(Wednesday, 8/1/2018) 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Room 209
In this presentation, the Editors will outline current and future vision for Medical Physics and Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics (JACMP) and review recent work-in-progress initiatives to implement this vision. Guidance to authors on how to write a good Medical Physics and JACMP papers and respond to critiques will be discussed and practical examples will be provided.
Vision for Medical Physics and ongoing developments:
Jeff Williamson, Editor-in-Chief, Medical Physics
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. We will review new and ongoing developments including a marketing campaign to attract new readers and authors.
Writing good scientific papers and responding to critiques:
Mitch Goodsitt, Imaging Physics Editor, Medical Physics
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 will be reviewed. Publishable Medical Physics and JACMP 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; for hypothesis driven 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 and clearly separated into introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections. 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.
Improving manuscript quality via structured reviews, enhanced scientific category taxonomy, and outreach:
Shiva Das, Therapy Physics Editor, Medical Physics
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 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, special issues on particle therapy, CT image formation, big data and machine learning are under development. A reviewer template, designed to capture essential review elements, was formulated based on referee feedback. The structured template is currently in use. 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.
Publishing in the JACMP; Present and Future Visions:
Michael Mills, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics
Clinical research papers published in the JACMP address a large spectrum of therapy, imaging, and educational and professional methodologies. Anyone who wishes to consider the submission of a manuscript to the JACMP will want to consider its publication space, the special nature of its open-access publication model, and the JACMP’s editorial expertise and audience. The essential vision of the JACMP is to provide medical physicists who are in clinical practice with an archival repository for excellence in patient care. As such, the overriding focus of any JACMP article is its clinical application and value. In addition to our worldwide penetration respecting radiation oncology and imaging clinical articles, we hope to recruit and publish more education and management and profession articles in the coming years. Although there is some overlap in publication space, the JACMP complements rather than competes with Medical Physics. In 2018, Wiley, our publisher, has created a mechanism for the Editors of each AAPM journal to exchange articles if we consider the paper would be a better fit in our sister publication. Finally, we expect to look for opportunities to engage our users with more social media options and opportunities in the coming years.
Learning Objectives:
1. Communicate current and future vision for Medical Physics and JACMP as well as recent work-in-progress initiatives to implement these visions.
2. Provide guidance to authors on how to write a good Medical Physics and JACMP papers.
3. Provide effective methods and tips for responding to critiques
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