Does anyone know about peer reviewed articles

[tgrimes]

just wondering who can submit articles to a scientific journal, what kind of degree they need, or is it all highly dependent on the journal itself?
I always thought this was a big deal, apparently not?
What kinds of things constitute a research grant at the NIH or NIMH?
(M.O.T. I know you are out there)
Someone please help... (but hopefully not until tomorrow, I am obsessing and need to get off the computer :D )

[roadracer]

I really dont know, but I know in some fields you can submit a article to a site, where if it is interesting enough, the experts look over it, and it can be critiqued, because inorder to even be considered for peer reviewed publications it has to meet certain standards in the format and everything.
Not sure if this is where you start or not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint
Here is NIH about grants
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/
also if you are looking for info for what ever your writing this site might help
http://www.jstor.org/

[MomOTwins]

OK, Grimey, you found me! I almost finished mowing our field/lawn (almost 2.5 acres) and came in for a breather, figured I could escape a really bad sunburn by stopping now, so here I am.

Regarding the "who can submit a paper" question:

It really depends on the topic and the journal that you are "targeting" with your paper. If you ask me (by pm or here on this message string) about a specific journal, I can give you some idea whether they'd take a non-scientist/non-MD submission and maybe give you some other ideas on what journals would be more interested in the topic. I've got a source for "information for authors" for pretty much all English language medical/scientific journals, so I can forward you the information you'd need to get the document together in the format that they accept.

Now, the second question is even more challenging, but I'll give it a shot (having written grant proposals to NIH and the NSF):

The key issues here are what the topic is, whether they have funding pools available for the investigation (the organization sends out a "request for proposals", or RFP, that details what they are looking for and how much money they will provide), and whether you've got something to investigate that is so cool (or so current, i.e. swine flu) that they want any and all applications ASAP. There is a huge pile of paperwork that needs to be included in a grant proposal to the federal government (or any other funding organization), everything follows standardized formats and styles (even to the point of having page limits or word number restrictions), you have to go into excruciating detail on where every penny will go (when I wrote these, I had our business' financial manager review the document to be sure I wasn't over- or under-estimating anything), and pretty much no one who is a non-scientist/non-physician/not affiliated with a research hospital or university will get funded.

If you are trying, as a non-scientist, to get funding for a study, I'd recommend contacting an organization that investigates/supports the goal you are trying to get to (i.e., for diabetes research, contact the American Diabetes Association) and ask them if they have funding available. They may know of a scientist that is preparing a proposal you could tie into, or they may have recommendations for funding that you haven't considered. I'll warn you, getting funded for a study is seriously difficult, even for scientists with long track records of amazing research findings.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to pm me and we can do this offline.

Kim

[tgrimes]

I am sorry, I wasn't talking about myself (but thanks for the vote of confidence, I am shocked you would even have considered that :) LOL)
This is my bothersome bother, see below text:
Can someone with a bachelors work as a research scientist at the NIH... do you know what that job description is, if so, does it entail being part of grant approval process?
Can that be where he developed his sphere of influence?
Is the key here 'co-authored'?
Isn't working at the NIH and co-authoring scientific publications a conflict of interest?
Is owning MedCon a conflict of interest if done at the same time? I can't even find info on the same MedCon. If this guy is too stupid to even do a fictitious name search to prevent infringement before naming his business, then i hate to think of the articles themselves. No, I didn't find which journals.
Not sure what my real problem is here, but i think I would like to trust the things I read in PubMed and the AMA journal and the like. If I find out these things are in some of the journals I look at from time to time, then i am going to worry about credibility.
So I guess you answered siome of my questions already, (these q's above are just additional worry) so, the question I want you to answer most now, is there such a thing as a 'credibility rating' for journals?
Anyways, here's the stuff creeping me out:

<<< David A. Geier is president of MedCon, Inc. He graduated with honors from UMBC with a B.A. in Biology and a minor in History. He has been a researcher scientist at the National Institutes of Health. He has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed scientific/medical publications on vaccine safety, efficacy, and policy. He has addressed numerous professional meetings, and most recently co-addressed the Institute of Medicine of the United States’ National Academy of Sciences on vaccines. ...' http://www.autismmedia.org/media4.html

[tgrimes]

OK, Grimey, you found me! I almost finished mowing our field/lawn (almost 2.5 acres) and came in for a breather, figured I could escape a really bad sunburn by stopping now, so here I am.



Mow? i figured you'd be plowing this time of year :)

[MomOTwins]

I'll run through your questions in order:

1) Can someone with a BA work at NIH? Yes, but not in a position of any kind of power/decision making/control. From what I've seen, a BA does not classify you to ever be in a position where you could turn down or push through the grant for a trial. I'd like to know what kind of position he had at the institutes with a BA (not to say that a BA is worth nothing, but a Bachelor's of Arts degree is not received well by folks in the sciences when compared to a Bachelor's of Science degree, a little nuance in our hierarchy that I don't want to expand on without alienating anyone who has a BA).

2) No, someone with his credentials, working at NIH (in any position), could NOT develop a following (aka "Sphere of Influence") for his beliefs. Note that I'm saying "beliefs" and not "theory" or "data".

