Today, we’re speaking to Euan Lawson, the Editor in Chief of the BJGP, about a number of issues around editing, the future of the journal and how you can get involved with the BJGP.

Here's a link to the BJGP Research and Publishing Conference: https://bjgp.org/conference

This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.

Speaker A

00:00:00.400 - 00:00:55.980

Hello and welcome to BJJP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the associate editors of the bjjp. Thanks for taking the time today to listen to this podcast.

In today's episode, we're speaking to Euan Lawson, who is the editor in chief of the bjjp.

We're going to have a chat about a number of issues around the future of the Journal, around editorial issues and how you can get involved with the BJJP as well. So, hi, Ewan. Yeah, nice to see you. And just wanted to really start by saying thanks for joining me here today for this podcast.

But yeah, thanks for joining me here today, Ewan, just to have a general chat about things going on with BJGP and your role as editor.

And yeah, just a chance to catch up about some of your thoughts about issues around academic publishing and then just have a chat generally about other things that you've been thinking about as editor. So how's your week been?

Speaker B

00:00:57.420 - 00:02:13.730

We've already had that conversation before we got here. Now we won't go there again. As you know, it's not been perhaps my ideal week.

But as I'm delighted to be here and talking a little bit about what's going on with the Journal and just give a little bit of insight into how things are going, perhaps the biggest thing that we're I've recently written about the impact factor at the Journal, and perhaps the most important thing I need to say is that we don't worry too much about the impact factor.

I know we do quite well on the impact factor, but I wrote an editorial which really pointed out that we are much more interested in the real world influence of the journal rather than what is quite a narrow metric about citations. We're more interested in how it affects clinical, how the journal articles affect clinical practice, how they affect policy.

And we're really pushing, trying to push in that direction.

And once we get into worrying about the impact factor and there are a lot of perverse kind of incentives in academia and it can sometimes result in what's known as questionable research practices and things can just slide away from the ideal a little bit.

So that's perhaps one of the things that we're trying to concentrate on most in this coming months and years is just making sure that we keep our impact all about real world rather than anything else.

Speaker A

00:02:14.130 - 00:02:26.230

Yeah, you mentioned questionable research practices and you did talk about this in your editorial or your editor's briefing, but how do you think the Journal can tackle that head on?

Speaker B

00:02:27.750 - 00:04:23.309

I mean, it is challenging because it's.

The thing about QRP questionable research practices is that there's like they're a spectrum and they go from really very minor stuff, which is like, you know, giving you, a professor in your department authorship on a paper where they really didn't do anything, to a kind of a. The far end of the spectrum where you start to creep into outright research fraud.

And most researchers, and I think particularly in the primary care field though, you know, we'd always got to be. You always. One has to be careful about making assumptions, you know, are.

Have bags of integrity and do the best they can, but they're working in pressurized systems. And sometimes the QRPs are just things like that can be about the authorship or it can be about declarations of conflicts of interest.

It's how we go about doing our work in terms of how we quote other papers. Or sometimes it can be a little bit about how we tweak results to try to get positive results out because they're more likely to be published.

And those are perhaps the areas where as a journal we can be a little bit more helpful in that, you know, making sure we are quite happy to publish negative findings. We don't overstate results.

It's very easy as a journal to take a paper and there's a, you know, you want a brief summary of it to explain it to people. But it's important that we don't overstate and overinflate results that result in inaccurate messages going out about those papers.

So they're the kind of areas we can help. But let's not be under any illusions. It's a systems kind of problem.

Academic departments and the culture they have and the whole system of getting grants, publishing how those then get disseminated in the media as well. So it's a big old complex beast. And I think we just try and look at the areas journals may have the.

May have an impact, and we're trying to push things in the right direction.

Speaker A

00:04:23.789 - 00:04:40.109

Fair enough. And you mentioned impact and I just wanted to touch here on the BJJP research conference next year, which is going to have a focus on impact.

So talk us through what we're doing there and sort of what your aim is really to get that focus for the conference next year.

Speaker B

00:04:40.269 - 00:06:24.960

Yeah, I think one of the things I've always been keen on, the BJJP Research and Publishing Conference is that it's very much just, you know, it's a little bit something that we want to offer more for the Community, particularly early career researchers and academics.

But any GP that's got a scholar or primary care person, clinician, that's got an interest in sort of the scholarly aspects of work and understanding a little bit more about that. So we're a small, friendly conference. I certainly had some feedback recently that they were.

Someone was happy that they had had a really great experience and found it very welcoming. And I was really. I mean, that was that. I felt really pleased about that because that's certainly what we're aiming at.

And this year the theme is a little bit around impact and influence. We're very lucky to have a couple of speakers who really know about that.

