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BMSA Research Series Part 2: A detailed introduction to research writing for medical students

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Summary

This on-demand teaching session is intended to equip medical professionals with research writing knowledge and skills. In just 30 minutes, learn the components and organization of a well-structured manuscript, referencing styles and ways to avoid plagiarism, and how to enhance and improve the quality of your writing to increase the chance of getting your paper published. Plus, discuss why and how to use research writing to contribute to career advancement, build networks and collaborations, and influence policy and change practice.

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Description

Building upon the success of our first research seminar, the Brunei Medical Students Association (BMSA) is excited to propose the second part of our research series. This online seminar aims to equip our members with essential skills and knowledge required for crafting high-quality research papers, conducting thorough literature reviews, critically appraising academic papers, and navigating the process of paper publication. We are honored to invite a distinguished Professor of Surgery, renowned for their extensive research experience, to lead this informative and interactive session.

Learning objectives

Learning Objectives:

  1. Identify and understand the components and organizational structure of a well-structured manuscript.
  2. Apply referencing styles and ethical research practices to manuscripts.
  3. Appraise the importance of research publishing in medical practice.
  4. Outline the stages involved in publishing a research paper.
  5. Summarize the components of a published research paper.
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Computer generated transcript

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The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.

I can't see. Yeah, that's OK. Um Oops. OK. So you can see my screen here. Yeah. Can you see my screen? Hello? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we can see your screen. You can see my screen. You can hear me quite, quite well as well. Yeah, we can hear you. All right. OK. So we'll, we'll, we'll get started. Um, as I said, um the, the presentation this, um this afternoon, uh this morning, in your case, it's uh introduction to research writing for medical students. Now, um I've decided to do this in um uh as a presentation rather than the interactive session. It's because the reason is because I think the uh um I mean, you, you guys are at, at different stages of uh uh research writing. I think some of you may have uh written papers and uh have, have, have been published already. Others will probably just be familiar, especially those from U BD will probably familiar with the S SM two manuscript writing. Uh that's quite well, quite different from actually for, for um uh publication because in publication, there are certain things that you have to, certain criteria that you have to fulfill. So what I'm going to do for the next half an hour or so is to present uh paper writing from the perspective of the editor. In other words, what are the editors looking for? Uh when you submit um your, your research or your research paper for publication? OK. So um have your objectives of um the session today. Well, the first one is to familiarize with components and the organization of a well structured manuscript. So you must know how to structure your manuscript logically, um including the different sections on introduction methods, results, and discussion. Uh a little bit about the uh referencing styles and um uh how to avoid plagiarism and maintain ethical research practices. So hopefully, uh with all this in mind, you should be able to enhance and improve your academic writing skills and increase the chance of getting your paper, your paper published because of the improved um quality of the manuscript. Now, first question, why? Right. F Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 who was an American novelist, said you're right because you have something to say from the medical point of view. You ha you you're right because you, you want to expand the frontiers of knowledge or you want to engage in academic discourse and intellectual exchange. The other thing that you want to do is perhaps to establish credibility and building reputation, reputation for yourself as well as your institution or your hospital. You may want to p publish because um you want to influence policy and change practice. For instance, you may decide to build networks or collaboration with other departments or other institutions. And most importantly, I think it's contributing to career advancement. As I mentioned at the top of the uh presentation today, it is important that um you know, doctors uh uh healthcare professionals, in order to advance in your career, you need to publish how many or how much you need to publish would depend on where you are. So if you are in an academic setting, publication is one of the KPIS, the key performance indicators, both for um you know, uh to stay in the job and as well as for promotion. The other reason why you want to write is because you want to disseminate knowledge to the public. Uh writing the article is only a small part of the publication journey. As you know, uh for publication, you need to start uh by securing funding for those of you who require funding. You need to conduct the research, write your article, submit your article and there's a whole host of processes after that, uh um uh before your, your paper gets published. And even if when after it's published, um you may also need to promote your article in in order for it to get cited to increase