The advantage of a well-written research paper

Academic publishers are selective about the works they choose for publication. As you browse through the many research articles that have been published, you will notice that the arguments are well communicated, the findings are appropriately organized, and the overall messages are clearly written. What becomes apparent is that academic publishers tend to favor manuscripts written by native English-speakers, or by those who have mastered the intricacies of the English language well enough that they can clearly articulate their work. Why?

In my experience working with thousands of non-native English-speaking researchers, I have observed that there are a number of reasons why publishers tend to prefer manuscripts written by these two types of authors. First, well-written papers can capture the reader’s attention, so journal editors are more likely to send clearly communicated works on for peer review. If you have conducted novel or innovative research, your manuscript might not get published if your writing is unclear. The rationale behind this is that your message might get lost, and as a result, your important work may never reach the peer review stage. On the other hand, if your data are not groundbreaking, but you are able to convey your arguments, methods, and findings in a clear and intuitive way, your manuscript will make a lasting impact on the publisher’s editorial team, increasing your chances of being considered for peer review.

Once your manuscript is in the hands of the reviewers, your clearly written text will work to your advantage. The job of the peer reviewer is to critically analyze the content of the paper to determine whether or not your paper merits publication. The task is made increasingly more difficult when the reviewer is unsure about the message or data an author is trying to convey due to poor grammar, word choices, or flow. Therefore, even if your paper makes it through to the peer review stage, you can tip the scale in your favor — toward publication — by ensuring that your message is clearly delivered.

This is not to say that papers will not make it to the “acceptance” stage if they are not grammatically perfect. Many publishers – including Dove – provide copyediting services for accepted manuscripts at no additional charge to the authors. This means that once your paper has been accepted, it will pass through many layers of screening. If some light editing is needed to ensure that your work is clearly written and showcased appropriately, Dove staff will take care of that for you. However, some manuscripts require a bit more than light proofreading and editing to get noticed by a publisher.

How can you increase your chances of getting published if you find that your written English needs some help? One option would be to find resources that will essentially try to teach you to “learn” the intricacies of the English language. But isn’t your time better spent conducting research? If you answered, “yes,” I would recommend that you seek other avenues for support. If you find that you need assistance preparing your manuscript, reach out to your university’s writing center, or contact journals directly for their recommendations. Many publishers know of additional services — internal or external — that can facilitate manuscript preparation, which can help polish your writing so it is publication-ready.

The final touches made to your manuscript are far more important than most authors realize, especially because published papers that are well-written are more likely to be read, cited, and well-received. Journal editors want to receive submissions that present great research, and most publishers will provide you with some level of guidance to help level the playing field for non-native English-speaking researchers.

 

Shawn Maloney
President, Journal Prep

Read original blog entry HERE

Merging the Literature and Propelling the Science

Gerontology is my passion. Understanding the aging process and how to really maximize on the advantages of aging (i.e., experience, wisdom, spirituality, life-long relationships) while minimizing some of the disadvantages (i.e., cognitive decline, depression and increased suicidal ideation, managing co-morbidities) really excited me as a researcher. That scientific pursuit in itself is enough to sustain any individual for a lifetime of scholarship and scientific inquiry. But as humans we are not always so linear in our thinking, and especially our behavior. We develop other interests and, over the course of time, if we are lucky, we have the opportunity to blend our interests and passions.

Fifteen years ago, I began to see more on HIV and the use of protease inhibitors in stopping the virus from mutating, proliferating, and ravaging in the body.  At the time, although the evidence was not quite amassed about just how effective this new pharmaceutical treatment would be in preventing death long-term, I thought (and hoped) that those living with this disease may actually be able to age with this disease.  As I continued studying, I read more and more about HIV and saw that there were many overlaps between HIV and aging (Figure 1) as I realized that people were probably going to age with this disease, and perhaps age successfully for many infected individuals. I presented my preliminary findings to healthcare practitioners and others at scientific conferences. All ideas have their time in the spotlight and apparently the topic of aging with HIV was premature. At first, my ideas were not met with the most roaring of applause, but at least there were a few open-minded souls in the audience that encouraged me to continue my work. So I kept tinkering with these ideas surrounding aging with HIV and found that, over time, more and more interest began to emerge on the topic. 

