Objectives and Context

To provide support to naturopathic researchers and naturopathic students with limited experience publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The peer-review process can be frustrating and daunting, and new authors can encounter difficulties that experienced authors have faced before and are able to solve. Access to a naturopathic researcher with experience in peer-review publication will likely increase the likelihood that new authors succeed in having their manuscript published.

This initiative aims to provide mentoring support to naturopaths who are new to peer-reviewed publication by providing them access to experienced researchers who can provide feedback on manuscripts before they are sent to a journal for peer-review. In doing so, we hope to bridge publishing gaps for naturopathic researchers by leveraging the professions’ global network of research expertise.

This mentorship initiative is not intended to provide advice on designing and implementing a research study. It aims to support individuals who already have data to collect and are seeking assistance to strengthen the manuscript reporting that data, prior to submitting to a peer-reviewed journal.

Accessing the Initiative

This initiative is currently available to faculty of WNF Educational Members, with a view to potentially extending it to other WNF Members in the future.

Individuals interested in accessing the initiative should contact the WNF via research@worldnaturopathicfederation.org to request support, indicating their preferred level of support and providing some basic information about the manuscript. The WNF will then facilitate the process of identifying and allocating a mentor to the team.

Allocation of an individual mentor to each authorship team, unless the allocated mentor identifies a need to include additional expert mentorship on the authorship team. This decision will be made in partnership with the authorship team.

Types of Support

The WNF Pre-Peer Review Support initiative primarily encompasses support available across two options, defined by the degree of mentor involvement: Expert Commentary and Guidance (‘light’ input), and Detailed Contribution and Editing (‘comprehensive’ input). A summary of the differences of the two types of support is presented below.

Option 1: Expert Commentary and Guidance

Those new to authoring research can request expert authors to mentor the authorship team by reviewing a manuscript. The mentor will provide comments and suggestions to guide the authorship team to strengthen their manuscript prior to submission. Through this ‘light touch’ mentors will provide suggestions for the new author/s to undertake independent revisions.

Expectations and Requirements

Authors

New authors requesting this level of support must ensure they have undertaken the following activities before requesting assistance:

• Manuscript fully drafted as a research article (e.g., using IMRAD structure)
• Methods section drafted in accordance with the study design’s reporting guidelines (see Appendix 1).
• Selected an appropriate target journal and formatted the article to meet the journal’s requirements (see Appendix 2).
• Identified articles using similar research designs that are published in the target journal.
• Commit to undertake the majority of the necessary writing tasks to finalise the manuscript
• Referenced the manuscript in accordance with the journal’s reference style and using referencing software (see Appendix 3)

Mentors

Mentors will commit to providing input via comments within the manuscript, to:

• Sections of the manuscript that do not meet the usual requirements of scientific journal publication (these may not be journal-specific) and reporting guidelines.
• Sections of text that requires further attention to:
  • academic language and phrasing
  • grammar and spelling (in English unless otherwise agreed)
  • reporting of methodology and methods
  • overall article structure and content
  • presentation and reporting of results (e.g. statistics or qualitative data)

Acknowledgement of Support

Mentors who provide ‘Expert Commentary and Guidance’ should be recognised for their contribution in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of the manuscript, in accordance with international standards of scientific publication and authorship (see Appendix 4).

Option 2: Detailed Contribution and Editing

This level of support is suitable when the request involves comprehensive input from the expert author to advance a manuscript to ready manuscripts for publication. Researchers new to authoring seeking this level of support may have an initial manuscript draft prepared but feel uncertain about how to progress it further for publication, or they may have the data available are unsure of how to begin the manuscript writing process.

Expectations and Requirements

Authors

Authors requesting this level of support must ensure they have progressed to a point where they are ready for substantive, constructive input. They would commonly have completed the following activities before requesting assistance:

• Collected the relevant data (where applicable)
• Identified the reporting guidelines for their study design (see Appendix 1)
• Located at least three manuscripts from well-ranked journals that report results from similar studies (see Appendix 2).
• Selected potentially three appropriate target journals (see Appendix 2). For each of the target journals, the following should also be identified from the journal’s guidelines for the draft manuscript:
  • Manuscript type
  • Word limit
  • Cost of publication (if any)
  • Reference style
• Commit to undertake the majority of the necessary writing tasks to finalise the manuscript
• Referenced the draft manuscript using referencing software (see Appendix 3)

Mentors

In response, mentors will commit to provide editing via tracked changes and comments, where appropriate, to address the following:

• Compliance with manuscript reporting in accordance with the appropriate reporting guideline
• content flow in the relevant sections of the manuscript
• compliance with academic language standards
• grammar and syntax (in English unless otherwise agreed)
• data analysis and reporting (i.e. statistical or qualitative analysis, depending on mentor expertise)

Acknowledgement of Support

Mentors who have provided this level of support should be listed as a co-author of the manuscript, in accordance with international standards of scientific publication and authorship (see Appendix 4).

Appendix 1: Reporting Guidelines for Common Study Designs

Reporting guidelines for different study designs are listed on the EQUATOR Network website: https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/. Table A-1 provides a list of reporting guidelines for common study designs which may be relevant for naturopathic research involving human participants.

Table A-1: Reporting guidelines for comment research study designs involving human participants

Appendix 2: Identifying Potential Target Peer-Review Journals

Potential journals to submit a draft manuscript must be considered within the context of the draft manuscript and the resources of the authorship team. Criteria to consider when identifying a target journal include:

• Journal scope, aims, and preferred research designs or article types
• Journal manuscript guidelines (e.g., limits to word counts, number of tables and figures, number of citations)
• Cost of publication
• Time to review and publication

There are a number of tools available online which can be helpful to search for, and identify the value of, some of the available journals (see Table A-2). Authors can also review the reference list of their draft manuscript to determine if any journals are already publishing research on their topic. These journal options can be further investigated using some of the above-mentioned tools.

Table A-2: Tools to identify target peer-review journals

Appendix 3: Referencing Software

Referencing software is an important tool to assist with publication in peer-reviewed journals as it supports compliance with each journal citation style requirements and more efficient alterations to citation styles should articles require resubmission to a new journal. Table A-3 is a list of commonly used referencing software.

Table A-3: Common referencing software

Appendix 4: Guidelines and Policies of Authorship

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has developed guidelines to assist researchers in defining the role of authors and contributors. It outlines the following four criteria to determine authorship:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved