JellyBean 058 with Kirsty Challen

Half way down the stairs is the stair where we stop. To talk to a peer. About peers. About peer reviews. @RollCageMedic gets stuck into the fine print of the process of submitting your research to a major journal with EMJ Sub-Editor @KirstyChallen.

I know next to nothing about Journals, Editing or Peer Reviewing. Kirsty Challen does. She is an Emergency Physician and an EMJ Sub-Editor. She talks to Matt McPartlin about the journal article review process and the debate surrounding peer review. Why Matt? Because she had approached him to Peer Review something. They were in a stairwell. (Seriously, they really were in a stairwell.) They also ate jellybeans. It’s really quite good.

Matt once again shows that he has a much more logical approach to this Jellybean Caper when he asks Kirsty for three top tips for the aspiring writer AND three more for the aspiring peer reviewer. (Recall that he was about to Peer Review something for Kirsty! Clever.)

This conversation came after the very interesting and thought provoking group discussion at SMACC Dub entitled “Publishing and the future of critical care knowledge dissemination.”

There was no free candy at that talk and thus, I would argue, that this one is better.

(What they don’t talk about (at all) is another Kirsty Challen talent; graphic design. She has an interesting practice in what she calls #paperinapic, the distillation of an educational message into a single graphic image. I generally prefer pictures and picture books. Something to do with my poor reading skills. Matt and Kirsty have perfectly adequate reading skills.)

Take it away Robin…..