Fortunately, a few journals were open to the idea of successful aging with HIV. I started publishing concerning what I found by merging the gerontological and HIV literatures.  In fact, there are several shared experiences for those aging and those living with HIV, including immune decline, cognitive declines, social declines, sleep disruptions, fatigue/mitochondria damage, and suicide. It turns out that those with HIV experience similar problems in those adults aging normally. So I began to sound the alarm that as people age with HIV, thanks to the new medications, they may be more at-risk of experiencing such declines and associated problems that go along with them. Therefore, we need to develop strategies to address these risk factors.

The science has now caught up to some of my ideas and we know much more about the phenomenon of aging with HIV. We are in a better place to do something about it.  But much of this progression in science and practice comes from merging seemly disparate literatures and getting ahead of an emerging phenomenon. 

I was fortunate that my interests lead me to this point where I’ve been successful in publishing many articles and book chapters on this topic. But as editor-in-chief of Nursing: Research and Reviews, I’m curious about others who are experiencing similar insights as they are merging their interest areas and seeing through the crystal ball as to what new issues are going to affect their patient population, whether it is in the field of multiple sclerosis, diabetes, substance abuse, and so forth. Please consider sharing your important insights with us as you practice, research, and review the literature. Together we can boldly propel the science forward.

Dr. David Vance
Nursing: Research and Reviews

http://www.dovepress.com/merging-the-literature-and-propelling-the-science---nursing-research-blog-post

Sound scientific evidence is a prerequisite for any modern health service to provide safe, high quality patient care

Sound scientific evidence is a prerequisite for any modern health service to provide safe, high quality patient care, while incorporating modern developments in diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and prevention. This evidence is best derived from continually updated answers to four key generic clinical questions:

1. What is the expected course of a disease, e.g., spontaneous cure or progression without clinical intervention?
2. Which tests/examinations should be used to diagnose a disease and predict its course, minimizing false positive and false negative results?
3. What is the likelihood that a clinical intervention will be beneficial: curing or preventing a disease, slowing its progression, or reducing its symptom burden?
4. What are the risks -- side effects or complications -- from selected treatments and interventions?

Answering these questions in the current clinical context requires overcoming rapidly evolving challenges.  The population in many countries is aging, resulting in an increasing burden of morbidity and polypharmacy.  A substantial portion of patients does not receive recommended therapies, and preventable iatrogenic harms are common.  Modern research brings the possibility of new treatments that may be effective, but with unknown long-term side effects.  Increasing health care costs are unsustainable.   The quality of clinical care and the efficiency of health care delivery must improve to overcome problems brought on by demographic changes, rapidly evolving and complex technology, and increasingly limited economic resources. 

Information technology is transforming the way medical care is carried out and managed, and improved diagnostics and new treatments also may help address the challenges of contemporary medicine.  However, these advances alone will not solve the problems and, in any case, impose their own challenges.  There is a clear need to integrate research on innovative diagnostics, treatments, and information technology with traditional epidemiological and clinical data, in order to provide the knowledge necessary to ensure better clinical outcomes at an affordable level of health care spending.

Clinical Epidemiology would like to invite scientists to submit papers covering these important challenges.

Dr. Henrik Toft Sorensen
Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Epidemiology

Read Original Blog Here

Peer Review

Is peer review no longer necessary? Should it be replaced with post-publication review?

Richard Smith, the ex Editor of the British Medical Journal, has strong views about peer review. He feels pre-publication peer review is no longer necessary and should be replaced with post-publication review.

Currently most journals, when they receive a paper, send it to a number of experts in that field. These experts (i.e. peer reviewers) make comments and the paper is either accepted with alterations or rejected. The system has its criticisms, most stemming from the word ‘peer’ (i.e. your equals and contemporaries), some of whom may be your professional ‘competitors’. Peer review can allow the reviewer to both reject your work and get tips for their own future work.

The system that Richard Smith advocates is that all papers are published online and then anyone who wants to review or criticize the paper can then do so. After a period of time, the paper can be rewritten in light of these comments. Alternatively, the paper is left as it is but readers can also view any criticisms or comments. This has the advantage, in this electronic age, of adding a certain dynamism to the publication process (i.e. once a paper is published that is the beginning of its academic life not necessarily the end).