your citations, right? So before you s you start writing the article, there's some questions that you ask you, you need to ask yourself, first of all, who are your target readers, who is going to be interested in what you're going to write? Secondly, what is the existing knowledge on, on, on the subject or the topic that you're going to write about? How significant is your message? Is it gonna make any difference uh, whether you publish or not? And you had, if you do have some findings, how sound are your findings? Are there any flaws in your um in your, in your research findings? And lastly, is this a novel innovative work? I mean, something that, that is a groundbreaking uh uh uh finding or is it something that, that, that fills a gap or, or is it just part of the theory expansion or extension? Ok. So all these, you need to ask yourself before you embark on writing your article. There are some tips before getting started, take time to brainstorm because writing itself takes time and energy. So sit down, think about it, go through what you want to write and how you're gonna write it, make sure that you have enough material and data. I mean, obviously, if your data is very scarce, there's no point writing it, you need to have a full uh enough data in order to um uh to publish your, your material, read the current journals in the field of study, especially uh those articles that have been published within the last five years. Um An editor of a journal when he or she looks at your, um your reference list. One of the things that he or she looks at is the uh the timing of the, the, the c the articles that you, the references that you cite it's got to be, or most of them will have to be within the, the, the, the last 55 years. So if you cite references more than 10 years old, usually the the editor or the reviewer will ask you to give more up to date uh references. It's always good to seek help from experienced writers. There are people who have written uh uh uh before who have written a lot in the past, ask them uh how to approach uh when you, when you decide to, to write AAA manuscript, as I mentioned before, take time to outline and organize your manuscript. Once you have written your manuscript, don't be in a hurry to submit it, read it, go through it over and over again. You, you, you always find fault in your, in your 1st, 2nd or third revision. So you need to revise it a number of times before it is ready for submission. There are some external resources uh for, for guidance. I'll come to that uh uh a bit later in my, in my talk, one of the questions that editors ask is who are the authors and or rather who qualifies to be authors? An author is somebody who has made substantial contribution, either um uh in terms of concept or design of work or in the um acquisition analysis or interpretation of data or somebody who has drafted the article and revised it critically, not just somebody reading whole thing and say it's OK, that person has to revise it critically for important intellectual content. And last uh and, and that person, uh all the authors have to approve the version to be published. And most of the journal will require to put you to put in your cover letter that all the authors have read and approved the final version to be submitted. So it has to be stated. And um of course, all these authors will have uh participate sufficiently to take public responsibility for uh the appropriate portions of the content. So for those people who have contributed and they do not fall in um into one or, or, or more of those categories above, they should be listed only in the acknowledgement section. Now, if you look at uh an article, the uh a published article, it can be divided into different uh segments. OK? You can have the ones that I level in red. Those are the um the titles and the authors details. And then you, you have the ones in green, which is the main text or the mean bulk of the uh paper. And then you have the blue section which are the statements and some uh journals especially more and more nowadays would require you to submit supporting materials or supplementary files. Uh I'll come to that later. So what I'm going to do for the next 1520 minutes or so is to go through them, um uh one by one and uh uh and, and to, to, to tell you what the editors are looking for for each segment. Right? Let's start with the title. The title of the article has to be concise and informative. It has to be specific and accurate, relevant and interesting. So it should be keyword rich and the eye catching and unique if possible. OK. I'll show you an example of the article that we have published uh um uh uh after this slide. So the next one is the authors details for the authors details. Obviously, you need to put down your name, uh some journals required to put down your qualification as well. Uh your affiliation, um The institution where the work um uh was done uh addresses including uh email for those of you who have your uh or which is the uh open researcher and contributor i identifier if you have one of those um if you registered uh you can put that down as well. Now, some journals uh require you to put the authors detail on the separate uh page. So you do not include that in the main, in the main submission. Uh The reasons for that is that uh these journals practice um an anonymized review. So the the the reviewers who review your article would not know uh where or who or where the the manuscript um originated from. Then we come to the abstract, abstract is a brief summary of the article. It has to be concise informative and accurate. Most art most journals will ask for abstracts of less than 250 words. And um uh it can be, it can be structured or unstructured structure means it's divided into background, into methods, into results and the conclusion or it can be just one or two paragraphs which are not structured. Now, abstract is a stand alone document. In other words, if you read your abstract, you should have a gist or rather the readers should have a gist of what the article is about. And it's usually the the part of the, the the the part of the manuscript that are sent to reviewers for the reviewers to decide whether the reviewers would accept um uh the invitation to re to review the paper, right? This is an article that we published uh which was published earlier this year in a Asia Journal of Surgery is one is an uh a, a research that that I did with a couple of colleagues of mine from uh from rebu hospital, a surgeon and a pathologist. Now, if you look at the um this example, uh you see the type of article right at the top it says it's an original article. Obviously, when you submit an article to uh uh uh uh a journal, it, it comes, it can be commentary, it can be original article, it can be a review article. So some, most of the journals would like you to specify what uh what type of article it is. So this particular one is the, is an original article and that's the title that we came up with. Now, if you read that title it, it, it, it, you know, it more or less tells you what the uh the paper is about. OK? It's, it's on breast paranoma for those of you who don't know what it is. It's where uh uh you this all this unqualified beautician, what they, what they do is they inject paraffin into female breasts in order to augment them. So that's called pa breast parainoa. And it is not as innocent as it looks because it can lead to uh uh very bad or disfiguring um um complications for, for, for the women. So it is a breast paranoma and obsolete but still important condition. So, so by reading that, you know, that not a lot of people practice it now because it's obsolete, but it's still important. Why is it important? We'll come to that later. But the reason why is I can tell you now it is important because the complications develop 2030 or 40 years later. So if a, if a woman has had the, the injection done, uh say, you know, uh this year, the complications won't come until 20 or 30 years later. So, in other words, although this um type of uh um procedure uh was done about 2030 years ago and we're beginning to see or we are starting to see some of the complications now. So it is obsolete but still important. And then the next part of the, the title is Experience With 60 Cases. In other words, I'm going to tell you or I'm sharing with the readers our experience of management with 60 of these cases. And I'm go, I'm going to do a literature review. So I'm gonna tell everyone uh what is happening um uh to this particular uh topic for the last uh wha or what has been published in the literature. So by, by looking at this title, it will tell you a lot of in it. It has already told you a lot of information that it is a condition called breast paranoma. It's something that's obsolete, but it's still important. And we want, we want to share our experience with 60 cases and we want to share uh what has been written about it in the literature. OK. Then of course, the authors detail that, that that's quite straightforward. Now, abstract, there are some important points about the abstract. Usually you, you would leave your abstract after you have written the whole paper. Uh why the reason is because a abstract is usually a result of a combination of different parts of your paper. So you pick up the statements from the, from your introduction, from your method, from your results and your discussion. And what happens now is that you need to put them together to form a logical flaw. So in other words, you have to carefully edit it. All right. So make sure that the sentences are cohesive and it makes sense. So one leads to, to, to the next so on and so forth. OK. Now, uh I mentioned before that most journals require to you to have uh abstract of less than 250 words and you need to adhere to that. Nowadays, you can actually submit your articles online and, and some of the online platform, they have an abstract column for you to fill in the abstract and it doesn't actually allow you if your abstract is more than 250 words. So you can't, you can't save that abstract unless it's less than 250 words. So it's got an inbuilt mechanism to restrict you to 250 words and below. OK. Some of the journals, as I said before allow you to um break your abstract into subheadings. In other words, you can, you can start with a background with uh uh your methodology, introduction, methodology, your results and your conclusion. So the next part of the, the article are the keywords. OK, keywords helps the keywords help with online uh discoverability. So it is actually used by indexes and search engines to find relevant papers. So in other words, you pick up um um important words from your um uh paper and use them as keywords so that when people search those keywords that should be able to find and retrieve your paper. OK. Most of the journals require 4 to 5 keywords and some journals even have a bank of keywords for you to choose on. So you can't just use any keywords you like, you have to follow uh the keywords selected by the journal. This again the same paper. Uh our paper um you can see the keywords on the left hand side. So our keywords for this particular paper is uh breast paraffin injection. So we know that it is uh uh something to do with breast. It is something to do with paraffin injection. It is something to do with paraffin noma, which is a condition that develops after paraffin injection. And one of the things that we wanted to look at is um what is its relationship with breast cancer. So those are the keywords that we chose and our abstract um as shown here. Uh And the, and this is a structured abs abstract with background methods, um results and conclusions. So by