Workshop objectives This virtual workshop will provide information to the participants that will enhance the quality of their research publications by informing them of the peer- review process, the publication process, the structure of a research paper and by improving their scientific writing style. Participants This will be a participatory workshop. It is aimed at authors who wish to improve the quality of their research papers. Participants will have a manuscript in preparation or a research project ready to be written up. They will work on their draft manuscripts during the workshop to incorporate their learning from the workshop into practice. Participants will also bring 1 manuscript each from 2 of their top pick journals they want to submit to and the instructions to authors from the same.

1. Welcome to All

2. Session 1: Tuesday
Before you begin writing
- Are you ready to publish?
- Choosing the right journal
- Different Journal at National and international level
- Current Problem in Scientific Writing

3. Why Do We Publish?
• Make contributions to society
• Be recognized professionally by peers
• Advance in the profession

4. Key issues in publication
• Ethical Issues
• Style and language
• Structure of paper
• Components of paper
• Article submission/journal selection
• Publisher‟s process/peer review

6. Writing process: its stages

7. Before you begin the research manuscript
• Establish a clear understanding of study question(s) or
objective(s)
- What do you expect to find?
- Will your study advance knowledge in the field?
- Will findings be relevant to field of study?
- Methodology?
• Get early feedback on concepts and direction
• Research that is not convincing, important, or applicable is
• Difficult to publish

8. Writing is a Process
“it’s easier to embalm the dead than to write an article about it”
- Paul Silvia

9. Pre-Writing
1. Clear objectives
2. A well designed study
3. Identify your co-authors
4. Identify your audience
5. Identify the journal
6. Review Instructions to Authors
7. Ethical Issues
8. Review published material for use as writing models
9. Make an outline to see if you have a publishable unit
10. Create a template for putting down your ideas
11. Write down ideas as they occur to you
12. Organize your data into tables and graphs
13. Write as you go

10. Choice of Coauthors
What skills do you need to complete the study?
- Technical, Statistics
- Communication / language skills
• Associated with target journal?
• Discuss roles and expectations early
- Commitment and available time
- Corresponding/senior author?

11. Before start writing
Be sure to select appropriate journal
Follow the instructions of journal
Keep research ethics in mind
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12. Essential information
1. Number of articles had already crossed 50 million by 2009.
2. Since then on an average 2.5 million new scientific papers are published
each year.
3. 34,400+ peer-reviewed journal in late 2014
4. No. of article increases at a rate of approximately 4% per year.
5. Number of researchers was 8.4 million in 2011 (Full time 6.3 million)
6. A researcher reads on an average 270 articles per year, depending on
discipline (more in medicine and science)
7. Average time spent on reading an article was 50 min in 1990 and 30 min
now.
8. If you read less than 270 articles per year, its likely that an average
researcher writes better than you do.
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13. "Hell is sitting on a hot stone reading your own scientific
publications"
- Erik Ursin
‘‘There are many exceptions in ecology. The author has summarized
them in four books’’
- Jens Borum, ecologist
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14. Scimago Journal and country rank about health professional (1996-2018)
Accessed date: Jan 17 2020
Rank Country
Documents
Citable
documents
Citations
Self-
Citations
Citations per
Document
H
index
1 USA 247828 225656 5152812 2558147 20.79 437
2 UK 69438 62134 1403131 364500 20.21 284
66 Nepal 274 209 2245 359 8.19 25
211
Somalia 1 0 8 1 8.00 1
Source: https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php
7/2/2019 14

