Abstract
Background: Many physicians in Turkey are both clinicians and researchers, and publishing their research contributes to better patient care as well as to career advancement. Objective: To identify the barriers faced by Turkish physicians to writing research papers and getting them published. Methods: Respondents were asked, through eight multiple-choice questions, about the difficulties they faced in writing research papers and in getting them published in journals. We also searched published literature for accounts of similar difficulties and answers to the question ‘What is your purpose in writing scientific publications?’ Results: A total of 18% (155 of 871) of physicians completed the questionnaire. About the difficulties faced in writing, 82 out of the 155 participants, or 57%, reported problems in finding financial support; 58 (40%), in obtaining required permissions and clearances; 65 (45%), in acquiring relevant skills, especially those related to data analysis or statistics; and 42 (29%), in language-related skills. About the difficulties in getting their papers published in journals, 85 (60%) said that they tried to overcome the difficulties by searching for appropriate solutions on the internet; 66 (47%) sought help from experienced colleagues; and 47 (33%) needed professional help in English translation and editing. Need for financial support was reported by a significantly (p = 0.04) larger proportion of associate professors or full professors (69%) than that of residents (47%) and fellows (45%). Conclusion: The main problems that Turkish physicians face in preparing scientific manuscripts were lack of  financial  support, inadequate knowledge of data analysis and statistics, and the paperwork involved in obtaining required approvals and permissions—problems that were common to the departments of internal medicine and of surgery. The primary motivation for writing and publishing was career advancement, especially through promotion to a higher academic rank.
Highlights
Publishing your research in medical journals is a hard task with its own rules and conventions and yet, clinical research is an essential part of the progress of science and contributes to better care of patients but writing up that research in the form of a scientific paper and publishing it are essential for career advancement of clinical researchers
The Interuniversity Board Presidency in Turkey (UAK) is a supra-university academic body founded in 1946, and among the criteria that it stipulates for promotion from a medical doctor to an associate professor are that the candidates should have been principal collaborators in many publications and should have engaged in other scholarly activities such as teaching, delivering presentations, and contributing chapters to multi-authored books
We sought to identify the barriers to academic writing and publishing faced by Turkish physicians and their motives for publishing research papers and to determine whether those barriers vary depending on the academic degree of the researchers and their affiliation
Summary
Publishing your research in medical journals is a hard task with its own rules and conventions and yet, clinical research is an essential part of the progress of science and contributes to better care of patients but writing up that research in the form of a scientific paper and publishing it are essential for career advancement of clinical researchers. The Interuniversity Board Presidency in Turkey (UAK) is a supra-university academic body founded in 1946, and among the criteria that it stipulates for promotion from a medical doctor to an associate professor are that the candidates should have been principal collaborators in many publications and should have engaged in other scholarly activities such as teaching, delivering presentations, and contributing chapters to multi-authored books. One of the main tasks of the UAK is to evaluate the publications and research work of candidates and, on that basis, awarding the title of Associate Professor to successful candidates. The productivity of a researcher is measured in terms of the number of publications and their quality, which is determined mainly on the basis of the impact factors of journals in which the contributions were published or the coverage of those journals by reputable indexing services such as Web of Science.2In Turkey, clinical studies can be conducted after notifying or applying to the relevant authorities. We found no study on the difficulties on writing and publishing faced by Turkish physicians. Objective: To identify the barriers faced by Turkish physicians to writing research papers and getting them published. About the difficulties faced in writing, 82 out of the 155 participants, or 57%, reported problems in finding financial support; 58 (40%), in obtaining required permissions and clearances; 65 (45%), in acquiring relevant skills, especially those related to data analysis or statistics; and 42 (29%), in languagerelated skills. Conclusion: The main problems that Turkish physicians face in preparing scientific manuscripts were lack of financial support, inadequate knowledge of data analysis and statistics, and the paperwork involved in obtaining required approvals and permissions—problems that were common to the departments of internal medicine and of surgery.
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