3) You can indeed work at NIH (or with NIH funding outside the Institutes) and publish. However, if you are an NIH employee, you need to get all manuscripts approved/cleared for submission internally before you try to get them published. Part of this is due to caution on the side of the organization to not publish stuff that is "personal theory" and not proven scientific findings and part of it is "Is this safe (i.e. not US security-related) to publish?".

4) Owning an outside consulting firm (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt by calling them consultants) while employed by NIH is not something that would typically trigger the warning alarms. HOWEVER, publishing and/or advertising under both NIH and MedCom labels during your time at NIH should really trigger the bells/whistles/angry dogs to ask "WTF?" in regards to any outside activities while employed by the federal government!

5) OK, here is something that has been a dirty little secret in the world of scientific publishing - being a co-author on a manuscript often means little, being the first author may mean a lot more. Let me just say that there has been a huge discussion over the past 10 years regarding who should or shouldn't get to be a co-author on a paper. There are now international guidelines that have been accepted by most reputable journals that clearly define who should or shouldn't be considered a coauthor (if you want the definitions, let me know, and I'll provide you with the link). HOWEVER (and this is a BIG however), some people don't think that the guidelines apply to them, just to those pesky bogus folks who try to publish stuff that we don't agree with! I'll just note that this gets really ugly and you don't want to get involved in a discussion of this issue when medical writers or practicing clinicians are around.

6) Regarding your "credibility rating" question: I WISH THERE WERE!!! However, if you are ever in doubt of a citation shown on PubMed, send me a link and I'll work hard to interpret the "reality" vs. the "woo" of any abstract that is cited. This goes for anyone who is having a brain spasm while trying to interpret these papers in their abstracted form.

And no, we don't plow our acreage, since we aren't planting anything on the fields. I am only mowing to keep the grass/birdsfoot trefoil/clover low enough for the boys to play on, not to use as an agricultural base for potential sheep grazing (we do have sheep grazing across the road from us at my brother-in-law's farm). We will (if the money is available this fall) fence off a chunk for grazing a couple sheep next year for eventual relocation to our freezer, but the rest will remain a playground for the boys, the cat, the Dad, and the Mom.

Kim

[tgrimes]

Wow, Kim, thanks, this was really helpful. Especially #6, and i'm wondering why would just a regular person like me pick three as the best, and I don't even know how I ever came to that conclusion. And I will definitley take you up on your offer!
And a big 'phew, what a relief' to the others. (except for a couple of hmm, that's interestings...)
Now I can sleep tonight (until I start thinking about why you can't at least put in at least one darn pumpkin hill for the with all that land) You know redheads love pumpkins!

[MomOTwins]

Glad to help!

Re. the pumpkin hill - we've got woodchucks galore out here and they LOVE pumpkins, so none of those will be planted this year. Also, our growing season is relatively short (we had a hard frost this morning!) and it is hard to get really big ones to grow up on our hill even if we could deter the chucks.

I'm going to experiment this year with an upside-down tomato garden planter on our deck, since we've had horrible luck with tomato blight in our garden boxes. The spinach is going in this week, and DH made the mistake of getting shelling peas instead of the sugar snaps that I wanted, so I'll be holding off on pea planting until I can nab the right seeds. The big extravaganza this year will be the perennials and annuals, as I want the boys to see what a few zinnia, cosmos, and marigold seeds can do if you take care of them. DH also bought a big variety of sunflower seeds, so we'll get miniature golden ones, huge russet ones, and some other varigated ones. Should be a fun fall for the local bird population!

[Keggy]

Kim... when I was working on my article my co author added our editor and research assistant as co writers, is that what you mean by people who shouldn't be added as writers? I agree, but curious if thats who you mean.

[MomOTwins]

Keggy, the guidelines that I mentioned are here: http://www.icmje.org/ . They detail who is considered an author vs. a person that would be acknowledged for their help (statisticians, editors, other folks who didn't participate in the study design, execution, and write-up of the findings). This set of guidelines is referred to in the "Instructions to Authors" for most scientific journals, either as a reference or as a rule for that journal regarding who gets authorship and who doesn't. As an editor or writer who didn't participate in the study design/execution/interpretation of data, I am not considered a coauthor, but I'm often acknowledged for my assistance by the authors in a little footnote or citation in the paper.

In the case of your paper, I'd have acknowledged the contribution of those two folks and not added them as coauthors. However, some journals only follow the ICMJE guidance as a recommendation, and don't require the contributors to sign off on a document that clearly states what their participation was in the study.

Now that I've bored everyone else to tears, I'm going to get back to work!

[Kristen (ColeysMom)]

I'm not bored! That was a great question Grimey...and loved reading the answers...and loved even more learning that you (Kim) have so much expertise in this area...didn't know that! :)

Thanks both of you!

[Keggy]

Thanks for infor. When we did this my co author took care of the submission of the paper, and made herself primary author and me, the editor and research assitant were co-authors (she said we were all "equals" but I had a huge problem with that) because of that the journal has changed the way it does things and made a sign off of who did what before the paper is published, editors and research people are noted but not listed as authors.