Where to publish qualitative research?

[Organic Chemistry]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I am interested in conducting qualitative research, because sometimes, it is really fun to just get down for an interview, and talk with participants about the "why" or "how" of important issues, instead of quantifying them. Personally, I have an interest in qualitative research for clinical medicine, such as issues with equity in medicine, marginalized populations and medical education. I have done some qualitative research in the past, but it was in a previous career of mines and only tangentially related to medicine.

Currently, I am having some difficulty in finding reputable (not predatory, ideally Pubmed indexed) journals for publishing them, but the only big journals I know about are BMJ Open and PLOS One, but that's it. It's not easy, since other disciplines, like nursing, public health or psychology, seem to be more welcoming towards qualitative research.

 

[sloop]

This is going to depend a lot on the actual article. If you have an advisor you can reach out to at your institution, they could probably give you better advice.

My experience has been that medical ethics/bioethics type journals are often open to this type of research, but you would have to read their descriptions as to the scope of the journal and look back a few issues to see if they’ve ever published something roughly similar in style or methods.

Public health journals, as you have mentioned, also are sometimes open to this type of research. Medical education journals often are, too.

You also don’t necessarily have to publish in a journal that is directly tailored to the field you are in or are interested in. Your manuscript just has to be relevant to the journal’s readers and within the journal’s scope. For the topics you listed, public health, medical ethics, and medical education oriented journals all seem like they could be appropriate.

The other thing that can become an issue in some types of qualitative research is word/page count. Obviously, as always, you’ll want to try to make the points you are trying to make in as few words as possible given limitations of space, but some types of research really just lend themselves to longer manuscripts and it can be difficult to pare down past a certain point without removing discussions of entire points/concepts. If your research is of this type, looking at the page limits will also be helpful in developing a short list.

The long and short of it is that you shouldn’t be afraid to submit to a journal in an adjacent field to the one you’re currently in. Many of the fields you mentioned would probably review the type of research you’re describing. The specifics of which journal you should submit to are going to depend on features of the actual manuscript: the topic, the length, the style, etc.

 

[mvenus929]

Agree with what sloop said. Journals that have previously been very quantitative may have difficulty accepting a qualitative article, but I've seen a lot of qualitative articles come out in the past few years. It's all about how you frame it, especially for an audience that may not be as familiar (or at all familiar) with qualitative research practices. One of the reasons I think med students need to be taught how to evaluate qualitative literature as well.

MedEd journals definitely publish qualitative studies. If you're looking at something more clinically focused, then the public health journals might be a better option. Investigating why patients with diabetes don't take insulin may be useful information for endocrinologists, but you'd probably get more traction in the public health literature.

Our hospital has an outcomes research arm that does a lot of qualitative research (and even puts on a series to get more people interested in it). You might look to see if your medical school or hospital has something similar, or ask some of those with a more social science background (the psychologists and ethicists come to mind) if there are any resources available for you.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

You kinda answered your own question. Qualitative research goes into psychology and social science journals.

I mean, heck, there's literally a journal call "Qualitative Research"

SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

Subscription and open access journals from SAGE Publishing, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com