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Now that you've started, don't compromise, don't cut corners. Number one, it, it just is unethical because you maybe have not got the approval for what you're trying to do. Um And number two, when you come to publishing and you should publish and we get there later, it's very hard to then sort of um justify why, why you've done it. And number three, it's a slippery slope. Your lower age limit for your project is 10. Somebody comes in who's 9.5. 0 my goodness. It's so difficult to um recruit. Let's go down 9.5 in six months time. You're gonna go down to nine and then 8.5. And by the end you've got a completely new topic, um new, new um co of patients and subjects for your project, then you started avoid be strict to the protocol that you, that you have done. And if it does need to, to be changed, make sure that you do it through the ethics direction. Careless handling of data that could be documentation. Um If it's supposed to be anonymized, it should be anonymized, but make sure you have your anonymization code somewhere, do not lose it because there's, if there's some information you want to go back to collect on that particular patient. If you don't have your code and you can't remember what your patient is is, you can't go back to collect it. If you don't document carefully, you, you come back to analysis. You think where is that missing information and always document to the lowest common factor. It's very well. If you say to yourself, we want to separate Children from adults when you write up. So all I'm going to collect is whether they're a child or an adult. Then somebody says to you actually was there a difference between the 10 to 15 year olds and the 15 to 20 year olds, you didn't document age because you thought we only care about child, you can't go back. Whereas if you document the precise age, you can go back later on and form them into groups. So try and manage your data in, in the lowest possible feasible and you know, sensible denominator and then storing the data. Um You may have some consent forms that are on paper, but you might have um data that's on one Excel spreadsheet. Avoid. If it's on one Excel spreadsheet, then you must, you have to have it on a cloud storage somewhere that is safe, that as backup, ideally back it, have it on your computer, have it on, on the cloud, have it on somebody else's account, have it on your, you know, related to your uh your Apple ID. So that you can always just make sure you have more than one copy and in more than one place um falsifying data, we obviously all know that this is incorrect. Um And ethical and actually, you know, when you falsify data, then you have to ask yourself why you're doing the project. We should be in it because we want to answer questions that will help patients that will improve lives. The only reason you're falsifying data is because you want a preconceived outcome and maybe that outcome would be to get in published in nature because this is a new a answer, but that's wrong. Or maybe that outcome, you wanted to get a publication for yourself, that's also wrong. The, the there, there was no, if you're in it to get a true answer to a question, a meaningful question, you will not be falsifying the data, um incorrect analyses, which is, which is different to falsifying. It's because you haven't understood the statistics. Um And maybe you haven't got the statistician on your team who, who um can do it for you. Um So by incorrect analyses, I mean, you're trying your best but you've got it wrong. Er and this can actually completely skew the, the, the results that we get in the end. And again, people are reading your papers and going to take action based on your results but if it's wrong, it's, it, it's um maybe, maybe the actions we take will be wrong. And then there are publishing issues plagiarizing. Sometimes we do that by accident because the review and it's written and you pick up a paragraph that fits into your own paper that's, you know, but avoid it falsifying authorship. There are clear I CMJ E guidelines for, for who should be an author and who should not. And you might think you're helping this person, you're actually not. It's we, you need to make sure that the correct authors are there before you even begin and, and it kind of goes into set up. And it's one of the things that maybe goes along with 0.1 choosing a good team. But at the very beginning, you need to say who is first author, who is senior author. Um um and sort that out at the beginning. And then again, that last point at the bottom not attempting to publish is an issue because you may have you sent out, you use all this time and all this resource and it's actually again, some sort of not ethical not to present the results and maybe the results are going to help people in the future. And I and I say attempting because sometimes you, you know, with, with all the best will in the world, your work doesn't get accepted in any paper, but you have to have tried. And the next part of the talk, which is what I thought I was going to talk about is is going to help you get your work published. I hope how to get your work published. My perspective as a managing editor of pediatric Radiology, which I've been doing for three years now. Um I've taken excerpts from letters to the authors that I have written. All the comments I'm showing are only my own. I'm not showing any of the reviewers and they have been anonymized and all of this is in good faith as constructive um criticisms and not in a way to shame or embarrass anybody if one of these papers happens to be yours. And it's my perspective as an editor, we can all look at the same thing and perceive it to be different. Most of us will not submit a paper for publication if we're not happy with it. So we will be happy with our