We're going to have Rebecca Payne, who's the gp, former chair of RCGP Wales, and also we're going to have Prof. Martin Marshall, who was former chair of the college, of course, during COVID and is now over at the Nuffield Trust.

And I think that's a really interesting perspective because the think tanks like the Nuffield or the King's or, you know, Health foundation, others that are around, have an enormous understanding of how to influence policy through research and we're hoping that'll be really useful for people and give them an understanding. What we see a lot of is that people are.

People do the research, but often everybody knows you have to do something to try to make your research get your. Everyone wants to get the research out in the world, but far too often, and again, this is part of the way the system is set up.

People just stop at that point and nothing further happens beyond that. And there's so many opportunities in so many ways that you can actually develop that. So we want to try and help people a little bit with that.

Speaker A

00:06:25.200 - 00:06:38.160

Yeah, and we've talked a bit about that just in terms of actually the impact of research and disseminating the results, that actually makes an impact. And I think that's going to be an interesting angle to get from Martin, especially from his perspective as well.

Speaker B

00:06:38.240 - 00:07:46.020

Yeah, it'd be good to see. I want to. We should point out the last few years, all of the research in the journal is open access, so it's not paywalled at all.

And we're having conversations about reducing paywalls across the journal as well. So there. That's in development, but, you know, yeah, we're. We're keen to make sure that we can do. We're trying to do our bit.

It's important that stuff just doesn't disappear into the journal. There's a slight risk of that.

Perhaps some of my favorite moments as editor in the past couple of year, few years have been when I've heard about papers that have changed practice and policy. The very obvious one being the Sandvik paper about continuity, which has been really picked up in government level particularly.

I know in Scotland they're pushing hard on that.

But also when we hear from people like NB Medical or Red Whale or the other RCGP Essential Updates, when they take our papers and they're part of the look obviously across all journals, but when I hear about our papers that are then really being translated into actionable clinical findings, they're perhaps some of my best. That's why I really love seeing that. That's. I think that's really where we want to be and what we want to be doing.

Speaker A

00:07:46.580 - 00:08:02.740

Yeah.

And we've been talking about the clinical practice and analysis papers in the BJGP and we've often reflected on the fact that some of those papers are some of the most read papers across the journal as well. I'm remembering the one about Earwax from a couple of years ago.

Speaker B

00:08:03.860 - 00:08:05.540

I was thinking earwax as you were speaking.

Speaker A

00:08:05.540 - 00:08:22.290

Yeah, fair enough. But I think it's important to think about how we can promote other writers and clinicians, primary care academics to submit those articles to us.

And I don't know if you just want to give a plug for those articles and how we use them.

Speaker B

00:08:22.450 - 00:09:57.910

Yeah, so absolutely. I'd be delighted to receive many more submissions around clinical practice. I think the key thing about this is you don't.

You know, almost all the academics who do anything related to clinical could write a clinical practice article almost next week because they're, they're subject area experts. But There are many GPs out there who've got a special interest.

Well, not just GPs, but any clinicians who've got a special interest in an area could write a really could write incredibly valuable articles that would change people's practice. I think the thing about clinical practice is they're relatively short, sharp articles.

But what we're really what think the ones that have worked really well are, you know the earwax one. Yeah, we saw incredible number of downloads for that.

I mean, I think there are some niche areas where people just don't get their education anywhere else. So they're incredibly useful.

We tend to try to tilt clinical practice and I'm not sure this is written down in the author guidance, but it's worth flagging it towards kind of when we have the ideal reader in mind, we perhaps think of the more experienced GP mid career Onwards, who knows their way.

It doesn't need the basics explaining to them, but has got some quite deep, challenging questions when you get the more complex patients or you've got a little niche area and that's like the perfect zone for us. And the perfect zone is not a great big topic like all of you know how to manage, you know, menopause.

It has to be a niche within that and then those kind of those because mostly because of the allowances of space, but like a niche in that targeted, that kind of gp, that kind of clinician who's got that level of knowledge. Where would. I would love to hear from you, you know, people who've got those, they should get in touch.

Speaker A

00:09:58.150 - 00:09:59.270

Yeah, send us an email.

Speaker B

00:09:59.270 - 00:10:00.230

We're happy to guide.

Speaker A

00:10:00.470 - 00:10:14.060

Fair enough. And what about the analysis papers?

Because often they're quite interesting in terms of critical look at a specific aspect of general practice policy or research and I know that you're interested to get more submissions on, on that angle as well.

Speaker B

00:10:14.060 - 00:12:01.900

Yeah, Again, my personal view is, again, if you're involved in any kind of research or writing articles or you're working in these areas, you could almost, you should almost always be able to write an analysis article that we could publish and I hope you will, people will consider doing it because, you know, whether it's two page version or a four page version, the. You've got that, people have got that expertise, they've got that understanding and they could, they should be able to really. We, we.

