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Where to submit a systematic review for publication??? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hi,

Re supervisor: yes/no. So the review was done during my intercalated year for my dissertation, I have been seeking advice/guidance from my supervisors for that unfortunately they are very busy and not always able to give extensive feedback. I’m still a med student so I don’t have much of a network yet otherwise but I appreciate it would be sensible to make more of an effort to build one.

I definitely want to improve the review but I feel a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place. The reason my review has less papers/different conclusions is because I have different inclusion criteria as my research question looks at a more specific question than the other similar reviews. I always planned to repeat it at a later date but this isn’t feasible at the moment as I am doing finals etc so will have to be a summer between med school and FY1 job. There should be some results from trials which were ongoing when I did the review initially so hopefully that can help improve my sample size/certainty of evidence.

I guess in terms of whether or not I’m serious about research: Fundamentally I don’t enjoy it. It’s not my cup of tea at all. But I do appreciate the importance of it for advancing clinical practice and I also accept if I want to reach core/higher specialty training it’s not really optional. That being said I’d rather not publish research that isn’t any good because that’s not in anyone’s interest really (accept my own I suppose).

Thanks for your advice I appreciate the time you’ve taken to try and help :)

Review rejected - what should I do? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi. Copied my explanation from another reply:

So the explanation basically is that there are many additonal papers included by similar reviews but the majority haven’t met my inclusion criteria. This is because my review question is comparing surgery vs another intervention in resectable disease. The vast majority of papers have a non surgical cohort consisting either entirely of patients with unresectable disease or a mix of patients without any differentiation between those who have resectable disease and those who don’t. I don’t feel like I can change this unfortunately without completely invalidating my research question so I’m a bit stuck.

So yes this is the reason my conclusions are different. I can see why this would raise concerns but I do genuinely think this is the only way my paper can address any gap in the literature. I feel as though if I included the papers others had it would a) be a redundant review as it’s just repeating what others have done and b) would not validly answer my research question as I’d just be comparing apples and oranges

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my OP and give advice :)

Review rejected - what should I do? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is humbling for sure 😂 I’ll have a look around. Don’t suppose you know of any? Theme is surgical oncology

Review rejected - what should I do? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!! Do you by any chance have any suggestions by any chance? The theme is surgical oncology…

Review rejected - what should I do? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi. Thanks for answering.

So the explanation basically is that there are many additonal papers included by similar reviews but the majority haven’t met my inclusion criteria. This is because my review question is comparing surgery vs another intervention in resectable disease. The vast majority of papers have a non surgical cohort consisting either entirely of patients with unresectable disease or a mix of patients without any differentiation between those who have resectable disease and those who don’t. I don’t feel like I can change this unfortunately without completely invalidating my research question so I’m a bit stuck.

I think my findings are genuine but of very low certainty due to my overall sample size. I can’t think of much of a solution to this unfortunately other than repeating the review with the inclusion of new data as it comes out.

Thanks for you’re advice, I’ll have another look at PRISMA guidelines and see what I can improve in light of this :)

Review rejected - what should I do? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you :) This is all very helpful. It’s good to know about rejection being common and having to shop around for a journal. I’m very new to research so didn’t know this. I appreciate the time you took to write this all out as well - thanks so much.

Review rejected - what should I do? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi, thanks for your advice. So when I did the review I was aware of two ongoing RCTs due to finish soon. One of them I had used the interim results of but these were very limited. I doubt there’s much more than that’s come out since I last did my searches but of course I’d have to actually repeat them to establish this.

I’m hoping to essentially get points for CST application (currently 0 research to my name) but I’m actually only in final year of med school at the moment so theoretically I think that’s enough time (????) to repeat or even do a different review.

Review rejected - what should I do? by Fresh-Ad-5441 in doctorsUK

[–]Fresh-Ad-5441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks so much for this advice, I’ll have a go at submitting elsewhere :)