Family Medicine Editor-in-Chief
Writing for publication is hard work, especially if you are doing it alone. I find that having a team to write papers with makes the experience easier and more engaging. But, in order to make the process move smoothly, it makes sense to spend a little bit of time at the outset to set some ground rules.
- Delegation of responsibilities—There are a lot of details to address when writing a paper and I find that is pays off at the end to be clear about who is going to do what at the beginning. My colleagues and I divide tasks, including being in charge of the reference manager, finding author instructions for potential journals, and delegating one person to be the “corresponding author”. The designated corresponding author will be responsible for sending calendar invites, Zoom meeting information, and reminders throughout the process.
- Authorship guidelines—You want to avoid any misunderstandings about author order or even who is included in the author list. There are myriad ways to decide who will be the first author and the senior author. It is helpful to talk about this order at the beginning. There may also be decisions about who is going to be an author vs being acknowledged at the end of the paper. I have had situations where one of the co-authors ended up doing much more work than the person who was designated as the first author and the group had a conversation about reordering author lists.
- Outline of paper—Before starting to write, the group should sit down and develop an outline of what needs to be covered. During this process, different authors may volunteer (or be assigned) different sections. You may elect to use a Google Doc or have people write their sections in Microsoft Word to be forwarded to one designated person to integrate each section into the whole document.
- References—You may also want to decide how to designate references at this point. Should authors put citations into a comment? Or at the end? It is helpful to be clear about this at the beginning. Some people may want to number their references, but this makes integration more challenging, so I usually recommend writing the author’s name and a date in parentheses and just adding the citation somewhere in the document. It is also helpful to decide at the beginning how you are going to manage references. It can be tricky to integrate several different reference lists from different (or even the same) reference managers. One way to manage this aspect of your paper is to assign someone at the beginning to be in charge of references and have each author forward citations to that person.
- Deadlines—One thing I love about writing in a group is that everyone is accountable to each other. Unless you are planning to submit to a special issue with a rigid time frame , writing a paper comes with artificial deadlines. But, that said, setting firm deadlines and scheduling regular meetings can keep a project moving forward.
- Editing—Once each author has written their first draft and the sections have been assembled into one unique document, one author may take the lead in making the paper sound like it has one voice. People write differently and it can be distracting to read a paper that is obviously written by different people. Each author will then want to edit for content and readability using track changes. Ultimately, the corresponding author will accept all track changes and finalize the paper.
- Post–writing tasks—After you are finished writing the final draft of your paper, someone needs to take the lead and submit the paper to the desired journal. This process, even after reading the author instructions carefully, can take a couple of hours. The corresponding author (often the first author but sometimes the senior author or one of the other contributing authors) will need to upload information about each author, designate suggested reviewers (for some journals), and write a cover letter among other tasks. Also, it is a great idea to discuss who will take the lead in revising the paper if you get a revision request from the journal and who will be responsible for resubmitting to a different journal if your paper is rejected.
- Opportunities for mentoring—Writing in a team is an excellent way for more experienced authors to provide support and mentoring to more junior authors. By using clear communication and empowering junior faculty to take ownership of the writing process, mentors can role model a streamlined and effective way to write for publication.
See our recent FM Focus on this topic, “Team Writing Etiquette in Verse” Team Writing Etiquette in VERSE
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