reading the abstract, you will have an idea of what the paper is it's about. So we go to the um next to the article structure proper. So the main uh text of the article we start with introduction. So for these, there are some questions that you would like to ask yourself for. Introduction. First question, what is the purpose of the study? What was the hypothesis that you wanted to prove? And um what is already available? What earliest researchers have done to solve the problem? And what are the gaps that you need to address? So the answers that you need to put in this particular section is you need to lay down the background of the work. OK. What is already known about it and where the gaps are and address and the reason why you have conducted the research and usually, well, uh uh uh more often than not in the introduction section, you need to put in the citations especially uh for the background of the work. If you're going to quote other people's work or what is already known, you have to cite them since our introduction. All right. So, as you can see, we started with um what, what uh what the b uh a breast paraffin noma is. So, in other words, it's an injection of a paraffin. What is paraffin? Paraffin is a high viscosity liquid? So we give a bit of history on the liquid paraffin injection and um why it is important. So that's the next paragraph. Uh because when, when liquid paraffin is injected into the uh into the breast tissue or the breast parenchyma. Initially, it is asymptomatic but it may develop inflammatory reactions. And it goes on to say that uh initially, uh the inflammation would settle. And only after decades, um years or decades later that they developed masses, ok, a mass in, in, in, in the breast. So that's an introduction. Um Again, uh if you can see the top left hand corner, uh we all as part of the introduction, we also explain why we uh why we want to write where we are doing this research. In other words, we uh we want to ex to share our experience in managing the 60 patients uh that we have uh over uh uh I think over the 1010, 2020 year period. OK. Next one, the next segment of the article is the materials and methods. So the questions that you would like to ask yourself for this section is what method did you use and why did you use it? And what was the technique? Basically, if it's going to be a laboratory, um a paper you need to describe your technique. And if it's uh uh uh uh uh a research on a group of um uh patients or a group of study subjects, what samples did you use and how did you select them? So, in other words, you need to, to, to describe um the um the way that you um you sample your um your patients And under this section two, you may want to include uh the ethics approval. And if you're going to use patients uh details data or even clinical pictures, you need to have informed consent. So the answer for this particular section is II is that you need to describe the data that you're going to use, describe your research protocol protocol. And if you use any algorithms explain why you use them and uh which statistic tools uh use. So you need to, to, to um uh to list all this in your materials and methods. So under methodology, there are some important points to consider. You have to describe the research design. And participants explain how you collect your data, uh details any materials or any instruments that are used in your study, explain how you collected your data and how you analyze your data. And if you use uh any recognized method of calculation or any uh laboratory procedures, you need to cite them and you need to clearly and precisely describe how the work was done and why specific methods are chosen. And it is under this section two that you address ethical considerations, um acknowledge your limitations and uh ensure your uh reproducibility. What it means is that the reason why you, you need to, to put in all these is because if someone else, some other research party or someone else is going to repeat your um um your, your study, you should be able to do. So according to what you have done. So sometimes what happens that in the research world um when you produce some uh uh significant research, it always leads to other uh uh researchers proving yours before it is accepted as a, as an accepted uh uh concept or an accepted methods. So in other words, you need to, to describe all this in your paper, so that other pa other researcher or other group of researcher can actually uh reproduce your your results. Oh This is the same uh uh slide that I used uh two or three slides ago. But this time illustrating the materials and methods uh as you can see uh in the material and methods, I described um the the period of study and where the study was done and how the data uh was uh collected and specifically mentioned that this is uh or it was a retrospective study. And um I also mentioned that the ethical approval study was obtained um and then describe about the uh the patient that we're going to study and what and what was done. So we mentioned about patients actually being seen by a clinician patients, underwent imaging uh ultrasound mammography, CT scan MRI and some of them even had the fine needle aspiration cytology. So all the procedures that were done on the patients uh were described in detail. Um This particular slide again, uh mentions about methods and uh uh the methods and material or the methodology. But what I want to show you is the two is part 2.2. I remember my uh title. It says literature is, it says breast uh Parapherocera Review was done. So if you look at 2.2 I mentioned that the literature review was done um by searching using keywords such as breast paranoma, breast paraffin injection um and the various other other terms uh other terms as well and where the uh the search was done in this particular case, it was