paper. We've put in our sweat and blood over the years, we've written it, we, we love it and we submit and so we obviously our perspective is it's fantastic and then you get the reviewers comments and they may be varied and then you get the editor's comment and that and that will be different too. So all of us will see things from a different perspective. Ultimately, first of all, just a brief summary of how the publication cycle goes here. You are the researcher you've written, you've submitted sometimes it gets sent to you before returned to you, returned to sender, even before I as a managing editor, any of my reviewers have seen it. Why? Because of inconsistencies. So the the, the Springer Springer publishes our journal pediatric radiology. Um the Springer team will think that there's inconsistencies in the title or in the authors. It's not anonymized. We operate a double blind peer review process which I think is really good. There are unconscious biases even when I see sometimes in the title, a AAA an observational study in Nigeria that sometimes makes me feel like I want to get rid of that in Nigeria because some somebody may straight away be thinking hm not gonna be as good as if it came out from in, in the United States or in the United Kingdom. You know, it's an unconscious bias that they, they that would so I would actually like not to see all of that. It, it means that the review is based, not knowing where the work was done and, and they, and they can be objective in that way and then if they were missing things. So so through some of these issues, it would get sent back to you as the author before I've even seen it. But then assuming it comes to me every single paper that comes, I would do an initial review. This is not a detailed in depth review, it's really skimming through what is the topic is it interesting? Is it relevant? I may straight away reject it without sending it out for review or what usually happens. So the numbers that get rejected straight off would be somewhere in the region of 5 to 10%. Um And then the other um 90% or so go for peer review. We may then reject, we may ask you to res resubmit which is a rejection, but we're allowing you to re resubmit that same paper answering the same question, but hopefully improved based on the comments we'll give you or we will ask you to revise major revision or minor revision. And it's not related to the length of the comments. It's related to the complexity of the comments if there are lots of comments, but they're mostly grammatical, it could be a minor revision if there's only one comment that says get rid of everybody who is 18 and above. Cos this is pediatric radiology and reanalyze all your data and you've, and all your data is from 500 patients and that's a lot of work we're asking you to do. And so that revision could be four weeks. And if it's way too much to do, even in four weeks, that's when we say re resubmit, go away, do all this work and resubmit. So the it's not related to the number of comments, it's related to the complexity um of the work that the comments are asking you to do. Um very, very occasionally after a revision, we may still reject. But, you know, 95% 99% of the time, once it's gone through a revision, once we've told you to revise, you can, you can be confident that ultimately it will be accepted. But as I say, it's not 100% it's somewhere maybe 95 to 99% of the time. So why would we reject or why would I because when it gets rejected without peer review, it's completely on me. Why would I reject without peer review? Often it's out of scope. Um So for example, here is one comment and I'll tell you, I don't think it fits our journal, consider an ent journal. It can be so much related to the mouth to the teeth that it's not really what a pediatric radiologist is interested in. Uh another one again, dental um journal. So, but this is my worst to date in the three years that I've been doing this work. Um This was submitted to, to pediatric radiology. I even understand it all of these circular RNA S and things and, and you just think uh you know, it's actually life I wake up ii two hours a day, 2.5, 3 hours a day on this work. And, and somebody sending this sort of um abstract to a pediatric radiology journal, you sometimes lose the will you really do? So actually consider the journal before you even start writing the manuscript. This makes it, it, it may seem so straightforward and obvious. But really when you're submitting an abstract like this, you haven't even looked at the guidelines. Look at other manuscripts that were published, other papers have been published in the past six months in the past three months. Does my work fit this journal? Uh If it does by looking at the um guidelines, I can make sure I write it and follow the guidelines straight up because this is much more likely to get my work published wrong age group, not every journal is age specific, but our journal is titled Pediatric Radiology. Hence, I think it goes without saying that we would like the patients to be pediatric. Now we define pediatrics as 17 and above the minute the individual has hit their 18th birthday, they are an adult. There are some instances where we will allow um if the if the disease onset was before their 18th birthday and there has been some longitudinal follow up that might be relevant and we might um say fine, that's ok. If however, a greater, the large proportion of the patients in this paper are adult. Even if there are a few pediatric, we will not accept, we will ask you to remove all of those adult patients and um just present the work on the pediatrics. And I know I'm speaking specifically about pediatric radiology, but this could go anywhere cardiac journal. It's obviously gotta be cardiac ultrasound journal. It's obviously got to be ultrasound and so on and so forth. Make