RNJ Corner – February 2020

Pamala D. Larsen, PhD, MS, RN, Editor-in-Chief
Linda Pierce, PhD RN CRRN FAAN, Associate Editor

Each year the Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) receives about 150 manuscripts. The RNJ publishes information and educational content focusing on contemporary rehabilitation nursing practice across the continuum of care and the lifespan. Manuscript submissions that address these issues, including current and future healthcare delivery in areas important to nursing and rehabilitation in 2020 and beyond, are welcome (find RNJ Information for Authors here).

Once a manuscript is submitted to RNJ, one may wonder about the manuscript peer review process and how a manuscript gets to be a published article.

Peer Review Process

On submission to RNJ, a manuscript is either rejected by the Editor or Associate Editor after a critical appraisal or placed into the double-blind peer review process. The major reasons for early rejection is that the manuscript does not follow author guidelines or focus on rehabilitation nursing, e.g., clinical relevance or specific clinical applications to answer the “so what” question about the topic are missing. If the manuscript is placed into peer review, the paper is sent to two or three reviewers for a ‘blind’ or anonymous evaluation. This kind of evaluative peer review means that the author(s) do not know who the reviewers are, and vice-versa, the reviewers do not know who the author(s) are.

• Reviewers complete a grid for each manuscript where questions are answered either Agree or Disagree / Yes or No. For example: 1) the purpose of the manuscript is clearly stated, 2) the content is well-written in a professional style with few grammatical errors, 3) the manuscript addresses the current and essential aspects of the topic….
• In addition to the grid, reviewers also use narrative evaluation guidelines to suggest a recommendation to the Editor (accept, accept if revised as suggested, revise and resubmit, revise (resubmit) with no guarantee of acceptance, or reject) on the basis of overall quality of the paper. Narrative comments follow the guidelines provided for the writing of a structured abstract. For research studies, this is broken down into headings of the purpose of the study, method adopted, the results, and conclusions drawn. For other kinds of submissions, reviewers’ comment on each heading in that structured abstract. Reviewers also examine the content/format of the abstract, table(s)/figure(s), and references.
• Reviewers submit the grid, narrative comments, and recommendation for each manuscript they evaluate. If the recommendation is to revise (resubmit) the manuscript and once that happens, the Editor makes the final manuscript decision: reject or accept. (Please note that rarely are manuscripts accepted for publication on the first submission; usually two-three revisions are necessary with the manuscript returned to the reviewers after each author’s set of revisions.)

Accepted / Published Manuscripts

If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the last step for the corresponding author is reviewing a galley proof. A galley proof is produced after the accepted manuscript is edited and formatted by the journal’s Editor and production team at the publisher (Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott). This proof is a PDF emailed file to the corresponding author and usually contains notes or queries from the production staff and Editor that the author needs to address in collaboration with any co-authors. The corresponding author has a final chance to accept or reject such changes, suggest minor revisions, and to answer any production related questions. Only critical changes are made, such as data corrections or names of missing author(s). Extensive content related revisions initiated by author(s) at this stage are not encouraged.

Published Ahead of Print (PAP) Manuscript

Once the galley proof of the manuscript is finalized, it will be published online before it is assigned to a print issue of RNJ. Having PAP capability assures that author(s)’ important work is disseminated as widely and as quickly as possible. 

Consider submitting a manuscript to RNJ for peer review and possible publication! Of special note: Each year at the ARN REACH annual conference, the Editors, in collaboration with Editorial Board members, present a session on writing for publication. If you are planning to attend the 2020 conference, October 21-24 in San Antonio, TX, please come to the session to learn more about writing a manuscript.