{"id":5726,"date":"2014-11-18T01:47:59","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T01:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/events\/practical-tips-for-improving-medical-papers\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T18:49:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T13:19:04","slug":"practical-tips-for-improving-medical-papers","status":"publish","type":"events","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/practical-tips-for-improving-medical-papers","title":{"rendered":"Practical tips for improving medical papers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><strong>Overview:<\/strong> Tips shared with graduate students and researchers at various hospitals in Beijing, China September 1 &amp; 2, 2014<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">On September 1 and 2, Editage provided a series of workshops in Beijing, China, including one session at the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences. The presenter was John D. McDonald, an experienced editor and trainer for Editage\/Cactus. The focus of these 2-hour workshops was \u201cPractical tips for improving medical papers\u201d, which due to the needs of researchers attending, was to focus on core organizational concerns and common structural and language problems when writing in English.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 499px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-element file-wysiwyg\" title=\"Default Title Text\" src=\"http:\/\/insights.cactusglobal.com\/sites\/default\/files\/1.png\" alt=\"Default Alt text\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 499px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><strong>Figure 1.<\/strong> Title of sessions presented in China September 1 &amp; 2, 2014.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">The core of this content is similar to that presented by John during previous sessions in Korea, which began by discussing the importance of having a plan when beginning the writing process. From the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL), the concepts of Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) and Lower Order Concerns (LOCs) were presented. In brief, HOCs are areas such as purpose, focus, and organization that an author must consider before writing a paper, while LOCs deal with mostly language concerns. The concepts of HOCs and LOCs were a theme that then continued throughout the workshop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Even with those familiar with the IMRaD (and \u2018general-specific-general\u2019) structure of journal papers, instruction on the 3-step process for writing an Introduction section seemed to be the best received. In this process, understanding the use of references when moving from Step 1 (general references) to Step 2 (specific references) was key information, as was the discussion pertaining to using a critical analysis of the references in Step 2 to provide a \u2018home\u2019 for the paper being written\u2014i.e., to set the paper up as a \u2018solution\u2019 in Step 3. Examples of key language in these steps then helped to further clarify this concept.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 499px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-element file-wysiwyg\" title=\"Default Title Text\" src=\"http:\/\/insights.cactusglobal.com\/sites\/default\/files\/2.png\" alt=\"Default Alt text\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">(a)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-element file-wysiwyg\" title=\"Default Title Text\" src=\"http:\/\/insights.cactusglobal.com\/sites\/default\/files\/3_0.png\" alt=\"Default Alt text\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">(b)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 499px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><strong>Figure 2.<\/strong> (a) General structure and (b) common components of the Introduction section. In (b), not all are used in every paper\u2014these are presented as possible options for use in specifics papers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Another well-received section was the discussion of ethics in writing, especially with respect to avoiding plagiarism due to improper paraphrasing; this section was added to session for the 2<\/span><sup style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">nd<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: 14px; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"> and 3<\/span><sup style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">rd<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: 14px; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"> groups. Key to the concept is that: 1) non-content words must be changed, 2) the structure of the original text must be changed, and 3) a citation must be provided. The second step was the most difficult aspect of paraphrasing that wasn\u2019t considered by many in attendance.<\/span><\/p>\n<table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 499px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-element file-wysiwyg\" title=\"Default Title Text\" src=\"http:\/\/insights.cactusglobal.com\/sites\/default\/files\/4.png\" alt=\"Default Alt text\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 499px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><strong>Figure 3.<\/strong> Avoiding plagiarism by paraphrasing properly.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">In the final sections of the session dealing with common errors in style and formatting, and then providing some real-world samples of editing changes, it was interesting to note that these concepts seem to be common across East-Asia (China, Korea, Japan). John\u2019s experiences to date have mostly been with Korean researchers, but in discussions\/workshops with Chinese and Japanese researchers the problems that writers have with spacing, articles, \u2018not only \u2026 but also\u2019, and others appear to be common. This commonality is good news for the use of common presenters in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":33313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[2408],"event_type":[2357],"new_categories":[],"new_tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-5726","events","type-events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","event_type-workshop"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Practical tips for improving medical papers | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Core issues related to preparing a paper for publication were presented in 2-hour sessions in Beijing, China on September 1 and 2. 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