In order to improve the quality of systematic researches, various tools have been developed by well-known scientific institutes sporadically. Dr. Nader Ale Ebrahim has collected these sporadic tools under one roof in a collection named “Research Tool Box”. The toolbox contains over 720 tools so far, classified in 4 main categories: Literature-review, Writing a paper, Targeting suitable journals, as well as Enhancing visibility and impact factor.
Our
world is changing faster than ever. In the last 200 years, global life
expectancy has more than doubled, and continues to rise.1
In the last 40 years alone we have seen the mobile telephone, the birth
of the internet, and digital and social media contribute to a world
that is increasingly connected. In this digital era, academic journals
have been slower to react and evolve.
Some
traditional journal formats may even hinder the researcher in sharing
their findings, and the end user in taking in this knowledge. This
automatically delays the potential for research to influence practice
and policy.2 To maximize research impact, journals and researchers should embrace digital technology, and the opportunities it affords.
Research impact is not being maximized: the knowledge translation gap
A
major issue is that research findings do not often result in a rapid,
efficient change of practice. It takes 17 years for just 14% of medical
research to be implemented into everyday practice.3
Traditionally researchers have lived by the mantra “publish or perish”,
with impact measured solely by citations and publications. While these
metrics are an important measure of acceptance and uptake by the
scientific community, they fail to capture the impact of research on
policy makers, clinical practice and patients. Such knowledge
translation relies on information being delivered to the audience in a
targeted, engaging and comprehensible form. We should publish our
research, and simultaneously take action to ensure it is impactful.2
Some potential barriers to research positively impacting practice include:
-
Research studies taken in their entirety are often heavy going, and not
engaging for general audiences. Other researchers seek the detail, but
non-researchers typically favour shorter, simpler and easily digestible
summaries;
- Research articles are typically viewed by a modest number of people, principally researchers;
- Articles may not be freely accessible.
What can journals and publishers do?
In
addition to facilitating peer review of research to ensure the highest
quality work makes it into print, and encouraging and building the
knowledge base for our profession, journals have an opportunity to
disseminate research findings effectively. This may help to bridge the
translation gap. There is no single solution, no silver bullet to the
challenge of making research widely read, and impactful. However, to
improve knowledge transfer and the impact of published research journals
are increasingly:
-
Making information accessible by publishing visual abstracts, video
abstracts, infographics, educational articles, podcasts and blogs.5
These formats can quickly communicate key findings so that busy readers
can engage with articles that are most relevant to them.6
They are not intended to be a substitute for reading the article, but
are akin to a movie trailer that helps you decide if you want to read
the whole manuscript. Recent innovations such as infographics,7 now published in The Bone & Joint Journal (BJJ)8-12 and Bone & Joint Research,13 as well as publications such as Bone & Joint 360, demonstrate the commitment of Bone & Joint Publishing to presenting research in engaging and accessible formats.
-
Encouraging/facilitating authors to contribute such material, but
making the production of these tools straightforward and accessible to
someone who is not an information technology expert. We now encourage
authors to submit visual summaries for consideration of publication
online alongside their manuscript.
-
Sharing content via the web, and social media platforms such as
Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The BJJ will share each and every
published paper on our popular social media channels on multiple
occasions, helping expand the reach of your article.
-
Offering open-access (OA) options for publications. Open access in
reputable journals has advantages including higher citation, download
and user engagement rates.5
We have a full, gold open access option at the BJJ. Having non-OA
options also offers authors an opportunity to avoid Article Processing
Charges. We feel that this hybrid model ensures the highest level of
research is available to our readers and subscribers.
What can researchers do?
The
digital age brings enormous opportunities. Where previously articles
would ripple gradually from a journal, digital innovation now permits
knowledge translation and impact at a greater rate. Researchers can
embrace this opportunity. Building on Barton and Merolli’s model,2 we suggest researchers, or research teams not only:
- Do the research and
- Publish the research
but also
- Make bite-size assets (like infographics, visual abstracts, video abstracts, podcasts, short videos) and
-
Use these assets to share research findings widely (using social media
for example Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, with or without press
releases). This can be done separately, and with support from the BJJ.
And consider, where research impact is prized,14 a further step.
- Measuring impact can prove your research to be worthwhile/or otherwise!
These steps are summarized in Figure 1. Fig. 1 Framework for increasing research visibility and impact (adapted with permission from Barton CJ, Merolli MA. It’s time to replace publish or perish with get visible or vanish. Br J Sports Med 2017.)2It
may be that one researcher develops all round skills and completes each
of these steps themselves (like a golfer being good off the tee,
hitting irons and holing putts), or that a team approach can be used
(like a football or rugby team where each player has roles they are
particularly strong at and deliver).
Conclusions
Like
all new techniques in medicine and research, the adoption of techniques
to generate engagement and impact will inevitably have a learning
curve, with some tools proving more beneficial than others. We look
forward to introducing a number of these tools in The BJJ, and hearing
from our readership about strategies have been most valuable. Please
engage with us online, (https://online.boneandjoint.org.uk/journal/bjj)
via Twitter (@BoneJointJ), on Facebook
(www.facebook.com/pg/BoneJointJournal) or by emailing us at
info@boneandjoint.org.uk.
No comments:
Post a Comment