The findings

The dissemination of findings is an important part of the research cycle. Journal publication and presentations is a common and valuable part of dissemination. Normally more than one researcher is involved in  authoring articles for publication.

It is important to understand and discuss the issues about authorship before starting to work as a writing team. Authorship applies to articles written, conference presentations including posters, and also to subsequent work that uses data derived from the study. It may be important to identify early who has access to the data that result from a study, and how and where it will ultimately be stored.

New analysis of data from a study done for another purpose may sometimes require a new ethics approval.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) have developed and updated a set of Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations) (219kb pdf). This document  provides the definitions of authorship and the different types of involvement in preparing an article for publication. Many journals require a statement of involvement for each named author, describing their contribution in detail. Some collaborative research groups also have Standard Operating Procedures covering authorship arrangements.

Conflicts of interest, defined as any form of competing loyalty, must also be explicitly acknowledged and addressed. Conflicts of interest may be financial or based on personal relationships, or other personal factors. ICMJE provides a summary of the issues involved.

Many universities and research organisations also have specific guidance around authorship. The NHMRC has developed an authorship guide (300kb pdf) to assist institutions develop and maintain authorship policies that facilitate the recognition of significant intellectual or scholarly contribution to a research output and reflect that authorship

Choosing the journal to submit to is another important step that should be thought through early on when writing up results.  Considerations include:

• Who is the main audience for that journal? eg, is it a general journal or a subspecialty journal? Is it aimed at many disciplines or only one?
• Is it local, national or international?
• Is it the kind of article and topic that is usually published by that journal?
• Does it fit into a series within the journal?
• Is the journal indexed for Medline and other bibliographic databases – which will ensure that the publication can be found by others who are searching the literature.
• What is the impact factor of the journal? This relates to how widely read and cited the journal is.
  However, the journals with the highest impact factor are also the most competitive ones to be published in, and their peer reviewing processes can be extremely slow and very demanding.
• Open access journals are increasingly being used – and some of these are evolving a new publishing model in which authors pay to publish their work, whilst it is free to readers. This enables more people to read the article but requires a financial commitment.

General guidelines for publication in the medical literature are available from ICMJE. There are also specific ways of reporting the findings of different types of studies - the EQUATOR network is an organisation whose aim is to improve the quality of scientific reporting, and its website has a comprehensive collection of guidelines and checklists for each study type, as well as more general advice for authors.

Each journal also provides its own style guidance to authors, describing their specific requirements in detail. This information can usually be found on the journal’s website. In thinking about publication, it is important to select a journal that publishes the type of research which is being submitted - eg, qualitative versus quantitative studies, pilot studies, randomised controlled trials, epidemiology, health service research and so on.

For referencing, it can save time to use software such as Endnote that will enable an easy change in styles to meet journal requirements.  

Once an article has been submitted to a journal it cannot be submitted elsewhere until a decision has been made.

Communicating the findings of research is an essential stage of the research process. Journal publication and conference presentations are a well known method for most clinicians and academics.

Ensuring that others working in the same field are able to learn from the results of a completed study is important - to improve care and knowledge, or influence policy or service planning, or - if a well-designed and well-run study is negative, to stop doing an activity which may be ineffective or even harmful.

Future research needs to build on what has already been learned and evidence based care depends on the continuing 'conversation' about the results of research. This reminds us that people using research evidence need skills needed to understand and critically assess the quality of research.  This helps health professionals and organisations decide whether and how a particular positive or negative result may be relevant to their own work.

To help spread awareness of your research findings,  your research plan for a project  should include a dissemination plan. When a study is published in a peer reviewed journal, there are several benefits:

• It can be assumed to meet a minimum standard of scientific quality because it has been subject to the critical scrutiny of the reviewers before publication
• It can be retrieved by searching the literature (although not all palliative care journals are indexed in the major databases)
• Articles in high impact peer-reviewed journals are considered a key ‘deliverable’ by many research funding bodies and contribute to the research team’s ‘track record’ when seeking funding for further research.

Presentation at conferences may involve poster or oral presentations and the opportunity to discuss or debate the findings with peers can be extremely valuable. However, information presented at conferences may not be so easily retrievable by other researchers.

You can extend the reach of conferences abstracts by adding them to a Grey Literature register.

CareSearch collects abstracts and posters from a number of key conferences and from non-indexed journals in its Grey Literature collection, and this database is searchable.

There are many other avenues that can be used in sharing your findings. Social media is increasingly being used as are blogs, videos and community presentations. Contacting media may also be important for some findings.

Having a dissemination plan can bring together the different elements informing a dissemination plan including intended audiences, key message and avenues, dissemination partners and indicators of success.  The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has developed a Dissemination Planning Tool.

CareSearch has developed a module Disseminating Research Findings. This module looks at communicating research findings in thoughtful, planned way.