15. Scimago Journal & Country Rank (Among 31971 journal)
Accessed date: July 1, 2019
Rank
Title SJR
H
inde
x
Total
Docs.
(2018)
Total
Docs.
(3years)
Total
Refs.
(2018)
Total
Cites
(3years)
Citable
Docs.
(3years)
Cites /
Doc.
(2years)
Ref. /
Doc.
(2018)
1 CA - A Cancer
Journal for
Clinicians
72.57
6
144 45 127 3078 20088 103 206.85 68.40
14409 Journal of Nepal
Health Research
Council
0.253
Q3
9 23 92 0 55 88 0.26 0.00
17441
Kathmandu
University
medical journal
(KUMJ)
0.174
Q3
21 53 259 879 86 238 0.31 16.58
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php
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16. Scimago Journal & Country Rank (Among 31971 journal)
Accessed date: July 1, 2019
Rank
Title SJR
H
inde
x
Total
Docs.
(2018)
Total
Docs.
(3years)
Total
Refs.
(2018)
Total
Cites
(3years)
Citable
Docs.
(3years)
Cites /
Doc.
(2years)
Ref. /
Doc.
(2018)
1 CA - A Cancer
Journal for
Clinicians
72.57
6
144 45 127 3078 20088 103 206.85 68.40
14409 Journal of Nepal
Health Research
Council
0.253
Q3
9 23 92 0 55 88 0.26 0.00
17441
Kathmandu
University
medical journal
(KUMJ)
0.174
Q3
21 53 259 879 86 238 0.31 16.58
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php
7/2/2019 16

17. https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php
7/2/2019
Scimago journal ranking of Nepal
There are 168 journals listed on NepJOL. There are 1473 Tables of Contents
listing 19,183 articles. 18,432 of the articles are available in full text (PDF).
Assessed date: 17th Jan 2020
17

18. 7/2/2019
Never try to be infamous
18

19. 7/2/2019
Never try to be infamous
19

20. What is indexing
• Indexation of a journal is considered a reflection of its quality.
• A form of citation index was first found in the 12th century in Hebrew
religious literature.
• Legal citation indexes were found in the 18th century and were made
popular by citators such as Shepard's citations (1873)
• In 1960, the Eugene Garfields Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
introduced the first citation index for papers published in academic
journals.
• The first automated citation indexing was done by “CiteSeer” in 1997.
7/2/2019 20
Ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3354504/

21. Currently major citation indexing services are
• Science citation index (SCI) and SCI expanded/Web of Science
• Scopus
• INDEX MEDICAUS/MEDLARS/MEDLINE/ENTREZ AND PUBMED
• EMBASE/EXPERTA MEDICA
• Index Copernicus
• PubMed Central
[Note: Four major online bibliographic sites – MEDLINE, PubMed Central, ISI, and Scopus.
MEDLINE confers a mark of quality upon a publication.
PubMed Central gives greater access to open access contents
ISI provides an official impact factor.
Scopus gives a clear view of journal metrics and provides H-Index and citation impact.]
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Ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3354504/

22. Many publishers claim to be indexed in Scribd Cabelles Directories,
slide share Google Docs, open J-Gate, and New journal.
For Nepal, 2020
NepMed is a Nepal MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and
Retrieval System Online) by NHRC in collaboration with Nepal
Medical Association. It includes bibliographic information for articles
from academic biomedical journals covering medicine, dentistry,
nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and allied health
sciences.
7/2/2019 22

23. Research4Life programmes

24.  HINARI is the health programme which provides free or
very low cost online access to the major online journals and
books in biomedical and related social sciences, to local,
not-for-profit institutions in low- and middle- income
countries.
 HINARI was launched in January 2002 for “free access”
countries (Group A). The “very low cost’
option was added in 2003 (Group B) and the groups apply
to all programmes – 16000 Journals….63000 e-books- 105
other inforamtions
 AGORA (agriculture) was launched in 2003 – 10000 –
Joranls – 27000 –e-books
 OARE (environment) was launched in 2006 – 11500
Jouranls – 115000 e-books.
 ARDI (applied sciences) was launched in 2009 and joined
Research4Life in 2011 – 7300 – journals – 22000 - books
 GOALI was launched in March 2018 - 1800 – Journals –
6900 books
Research4LifeTimeline

26. Access to leading academic publishers

27. Common Issues/Problems
Clarity in writing
Using long sentences with multiple concepts
Writing long paragraphs
Complex language, poor grammar and punctuation
Instructions to authors
Missing to go into the details of the instructions/not going through the
instructions properly

28. Contd…
Who to include as authors (and in what order)
– This can cause some dispute!
– Some journals have a clear policy
– Some supervisors or research groups also have a policy
– All authors carry full responsibility for the content
Submission can be harder than we think
– The submission process itself can take considerable time, even if all
the required documents and files are ready

29. Contd…
• Have a very big and rich data – cannot manage to write it down
• Not able to find right person to help in the statistical analysis
• Difficult to access full text articles
• Language – that is understood by the readers
• Choosing the right journal