Writing and Publishing in Medicine, 3rd Ed.

Abstract

Writing and Publishing in Medicine, 3rd Ed. Edward J. Huth. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1999. Pages: 348. Price: $34.95. ISBN 0-683-40447-4. Kathleen S. Reuter, College of Optometry , The Ohio State University , Columbus, Ohio Writing and Publishing in Medicine is an all-encompassing text on medical writing and even more general, scientific writing. In this third edition, Edward Huth has certainly accomplished his goal of writing a “broad but adequately detailed guide to decisions to be made by authors and to the processes of writing.” Huth takes the future author through the planning, writing, revision, and, finally, submission process in step-by-step detail. The first chapter lays out the “nineteen steps in planning, writing, and publishing a paper” whether it is a research paper, a case report, a review article, or an opinion paper. The following sections guide you on how to plan your paper and choose an appropriate writing format and scientific or medical journal necessary to maximize your chances for publication. Huth begins by giving details on how to conduct an exhaustive literature search, listing many medical indices as well as additional indices in the health sciences field. Internet web addresses are included, which make this advice very current, although it may quickly become outdated. Criteria for authorship, important to establish before writing, is discussed in the text, presented in an easy to read table, and is also explained in an appendix. The next section discusses the structure and content of a paper. The conventional IMRAD format (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion) is explained, and details are given on what should be included in each section. Different types of papers are addressed: a paper on reporting clinical trails and observational studies, a research paper reporting laboratory research, the review article and the metaanalysis, the case report and the case-series analysis, an editorial, a book review, and the letter to the editor. This is the section that probably would be referenced the most frequently during the shelf life of this book. Writing the first draft is covered next. There is detail on writing the abstract, the title, and the outline of the paper and a chapter each on including and preparing tables and preparing illustrations. It would be a rare occasion if you have a type of illustration that was not addressed in this book. In this section, Huth even talks about writer’s block and what to do about it. Don’t think you’re out of the woods yet. Next, Huth covers revising the manuscript. In revising for content and structure, questions are asked concerning whether or not you included all the necessary information in your manuscript. For example, a question for the Introduction section of the paper is “Does the Introduction make clear the basis for the main question considered, or the hypothesis tested, in the paper? Is that question of hypothesis made clear by the end of the Introduction?” Questions for the title and the abstract are included as well. A difficult part of the revision process is the use of good scientific prose. The book reviews the rules about writing that you learned in high school English classes but may have forgotten over the years. For those for whom English is a foreign language, advice is given on the eccentricities of the English language. The chapter dealing with citing references gives plenty of examples from printed journal articles to information from a computer program or the web. If you can’t find what you need, Huth cites references to many encyclopedic style-manuals should you need to look up an infrequently used reference. The last section of the book concerns the actual submission to the journal. The submission letter accompanying the manuscript, the peer review of your paper, your accepted, but edited, manuscript are some of the topics included in this section. You need to know all about the journal you are submitting to and what the journal’s editor is expecting in a manuscript. Huth’s advice is don’t hesitate to contact the editor should you have any questions. This book certainly doesn’t say that getting a paper published is easy, but it offers to be your coach should you decide that you have something worth saying to the scientific or medical community. If you follow this book’s advice, the chances that your work will end up being published should definitely improve. In summary, this book is a very detailed, readable manual on scientific and medical writing, useful for novice and experienced writers alike.FIGUREFigure