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Session in Memory of Alex Turner: Medical Physics Journal Workshop: An Update On the Journal's Improvement Activities and Guidance On Writing and Reviewing Papers


R Tarver

J Williamson

S Das

M Goodsitt





R Tarver1*, J Williamson2*, S Das3*, M Goodsitt4*, (1) The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, Fort Worth, TX, (2) Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, (3) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, (4) University Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Presentations

10:00 AM : Memorial Tribute - R Tarver, Presenting Author
10:10 AM : Vision for Medical Physics and Status of Current Initiatives - J Williamson, Presenting Author
10:25 AM : Improving Manuscript Quality via Structured Reviews, Enhanced Scientific Category Taxonomy, and Outreach - S Das, Presenting Author
10:40 AM : Writing Good Scientific Papers and Responding to Critiques - M Goodsitt, Presenting Author

TH-C-108-0 (Thursday, August 3, 2017) 10:00 AM - 10:55 AM Room: 108


In this presentation, the Editors will outline our vision for the future of Medical Physics and review recent work-in-progress initiatives to implement this vision. Finally, we will close with guidance to authors on how to write a good Medical Physics paper and respond to critiques. A major focus will be the transition to a new publisher in 2017 following a more than 40 year association with American Institute of Physics Publishing.

Vision for Medical Physics and ongoing developments: Jeff Williamson, Editor-in-Chief

The broad vision of Medical Physics is “to continue the Journal’s tradition of publishing the very best science that propels our discipline forward and improves our contribution to patient care.” More concretely, the Journal should be the preeminent forum for print and electronic exchange of cutting edge medical physics science. We seek to identify the best contributions in (a) translational research applying innovative physics and engineering to clinical problems; (b) cutting-edge basic science developments with clear potential for improving patient care; and (c) high impact clinical physics innovations. Among the challenges and opportunities we face are: electronic-only and open access publishing competition from other radiological science journals; trends towards more interactive, social-media based scientific communities; and diversification of the medical physics research, authorship, and readership domains, including clinical applications quite foreign to core ABR clinical competencies. Ongoing developments include:
1) Transition to a new publisher, Wiley, beginning with the January 2017 issue. While the learning curve has been formidable, the working relationship and level of service provided by Wiley has been outstanding. Two major goals for 2017 are improving review efficiency and mounting an author marketing campaign.

2) A comprehensive hierarchical expertise taxonomy was implemented for selecting Associate Editor based on their expertise and are expanding it to all referees and articles.

3) Newly appointed editors for Review Articles and Future of Medical Physics Articles solicit high quality articles on topics of high interest and reviewing preferred manuscripts. Before initiating peer review, each author works with an assigned Co-Editor (John Rowlands, Ingrid Reiser, Joao Seco, or Tim Zhu) to develop a mutually acceptable outline and abstract

4) A new article category, the Medical Physics Dataset Article (MPDA), was launched in February with publication of our first article and an accompanying editorial. MPDAs describe scientifically or clinically valuable open-access datasets with high potential for contributing to the research of medical physicists working on related problems. MPDAs do not include hypothesis testing; or data analyses supporting generalizable conclusions, but describe a permanently archived, publically accessible dataset. This initiative is being led by Joe Deasy.

Improving manuscript quality via structured reviews, enhanced scientific category taxonomy, and outreach: Shiva Das, Therapy Physics Editor

Medical Physics is committed to continuous improvement with the ultimate goal of improving the potential impact of accepted manuscripts. To do so, Medical Physics must be able to tap into important/emerging areas and be able to select high quality contributions consistently via discerning reviews. Improving the quality of reviews is crucial to selecting high quality manuscripts and also to improving manuscript impact via feedback in the review process. With this in mind, Medical Physics: (a) is fostering outreach to important areas that are currently underrepresented in Medical Physics; (b) has recently implemented a structured template review form; and (c) is in the process of implementing a comprehensive scientific category taxonomy to identify reviewers who are best suited to an article. Outreach efforts have begun to various scientific areas. Strategies to increase submissions from these areas will be discussed. As a consequence of this effort, a special issue on particle therapy is under development. A review template was implemented in late 2014 on a limited test basis. Based on reviewer feedback, the template was restructured and shortened to capture essential review elements. The restructured template is currently in use. The new scientific category taxonomy has been deployed to members of the Board of Associate Editors and the Editorial Board, and will be deployed to guest associate editors and reviewers in the future. Salient aspects of the structured review template and scientific category taxonomy will be discussed in this talk.

Writing good scientific papers and responding to critiques: Mitch Goodsitt, Imaging Physics Editor

We will review the essential components of the title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion sections of manuscripts, as well as the desired writing style and styles of the figures and tables. Publishable Medical Physics manuscripts must include clear and concise statements of the novelty and clinical and/or scientific importance of the authors’ work. Examples of novelty include: a new technical solution to an important clinical problem; new generalizable knowledge; and first demonstration that an existing engineering solution solves a clinical problem. Please note that we encourage authors of recently published conference proceedings papers (e.g., SPIE and IEEE) on novel medical physics related work to submit more substantial versions of those papers to our journal. All submissions to our journal must include: sufficient background information and rationale; enough detail for others to reproduce the authors’ work; sufficient statistical analysis to refute or validate the authors’ hypotheses; a description of how the present work compares to, is distinct from, and improves upon others’ work; and sections devoted to the limitations of the study and future directions. Writing should be polished. Poor wording, grammar and composition frustrate the review process. When authors receive critiques from the referees and associate editor, the authors should provide a detailed point-by-point response to each comment. The authors’ rebuttal should include the text of the original criticism, the authors’ response, and a pasted copy of the modified text along with the line numbers in the revised article. The new text should be highlighted in yellow or in a different font color in the revised submission. Following these recommendations will improve submissions and facilitate the review process.

Learning Objectives:
1. Understand recent changes and initiatives in Medical Physics publishing activities
2. Understand strategies and resources available for improving quality of Medical Physics manuscript reviews
3. Understand strategies for writing good Medical Physics papers and effectively responding to reviewer critiques.


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