done um using the uh the P uh PM. OK. And I also mentioned that uh I only include all the English studies by excluding all the uh uh studies that are done in other other languages. And I also mentioned data extraction, how the data was extracted. OK. So next part of your article would be the results, results is obviously what answers did you get? OK. That's a question. The answer is that uh you have your results but you need to present them. Uh There are a number of ways you can present you, you can present your results, you can use text uh uh or if you want, you can supplement this with uh tables figures and uh and graphs. OK. So under the result section, if you have complications that that needs to be uh mentioned in, in your results section as well. So for tables figures and graphs, um they are useful for presenting data and visualizing your results because uh it gives clarity consistency. Uh don't forget to label your table, your graphs and your figures and some of them, you, if you, if you have uh um if you are citing other peop other researchers uh work, you need to give uh proper citation for that. Um Look at the uh journal guidelines for tables uh figures and graphs. The reason is because some journals only allow you to uh a maximum number of tables, graphs, figures or graphs. So you can't use too many. OK. And uh with tables, figures and graphs, you must have a legend. OK. So your legend must be clear, concise and accurately reflect the data presented in your figures, tables or graphs. Oh, um You can see this slide. Now, I'm presenting my uh my, my, my results. So when I presented the result, I actually break them up into different sections, for example, uh because this is a clinical study. So I started with patient demographics, then uh went on to the presenting symptoms and um uh the clin the imaging, the investigations and uh uh management, whether the patients had surgery or not. And what are the complications uh uh after that or how do you then your data? Well, it depends on the uh the studies that, that you, the study that you have performed. If it's a quantitative study, then um it, you, you, you have to present the demographic data first. That's usually presented first. So you have to remind the reader uh of the research questions being addressed or the hypothesis being tested, uh state differences which are significant and highlight the important trends or differences or comparisons. And you may want also at this stage to indicate whether the hypothesis is supported or not. But if your study consists of qualitative studies, uh these, you can do the presentation and discussion of qualitative data Uh combined, you can do that. Some, some are some uh articles uh they do that and uh being qualitative is usually expressed in words only. So make sure it's well structured. And uh um uh the the readers will um we, we, we will be, we'll find them easy to follow. You have to be consistent. Um certain uh choices of terminology and nomenclature are used. You may use, you may choose to use headline uh headings and sub subheadings for qualitative experimental studies. Um The results almost always presented separately from discussion and for experimental study, it is it is best uh illustrated in tables and figures. OK. So point out the differences in relationships and provide information including negative results. This is an example of a table. Um You, you summarize table is best used to summarize large amount of related data. And it's usually um um self-explanatory meaning you look at the table and you will understand what the table is about. Similarly for graphs, it gives you a AAA nice uh visualization of your data. And especially when you want to show a trend in the data, it's best represented in a graph. OK. Uh This is an example uh the illustration of our uh paper and you see can as you can see for uh patient demographics presentations, uh patient assessment and treatment and follow up, it's all done on, on the uh all presented on the uh in in in the table. You may also want to send your data um using imaging, for example, uh act scan or even patients uh uh photographs. Um check the authors guideline for im imaging size and specifics because some of them uh some of the journals require you to, to, to submit certain pixels high pixel um pictures because if it's too blurry, they, they may not accept uh your, your pictures. So your pictures have to be uh highest quality, try not to edit your pictures too much. OK? You may want to do to edit once or twice but not more, more, more, more than that. And uh if you want to illustrate certain things on the, on your illustration, make sure you put in arrow head arrowheads. OK? Um If you're using histopathology slides, please use um uh please provide the stain that use and the magnifications. So for histopathology slides, make sure that you have the stains uh used mentioned and also the magnification of your uh microscopy have your original available. And uh if you're going to show the pa patients faces. Uh you need to get consent uh from the patients. This is uh our example. And uh what that's what I meant by breast paranoma if you can see the picture uh label A. So this is how the patient would present 20 or 30 years later. So you get uh lumpy disfigured based uh uh breast tissue 20 or 30 years after paraffin injection. So one quick look at this, you probably think that the patient has bilateral breast cancer. Uh So it can be uh a misleading. So B is our, is the ultrasound scan of uh uh the, the, the, the paranoma and C is the mam mammogram. As you can see, it's just the whole thing is just white and d if you can see the, the breast, the right breast, there is a uh a couple, there are a couple of rounded structures uh in there, those are breast paraphomia. So this uh this is how we presented our, our clinical and um uh