the study results are understood and interpreted by the reader and can be related to their own context.
4. Attract new readers: Try and include a scholarly conversation which may attract new readers
5.  Focus!! On the methods!! : A peer reviewer will focus on three main areas – Methods and methodology used, If the topic is sufficiently current and how useful can it be to other users from different fields
   
   And then the general stuff, but still important
   
6. Avoid plagiarism, data fabrication and always comply with ethical review board guidelines
7. Editors spend a lot of time reading the literature in order to be able to responsibly appraise your paper and hence you too need to be well-read and up to date about the topic you choose

To Point 7, we would add – do a proper literature search, find as recent references as possible and reference them correctly!

Finally – Be very open about the editorial decision. Editors and reviewers work hard to give you feedback, which is a *great learning resource*
If you receive a negative feedback about your paper, take help from others who are not involved with the paper to interpret the instructions from the editor and reviewers. Do make the effort to work on it and make revisions  before re-submitting it to the journal or submitting the work to a new journal.

A great tip that they add is that volunteering to be a peer reviewer is an excellent way to become a better author. Wise indeed!

-Dipti Suvarna and Vasumathi Sriganesh-