Academic publishing, part I: Peering into the review process

NeuroGenesis is meant to be a feature that helps academic neurologists navigate a wide spectrum of issues that they face in their careers. It may seem to be a bit selfserving, then, for the Editor-in-Chief to take the podium first and focus the initial segments in this series on academic publishing. However, at most academic institutions, both in the USA and internationally, publication remains the coin of the realm. My own view is that the beating heart of academic neurology is teaching, which I think is the sine qua non for our profession. However, teaching must be interpreted broadly. We teach locally in a one-onone way at the bedside, and in small groups, or in larger lectures. Clearly as we teach in larger settings, the quality of the individual interactions is reduced, but if the teacher is effective, the number of students impacted is increased. The way to reach the largest number of potential learners is by publishing your work. It is remarkable and gratifying to have colleagues you have never met come up to you at a meeting and thank you for writing something that had an important impact on their lives and careers. In terms of judging academic careers, it is always much easier to quantify the contribution made by publications than that made by local teaching. I would argue that local teaching is at least as important and is the very lifeblood of an academic medical center. But it is still very difficult to measure the quality of local teaching, especially in the one-on-one and small group settings in which we really learn to be clinicians. For this reason, even for those who are expert and superb clinician–teachers, it is much easier to establish your bona fides for promotion if at least a substantial part of your activity is in academic publication. Of course, for those who engage in research as a major component of their careers, the only way to communicate results effectively is to publish them. Hence in virtually all academic promotions, publications play a major role. It could be argued that perhaps they play too large a role in the evaluation and promotion process, but few would argue that it is an area that a serious academic neurologist could afford to overlook. In this inaugural series of NeuroGenesis, we will cover 3 important topics in academic publishing. In future entries, I will discuss how to choose where to publish your work, and how to prepare your paper so it has the greatest chance of being accepted. In this issue, I will discuss something near and dear to the heart of all journal editors: the peer review process, and why it is so important for your own intellectual growth and academic career that you participate as a peer reviewer.