imaging. So it has to be uh labeled and uh described as you can see in the legend. And of course, in the picture, a we obtain consent from the, from the patient before we publish this. Oh Moving on to discussion now, discussion means what do the results mean? Uh what is the impact of a previous studies in relation to your present studies? So what, what does your study mean? Uh in the whole uh con uh concept or con context of uh uh uh uh uh the, the, the the condition. Um Does it answer your question? Because when you started in the introduction, you have some questions. So uh did you manage to answer those questions? So in other words, for discussion, you need to interpret and critically analyze your results, compare your results from uh from previous studies. Um You have to discuss the limitation of your results and highlight any unexpected results and uh mention how your results add value to those uh from the previous studies. Under the discussion, there are six key points that need to be included. Uh You need to summarize the key points. And uh you need to mention how your research uh fits into the field as a whole. Um Whether your work um um uh has full, has filled the gaps in that part in the field and or has it uh modified current view and uh what lies beyond the edge of current knowledge. And you may also want to suggest the future directions um in terms of research for the condition that you have studied. This is our uh paper again, as you can see uh the results followed by the discussion. So discussion is usually uh straightforward and uh and simple. You only um a uh analyze and also describe uh or discuss uh what you have what you have found. So last bit for the main text is the conclusion. So what are the implications of the research? Why is, why do you think your paper is important? And what future studies do you recommend? So for to answer that you need to restate your hypothesis, you started off with a hypothesis. So you have to restate that and then uh mention your most important findings and uh give the audience or the readers a take home message, highlight the overall significance of your study and don't forget to mention the limitation of your study and also the future direction uh for uh for research in this particular field, this is our conclusion. As you can see conclusions is usually short and sweet and concise. So for results discussion, conclusions and limitations, you have to ask yourself the following questions are results presented in the way that best emphasize the findings are these sections free of supported generalization assumptions. So do not make any supported generalization assumptions. So what you mentioned has to be backed up by either your finding or what has already been done in the literature. So, are your conclusions appropriate? And uh are there any uh appropriate limitations and directions uh and mention about directions for future research too? OK. So that's the main part of the uh article. So there are other smaller parts of the article uh right towards the end. Uh For example, acknowledgement as I mentioned before, um you detail any contributors that are not listed as uh uh as authors. So those people who do not fulfill the criteria for authors, authors should be placed under acknowledgement and there should be statements and dec dec declaration. So this is the part where you would uh declare your conflict of interest and uh declare funding if you have received funding for your research. And even if you don't, you need to mention that you do, you do not have conflict or you don't have conflict of interest and you did not receive funding. So most of the journals would like to specifically mention that uh if none of these exist documented. OK. So the last one is the reference list. Uh you list all the articles cited in the paper and you must follow the style of the journal. So we'll come to that uh uh uh uh uh a bit later. And as I mentioned it earlier on in my, in my presentation, most of the uh journals now require you to submit supply supplementary files, supplementary files. Uh For example, your raw data, uh any supporting material, it can be a, a file, it can be a film, uh It can be a video and, and, and also as I mentioned, as I mentioned just now raw data. So you can put that all as a supply as supplementary files. And sometimes what happens is that in some of the journals, you, you don't need to submit it, but you need to keep it because if a reader uh uh is interested in your supplementary file. You should uh have uh uh access for the for uh for the reader to, to, to get your supplementary file. In other words, the reader may contact you directly for those supplementary files. Oh, this is our the end of our paper, as you can see. Um all the different sections are there. So we have ethics mentioned, fundings mentioned, although we did not receive any specific grant of funding, but we have to mention that no funding was received um conflict of interest uh acknowledgement. And um it is also quite uh us quite uh um usual now for journals to ask for authors contribution. So say for example, our paper just now had uh has three authors, then you need to specify each what the authors have done for that uh for this paper. So most of the journals now require you to um to mention that or referencing uh referencing. So what is referencing referencing is to tell reader where ideas from other sources have been used in your manuscript? So what is it important to reference sources correctly? Well, it shows that you can find and use uh the sources to create solid argument. In other words, you have done a proper literature search, you have to properly credit the originators of ideas, theories and the research findings and shows how your argument relates to a bigger pic picture and the most important thing for referencing is to avoid