This guide covers what to consider when selecting a journal, a guide to publishing in popular Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine journals, and resources on learning how to write a successful case study.
OCOM encourages a culture of research, and both through faculty scholarship funds and the final project process, students and faculty are encouraged to engage and participate in the research process. In addition to allowing master’s students to work with a faculty mentor on a group research project, OCOM also earmarks money to support faculty scholarship.
Besides beefing up your CV and bringing you a certain level of fame, publishing is important for the health of the AOM field. By publishing case studies, clinical trials, essays – even book reviews – you are helping to create a dialogue around issues in the field and pushing practitioners to better themselves. To share what works and what doesn’t work helps hone us the medicine to be the best it can be.
Make sure to submit to only one journal at a time. Publishers often make you sign an agreement that your article is not under consideration at any other publication, and most will not even look at your submission if your article is being submitted elsewhere. The website of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has more information about duplicate submissions.
There are many things to consider when selecting a journal for publication:
You will need to check the submission guidelines for the journal you are applying to; this can normally be found on the publisher’s web site. There is normally an online submission process, and the publisher’s webs site will explain the style format, aims and scope.
Some journals are very competitive and may have very high rejection rates. You can look at the acceptance rate to get an idea of the likelihood of your journal being accepted and if it might be worth looking at a more specialized journal with a higher acceptance rate.
The submission process varies from journal to journal, but you should typically expect to hear a response within 4-6 weeks. Feel free to contact the editor if you have not received a response within 8 weeks. You should receive one of the following responses from the editor: Reject, Accept, or Modify. If your paper is accepted, congratulations!! Sit back and enjoy your fame. Getting an acceptance on the first try is very rare, though. The editor is more likely to ask you to modify your article, based on recommendations of the peer-reviewers. You will have the opportunity to make changes to address these concerns and resubmit your paper. Depending on the level of criticism and work required, you may choose to resubmit your work, or take your work elsewhere and submit to another journal.
Statistically speaking, there is also a pretty good chance that your article will be rejected. Most high-quality journals have rejections rates of 50% or more, so getting rejected is not the end of the world; you are definitely not alone. There are different types of rejection letters, and what you do next can differ depending on the situation. If the editor finds some minor flaws (such as a design flaw) in your work that would prevent publication but that could be fixed, you may try making changes and resubmitting. But if your article is mostly fine but rejected for not fitting the scope of the journal or because is deemed less important than other submissions, then you may think about submitting your article to another journal.
Do you want to maintain copyright privileges of your work? Most journals require that you sign over the copyright, but many now have clauses that allow you to upload your work to an institutional repository. Some will charge you a lot of money to get a copy of your own article after publication. If this is important to you, look over the copyright guidelines before submitting to a journal.
If you were awarded a grant to conduct research, you will need to check to see if there are any publishing stipulations. For example, the NIH Public Access Policy requires that the final manuscript of all NIH-funded research must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance of publication. If you have been awarded a grant and the awarding agency has publication policies, you will need to check with the journal you are submitting to in order to verify that they can comply with those policies.
If you are looking for a journal that is influential in the field, you may try looking at the level of influence and ranking. Here are some tools to help you note a journal’s impact and ranking:
INDEXING IN DATABASES
If you want people to read your work, one of the best ways of getting your work out there and available to researchers is by publishing in a journal that is indexed in a major database. In order for people to read and reference your article, they need to be able to find it. Having an article indexed by PubMed or Alt HealthWatch means that there is a higher chance of people referencing your work.
You may want to select a journal that you actually like! Which journals keep popping up in your research? What do your colleagues read? Which journals does our library subscribe to?
If you are on a time constraint, you may want the length of the review process to weigh into your decision. Some journals are monthly, but others may only be published twice a year. Your chances of getting published by a journal with more frequent publications may be higher because they are publishing way more material than quarterly or bi-annual publications. By contacting the editor, you can also find out how long it takes the average submission to get to publication (or rejection).
Many journals now allow you the option of paying a fee to make your article “open access,” i.e., freely available to the public. Some journals are completely open access, so publishing with them at all will require that you pay a large open access fee (normally between $750 - $1500 for an institution of OCOM’s size).
Peer-review is a process in which your paper is evaluated by peers in your field, demonstrating the strength, quality, and credibility of your article. OCOM does not participate in the tenure process, so there is no requirement of being published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, OCOM’s faculty evaluation system does require faculty to create portfolios, which are reviewed by their faculty peers; publishing in peer-reviewed publications is a great addition to your professional portfolio.
Do you want to publish in a conventional or alternative medicine journal? If your paper is about teaching or educational policy, an education journal may be more appropriate than a medical journal.
Who do you want your article to reach? Acupuncture practitioner? International audiences? Or is your target audience conventional doctors and researchers? Reading the journals scope and mission statement
Is your paper an original study? Case study? Literature review? Be sure to check the journal requirements to verify that the journal you are submitting actually accepts the type of paper you are submitting
The OCOM Library highly encourages people to use Zotero or another citation manager during the research / writing process. Not only will it make citing resources a breeze, if you need to switch the format of your citations (from APA to AMA, for example), you can do it with just a few clicks rather than having to completely redo the citations for your entire paper.
Is the manuscript written in the correct format, as detailed on the journal publisher’s website? Have you asked someone else to proofread your material for grammatical errors? Are your references properly cited? Have you double-checked that all of your charts, graphs, tables and illustrations are labeled correctly and in the acceptable format? If you are using graphs or illustrations that are not your own, did you procure the copyright to use them in your work? Did you check the journal’s aim / scope to make sure it is compatible with your article’s subject matter or the type of article?Check in section W 20.5 to find information on how to write journal articles for publication.
Siu-Wai Leung, 2016
Trish Greenhalgh, 2019
Trish Greenhalgh, 2014
Robert E. Stake, 1995
Hugh MacPherson, Ted Kaptchuk, 1997
Vinjamury, SP. How to write a case report. American Acupuncturist (reprinted in Meridians). Spring 2012;(55):25.
Isaacs L. Evaluating anecdotes and case reports. Alternative Therapies In Health & Medicine. March 2007;13(2):36-38.
Kienle G, Hamre H, Portalupi E, Kiene H. Improving the quality of therapeutic reports of single cases and case series in oncology--criteria and checklist. Alternative Therapies In Health And Medicine. September 2004;10(5):68-72.
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