Medical Editing and Publishing Services

Responsibilities of a Scientific Journal Office(Part 1)

The success of a scientific journal does not only depend on its scientificity; it also requires precise and accurate management of its publication. One critical issue is managing the manuscripts of submitted or rejected articles. Read more about Responsibilities of a Scientific Journal Office(Part 1)

Indexing

One of the biggest challenges facing scientific journals is being indexed in international and top-rated databases. The benefit of being indexed in such databases, is the availability of the journal to a wide audience, in a short amount of time. Read more about Indexing

How to make scientific journals known

We can’t expect a scientific journal to become famous without making any efforts; even if it has a high quality. There are some procedures for making a scientific journal known, but before taking action, one should consider one’s resources and the required amount of time. In order to fulfill this aim, only an accurate plan is required, which will not cost much.

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Scientific journal publishing methods

Electronic and printed

Journals are often published in both printed and electronic formats. However, the advantages of electronic publishing, such as being inexpensive due to not needing a budget for paper and print, has caused the scientific journals to be published only in electronic format. Electronic publishing can have open access or limited access. Read more about Scientific journal publishing methods

Different methods of publishing a scientific journal

The technological revolution has changed the audiences’ expectations of the scientific journals; therefore, the publishers should consider this matter. The internet has provided scientific journals with many new opportunities and the ability to promote their work. Some of which are listed below: Read more about Different methods of publishing a scientific journal

Finance and Business Planning

Precise, commercial, and financial decisions are essential for continuous article publishing in a  scientific journal. Moreover, it is of utmost importance to consider financial matters. Moreover, the editor in chief should be clear-sighted about the financial resources which can be attracted (e. g. publishing office or virtual subscribers, advertisements, and gaining sponsorship from associations or institutions). Read more about Finance and Business Planning

Publication Ethics-(Part3)

Draft Competition There is a competition for drafts when several articles are written on the basis of one study, but two or more authors are involved. The result will be that the authenticity of the study is diminished and the subject of copyright may be lost. When a scientific content has been published in several Read more about Publication Ethics-(Part3)[…]

Publication Ethics-(Part 2)

Deception Deception involves the presentation of untrue findings, alteration of data, or selective reporting of findings. It is very difficult for a journal to identify this fraud at the point of article submission. However, the editorial board and the reviewers must be aware of the possibility of this fraud because this is a very serious Read more about Publication Ethics-(Part 2)[…]

Publication Ethics-(Part 1)

Unfortunately, unethical research practices and dissemination of the research findings are widespread in the scientific community and are observed in many different shapes and forms. The unethical research behavior, such as spreading misinformation about a formula or making significant changes to the rules could have adverse effects on every subsequent study. The important point is that all researchers tend to use scientifically accepted fundamentals Read more about Publication Ethics-(Part 1)[…]

Scientific Journal Strategies

Outlook Gathering the content related to the goals, context of activity, structure, and form of a journal makes the journal long-term outlook clear and the founders know precisely why the content should be published and how it should be presented. Who is responsible for the success or failure of a scientific journal? The answer to Read more about Scientific Journal Strategies[…]

Provision of satisfactory conditions for draft article submission

Draft articles are the raw materials of a scientific journal without which, journal will cease publication. Many scientific journals start as quarterly; however, their publication may end in failure due to non submission of sufficient drafts in the absence of a thorough planning. Numerous journals are always out there to publish the draft article. In Read more about Provision of satisfactory conditions for draft article submission[…]

Types of Scientific Journals

In addition to the purpose and vision of academic journals, it is necessary to consider the type of journals. Scientific journals may be electronic-, print-, or electronic-print-based publications. However, some scientific organizations do not consider the electronic-only form valid. Nonetheless, the majority of universities and research societies recognize the validity of online science journals. In fact, Read more about Types of Scientific Journals[…]

2nd World Congress on Antibiotics

2nd World Congress on Antibiotics scheduled in London, UK during October 16-17, 2019 with the theme Improving World Health with Antibiotics . Antibiotics 2019 conference is organized to unite scientists, researchers, teachers, business delegates, students and research associates to communicate about their experience, knowledge and also about the on-going research.

How to become a good scientific article writer?

1. Read a lot of articles. In order to gain a deep insight into writing and managing the structure of your article, you need to read a large number of articles in your field of interest. It is recommended to look for articles in reliable databases, such as PubMed.

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Clinical Trial Registration

As mentioned in a previous article, a clinical trial is a type of study which investigates the behaviors of a new treatment or intervention on a group of volunteers. Clinical Trial Registration was introduced as a practice to inform the community of researchers about the initiation of a trial. In this regard, the clinical trials registry in the WHO Registry Network was established as a platform for the registration of clinical trials. Read more about Clinical Trial Registration

Different types of journal publication

Journals have different methods of publication for the accepted articles. This article is a short review of different types of publications.

Ethics and publishing (Part 2)

To develop the discussion on the topic of Ethics, this article explores the issues related to the sources of funding, conflicts of interest, fraud, plagiarism, and duplicate submission.

Ethics and publishing

It is important for some scientific journal authorities to know that the authors have observed ethical issues while conducting their biomedical studies on humans and animals. All the submitted articles to a journal should be checked for their observation of ethical standards (consent from the participants and respect participant withdrawal from the study). Therefore, in case the journal needs the proofs of ethics, the authors should provide the necessary documents.