plagiarism. So you can actually quote uh other people's uh data, other authors uh um uh description. But as long as you cite it, as you cite it in your, in your reference, then it is, it's not considered as plagiarism, what needs to be referred then. Well, anything really, it can be words, facts, ideas, theories, interpretation. So it can be a manuscript, it can be a journal article, a book, a book, chapter, a conference paper, a pamphlet, even an internet site. Nowadays, if you look at uh if you read the articles, you see a lot of internet sites uh been uh been uh cited and referenced, even a film, a short film, long film. So if you mention that in your text, it has to be cited in the reference section. So when do you do it? Well, if you copy words from a book article or another source word by word, you have to uh cite it, you have to reference it even if you don't copy word by word, even by using the idea um by it, paraphrasing it or summarizing it, you still have to cite it. OK. So there are two elements in referencing. One is called the intact citation. This is the one that you actually inserted in your introduction or uh in the in the main text. And uh and uh obviously the next one is the reference list at the end of the assignment Yeah. What's the difference between reference list and uh and the bibliography you've mentioned bi mean, you, you have come across bibliography in some of the articles. Well, reference list contains details of only the work cited in the, in the text. All right, in your document. B gray source is not usually cited in the text, but they can be relevant to the subject. So you can list that so that your uh interested reader can read if he or she wants to learn more about the the topic of interest. So not necessarily cited, well, not cited in your text or in the document, but you may want to include it at the end so that interested reader can actually uh look it up and find out more about uh the topic. Yeah. So uh this is our our references um also then referencing styles. Um the the the citation uh usually includes the author's name, the title of the article, the journal name, the year, the volume pages uh publishing companies. And nowadays, even the do I the digital object identifier um are usually uh cited. So an example is the one at the bottom, you can see the author's name, the article, the journal, uh the abbreviation, the year, the issue, the pages. And also the do I uh had a number of referencing or citation styles uh used in by different uh journals? Uh I think the ones that you are most of us are familiar with uh either the Harvard referencing or the Vancouver referencing. The important thing here is that you always check the uh authors instruction and read and have a copy of the article that you want to submit, have a copy of the journal that you want to submit to and get uh an article from that particular journal and read and look at the referencing style. So you have to follow the referencing style. The reason why this is important is because some uh journals are quite strict on, on the formatting. So if you do not format, do not format according to their requirement, um the the the your manuscript will get will be either be rejected or it will be returned to you for uh changes. Uh Even before it is sent for reviewing, um I've mentioned about referencing style and all that, I mean for those of you who have done the referencing before you know that there are certain tools on the market, for example, uh en nodes Mandalay and Sotero. Um these are the ones that are already available which can help you with referencing. These are Softwares for storing and managing information resources. You can actually import references from search engines, database and websites. Uh It can save um the all these treatments for you. You can insert citations and create bies on the word documents. So there are others on the market like Bit me citation machine, et cetera, et cetera. So now, you know what the, what the editors are looking for. So when you prepare your manuscript for submission, make sure that you read and follow the manuscript submission guidelines. So it's different for different journals, make every effort, effort to improve the quality of a manuscript. As I said, when you finish a manuscript, don't think that it's all done, just read it. And it's even better if you can ask uh people that uh your colleagues or your superior who have published before, ask them to read the, the, the, the journal and ask them to comment on your journal, be very objective about your work. And when you submit your paper, uh make sure that it has a funding statement, a conflict of interest and it has complete ethics statements. These three statements are, are very important as I mentioned, the first two, even you, you, you, you do not have funding or you do not have conflict of interest. You must mention that um that, that, that you do not have funding and you do not have conflict of interest. Always abide by research ethics. Now, when you submit your article to a journal, submit one journal at a time, OK. Don't say well, I want to improve my chance of submission. I will, I will uh uh chance of uh acceptance. I will submit my article to five different journals at the same time. Don't do that. The, the reason you don't do, don't do that is is uh you, you don't want to do that is because um uh uh uh sometimes a reviewer can be um the same reviewer from different journals. So if a, if a reviewer accepts uh an article for uh reviewing and finds out that it is the same article from two or three journals, it it will you, you're actually wasting the um the reviewer time. Reviewers, times are very precious. Um uh Nearly all I can tell you all the reviewers do it uh out of the kindness of their heart, they don't get paid for reviewing papers. Uh In the introduction, you may, I'm