What's a resident's role in getting published?

[ladysmanfelpz]

A couple of medical student's decided to write a case report of a patient we saw. They hammered it out pretty quick and our attending was pretty excited as a good unique case. So now what to do? Do we just reach out to journals and ask if they will publish? What about publishing fees that are crazy high on some journals? And what should a resident's role be in this? I would like to lower the load on the attending and help facilitated the students with their questions and get this thing published.

Thanks for the help.

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[GoSpursGo]

Hoo boy.

Your intention to lower the load on the attending is admirable, but if you have never published before and have no idea about the process then you're going to need their guidance to at least figure out which journals to target. Many journals do not accept case reports, so knowing which journals in their field might take them is needed to even start the process. Once you target a couple of journals, undoubtedly having the resident figure out how to actually submit would be very helpful.

Ask about the publication fees with the attending and make sure they have some sort of professional funds that can offset the cost of publication if accepted.

 

[ladysmanfelpz]

Similar responses are what I've been getting. He did go over some he desired, but unfortunately a lot have high publishing fees. We do have one submission pending. I am more curious as to how to go about it. I've just emailed contact us links on some of the journals with some helpful responses, others not. Shouldn't each journal have a hyperlink at the bottom as to who to contact regarding interest in submitting as well as any cost associated? I feel like that would be reasonable.

Some helpful tips on the actual process of it, what to look for, who to contact, and other helpful tips would be appreciated. I can do the grunt work after that.

Thanks.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Similar responses are what I've been getting. He did go over some he desired, but unfortunately a lot have high publishing fees. We do have one submission pending. I am more curious as to how to go about it. I've just emailed contact us links on some of the journals with some helpful responses, others not. Shouldn't each journal have a hyperlink at the bottom as to who to contact regarding interest in submitting as well as any cost associated? I feel like that would be reasonable.

Some helpful tips on the actual process of it, what to look for, who to contact, and other helpful tips would be appreciated. I can do the grunt work after that.

Thanks.

Most journals have an author guideline page, and should explicitly say if they accept case reports and what the processing fees are. The "contact us" links are going to be useless--unless the journal explicitly does or does not accept case reports, they are almost universally going to tell you to go ahead and submit the paper and the managing editor can determine if it is of interest. But for the first pass you should be able to figure out whether a journal is open to your case report by reading the author guidelines--that is part of the grunt work you need to do on your own.

 

[mvenus929]

Practically speaking, you should be targeting a specific journal before you write, rather than writing up something and hoping to get it published somewhere. Each journal is going to have its own structure and while you can tweak things, it's easier to start making sure you meet the guidelines rather than having to retrofit it. Something I didn't understand as a medical student.