Editing

Articles are usually subjected to editing even if they were previously peer-reviewed. In fact, articles are usually edited for a couple of times to eliminate their probable errors. The editing process of a journal highly depends on financial resources. The journals with limited budget usually employ one editor or ask their general editorial board to do the editing. In such cases, a member of an editorial board may voluntarily provide editing services which lead to a high volume of tasks. On the other hand, they might not be highly skillful in editing resulting in obvious mistakes. In this regard, editing services are mainly provided in three different types.

Importance of citation rate and impact factor

Citation rate and impact factor are considered as two indicators of journal quality. In traditional approaches, the total number of journal members were suggestive of the importance of a journal. However, this approach was not applicable to open journals since they do not present any hard copy.

Digital Object Identifier(DOI)

Digital Object Identifier commonly recognized as DOI is a standard number used for journal articles, research reports and data sets, and official publications to enhance their accessibility. In fact, DOI is a string of numbers that is exclusively assigned to each article. The DOI helps the publishers to enhance the visibility and quality of their journals.

Indexing

One of the biggest challenges for scientific journals is membership in international indexing databases.  Membership of a journal in such databases enhances the visibility, readability, and availability of articles. Indexing databases are usually classified into three groups, as follows

The content quality of a journal

The quality of a journal is an important issue, which is highly affected by the budget allocated for the journal. Generally, it is expected that each volume of the journal has a higher quality than the previously published volume.  Although having sufficient financial resource is of utmost importance, it is not the only condition for the high quality of a journal. In fact, what counts for the quality of a journal is the right management of an allocated budget.

Tips for the post-review process of an article

The review process of an article may take several months to complete. However, when an article is reviewed, the authors are usually required to provide their replies to the comments of the reviewers in less than 2 weeks. In case the authors fail to follow this process, their article would be rejected and it should again be subjected to the review process.

Post-submission tips of an article

Most scientific journals are now equipped with journal management systems. In this regard, as soon as an author submits an article to a journal, s/he receives an automatic thank you e-mail. Some journals have stricter rules and ask for the e-mail address of all the authors involved in the article. Therefore, after submission, the thank you notes will be sent to all the author not the submitting author as a means of validating the authors’ identity.

Tips before the submission of an article

Before any decision to submit an article for a journal, the authors should consider some important issues. As a researcher, you can firstly ask a colleague to read your draft and give you his/her honest feedback. It is essential to choose a person who has not been involved in the article to have his/her unbiased criticism. Moreover, s/he should be warranted that his/her comments do not affect his/her relationship with you.

Stylistic elements of a scientific article

The main purpose of an article is to be published in media in order to inform the audience about some new changes to the word. Depending on the type of an article, the writing style of an article may vary. An academic article is the one which should follow not only an organized the format but also a consistent style. This essay deals with the stylistic issues that a researcher need to take into consideration.

Writing a medical article

An article is the byproduct of a research project written to inform the community of researchers about the project and avoid the performance of simultaneous similar studies. In this regard, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors presented a framework for research articles to enhance the quality of medical science and consistency among the medical researchers. Although the medical findings of the research can be presented in various formats, including case studies, a research article should generally have the following sections.

Declaration of Helsinki

Regarding the ethical issues in research, this Declaration was first adopted by the World Medical Association in 1964 at Helsinki to guide the biomedical researchers working with human participants. There were some modifications to the Declaration of Helsinki and the final revision was made in 2000 in Scotland. During 2002 and 2004, two clauses were added to two principles in this declaration. This declaration includes 32 articles in 3 sections. The following part explains some of the principals mentioned in the Declaration of Helsinki. 

Ethics in Research

Research ethics were first introduced as a result of Nuremberg trials in 1947 at the end of World Wide II when  23 doctors and bureaucrats were accused in the trials of military courts for their cruel rules against humanity. The reason for this was that a large number of physicians and military authorities conducted their experiments on a large number of individuals, who are unaware of the conducted studies. These experiments led to a high mortality rate. In this regard, the following ten points of the code were proposed to stop this condition:

Sample size determination

Sample size determination is an important step in conducting research since it should provide the necessary information about the population of the study. In case the sample size is smaller than expected, the obtained results of the study cannot be generalized to the target population. On the other hand, the larger the sample size the more precise the findings. However, it is not usually possible to have a large sample size due to research limitations, such as cost, time, or the convenience of collecting the data. There are different approaches to calculate the sample size:

Nonprobability sampling

Nonprobability sampling is a type of sampling, where members of sample are not chosen randomly. Unlike probability sampling, all members of population do not have an equal chance of being selected for the study. As a result, the obtained results of such studies cannot be generalized to the members of target population. In general, Nonprobability Read more about Nonprobability sampling[…]

Probability Sampling

In general, sampling is conducted in two types of probability sampling and non-probability sampling. In probability sampling there is an equal chance for all members of a population to be selected for the study. Therefore, each member has a known chance of being randomly chosen in the sample. The types of probability sampling are presented below.

Sampling

One of the important steps for researchers to conduct their study is the recruitment of research participants. Given this, the researchers need to identify the following elements of research.

Studies without control groups

There is a type of research conducted without any control groups. These studies cannot be considered trials and are mostly employed to investigate a method of diagnosis rather than examining the effect of a treatment or drug. The main disadvantage of these studies is that the researchers may consider their own method as the best available method since there is no comparison.

Sequential controlled clinical trials

Regarding our previous article on controlled clinical trials, this essay extends the discussion to the classification of sequential controlled trials.