I know we've got some academics who are very good at it and understand that process and we often get submissions from them and. But I think so many more people could be doing it to improve their impact and influence of the work they do.

One thing I should mention about analysis, and this is kind of like a heads up, it's in the pipeline and one of the things that we've struggled with over the years with the BJGP is to publish service evaluations and sometimes Innovations in Practice.

We're working quite hard at the moment to create a new section which will be very analysis like and it's probably going to be called something like Innovations in Practice and it's going to be an opportunity to publish things that do that. People that.

Some of the radical, not necessarily radical, but some of the innovations that are going on, developments in general practice, particularly when we consider the ten Year Plan at the moment, it's an opportunity to publish those.

There might be some audit data, some service evaluation data as part of that and share good practice, good policy and so we're creating a section of the journal where those can go in. We've got a little bit of work, so we're not quite there yet.

But if you're doing something novel, important, you think valuable in your area of primary care, we will very soon be.

We're hoping to get that launched early part of next year, to give people an opportunity to bring forward again very much about influence, so that we can actually do a real world influence rather than just. It's not about pushing our impact factor up.

Speaker A

00:12:02.220 - 00:12:16.080

Yeah, fair enough.

And I think that kind of section would really support gps who might not be linked to an academic department, but, as you say, are doing something innovative in practice. Might not have a lot of experience of publishing research, but, yeah, we're certainly.

Speaker B

00:12:16.080 - 00:12:42.530

Going to create it so that it's relatively templated up so you don't have to just know, you don't have to understand all the kind of the nuances and wrinkles of how to write an academic paper. We're going to try and make that as straightforward as possible. And I think that's right.

It's examined exactly that kind of scholarly gp, doing good work, who thinks what they're doing could be valuable to let other GPs and other primary care systems so people know about. And that's probably been a slight gap in our offering over in past years and we're trying to fix it.

Speaker A

00:12:42.770 - 00:13:03.490

Yeah, fair enough.

So I wanted to take a bit more of a philosophical slant here and just get some of your reflections on general practice and primary care research as a whole. And how do you think this role that you've taken on as BJGP editor has shaped your view of research or your clinical practice?

How is it making an impact in other areas?

Speaker B

00:13:06.330 - 00:15:13.420

I think it's. It's hard to say. My reflections on general practice in general are kind of.

I mean, I come from a particular perspective, I guess, and it's hard not to have it in mind when I'm working clinically.

One of the things that's probably my about myself is I've never been a GP partner and that's probably an important declaration because I do have some comments about GP partnership at times that I can, you know, I'm broadly a supporter, but I can see some serious flaws in the model at points that worry me that we are kind of wedded to it in a way that is a barrier to future change.

And I think there was an article, in fact, from the RCGP saying, you know, recently from Camilla Hawthorne, the chair, saying that how important the partnership model is, but we've got to be able to develop it for the future.

I've never been a partner and I've tended to work on the fringes a little bit, you know, out of Arrows Care, drug and alcohol services, prison medicine. I was in the army in the past, so I've worked in a lot of kind of more fringy areas rather than.

Of course I've done mainstream general practice as a salary GP as well. And so I'm not sure I can. That perhaps has been.

That's perhaps more important in terms of what I have brought as BJ GP editor rather than the other way around.

And so it's influenced me in terms of trying to work hard as an editor to cover bits of general practice that don't otherwise get seen and particularly related to inequalities as well. But it's just trying to find the bits of general practice that don't get good coverage. And sometimes, you know, I.

And I can think of numerous examples over the past few years where we've just not had a single article about sex. There was a.

There was one, I think we had an editorial on sex work like a year or two ago and I looked back and really couldn't find an article on that at all in the journals archives going back what, 60, 70 years, whatever it's been. So I really think that's kind of. In terms of my role as editor, I'm really very keen not to kind of ensure we cover those.

So I guess that's a plea as well if you're working in an area of general practice and you think it's had very poor coverage, it's not visible. Get in touch again. I'm really. I love having these conversations and hearing about them.

Speaker A

00:15:13.740 - 00:15:28.630

Yeah. And we often have issues focusing on inclusion, health and we had that focus on missingness from Andrew Williamson's team up in Scotland as well.

So I think that's been really great to highlight and I know that's influenced a lot of people who are thinking about that space as well.

Speaker B

00:15:28.630 - 00:15:51.930

Yeah, that's exactly a good example. And I think we cover tons of the mainstream stuff as well. Of course, all the regular practice.

Yeah, I'm keen to shine a light, try to...