sure that it's relevant to the journal that you are presenting. Two. There are some journals, Clinical Radiology, British Journal of Radiology, Radiology, European Radiology, who who, which are not specific and, and those you can go to whether irrespective of, of what your work is related to. So just be careful. Um we have published this in 2022 to um define what we mean as pediatric. Um uh And the, the exceptions where, where we may accept um patients who are not necessarily strictly pediatric, lack of novelty. So remember when we were saying the 10 things to do in research set up was a literature review. Has your question been answered before? If it has been answered before and uh and we're not going to publish it, there just isn't the whole point is to, is to move forward, step by step, increase our. Um And, and I would usually say, and you know, I if, if I can identify that it's not novel, our reviewers are really a scarce commodity. All of us are busy people. I will not send them a to review an article that, that I know really it's not new. Um And this is the sort of sentence that I would, the sort of statement I would say, in other words, your work provides no new information or learning points for our readers when compared to the case series reported by so and so I will actually give you that feedback and I have therefore decided not to subject it to external peer review. The the reviewers haven't got the time to be reviewing something that I'm going to reject afterwards anyway. And that's not to say that I, you know, II truly appreciate the effort that has gone into this manuscript. However, the biggest challenge you have is convincing the reader that you've added anything new to the literature, are your findings different to features described in? And I gave the paper by other authors or other anatomical sites. And um you know, and then sometimes we've actually invited a paper on the topic. So you're going to say to me, how do we know that you've invited a paper on this topic before we submit, you're not going to know, but you can, by all means contact and ask. So May last year, this person dear prof of am writing to inquire about the suitability of submitting a paper on the topic of that was um 25th of May, as I say, 2.5, 3 hours a day on this journal work. 26th of May. I responded. Many thanks for reaching out the topic is of interest to me. And would I think interest our readers when in doubt contact the editor? I can't speak for all edits of all journals, but certainly for our journal myself and my contemporary who covers the Americas papers coming from the Americas, North and South Tika Kana. She also is um open to, to these enquiries. If you're not sure. Does my article fit then ask if it fits. We are not guaranteeing it will be accepted. We, we are guaranteeing that we will consider it. Um Again, I reject some that are have an unconfirmed diagnosis, particularly if there are case reports. Um There there was one that had no histological confirmation, had no longitudinal follow up. Didn't give us any idea what the chemotherapy was. Didn't tell us anything about the treatment, didn't tell us how the imaging changed with the treatment, didn't tell us the patient's long term outcome. You are left wondering what is this case report telling us? What are we actually learning from it? And a case report has to teach us some kind of lesson. Um And if it doesn't, I'm I'm not gonna forward it to my peer reviewers. If it's on something that is remarkably rare, this will be one of these reject but resubmit, you know, fill out all of these questions, answer them all, resubmit and I'll submit and I'll I'll send it to the peer reviewers incorrect manuscript type. You're trying to make something into something. It's not usually that would be something that's really a pictorial review or a li er that that the person is trying to make into um AAA scientific primary Scientific Original article which isn't the case trying to fit a square into a circle won't work. Um And I'll just reject it straight off and say go back rewrite it. Here are the author guidelines structure it according to one thing or another. In terms of our journal, we, we case reports, we have, we're stricter about accepting case reports. But if it's a really good pictorial review, a really good case report, a really good literature review, systematic review or original article, they will get published. So don't perceive that we are more likely to it because you've tried to make it an original article. If it suits to be a pictorial review, write a really good pictorial review include wonderful radiographs and MRI scans and 3D reconstructions of the heart and whatever and we will it will be get accepted. Um So again, here I said to this person, you may resubmit it as a pictorial review, you know, it just does not fit the what you've tried to do, you try to make it original and it's not an original article. So then those are the top sort of five issues that I found myself when I looked back re rejecting without going to peer review. And I saw this article um written by Dantes Torres um 2022. The, the their top 10 reasons for rejecting. And it's interesting that um these five are that, you know that their top um 54 of their top five are, are the ones that I have quoted and we have rejected for some of the, if we thought there was a lot of plagiarism or ethical issues, lack of interest, of course, we would um reject, but I definitely haven't had to reject for ethical or plagiarism so far. Um, in terms of poor presentation, poor English data availability, again, we wouldn't reject for, for those reasons, we would say, um sort them out afterwards unless the English is so bad that nobody understands what is being said and then that would get straight off rejected. Um I do, we do suggest to you um our authors where