uh the the the host mentioned that I was I'm a reviewer from 20 different Scopus index uh journals. That's correct. II get at least one or two papers uh for to review every month. So my my time is very precious. So I don't want to get the same uh article from from two or three different um journals. So you don't want to waste the reviewer's time. That's the reason why you only uh submit to one. OK. And uh in your cover in your cover letter, you have to mention that you only submit to one part to this particular journal and uh uh no other jo no, you have not submitted to any other journals except the one that you submitted to now. So that has to be mentioned in the cover letter uh your life is now simple, simpler with online manuscript submission. So nearly all the journals now can be submitted online and you have proper platform uh to do that. So that makes your life much, much easier mission checklist. So these are the check, this is a list of checklists that you have to go through before you submit. Make sure your word limits are correct. For example, if it's going to be a research, some most of the journal accept up to about 6 3000 or 5000 words. But if you're only submitting a case report, it's usually about uh 1000 or 1500 words. So make sure that you keep within the word limits. Uh The article structure as I mentioned, read the journals uh uh submission guideline, uh the referencing style and the uh uh an M IZATION status. In other words, some journals require um you to submit uh uh uh uh a text without the um uh mention your name or the institution that you are from. OK. And you will also need a co cover letter. Make sure that you attain you have obtained permission for all the copyright material consent. If you use a patient's data, uh have your supplement, supplementary data available. You can either submit it uh if the the journal requires it or keep it uh when uh your reader uh ask for it. OK. Some uh journal uh publishing houses actually uh assist the uh authors whose English is not. Uh if English is not your primary language, they can help you with English language editing service if you need it uncommon mistakes to avoid uh not thoroughly reviewing submission guidelines. So in other words, uh not following the not reading submission guidelines carefully and not uh following it. Um The the guidelines uh forming is important as I mentioned, um not appropriate fit for the journal. Say, for example, if you have uh um uh uh uh uh uh uh say uh research on psychiatry and you would like to submit it to a surgical journal. Obviously, that's out of the scope of the journal, wrong manuscript type. So uh if it's a research article, it's a research article. And if it's a commentary or if it's a review, make sure that you mention it uh uh properly before you submit it, poor grammar and syntax. Uh That's um again, make sure that um it doesn't happen. Uh sometimes uh especially the top journals, if you have insufficient novelty, they will not accept it. So this is what we saw called the me two me two articles. In other words, somebody has already published, say, for example, uh 50 or such cases and then you come up with another 50. So it's what we call a Me two article. So it doesn't actually contribute much to the literature except increasing the number from 50 to 100. So most of the journals do not accept unless you have some uh sufficient novelty to the paper, uh or, or your findings. OK. So, citation, as I mentioned, referencing that that's very important. So make sure that uh uh your, your other people's will appro cited in your paper. Um So the, I think one, what the last slide or, or the one slide before the last one. Now I've spent the last sort of 35 40 minutes talking about how you would write a paper and uh uh what the editors are looking for. I mean, obviously we are in the day and age of uh A I now. So there are a lot of a isa I tools available on the market which can assist you. So if you make your life easier, uh we used to do uh used to take about, you know, a week or two to write a paper. Nowadays, you can write paper within two or three days by using this A I two. But what is important is that you will still need to know uh how to write a paper properly because A I two will only help you to write a paper. It doesn't actually write, it doesn't actually write the paper for you. OK? So you need to know what you're looking for. You need to know what uh how you're gonna present the data. And all these A I tools will help you to do that, but you will not write the whole paper for you. And very importantly, also be very careful when you use A I two, check your references carefully, check your facts carefully because um uh some of the um uh the, the comments from the A from the A I 2 may not be accurate and we may not be cited properly. So there is a danger of plagiarism uh if you use A I two. So these are the difference. So I'm not gonna go through them, but just to say that uh you're probably familiar with uh uh a few of them. And this is the, the next, the uh the, the next slide and turn it in is the one that uh U BD uh uh uses uh now to de to detect plagiarism. So there are others uh on, on, on the market uh for literature search. The last one. Research rabbit, that's a good one. So if you're interested, look it up, if you don't know about it, go, go look it up. It's very good and very useful for literature search. So that's the uh last slide. So happy writing everyone. Hello. So thank you so much for giving us that talk. And um as always, if anyone has any questions, please feel free to use the chat box to share your questions. Uh So I see that there are some questions. So I'll just read it out for you. OK. So one question is based on your experience, are there any specific journals that you would recommend for submit a paper regarding patients in Brunei.