Publishing an academic paper: basics of the submission process

After completing this module, the paramedic will be able to:

Publishing an academic paper is key to distributing and communicating your research to the broader scientific community. Gaining knowledge through a structured and accepted scientific process and preparing your own paper can be a daunting task, especially for those new to the submission process. Researchers start their work by reading background information and becoming knowledgeable on the topic they wish to investigate. Information can be obtained through books or research produced outside of traditional academic methods (grey literature). However, the most reliable way to gather other research that has been published about your topic of interest and/or in your field is to read papers published in academic journals. This article gives a broad overview of what you need to know before endeavouring to publish an academic paper, along with basic tips on the submission process.

Before starting your research, there were many questions you needed to ask yourself such as: What is my research going to be about? What type of study am I doing? What types of data do I need to collect? These types of questions were pertinent in the conduct of your research, and they are similarly important when writing your paper. You should especially consider the key findings of your research and how it contributes to the body of knowledge in your field. What is so important about your findings that people should know about it? You should thus consider the audience you want to communicate to, that is, who you want reading your paper. These are very important considerations when deciding to which journal to submit your paper. Each journal has aims, scopes, an outline of what the journal is trying to achieve, and what topics it wants to publish.