they might go um have your manuscript reviewed by a native English speaker or use one of these um services like Tren Springer has a, an author service that they um help um with looking at the English and, and, and the grammar such um opportunities and then you can resubmit it and when we can read and understand it, we might accept it. Um Most of the time, as I say, the manuscripts will go for peer review and the reasons for them being rejected. Original article. Um Here, I've taken one, all of these comments related to one original article and the comments um er, that have gone through them. I'm not going to read them all out because well, you can read, but I will on the right hand column just say what the sort of issues were so um the format and manuscript type. So this wouldn't make it necessarily rejected straight off. But if there are so many other issues, then of course, as I say, we will reject this one was probably on a very good topic and maybe they had done a lot of work. Um And I could see that it, that, that to reformat, it wouldn't be too difficult. And so I didn't reject it straight off. I sent it to the reviewers, there were grammar and spelling errors, but again, we didn't reject straight off, let the reviewers go and see it because it wasn't so bad that we couldn't understand what the authors were trying to say, gave them suggestions of where they could go to um improve the grammar. Um And then if you look further on to my numbered points, um the, the, the feedback I gave them, the introduction should set out the question that your study seeks to answer. You know, where is the knowledge gap? What are you actually trying to do? It's really confusing. So it's really good if you make it very clear upfront, what is the question? And actually, once you make it clear, what is the question, it's really easy for you to answer it yourselves and for the reader to understand that it's been answered. If that is the question, it makes sense that they've used that methodology. And if this is the answer they've got, these are the results they've got from that methodology. Then this is the answer to the question. It's really very straightforward, make sure that that methodology is detailed and clear, couldn't understand what they were saying. Um And 0.5 how were the diagnosis of these three conditions even confirmed? Do we even know that they had the conditions, you know, so it's really very difficult to understand some of these, to make sure that your methodology is well written discussion and limitations need to be based on what's gone before. So often people now start discussing something completely different. We were talking about climbing Mount Everest. Um Suddenly they're talking about swimming. The Thames. Now, both of these are great physical feats. But where is the relationship? Why are you talking about swimming? The Thames in the discussion of a paper that was concerned with climbing Mount Everest. There needs to be a link, don't bring in anything new in your discussion. Um And all I put limitations there because people often forget to talk about limitations. I am yet to see a study. I am yet to personally conduct a study that does not have limitations. So and the limitations of things that we, we accept the next time we might try and do it um and improve upon those limitations. It's always good to look back and say, what could we have done slightly different? There are often reasons why you accepted a limitation but sometimes you only see the limitation afterwards. So, but, but it doesn't mean it won't get published. In fact, I II have on many times sent a manuscript back. One of the comments in my in my reviews will be add some limitations because I myself can see there are limitations. I we usually say for example, and give you, give you the benefit of those limitations that I have seen. I'm not, it's not a, it's not a game. I'm not trying to trick somebody. I won't, it's not for them to, I'm not holding your limitations in my heart tight and refusing to let you know, but you, but actually look back and think, well, what could we have done better if you put them straight up? It doesn't mean your management will get rejected. The reviewers and my editors and myself, we know we understand that studies have limitations. It's the failure to yourselves to put them in your work. That is more likely to get it rejected figures and tables. Um read the author guidelines for how figures and tables should be presented, do not put tables and figures in and then repeat everything again in the text. The point of the of the tables is to be able to summarize complex data in a way that is digestible by the reader. Don't, don't put it again in the text, but don't put in a table that is one column and 1 L and one row that is actually is not a table, you know, somebody will have a table that shows the P value for one test uh and call it. No, it, it, it's so, so find, so it, it there and sometimes if you can say it in a sentence, say it in a sentence, the P value comparing X and Y was this significant or not significant? That doesn't need to be tabulated. So be careful figures need to be orientated the correct way. It, it, it, it, these things are obvious. But so many times when you're, when you're doing a figure and you're trying to magnify it and you distort it, you're, you're increasing the length, but you haven't increased the width at the same pace and then it looks, it's, it's distorted, don't submit those figures, change them around and make sure everything is um correct and left should be left, right, should be right if you're orientating upside down for some particular reason, explaining the figure legend, why otherwise we, we will believe it's a mistake and we will either turn it around or, or reject the paper because everything is so incorrect that we're not sure