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 FROM THE EDITOR
If you are reading these words, you
are in the minority. The Swine Health and Production readership
survey, sent to a random sample of 100 AASP members last summer,
indicates that few of you (45%) read this From the Editor column.
The good news is that the majority of you read the Case Studies
(88%), Original Research (77%), Production Tools (75%), and Literature
Reviews (70%). The readership for Brief Communications was a little
lower (66%), perhaps because this is a new genre category for
SHAP. I was interested to learn that many of you use author
and topic as criteria to determine whether you'll read a manuscript.
In this month's column, I'd like to bring to your attention another
tool we provide to help you decide whether to read an article.
All the articles we publish in Swine Health and Production
are assigned a genre category--for example, "Original Research,"
"Case Report," "Production Tool," etc.--which
is indicated at the top of the first page of each article. This
category is intended as a means to help you, as a reader, orient
yourself to the material you'll be encountering in the article
itself. Each type of article has a different purpose and is therefore
presented in its own genre-appropriate manner. Case Studies describe
herd health problems that are unique. They might be a new clinical
presentation of an old disease, or a difficult diagnostic challenge,
or a novel treatment protocol. Case Studies are meant to help
you deal with similar cases in your practice. In Case Studies,
you'll want to know the history of the farm, and whether the described
case is similar to what you see in practice. Production Tools
give you a new method or resource to use in practice. Original
Research tests a hypothesis, elaborates the materials and methods
used to test that hypothesis, and then draws conclusions from
the results. Brief Communications are original research designs
of a smaller scope.
Each of these genre types also uses different techniques to
support the claims they contain:
- In Original Research and Brief Communications, claims are
supported by the data that result from a carefully designed experimental
apparatus that uses a statistically adequate number of experimental
subjects, controls for potential confounders and bias, and proper
techniques to statistically analyze its findings. This enables
the authors of Original Research reports and Brief Communications
to state fairly precisely the cause-effect relationships they've
observed between the dependent and independent variables in the
study.
- Case Studies, because they report findings that were gathered
under field conditions, usually do not have controls. They do
have the advantage of more closely imitating the types of conditions
under which you will actually be practicing veterinary medicine.
These types of studies allow their authors to claim credibly
that the phenomena they observed are likely to be generalizable
to some other practical situations.
- Production Tools are "methods" oriented, and instead
of presenting an account of the discovery of new knowledge, they
are meant to communicate a helpful new procedure. Because these
methods are abstract and meant to be generalized over a variety
of practical situations, they are generic enough to be helpful
under almost any set of circumstances.
All articles in all of the genres are refereed and edited with
equal rigor and care.
At times, we have authors who would prefer to have their manuscripts
published under the "Original Research" genre rather
than one of the others. In my opinion, each of these genres has
equal value. They have a distinct purpose and format. All submitted
manuscripts, regardless of genre, undergo the same rigorous peer
review process. For example, I have published a Production Tool
in Swine Health and Production that required as much creative
energy and time as Original Research. Academics live by the mandate
to "publish-or-perish." At my institution (the University
of Guelph), a first-authored publication is valued equally for
purposes of promotion and tenure, regardless of its genre.
A colleague of mine, Dr. Louis Perino, once told me that new
scientific information does not become knowledge until
it is published in a peer-reviewed journal. The reviewers and
editors determine the appropriate genre category under which we'll
publish a manuscript. By striving to present the material in each
genre in a relatively consistent way, we hope to ensure that you
receive the information you need in the format most appropriate
for its type of new knowledge.
-- Cate Dewey
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