Chinese Submissions to Osteoarthritis and Cartilage

andHow to Get Your Paper Published

Jonas Ranstam PhDDeputy editor of Osteoarthritis and Cartilage

Dept of Orthopedics, Skane University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.

Osteoarthritis and CartilageImpact Factor and Rank

Year Impact factor Rank in Orthopaedics

2010 3.953 1/61

2009 3.888 1/56

2008 4.082 1/49

2007 3.793 1/48

2006 4.017 1/43

2005 4.215 1/41

2004 3.573 1/42

Source- Thompson ISI

Osteoarthritis and CartilageAuthors - Geographical Breakdown

Osteoarthritis and CartilagePredicted for 2011

~ 600 manuscripts

~ 70% rejected

Osteoarthritis and CartilageNumber of submissions 2005-2011

Osteoarthritis and CartilageNumber of submitted manuscripts

Osteoarthritis and CartilageNumber of accepted manuscripts

Osteoarthritis and CartilagePer cent acceptance rate

How to Get Your Paper Published

The road to success: Tell the whole story

The whole story

1. Why did you perform the study?2. How did you design and plan it?3. What patients, animals, cells, etc. did you examine?4. How did you examine the samples?5. What did you find?6. How do you interpret your observations?7. How uncertain is your interpretation?

The whole story

When a well-done trial or experiment or observational study is fairly, honestly, and thoroughly reported, it will have so many warts, footnotes, and exceptions that it may be hard for the uninitiated to believe that the work was of high quality.

Frederick Mosteller, PhD

All scientific findings are uncertain

No one expects you to present findings without uncertainty.

What is expected of you is that you reduce the uncertainty as much as possible and quantify and report what remains of the uncertainty.

Reporting guidelines will help you

ICMJE's (icmje.org)

Report specific checklists (equator-network.org)- CONSORT randomized trials- TREND non-randomized trials - STROBE observational studies- STARD diagnostic accuracy studies- ARRIVE in vitro studies- PRISMA systematic reviews- Et cetera

Most importantly

Follow the Journal's Guide for Authors

http://ees.elsevier.com/oac/

OAC Recommendations1. Ranstam J. Sampling uncertainty in medical research. Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2009;17:1416-9.

2. Ranstam J. Reporting laboratory experiments. Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2010;18:3-4.

3. Ranstam J, Lohmander LS. What's in a number or in a picture? Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2010;18:1003-5.

4. Ranstam J, Lohmander LS. Ten recommendations for OAC manuscript preparation, common for all types of studies. Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2011;19:1079-80.

http://ees.elsevier.com/oac

Recommendation 1.

State the research question and the purpose of the study. Is the ambition to describe an observation, to generate hypotheses or to test a pre-specified hypothesis?

Recommendation 2.

Describe the source of study participants, patients, cadavers, animals, tissues, cell lines, etc., and how many units that have been included in the study.

To what population do you wish to generalize the findings of your study? If all observations have been sampled from one subject, animal or cell line, direct generalization cannot be made beyond this.

Recommendation 3.

When observations can be presented individually, either numerically or graphically, this should be preferred.

When fewer than four observations are presented, they should as a rule be described individually, not as an aggregate.

Recommendation 4.

When presenting data in aggregated form, always provide the number of included observations (n) as well as measures of central tendency (mean, median, etc.) and dispersion (standard deviation, range, etc.).

If repeated measurements or replicates are used, present both the number of independent samples and the number of repeated observations per independent sample.

Recommendation 5.

Describe all statistical methods in the statistical methods section, using well recognized terms such as Student's, Welch's or Satterthwaite's t-test.

Always identify the statistical software and version used.

Recommendation 6.

The validity of results from statistical tests relies on certain assumptions being fulfilled.

Describe how you have examined this and what the results were.

When departures are detected, alternative methods may be required.

Recommendation 7.

Generalizations from observed data are often made with the help of hypothesis tests. It should be recognized that:

1. Tested hypotheses relate to the generalization of an observation, never to the observation itself.

2. A statistically significant finding is not necessarily practically, biologically or clinically important.

3. A statistically insignificant test does not necessarily indicate similarity.

Recommendation 8.

Confidence intervals provide more information on inferential uncertainty than is included in P-values.

Both SEMs and 95% confidence intervals describe uncertainty.

95% confidence intervals are preferred.

Recommendation 9.

If one-sided statistical tests, one-sided confidence intervals, Bonferroni corrections, simultaneous confidence intervals, or other departures from the conventional 5% significance and 95% confidence level are used, explain and motivate the reasons for this.

Recommendation 10.

The level of statistical rigor (and remaining inferential uncertainty in the results) should be in parity with the purpose of the study and the author's conclusions.

Collaborate

Statistics is a rapidly developing science.

Statistical methods are becoming increasingly powerful and complex.

If you are not familiar with the statistical methods needed for your study, consult a biostatistician.

Thank you for your attention!

And best of luck with your OAC submissions!