Biomedical Publishing Podcast

Alle researchers need to search for previously published material. You can either do it in a loose fashion, so-called "surfing" for evidence, or you can perform a search systematically, e.g. for a systematic review.

There are strict rules about how to handle your data from a research project. You cannot put them on Dropbox or similar web-based repositories and you cannot save them on the hard drive of your personal computer. 

It is mandatory to follow the Good Clinical Practice (GCP) rules for trials involving drugs. This episode will give you the background and the main content of the GCP regulations and what it practically means to you when running the study. It is no way a full description of the GCP concept but will give you the highlights so that you can find further details yourself.

There will for certain be critical phases in your research process, This episode will go through the critical phases in the protocol, data acquisition, analysis, manuscript and publication phases. Most problems can be prevented.

You do not need to be an expert in the clinical field to write a systematic review. It is a fairly easy process because it follows a specific guideline (the PRISMA guideline), and it is also fairly easy to get it accepted for publication in a journal if you do it the right way. And importantly, you will automatically read the necessary literature in your research field. The only drawback is that you have to invest the necessary time and energy, but that is not really a negative thing. So go ahead and write a systematic review in your field of research. 

If problems arise with serious author disputes or question about research integrity then journal editors go to COPE for advice. You should therefore know about this important ressource that is freely available on the internet.

There may be author disputes in a competitive environment like biomedical research. this is sad and disturbing, but if you handle it very early in the research process then most problems can be prevented.

Before study start (meaning before accrual of the first patient) you have to obtain certain permissions and perform certain registrations. There are differences from country to country but you will always need ethical committee approval for a clinical trial.

It is very often a struggle to obtain necessary funding for your research ideas. This episode will discuss how to obtain funding and how to make a good application for that.

The best way to get the idea for a research project is to listen to the questions asked by the patient and by younger colleagues and medical students. They often ask the relevant questions, and these can very easily be translated into research questions.

Everybody needs a mentor. When you look for a mentor the most important factor is chemistry. You will spend a lot of time together with your mentor so communication has to be pleasant and productive. The research area may not be that important as long as your mentor is the right person for you. 

In large multicenter trials there may be problems about authorship if you do not settle that before study start. In this context it is advisable to make a formal authorship contract with the study sites before accrual of the first patient.

In this episode we go through the editorial process. What happens with your paper in its way through the editorial office, out for review, back again, and the additional steps until final publication.

Whenever possible you should use a reporting guideline when writing your paper. This will increase the quality and transparency of your work and it will also increase the chance of getting your paper published.

It is important to write a research protocol for almost all types of studies. Usually the protocol is large and comprehensive for human clinical trials, and for other study types the protocol may be smaller.

In this episode I go through my current choice of software for PC/Mac and apps for smartphone. These are tools that will make your life easier as a biomedical researcher.

There are many reasons why a paper can be rejected by the editor. We go though some of the most important reasons, where choice of the wrong journal may be the most important one. 

The submission proces has certain steps and include the manuscript system used by the journal, a cover letter, submission of different files, and if you get a chance to revise your paper, the revised paper should be submitted with a detailed rebuttal letter.

Writers block may be the most important inhibitor in the writing proces, both for novices as well as experienced authors. This episode will outline the possible causes and potential solutions to this common and irritating problem.

There are different issues to consider when you are deciding for a target journal for your scientific article. The best advice is to decide as early as possible because it may influence the writing of the paper and even the study design in some cases.

Not a full grammar school but a few relevant style tips that you should be aware of.

You will undoubtedly be asked to perform peer review and then you will probably have some worries about this. This episode will guide you through the process.

There are two kinds of editorials, and this podcast will explain how to write the editorial that is not written by the editor.

A case report may be one of the easier articles to write. There is a published guideline on the writing of a case report (www.care-statement.org) and some additional tricks and comments that you will hear in this podcast episode.

The narrative review may be a difficult article to write for the novice science writer. The reason is that it does not follow explicit rules or guidelines. There are a few tricks, however, so listen to the podcast and learn how to build your next narrative review.

It may be important and a very good idea to publish a protocol article with its statistical analysis plan before enrolment of patients in the study. This will secure the analysis plan and ensure that the researchers will not go on a fishing expedition in tha data analysis phase. In the episode we discuss how to build the protocol article.

You may not realize how important this is, but your image as a researcher is actually reflected in your reference list. If you make errors in the reference list, then the editor and peer reviewers may suspect that you have also made errors in the research project itself. So be careful and correct all errors in the reference list. It has to be absolutely flawless.

Publication of research protocols or more importantly the statistical analysis plan is important to ensure research integrity. There are various solutions for this. Hear the podcast and find out how and why.

It may seem like a strange question but it has nevertheless been an important issue for especially Chinese authors. Hear the podcast and find out why.

There are many good reasons to obtain a unique personal author identifier and the ORCID ID is the solution for that. Go to orcid.org and register now. It is simple and free of charge, and you will get your ORCID ID in 30 seconds.

Typically the forst author has written the first draft of the paper and the last author is the most senior of the supervisors. But what about the middle-authors, does their place in the byline have a specific meaning?

In the biomedical sciences we use the ICMJE criteria for authorship, and if these are followed there is actually no upper limit for the number of authors on a scientific paper as long as all authors fulfill the four authorship criteria.

There has been a tendency, especially in larger trials, to use a group name in the author byline. With the current clear definitions of authorship the use of a group name in the byline may be a little old-fashioned. The episode will discuss the pros and cons of using a group name, and will guide you to have your group name indexed even without using it in the byline.

It is important to respect secrecy in the review process, both for editors and reviewers but also for authors.

When you want to refer to a specific webpage in your reference list then there is a risk that the webpage will not be available forever. You can therefore use a smart trick to ensure that your referred webpage will always be available for the reader. This is explained in this weeks episode.

It is popular to use dedicated software for reference management when you write scientific papers. There are, however, both pros and cons. 

In this issue we discuss various issues of trial registration, including where to register, what to register, and how to find registered studies with a search covering all the available databases. All trials should be registered and the term "trial" typically covers interventional human clinical trials. There may, however, be good reasons also to register observational studies although it is not mandatory at the moment.

In this episode we discuss the actual composition of the systematic review. This should follow the PRISMA guidelines where you will find great help.

This episode will guide you to make an outline of a typical original paper.

There are lots of data hidden, which will never get published. This is a serious problem, both ethically and also because it causes substantial publication bias. This episode will discuss this important issue.

This episode is about how to behave as a peer reviewer.

Almost all biomedical journals issue press releases when a new issue is being published. This episode will describe the mechanisms and usual routines in biomedical journals around the use of press releases.

In this episode we discuss how to use tables and figures in your scientific paper.