Publication Guidance

Naming authors on a research output ensures that the appropriate individuals get credit and are accountable for the research. 

Many journals have their own guidelines on authorship in their instructions for authors – often modified versions of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Take the time to fully understand each journal’s guidelines for authorship. Principles, customs, and practices regarding authorship differ across cultures and scientific disciplines. 

It is good practice to identify from the onset which journal you intend to publish in and read all the guidance for authors prior to undertaking any writing, and essential before submitting a manuscript.  

All authors must have made a substantial contribution to the design, data acquisition or data analysis/interpretation and have drafted/revised the article and approved the final version. 

Ideally, the order of authors should relate to their relative contributions to the manuscript, with the person who contributed most listed first. The final authorship order will be confirmed at the point when a final or near-final draft is prepared. However, authors should give thought to the order before preparing the manuscript to avoid disappointment. 

Lead authors will normally be responsible for completing journal-specific author and conflict of interest forms. 

 

Inappropriate types of authorship

The Trust does not support the following types of authorship:

• Guest Authorship – Including a particular name will improve the chances that the study will be published or increase the perceived status of the publication. The “guest” author makes no discernible contributions to the study, so this person meets none of the criteria for authorship.
• Honorary or Gift Authorship – authorship based solely on a tenuous affiliation with a study i.e. authorship bestowed out of respect or gratitude based on one’s position as the head of a department or senior researcher despite a lack of substantial contribution. 
• Ghost Authorship – Individuals who participated in the research, data analysis, and/or writing of a manuscript but their contribution is not included in the authorship of the paper or Acknowledgments. Contributions must be included as stated in the Authorship and Acknowledgement sections. 

It is a requirement that the Trust is named when submitting items for publication and the affiliation is included.

Give the full Trust name in the affiliation contact address i.e. Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, followed by the individual site address of the author.

Authors must also include affiliations stipulated by other parties who may have influence on the publication, for example, funders.

Non-Author contributions

• In the Acknowledgements section, authors should include the names of individuals who contributed to the work, but their involvement did not qualify them for authorship criteria, journal policy on the number of authors in the author by-line. Please refer to Non-Author Contributors as set out by the ICMJE. 
• Please note that some publications require written permission to be granted to name an individual in the 'Acknowledgements' section. 

 

The Trust

• All publications resulting from research sponsored by Notts Healthcare or service evaluations should include the following acknowledgment. 
  • This study/research/service evaluation (delete as appropriate) was supported by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. 
• Where appropriate the site or team should also appear in the acknowledgements section
  • This study/research/service evaluation (delete as appropriate) was supported by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (add site or team).
• Where the authors have had significant help from a particular member of Notts Healthcare staff which does not qualify them for authorship. This staff member should be acknowledged by name and then the trust.
  • The authors thank XXX of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust for their support and assistance in this work.
     

Funders

• You should acknowledge the sources of funding you have received for the research you are publishing. For grants, include grant number and source. Some funders have their own guidance on how they require to be acknowledged e.g. NIHR.

Projects which are not ‘research’ may be of interest to a wider audience and it is possible to publish such projects. This guidance should be considered alongside our other guidance and the instructions for authors provided by journals.

 

Service evaluations

• Service evaluations can be written-up for publication. However, they should be described as service evaluation and not research because, unlike research, it is not possible to claim the findings of a service evaluation are generalisable or transferable. 
• The Trust’s Research and Evidence Department will have reviewed and approved your service evaluation before you started it. This will have ensured the evaluation followed ethical principles. This is important because service evaluations are not subject to a review by an NHS Research Ethics Committee.
• Service evaluations are sometimes done as student projects and the academic institution sometimes requires approval from their University Ethics Committee. This is in addition to approval from the Research and Evidence Department, and in such case both approvals should be reported.
• Data should be reported in a way that maintains anonymity so that patients/staff can’t be identified. Data suppression methods should be used where appropriate to limit prevent the reidentification of the disclosure of information about individuals.
• Proposed papers require sign-off from the service manager prior to submission. 

 

Quality Improvement (QI)

• If you are thinking of writing up your QI project, Ceri Feltbower, Head of Quality Improvement, is happy to offer support and provide guidance.
• Authors should follow the Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE 2.0) guidelines when writing up a QI project. This should be considered alongside the relevant journal guidelines if aiming to publish.

 

Audit

• As per the Trust’s Clinical Audit Policy, staff wishing to publish their clinical audit findings outside the Trust, must get sign-off from the Divisional Clinical Director/Senior Service Manager prior to submitting any material for publication.  They must then notify the Clinical Audit Team.   
• Clinical Audit material must not be submitted for publication externally until explicit approval has been given.