that the author has understood um that we're not sure about the quality of the entire work. Um And then journals style, every journal will have its own style. We have a manuscript checklist that you should look through and obey, comply with all those issues because we won't let them go. If you, if people are ignoring them, hoping that we too will ignore them. It's not going to happen. And if we, and if you ignore them first revision, second revision, third revision, you, your manuscript might get rejected. We, we won't keep telling you these same things over and over. A journal does not exist without manuscripts. So we will give people a chance. We want the manuscripts. But, but at a point in time comes where there's life is, you know, life is short. I can't, I can't look at this for the seventh time over over five months and be telling you to, to go to follow journal style. You may be the, you know, we have to reject it ultimately. Um We do know that a lot of work goes into these um papers for everybody and usually everything is meant to be constructive and helpful trying to make things better. So, so we will let let you know here was one where they did, there was, it was a really, really good manuscript um but it had to be rejected. There were, there were so many, there were other issues. Um not so much, what was the question, but the methodology wasn't detailed enough. We weren't sure if they had obtained consent or assent from the Saudi population. It was written in such a way that it was a bit, was it prospective? Was it retrospective was ethical approval given? And there were all of these issues and, and you know, once there's an issue of consent and ethics, you do have to um wonder about it. Um Again, there were issues with figures and tables and they didn't fit journal style. Now, in case of case reports, there was, there was, there was one that did go for peer review. Um, that which I, if I had, I didn't pick up on that. There was some ethical concern and, and it was, um my comment following the review was, I don't believe that it's right to select one case from a larger unpublished study. So in their method, they were doing a big study and in that big study, they thought, oh, we'll just pick up this case and we'll, and we'll write um er a, a case report about it. They were, therefore, they had therefore been unblinding themselves from this big study that they were doing and we were not sure if that was the right thing to do. Um This picture here is to say that, you know, I as an editor could maybe have picked that up at the beginning and rejected it without going for peer review. But the peer reviewers are uh sort of, we depend upon them because they're the ones that go through it with a microscope with minutia and they help us find the missing bits, the details that we, we don't have. And I always take these opportunities to thank anyone who a acts as a peer reviewer because really and truly, they get nothing else out of it except that, that, that, you know, that they are helping um our community essentially um pictorial reviews lack of depth or detail will get your pictorial review rejected. Sometimes they come as if they're just bullet points, tiny bullet points for each case um and the cases aren't properly linked together and the images aren't very nice. And so, you know, example here, this is relatively short of a pictorial review. Why have you restricted yourself to the? And there was just one thing that they one thing that they presented and it almost looks like a case report that just has lots and lots of images. A pictorial review should tie things together, you know, the ultrasound imaging of congenital heart defects or something like this. Um And, and then you have more than one congenital heart defect that is that is um linked and why would you just make it ultrasound? Why not just the imaging of congenital heart defects? So make it as expansive as you can so that it's a real nice learning opportunity for our readers. Um So the topic may be interesting but that each section has just been skimmed through and summaries, remember that we need to see the full picture in order to understand the full picture. If you're just showing us little segments, we actually miss out on what it is, you want us to see. Um again, poor methodology maybe because of lack of journal guidelines, we hold our hands up. Sometimes there are issues where our guidelines are not explicit or not even available for the particular issue that might arise. And when that happens, we do try and um update the guidelines. And we have since in the three years, I've, I've been here, we have been updating our guidelines to try and answer all questions so that authors know what it's not on the author. You know, we have it there, the, the answer to their question. Uh Sometimes the manuscripts are too long, way too long. Here was, um, here was something, um I asked them to shorten it by about a third, at least if it was going to be resubmitted. Now, you might be saying we've gone digital now we're no longer b paper based. And that's correct. But even if you're digital, you want to hold the authors, the readers to what the author has said. If something is really, really long, it, it probably is because it's, it's missed focus. It's lost the focus of what the article was about. And we don't want lots of long, long articles that are rambling. It's got to be sharp and incise. But the, the, the, the fact that it's um, digit that our journal is now digital does mean that we can have longer manuscripts than in the past. But uh here was one, look at that there were over 60 images please reduce the images by 33 to 50%. This is not because there were over 60 images. This is because there were over 60 images that did normal need to be there. Um Sometimes the there's two images are showing exactly the same thing from exactly the same patient at exactly the same presentation. So why are we seeing them there? Think carefully about why you're showing these particular images, what is the point of them? And we do without them. And as an example, I put up this manuscript that was published um in 2023 May last year, it had 45 figures. They had subparts. So there were a total of 84 images it was accepted and published because it's on tuberculosis if I'm not mistaken. Um because each image had a point it was making within that pictorial review. So it's not the absolute numbers alone. Although of course, there will come a time where if you were going to present us with 500 images, um there will come a point at which we would say curtail the number of images, but make sure they're high quality and make sure that there's a purpose to them. Um avoid hyperbole by which I mean to our knowledge, no comprehensive review of the imaging features. Essentially, you're saying ours is the most comprehensive, you have to be really careful. Um For example, I was able to find that there were previous reports on that particular topic. Um And really, it's not for us to say whether they were comprehensive or or not in our own papers. Um And again, here was one where, where I asked them to say a little bit less as you see at the bottom. And they, um they stated we performed a, a systematic review of all studies um in pediatric radiology. It's not possible. Nobody will have reviewed all studies. Um you, you with all the best, well in the world, it's better to say we have attempted to perform a systematic review of all studies. So it's kind of like this, you know, once in a while, someone amazing comes along and here I am. Um I'm sure without a doubt that all our authors are amazing, but it's so much better for someone else to tell them than for them to tell them for them to be saying it themselves, you know, with your publications, of course, you will believe that your, your publication is amazing otherwise you wouldn't be submitting it. But again, in my reviews, if I think it's amazing, I will absolutely tell you. This is amazing. This is really good work. We're very, very pleased with it. But if you're saying it yourselves, it, it it does, it doesn't look well. Um And then when we've asked you to revise the manuscript, please carefully consider what the editors and reviewers have said. People are using their time to say these things if they haven't understood it's on you, not on them because they have been selected as subject experts. They've gotten to be professors or, um, heads of department, you know, on the editorial board because they can do the work if they have misunderstood. It's, there's a reason they've misunderstood at, at least start from that humble position. Sometimes people misunderstand because again, they, they've been busy and they've read it really quickly and they, and they've misunderstood but start from the position of what can I do to, to trans to translate my information better? So rebut with respect, it's double blind, but I know who the authors are. I know who the reviewers are. You will not know each other. But it's, it's nice to be respectful and actually look at the criticism and think does that is that sensible? If it's not sensible? Say so but say so respectfully, I've had only one occasion. Well, I'm not a, I'm not a violent person. Please did not misinterpret this image. But there are some things that can be annoying. I look as I said at every single paper and you will remember, you may not remember the details, but there are things you remember one I rejected and then the authors changed the title and resubmitted it. Word for word. All that was changed was the title I've read this before. I was telling myself I have read this before. And yeah, I can, we can search our database. Don't you imagine that we can't? And I will search the database and I did search the database and I found word for word everything that was the same except for the title, same authors infuriating. It really is infuriating. I have previously rejected this case report. The situation remains unchanged. Merely changing the title. Does not change my opinion. Please do not resubmit this case report. It would be a waste of my time and yours d don't do things like that. It takes us back to where, where we were talking at the beginning about good research, good publication. If it's not a good study, it's not a good study. I don't care what it's called, you know, and I'm gonna remember. So please try. So based on everything, if I was to give you advice, I would say the title should be succinct, it should represent the work you're doing and the work that you um that the question you've tried to answer. I personally think you should write the abstract. Last cos it's a summary of everything one of my editors who has since left. Um the, the role said to me that he thinks it should be done first because then you can use that and expand each section into your, into the main paper. I II don't agree with that. I think that if you've written the full work, you can pick out what is most important from that and make that your abstract. Um We have a visual abstract that, that um or graphical abstract. And many, many journals um have introduced this. So I think whether you're submitted to be or or not, it's good to, to, to learn the lesson that I'm going to, I'm, I'm trying to um teach you on this slide. So you have an nice title at the top. You've got your aim, you've got your method, you have a conclusion at the bottom. And you've got your first author, a Tau in the right hand corner. And then you've got the, the, the the thing that you've shown everybody fails. Sometimes the reason some people do not succeed is because rather than learning and growing from their failures, they get weighed down by them, their