Publish or Perish

Last update: 18 September 2009,
by Maureen Bell

Below are some resources which you may find helpful if you decide to brave the highly competitive world of academic publishing.

Section 1. General Resources

How to Get Published
This Powerpoint presentation by John Beard, with tips from two editors - Simon Chapman ( Tobacco Control) and Barry Pless (Injury Prevention), was given at the inaugural Northern Rivers University Department of Rural Health – University of Sydney postgraduate symposium, conducted in Byron Bay from 7-8 December 2006. It gives a clear overview of the process of getting your work published. Also available as a .pdf file

Nurse Author & Editor Newsletter
Nurse Author & Editor is an international publication dedicated to nurse authors, editors and reviewers. It is published by Wiley- Blackwell as a free quarterly online publication. Each issue consists of articles offering advice on writing quality manuscripts, avoiding rejection, finding publishing opportunities, editing and reviewing. In order to view issues of Nurse Author & Editor (from 2006) and to sign up for a table of contents alert, you will need to register.

Section 2. The Literature Review

Tips for searching the literature without getting in a tangle.

We live in an age where, in many areas of research, there is a huge body of literature to be navigated. Even the range of specialist databases available for this purpose has grown dramatically in the past decade. Being organised, however painful, will make your life a lot easier, save you time and avoid confusion. I have some hints on the essentials of database searching, as well as some advanced help for postgraduates and researchers.

Databases I think may be useful for searching the nursing literature are listed here.
PubMed (Medline), CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, and Health Source: Nursing, are the most important. Scopus, although not specifically a health science database, has some excellent features which allow you to explore cited references. It includes all Medline and Embase data from 1996, but lacks the sophisticated subject search capability of Medline.

Section 3. Writing Your Paper

Tips on crafting a readable, well structured paper.

Here are the results of a brief PubMed search on writing and publishing for nurses.
Check individual journals' and publishers' sites for details of style and content which they require.

A selection of the Library's books on medical writing is listed below. You can find additional titles by looking up medical writing as a subject heading in our catalogue.

Wolcott, Harry F.
Writing up qualitative research / Harry F. Wolcott.
3rd ed. Los Angeles : SAGE, c2009.
Contents: 1. On Your Mark -- 2. Get Going -- 3. Keep Going -- 4. Linking Up -- 5. Tightening Up -- 6. Finishing Up -- 7. Getting Published -- Appendix. Applications.

Matthews, Janice R.
Successful scientific writing : a step-by-step guide for the biological and medical sciences.
3rd ed. Cambridge ; Melbourne : Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Contents; 1. Preparing to write -- 2. Composing a first draft -- 3. Visual support for the written word -- 4. Visual support for the spoken word -- 5. Revising to increase coherence -- 6. Improving word choice, and syntax style -- 7. Attending to grammar, numbers and other mechanics -- 8. The rest of the story.

Fondiller, Shirley H.
Health professionals style manual, by Shirley Fondiller and Barbara J. Nerone.
New York, NY : Springer Pub., c2007.
Contents: Style and substance : the dynamic duo -- From principles to practice : the art of effective writing -- Understanding usage : an alphabetical guide to specific writing tips and pitfalls -- Be clear and direct: how to avoid redundancies, euphemisms, and cliches -- Harness the potential of computers and the Internet.

Goodman, N. W.
Medical writing : a prescription for clarity / Neville W. Goodman, Martin B. Edwards ; and with cartoons by Andy Black.
3rd ed. New York ; Melbourne : Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Contents: Pt. I. Problem : the illness. 1. Introduction -- 2. The malaise of medical manuscripts -- Pt. II. Solution : symptomatic relief. 3. Guidelines to clearer writing -- 4. Is there a better word? -- 5. Superfluous words -- 6. Imprecise words and phrases -- 7. Superfluous phrases -- 8. Trouble with short words -- 9. Use of the passive voice -- 10. Consistency : number and tenses -- 11. Circumlocution, metaphor and cliche´ -- 12. Word order and pronouns -- 13. Punctuation -- 14. Constructing sentences -- 15. Drawing clear graphs -- Pt. III. Practice : recuperation. 16. Some examples rewritten -- 17. Do the experts agree?

Section 4. Finding an Appropriate Journal

There are a number of possible approaches which can be used independently, or in combination.

4.1 Check for Relevance

Try doing a search on the subject area of your article on some of the databases, to see in which journals articles on this topic appear frequently.

• PubMed lets you limit your search to nursing journals. Just add AND jsubsetn at the end of your search
• Scopus provides a breakdown of all search results journal by journal, with the journals in which the largest numbers of results appear at the top of the list.

4.2 Check for Exposure

Check to see how many different international databases cover the journal(s) you are considering. To do this use Ulrich's Periodicals Directory.

For example Journal of Advanced Nursing is indexed in the online databases listed below. You can see from the size of the list that this will give huge exposure to the contents of this journal across a broad range of disciplines. It's indexed in the major English language medical and nursing databases - CINAHL, Medline, Health Source: Nursing, British Nursing Index - as well as Scopus, and many other broader based databases.

4.3 Check for Quality (Journal Impact Factors)

So what's a journal impact factor? The journal impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year. The impact factor is used to compare and rank different journals within a certain field. It was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now part of Thomson Reuters, and is described in an essay originally published in the Current Contents print editions June 20, 1994. Impact factors are calculated yearly for those journals that are indexed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

Section 5. Instructions to Authors

Other useful web sites are:-
Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences and nursing editors and authors pages at Nurse Author & Editor

Section 6. Randomised Controlled Trials and Systematic Reviews

I have a separate page with information about the Cochrane Collaboration, and evidence based medicine. On it you will find links to information on how to report a randomised controlled trial, and how to conduct a systematic review.