 

Case studies

• The term ‘case study’ has been used to mean different things. For clarity, case studies for who the author is part of the care team can be written up without R&E approval as long as they are anonymous (not just removal of names but that individuals are not identifiable via other details).
• You must check the journal guidelines before you begin because some journals require consent to publish personal information (e.g. BMJ).
• Staff wanting to do a co-author a paper with a patient / service user must seek advice from the Information Governance Department. In some cases, it may be appropriate to use a pseudonym for the patient / service user co-author. Where this is the case, the Information Governance Department could be the intermediary between the staff member and the journal.
• Once a manuscript has been accepted, a record should be added to the Trust’s Evidence Repository.
• Projects using single-case experimental designs are not ‘case studies’ and should gain the appropriate approvals.

Researchers should aim to publish papers as open access, so they are freely available. Some journals charge an open access fee, such as an article processing charge for making papers open access. Where possible, such fees should be costed into your research bid. In many cases, this would be expected by the funders as part of the dissemination plan.

It is likely to be difficult for non-funded research, systematic reviews, and non-research projects such as service evaluations, to get funding for open access. You should check whether fees will apply before you submit your paper to a journal. Potential sources of funding include whether the service could meet the fee or, if an author is affiliated to a university, whether the university has an open access fund.

One of the benefits of the Trust’s Evidence Repository is that pre-print versions of papers will be added (subject to copyright) which is another route to make papers publicly accessible.

Be wary of “predatory” or “pseudo-journals” who pose as peer-reviewed medical journals. They often approach directly, and will accept and publish most submissions, but charge authors a publication or processing fee after a paper has been accepted for publication.

Think. Check. Submit. encourages researchers to look out for the characteristics displayed by predatory publishers and provides a checklist of questions to evaluate publishers.

If you are unsure, please contact the Trust Library service for advice.

If publishing a paper for the first time, it’s good practice to set up an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) which will stay consistent over time. This makes it easier to bring your publications together. This will also be used to verify authors in the Trust’s Evidence Repository.

Manuscripts containing patient personal data must be sufficiently anonymised. The BMJ consider an article to be sufficiently anonymised where there are no direct identifiers and no more than two indirect identifiers. The BMJ advise that removing identifiers does not affect the readability or understandability of the study. Identifiers are listed in the BMJ’s standards of anonymisation checklist. Further information is available at the BMJ Author Hub.

Registering research protocols

• You will be asked during the research application process (via IRAS) whether the research will be registered on a public database. The Health Research Authority (HRA) say all research should be registered in a publicly accessible database. Please see the HRA guidance. 
• While the Trust’s R&E Department register all research applications on a project management system, EDGE, this is not publicly accessible. Where appropriate registers are not available, protocols can be submitted to the R&E Department for registration on the Trust’s publicly accessible Evidence Repository.

 

Registering systematic reviews

• It’s good practice to register systematic reviews before starting them and to see whether a similar review already exists. PROSPERO is an international prospective register of systematic reviews. Please see their website to check their current guidance about registering.

Where copyright allows, the Trust requires a deposit of the full-text in the Trust’s Evidence Repository. Publisher copyright and open access archiving policies vary on a journal-to-journal basis, but usually the copy is the author’s final peer-reviewed version before publication and not the publisher’s PDF. Please liaise with the Trust Library service who will clarify the copyright and will make the deposited copy available on the Trust’s Evidence Repository. 

Celebrate your publication by letting the Communications team know about it.

Before submission

• Choose where to publish and read all the guidance for authors prior to undertaking any writing. 
  • Are you required to publish in a peer-reviewed, open access journal? Read funder’s guidance and adhere to requirements.
  • Look at the papers you plan to cite to see which journals may be suitable for your manuscript.
  •  If you are unsure, the Library and Knowledge service will be able to search for journals in your field/topic and provide impact factors to help with your decision.
• The EQUATOR Network (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) is a great source of tips and reporting guidelines for many types of study designs.
• For non-research papers, the final draft should be submitted to the service manager for approval prior to submitting to a publisher. 

 

On submission

• Correctly enter your affiliation
• Make sure you acknowledge the Trust and any research funders in the correct format.
• Include your ORCID where possible.
• Ensure you have a copy of your author’s accepted manuscript and contact the library about depositing in the Trust’s repository.

 

On acceptance

• Contact Research and Evidence Team to ensure publications and other outputs are recorded on EDGE (for research and service evaluations).
• Contact the Trust library service about depositing your manuscript in the Trust’s repository.

 

On publication

• Celebrate your publication by letting the Communications team know about it.