failures become a burden and a handicap preventing them from succeeding. In contrast, the successful person derives important lessons from each failure. They do not give up but use each failure as a stepping stone on their way to success. So this abstract is conveyed to you in words, issues around how to deal with failure and what might help you succeed. The written word is a form of communication. However, remember this is a graphical abstract. It's a visual abstract. This is not visually or aesthetically pleasing, but it's all words try and minimize the words. Radiology is a visual subject. Use your images. So here we're saying exactly the same thing unsuccessful person weighed down by all his failures, successful person using the failures as a stepping stone to to move up in the world. And then the conclusion, a picture is worth 1000 words because really and truly all those words in the last slide are are so much better said and so much more um meaningfully said, I think by, by the images. So remember that that your graphical abstract is in fact a graphical abstract, put a put in a graph, put in a radiograph, put in an MRI, put in an image because that's what it's all about. Um So write it last but make sure that your graphical visual abstract is visually appealing. Cos that's the point of it. Your keywords should be me compatible, arrange them in alphabetical order. They should cover the disease, the modality, the age group, the methodology. Anything else that you think is important? Then that's fine. But those are the main things because that's really what people are going to search on. I'm interested in multiple in, in, in multiple sclerosis. You know, you can add brain if you want but multiple sclerosis is the important thing. It's MRI you know, it's usually adults and this is a prospective study. So people will find your work if they're looking for it um particularly for systematic reviews and things, then the background is really about what is the problem being addressed. And it the example I'm going to give, I absolutely love chocolate cake, but I'm in I'm gluten intolerant and I'm not the only person who's gluten intolerant that loves chocolate cakes. However, the chocolate cakes that are made for people with gluten intolerance are awful. The aim of this study is to, is to bake a gluten free chocolate cake that is delicious. Everybody knows. In fact, by the time you have given the background properly, it will be obvious to your reader what the aim of the study is. you don't actually have to state it, but it's gratifying when you state it because they think, yeah, I understand this and I understand why. And that's good. And then your materials and methods once you know, it's simple, it's straightforward. It literally is the recipe for the cake. How much gluten free flour did you put in eggs? How many eggs did you put in milk? Did you use? You know the chocolate? Which chocolate was it? Was it Cadbury? Did you melt it or did you use cocoa powder? Um It's what oven did you use to bake it in? It's how long did you mix it for? Did you add the baking powder or did you use yeast for some weird type of cake? If you used yeast, it's almost like that's bread, right? But everything and then the weights, the measures the times you put them in. How long did you bake it for? At what temperature did you leave it out afterwards? Did you turn it out? Did you decorate it. And how did you decorate by the end of it? Anybody anywhere in the world who has got access to the same ingredients will be able to follow your materials and methods and come out with exactly the same cake. That's the point of recipes, right? So that is the way you should look at your materials and methods. It's a recipe. We don't want any qualitative, we don't want any judgments or comments. Just give us the list for the recipe. Then your results. Goodness me, my throat has gone funny. The results, including your tables, your figures and your legends. This is what you described the cake. How far did it rise? Was it soft? Was it moist? Um A lot of our research should be subject should not be, should not be subjective, it should be objective. But there you can do a qualitative study of this. You can say we gave, we, we gave a slice of our cake or a mouthful of our cake to 50 people. And these are the results and they said it was delicious. 20 of them said it was delicious. 10% said it was too dry. 8% said. So you can give the qualitative as well as the quantitative um ha aspects. But this is when you describe it and if you've given decoration, you can describe how, how it came out. Then your discussion will will be a discussion summarize your results. First of all, compare it to what is already known. Now, while only 50% thought our cake was delicious, this was higher than the, er, 20% in the study by, er, 2019. That's where you come about it. Um, your limitations, we, we, we baked it at this temperature because our monitor did not allow us to bake it at a lower temperature. In retrospect, we should have been able to, um, maybe bake it at a lower temperature for a longer period and that might have helped the cape retain moisture, this sort of thing. And then your conclusion is while this is one of the better c while this has got better results than previous studies, there is more work to be done. Um And then you critique the cake essentially in in your discussion. So, so you know, with those sections in mind, you, you will know what should go in the materials and methods, what should go in the results? The one bit that you're allowed to be comparative and use was like er er what was delicious and things are is the discussion, the materials and methods and the results should be purely factual scientific unbiased data. Um And then we have the statements at the end and and and the conflicts of interest of