Social Medicine Writing and Publishing Workshop

Call for Participation

10 May 2021

The key aim of this online workshop is to build the writing and publishing capacity of early-career researchers based at institutions in Latin America who are working in the fields of social medicine / collective health and are interested in publishing in English-language journals. The workshop will be co-led by Vincanne Adams, Dörte Bemme, Carlo Caduff, Jeremy Greene, David Jones, Anne Pollock and Nikolas Rose. The organizers of the workshop are current/former editors of the journals BioSocieties, Economy and Society, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Transcultural Psychiatry and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.

The workshop is funded by the Wellcome Trust. It is part of the global social medicine network.

The five journals BioSocieties, Economy and Society, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Transcultural Psychiatry and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine are cutting-edge international journals committed to the scholarly exploration of social, cultural, political and ethical aspects of health and medicine. The workshop organizers have wide-ranging publishing experience and connections and will also help participants to find and pursue other appropriate high-profile outlets for their scholarly work, including national and international journals.

The specifics of the workshop will take shape in response to the papers that the early-career researchers bring to the table. The participating editors will draw on their diverse expertise in order to suggest appropriate social science and biomedical journals to early-career scholars and give multi-stage guidance for how to pursue publishing in them.

Participants should send a CV and a 300-500 word abstract for the article that they plan to develop in the workshop to Alice Hilborn by 10 April 2021.

Please send CV and abstract to Alice Hilborn: alice.hilborn@kcl.ac.uk

Acceptance decisions will be made by the workshop organizers. Decisions will be based primarily on the strength of the abstracts submitted, with some consideration of topical and institutional balance and of who would benefit most from participation in the workshop. Participants will submit a full draft of their papers by April 30, 2020.

Structure of the Workshop: 10am to 3pm BRT

Introductions Part 1: Senior scholars: Autobiographies of scholarly publishing

The seven workshop organizers will each give five-minute introductions of themselves that focus specifically on how they have developed their own scholarly publishing agendas. The back-stories of publication are often mysterious to early- career researchers and provide an interesting route into getting to know the workshop organizers.

Introductions Part 2: Early-Career Researchers: Flash Presentations

The 15-18 participating early-career researchers will each give two-minute introductions of themselves and their research project for the Workshop through the presentation of exactly one slide. This way, all participants will get the opportunity to learn about what all of the early-career participants are working on, whether or not they are in the same small group.

Plenary informational sessions

Larger-group sessions will provide participants with an overview of processes for submission and revision for international journals and give participants a chance to ask general questions.

Small-group intensive feedback sessions on specific works-in-progress

In advance of the Workshop, the submissions will be divided into three groups, according to thematic and/or methodological similarity. Each small group will be led by two of the senior scholars.

In advance of the Workshop, the pair of senior scholars and six early-career participants will read the five to six papers included in their small group. During this component of the Workshop itself, each paper will receive forty minutes of focused attention. First, the author will spend five minutes presenting a snapshot of the paper’s main arguments and the intended journal for publication. The senior scholars will then guide discussion of each of the contributions and strategies for moving it toward publication. Each senior scholar provides five minutes of constructive and focused feedback on the content, structure, and suggested journal avenues for the paper, highlighting challenges and possibilities for making it submission-ready. The remaining twenty minutes will be dedicated to a group discussion of the paper, including feedback from other early-career participants (which helps them to gain experience as peer reviewers). There will be breaks in between each paper discussion to prevent fatigue and encourage informal conversations.

Closing plenary session

Overall feedback session from all the participants in which the senior scholars and early-career participants reflect upon the general trends and challenges they have observed, and make concrete plans for publication avenues and potentially broader collaborations in the future.

Post-workshop follow-up

Each co-leader will be assigned three authors from their small group for ongoing support. In the three months after the Workshop and beyond, the senior scholars will follow up with the early career researchers to check in on progress toward submission and publication of the papers in progress and provide ongoing support. Peer support among participants will also be encouraged.