Scientific Writing
Reporting a Questionnaire or KAP Survey So It Survives Review
Questionnaire and KAP studies run into four recurring reporting failures, and none of them is the statistics. A twelve-row reporting grid, and the ver...
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Directive Academy
Guides on peer review, research integrity & scholarly publishing — for authors, reviewers and editors
Peer Review
Appealing a Rejection: Which Grounds Work, Which Never Do, and the Letter to Send
An appeal is not a second opinion. It asks an editor to revisit a decision taken on a record that contains an...
Directive Editorial Team · 6 min
Open Science
Your Article's Machine-Readable Record: How to Pull It From Crossref and Read It Field by Field
Every published article carries a machine-readable record its author never sees. Here is how to pull yours fro...
Directive Editorial Team · 7 min
Peer Review
Ten Statistical Reviewer Comments, Decoded — and What to Do When You Cannot Do the Analysis
A decode table for the statistical comments clinicians receive on chart reviews and case series — plus how to...
Directive Editorial Team · 7 min
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Scientific Writing
The Identifiers Inside the File: De-identifying Clinical Images, DICOM Exports and Scans
Consent covers permission. It does not remove the patient's name from the DICOM header, the GPS tag from the ward photograph, or the MRN burned into t...
Open Science
Paying an APC Across Borders: Invoices, Tax IDs and Bank Charges
Acceptance is when the finance wall appears: an invoice your hospital will not reimburse, a wire that lands short. Twelve questions that settle all of...
Research Integrity
You Have Found a Problem in Someone Else's Published Paper: Who to Tell, in What Order
Almost nothing is written for the reader who has spotted something wrong in a published paper: the order of contact, the evidence to attach, and the l...
Editor Resources
You've Been Invited Onto an Editorial Board: What to Ask Before You Say Yes
A masthead listing is a loan of your reputation, easier to give than to take back. Twelve questions to send before you accept, plus a removal letter i...
Editor Resources
When an Editor Submits to Their Own Journal: The Firewall, and Ours
Editors publishing in their own journals is normal. Editors deciding on their own manuscripts is not. Six questions that show whether a journal has a...
Editor Resources
Two Reviewers, Opposite Recommendations: What a Handling Editor Actually Does
A split is not a tie to be broken. A reconciliation worksheet for handling editors, a triage for unusable reports, and the decision letter that saves...
Research Integrity
Is It the Real Journal? Detecting a Hijacked or Cloned Journal Website
A clone is not a low-quality journal. It is a real journal's identity worn by someone else, which is why quality checklists pass it. Five ownership te...
Research Integrity
What That Indexing Badge Actually Means: A Decoder for the Logo Wall
A journal homepage shows nine logos. Some represent an admission decision you can verify in a public register, some were bought, some just mean a craw...
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