There are some advantages of this system not least speed and removal of peer review bias - indeed some physics and maths journals already use this method. Personally, I prefer the current system with all its flaws. The mistake many make is thinking that the peer reviewers decide if a paper is accepted or rejected. They do not. It is the editor or the editorial board who make this decision. They should make this decision not just on one review, but upon their own analysis of the paper and topic and all the reviews.

In my experience, peer review invariably adds a lot to a paper, including missing references, better analysis, better grammar or simply congratulating the authors. Reviewers can change a good paper into a great one. That this is done confidentially allows reviewers to speak the truth and therefore, generally, to give authors insights that are more valuable.

As the publication times from Dove show, pre-publication peer review does not necessarily mean that publication is slowed. Ultimately, well written, rapid peer review is a safety net for authors and readers. It means that papers can be refined before general release, possibly avoiding embarrassing mistakes and tempering novel findings with expert judgments before they are released to the wider audience.

As I have said many times before, the peer review system is like Winston Churchill's view of democracy: It is not perfect, but it is better than the alternatives.

Professor Scott Fraser
Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Ophthalmology

 

http://www.dovepress.com/peer-review-blog-post

The significance of Sarcopenia in longevity medicine

Muscle, or lean body mass (LBM) can be lost at any age as the result of injury, disease, emotional stress, diet, malnutrition and any other number of factors.

Despite the cause, muscle loss is clinically significant because it erodes strength, endurance, health and vitality. In contrast to LBM loss resulting from individual adverse circumstances, sarcopenia is a condition characterized by muscle atrophy that affects everyone as the result of aging. Surprisingly, muscle loss begins early in life; upon completion of development and as early as twenty or twenty-five years of age. This indicator of aging onset is clearly evident as loss of speed, strength and endurance in middle-aged athletes, which is presumably less than in non-athletes. Clinical studies have shown that the excretion of urinary creatinine, which is a measure of muscle creatine content and total muscle mass, decreases by nearly 50% between the ages of 20 and 70 years. These measurements indicate that degradation of muscle exceeds its synthesis soon after young adulthood is past and suggests that senescence begins much earlier in life than is generally presumed. Thus, interventions in aging focused upon sarcopenia may have great value for increasing duration of life and improving its quality.

A large component of involuntary weight loss during aging occurs in fat-free mass. By age thirty, body weight gain begins to be preferentially accrued as fat instead of muscle and this process that underlies loss of LBM continues unabated thereafter. However, the lost muscle is usually not noticed by affected individuals, because it is replaced in subtle ways such as by padding areas of loss with extra fat. After forty years of age, muscle loss proceeds at a rate of 0.5 - 2% per year or about 8% per decade on average. This rate accelerates noticeably after age 60 and is highest in physically inactive persons along with a parallel decline in dynamic, static, and isokinetic muscle strength. The result of such age-related LBM loss is a decline in function such that up to 65% of older men and women report that they are unable to lift ten pounds with their arms. From age 60 and for each decade thereafter, the rate of muscle loss doubles.

 

 

Since maintaining muscle mass is essential to supporting whole-body protein metabolism, wound healing, physical strength, organ function, skin integrity and immune function, sarcopenia can be debilitating. Consequences of age-related muscle loss include:

1. frailty—reduced ability to walk, climb stairs, rise from a chair, and carry a load
   
2. physical disability—3- to 4-fold greater risk, independent of age, gender, obesity, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, chronic morbidity, and health behaviors
   
3. loss of independence—reduced ability to cope with major illness and limited capacity to participate in activities due to diminished aerobic capacity
   
4. depression—due to loss of independence
   
5. increased mortality
 

Health care costs of people with sarcopenia accelerate as they become increasingly disabled. In the United States in 2000, the estimated direct health care costs related to sarcopenia totaled $18.5 billion or about 1.5% of the total health care expenditures for that year. Excess annual health care expenditures were $860 and $933 for every man and woman with sarcopenia, respectively. In fact, a 10% reduction in the prevalence of sarcopenia would save $1.1 billion a year in US health care costs.