the contributions, data availability and the references and all of these will will will be different based on the journal that you're submitting to. Um But you should look at the off the guidelines to make sure that you've got it. Um You, you know what they're doing. We, as I say, myself and Tika are very happy to be contacted whenever anyone has an issue, contact the editor of the journal that you're trying to um submit to. And, and again, II, you know, I can't speak with them, but I would be surprised if they didn't respond and, and, and help you um all in all, it's a collaborative process. We, we need our authors without the authors in the center, you know, authors are front and center of this whole thing. Um without you, we can't do it, but it's actually a collaboration. We're not trying to outsmart each other. We um the reviewers help us, the editors improve your paper so that ultimately, you know, you have the success that you're looking for, which is all of that hard work is accepted um by our journal. Thank you. I don't know if we have time for questions or if we were expecting time for questions. I think I stopped sharing my screen if I can. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Thank you, Paul for such an amazing talk on um research. Um I think we've still got a few more minutes and we may be able to entertain questions. Uh Please feel free to drop your questions and comments in the chat box. Um By the way, II think I have a question of my own. Uh Please go ahead. Yeah, it's just more like uh more like me just wanted to know your thoughts on how, um or what you, what you think about um medical students or early career doctors from low resource settings and how they can be able to provide, uh uh sorry how they can be able to publish their work and top journals because it's quite difficult for um for some of the journals that need some and that request for payment for fees before they can make some before they can publish. So I just wanted to know your thoughts on how. Yeah, so I took on the role of managing editors for because up until then in all its 70 plus years, they had never been a female managing editor and they'd never been a managing editor of ethnic minority background. So my purpose was to improve the, to make it more equitable both in terms of ethnicity and, and sex and, and other protected characteristics. And we last year wrote a series of, we, we had an is an issue of the journal that was specific to um LM IC countries. Um And we wrote that and if you read those articles, if you, if you look up, maybe just do a search of my name, I can't remember, but I don't have it off the top of my head. Um The sort of initiatives that we're trying to do in our journal because as you say, there's limited publications across the world from um lower income countries. Um I think that the best if you can collaborate, find mentors, first of all who are in, in, in other countries. But make sure that the, the I think that the questions that you're answering in your should still be relevant to your own practice. If you're not based in the UK, if you're based in a country in Africa, for example, or, or India, you should make sure that the questions you're answering are still relevant to you, but make it the highest quality that you can based on your resources in that country that you're based at. Um a lot of journals d don't take costs, they don't pay. There's no charge. The charge is only if you want your manuscript to be open access and, and if you, and there's no reason to have it open access, um If you haven't got the funding Springer does in fact have um a, a um what's the word? I can use a system where if you're in a lower income country, they, that you may qualify to have your manuscript published open access without having to pay. And I wish I could remember the name of it. But if again, that article that I wrote, um will I is there or if you want to email me at the um email address that I gave, I can look it up. So, so a lot of um the bigger publishers are trying to encourage publications from the from smaller poorer countries. Um and, and asking them not to pay again, a lot of um if you have collaboration, for example, if somebody wrote a paper with me as a coauthor, I have to be the senior author, then my university will actually pay for open access for these journals because I'm on it as a senior author. Now, you don't want to find people who are unscrupulous and just become a senior author. If the person is an author, they have to do the work to be an author. I giving this as an option. I'm not giving it as a can I say, can I say things like that here? I'm not, I'm not giving it as that kind of craftiness, right? They, they have to do the work. But if you are the first author based in Zambia, Uganda, Nigeria, wherever you are based and you have a senior author who for us, my University of Sheffield, University of Sheffield would pay for it to be published. So that so there are options to get the work published. I would and, and finally, yes, you want it to be in, in, in pediatric radiology or radiology or British journal. But we do have a, you do have your own African, you know, journals, isn't it? Right? Yes. Um and so you could go to, to those journals and, and get the impact it, raise the impact and factors of those journals by, by putting in really high quality and, and then have us have people in the United Kingdom aspire to be published in the African Journal of pediatric radiology, right? Ok. Thank you so much for, for um your talk and such fantastic answer. Um I don't think there are any more questions. Ok. You got three minutes left, right? So people can stretch their legs for three minutes. Yes. In the sense of that, we can just return back to the main stage. Ok. Thank you. Remain on the conference. Thank you so much. Thank you.