Publish or Perish? Maximising the Chances of Your Paper Being Published

1. Publish or Perish? Maximising the Chances of Your Paper Being Published Michael Drummond Centre for Health Economics University of York

2. Outline of Presentation • Selecting the right journal • Understanding the processes journals use • Dealing with reviewer comments • Appealing editorial decisions DISCUSSION WELCOME THROUGHOUT!

3. Choosing the Right Journal • Journal readership/audience • Journal reputation/quality - Peer assessment - Impact Factor - Article Influence Score - Eigen Factor Score - H index • Article processing time • Open access/hybrid journals

4. Which is the ‘Best Quality’ Journal? Peer Assessment • Journal of Health Economics 2. Health Economics 3. Value in Health

5. Journal Metrics • The most commonly used metric is the IMPACT FACTOR; this reflects the average number of citations each paper receives over a given time period (eg 2 years or 5 years) • Alternative measures are the EIGENFACTOR SCORE or ARTICLE INFLUENCE SCORE; these reflect the prestige of journals in which the citations are made, as well as the number of citations • Another recent metric is the H INDEX, which is calculated the same way as for individual researchers (eg If a journal has an H index of 75, this means that it has published 75 papers that have had 75 or more citations

6. Impact Factor (2017) Note: the Impact Factor normally quoted is the 2-year IF, calculated as above; one might question whether this is very relevant for health services research journals # citations received in 2017(of papers published in 2015-2016) ÷ # citable papers published (in 2015 and 2016)

7. Question What’s the median number of citations for papers in Value in Health during the two year citation window for the Impact Factor?

8. Question What’s the median number of citations for papers in Value in Health during the two year citation window for the Impact Factor? Answer: either 0 or 1

9. Which is the ‘Best Quality’ Journal? Impact Factor

10. Which is the ‘Best Quality’ Journal? Impact Factor 1. Value in Health (5.494) 2. Journal of Health Economics (3.250) 3. Health Economics (2.319)

11. Which is the ‘Best Quality’ Journal? Article Influence Score

12. Which is the ‘Best Quality’ Journal? Article Influence Score 1. Journal of Health Economics (2.0) 2. Value in Health (1.4) 3. Health Economics (1.3)

13. Which is the ‘Best Quality’ Journal? H Index

14. Which is the ‘Best Quality’ Journal? H Index 1. Journal of Health Economics [1982] (103) 2. Health Economics [1992] (96) 3. Value in Health [1998] (82)

15. Unofficial CHE ‘A List’(In No Particular Order!) • Journal of Health Economics • Health Economics • British Medical Journal • Lancet • Any of the top US health services research/health policy journals (egMedical Care, Health Affairs) • Any of the top US medical journals (egNEJM, JAMA, plus a few single specialty journals, such as J. Clinical Oncology) Note: Over a 7 year period (2008-2014), CHE researchers published 405 papers in 145 different journals. One third of the output was published in 5 journals, in this order of frequency (Health Economics, Value in Health, Health Technology Assessment, Pharmacoeconomics and Medical Decision Making)

16. Making a Submission • Make sure you read the journal’s Scope, and Guide for Authors, before submitting (‘fishing’ enquiries are not generally well-received) • Make sure you understand the decision-making process of the journal • Ask yourself questions about the ‘added value’ of your paper (before the journal editor does!)

17. Scope of Value in Health • Economic evaluations • Patient-reported outcomes • Preference-based assessments • Comparative effectiveness research/health technology assessment • Health policy analyses

18. Article Categories • Original research • Methodological articles (on any topic within scope) • Policy perspectives • Systematic reviews (on any topic within scope) • Brief reports (on any topic within scope) • Commentaries • Task force reports (by invitation only) • Editorials (by invitation only) • Letters to the editor

19. Some Specific Guidance that People Often Ignore Before Submitting to ViH • Comparative effectiveness/HTA - papers must address issues of value beyond clinical effect • Burden/cost of Illness studies - papers must have high policy interest, or incorporate methodological advances • Country adaptations - must make a substantial contribution to the literature eg. Discussing methodological issues in adaptation of the analysis or the influence/importance of local health system characteristics on the interpretation of results Note: avoid saying ‘this is the first estimate for country X’ when submitting to an international journal

20. Level of Interest in a Paper Methods Interest Policy/Decision-making Interest

21. Journal Decision-Making Processes • In the initial assessment, level of interest takes precedence over methodological rigour • Journals are not interested in boring, or ‘so what’ papers, even if they are methodologically sound • Journals such as JHE, Health Economics and ViH receive 800-1000 submissions per year and reject 80-85% • Peer-review is where the detailed assessment of methodological rigour takes place, but many journals cannot feasibly send every paper out to peer-review, so most papers don’t make it to that point

22. Questions to Ask of Your PaperBefore the Editor Does! • What is already known about the topic covered by my paper? • What does my paper add to existing knowledge? • What insights does my paper provide for informing healthcare-related decision making? Note: avoid saying ‘this is the first estimate for country X’ when submitting to an international journal

23. Journal Processing Times • Obviously the time taken is very variable, depending on the nature of the reviewers’ comments, the way in which these are answered by the authors, the need for re-review, etc. • The most common statistic is the ‘Time to first decision’ • Ideally this should not be longer than 90 days; for ViH it’s currently around 60-70 days

24. Journal Processing Times • Obviously the time taken is very variable, depending on the nature of the reviewers’ comments, the way in which these are answered by the authors, the need for re-review, etc. • The most common statistic is the ‘Time to first decision’ • Ideally this should not be longer than 90 days; for ViH it’s currently around 60-70 days

25. Responding to Reviewers’ Comments • Copy and paste the comments into a new document • Insert your responses, point by point, to each comment, even if no substantive response is required • Indicate where, in the text, you have made revisions • Use this as an opportunity to congratulate the reviewers, not to criticise them Note: at this point the editor will be making an assessment of whether you have/or can fix the paper or not

26. Appealing Editorial Decisions • Most of the time it’s better to move on, as the odds are against you • Appeals based on issues of factual inaccuracies are likely to be more successful than appeals based on differences of opinion • Recognize that the reviewers may have made confidential comments to the editor that you have not seen

27. Conclusions • Remember that your paper is going to be assessed along with many others (often in a group of 5 or 10) • Try to grab the editor’s attention • Be clear on the aims of your paper and what it adds to the literature • Highlight anything that is novel about the paper • For the initial assessment, the most important sections are the Abstract, Introduction and Discussion/Conclusions.