Since reduced skeletal muscle mass during aging is an important and basic cause of morbidity that is significantly and independently associated with functional impairment and disability, the challenge to longevity medical practitioners is to develop effective and practical interventions to prevent or at least partially reverse sarcopenia. Such effort may succeed in identifying beneficial changes in life style, exercise regimens, and novel pharmacological or nutritional therapies to protect us all against this particularly malignant scourge of aging.

Dr. Richard Walker, Editor-in-Chief
Clinical Interventions in Aging

http://www.dovepress.com/dove-press-blog-2-blog-post

Has the field of nanomedicine matured?

I am often asked if nanomedicine has matured.

I am never sure how to answer that question since many nanomaterials are currently used in medicine, from drug delivery to imaging to orthopedic devices. The recent announcement of expanded FDA anti-infection claims for a silicone nitride spinal device with unique nanofeatures, again, reminds me that, yes, nanomedicine has matured.

Dr. Thomas J. Webster, Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Nanomedicine

http://www.dovepress.com/dove-press-blog-1-blog-post

Introducing the Dove Medical Press blog

Welcome to our blog.

With this blog we intend to feature the opinions and commentaries of our esteemed journal Editors-in-Chief and key publishing staff. With over 125 journals publishing 10,000+ articles, we do not expect a shortage of interesting reading. The entries will consist of timely developments in a collection of fields, including science, technology and medicine. We are excited about this new development. Our goal is to give our journal Editors-in-Chief avenue to inform their authors and readers about industry goings-on, as well as to provide them a chance to interact with each other. Likewise with blog entries from myself and other key staff, which I trust will be of interest and create some robust discussion.

For November 2012, we introduce Professor Thomas Webster and Dr. Richard Walker. Dr. Walker will discuss sarcopenia and its significance in longevity medicine, while Professor Webster addresses a common question: Has the field of nanomedicine matured?

Dr. Walker is Editor-in-Chief for Clinical Interventions in Aging. He has broad experience in the theoretical and practical aspects of aging research derived from key positions in academia and industry. His education includes a BS in pharmacy (Rutgers University), an MS in biochemistry (New Mexico State University) and a PhD in endocrine physiology (Rutgers University). Postdoctoral training in Neuroendocrinology and Neuropharmacology of Aging was received at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Duke University Medical Center and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Walker has held academic positions in Clemson University, Sanders-Brown Research Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, Medical College of Pennsylvania and the University of South Florida College of Medicine. Dr. Walker successfully prepared several investigational new drug applications (IND’s) to the FDA for studying hormone replacement in aging subjects, and with his colleague Dr. Barry Bercu, has organized and co-chaired many international symposia on clinical interventions in aging.

Under Dr. Walker’s direction Clinical Interventions in Aging provides an ethical forum for presentation of data and debate on issues relevant to medical practice that is less concerned with treating intrinsic diseases of aging than with sustaining health and vitality throughout life.

Professor Webster is Department Chair and Professor, Chemical Engineering, Northeastern University, previously Associate Professor for the Division of Engineering at Brown University and the Division of Orthopedic Surgery at Brown University Medical School. He has degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh (BS, 1995) and in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (MS, 1997; PhD, 2000).

Professor Webster’s research on nanophase materials has received attention in numerous recent media publications such as MSNBC News, June 1, 2004; the Economist, June 5, 2004; and Chemical and Engineering News, Feb 28, pp. 39–42, 2000. He has organized more than 25 symposia at academic conferences highlighting the use of nanomaterials in biological applications.

Other honors include: 2000, Karen and Lester Gerhardt Graduate Student Award in recognition of outstanding academic achievement and promise for a successful career, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; 2002, Biomedical Engineering Society Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award; 2004, Purdue University Young Investigator Award from the Schools of Engineering; 2005, Finalist for the Young Investigator Award for the American Society for Nanomedicine; and 2004, Early Career Award from the Coulter Foundation.

He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Nanomedicine and is on the Editorial Board of Biomaterials, American Society for Artificial Internal Organs, International Journal of Nanomanufacturing, and Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology.

Tim Hill
Publisher, Dove Medical Press

 

http://www.dovepress.com/dove-press-blog-intro-blog-post