MEDEV

School of Medical Sciences Education Development

As the Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry & Veterinary Medicine we published a learning and teaching newsletter/magazine entitled 01 three times a year.  Each edition and individual article can be viewed on our site.  We still hold paper copies of a number of the newsletters.  Please contact MEDEV if you would like a paper copy.  Alternatively, each newsletter is available through print-on demand (searching for MEDEV).

Each A4 sized full colour issue was around 36 pages long, following an easy to read newsy, journalistic style.  Science magazine was the inspiration for the editorial style.

In establishing the newsletter we were conscious there were already several excellent, well established, peer reviewed learning and teaching journals. The intention was to not to compete with journals such as:

• Medical Education
• Medical Teacher
• Journal of Dental Education
• The Journal of Veterinary Medical Education
• ADEE
• and the education sections in the BMJ and BDJ

The intention was to complement these by providing an extra dissemination route for projects and services from an early stage in their existence and for highlighting good practice in the sector.

The process included:

• Draft editorial and copyright guidelines, below.
• An editorial board made up of subject centre staff and experts in the field taking an editorial overview, checking that the newsletter is accurate and represents the work of the constituency with integrity.

We very much hope the newsletter provided opportunities to disseminate news and information about your work.

If you would like any further information please email e...@medev.ac.uk or call Suzanne Hardy, Senior Advisor (Communication) on 0191 222 5888.

Length

As a rough guide, a one-page article was 500 words maximum, a two-page article 1,000 words, etc.

Usually articles fitted on one, two, or, in rare cases, three pages.

Style

Articles were requested to be written in clear, concise and accessible language. For them to be understood by and be of interest to readers from outside your own field, across the subject constituencies (medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine) and beyond these into the generic learning and teaching communities.

Avoid the use of jargon, acronyms and overly technical terms. Commercial publications (such as Science) with a more journalistic style rather than straight peer reviewed academic journals are a guide to what we are looking for.

The editorial board reserved the right to partially re-written the articles to ensure a consistent style throughout the newsletter.

Content and structure

Authors were asked to start with a short summary of the subject matter. In the main article, would try to present an overview of your work that will lead the reader to want to find out more. When writing about something such as a research project, for the subject centre newsletter you should concentrate on aims and findings, rather than methodology. Some kind of brief outline methodology is of course needed, but bear in mind you are giving readers an introduction to your work, not a definitive report.

Images

These would include pictures and graphics to illustrate your articles, wherever possible. If you graphs and tables were available we requested them as separate image files, bearing in mind the guidelines about technical writing above.

For pictures, graphs, tables, illustrations, diagrams of photographs - related to the article and/or of the authors we would always seek to ensure you have copyright for any images (see below).

High resolution images were important, so that it is suitable for printing, and should be a minimum of 200 dpi (screenshots are at 72dppi, but should be as large as possible) and of an appropriate size (at least passport sized!).

Send your images as graphics files separate from the text document containing the body text of your submission was also required. For example - myarticle.doc or myarticle.rtf plus myimage1.jpg, myimage1.png, myimage1.tiff, myimage1.gif, etc.

Authors would add a placeholder for images diagrams in context together with a caption. e.g. Diagram 1: showing the internal workings of the haptic device (insert haptic1.jpg here).

Images and diagrams would be labelled clearly and sent as separate image files (i.e there were not embed images in your .doc or .rft documents.

Where an image was unsuitable for printing, we reserved the right to remove it and its references from the article. If this causes contextual difficulty, we contacted the first author.

Names and contact details of authors

The full title, first and last name, position, institution and email address of every author. in the newsletter, following our standard format: e.g. Laurie Taylor, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Poppleton, laurie.taylor@poppleton.ac.uk or Dr Mary Taylor OBE, Centre for Academic Development, University of Poppleton, mary.taylor@poppleton.ac.uk. Some titles/job descriptions may not appear in the final copy.

References

If included references were included as part of your word count and in proportion to the length/style of the article.

Acknowledgements

The acknowledgements of funding or image sources, or contributors who are not authors were encouraged.

Submission

There was a sample template available to download.

Deadlines

The 01 newsletter is not currently seeking any articles.  If you would like MEDEV to disseminate your article/report etc please email MEDEV

Proofing and corrections

We reserved the right to edit work for factual accuracy, clarity, format, design and layout. If major editing was required, we contacted the first author.

Copyright

The copyright for all material that appears in the newsletter will be retained by the original authors.

We will use the article on a 'once only' basis in the newsletter, but retain the right to re-publish electronically on the subject centre website.

If any other party wishes to re-print or otherwise use your work they will be referred to you for approval.

If you images were sent we asked that the copyright holder has given permission. In the case of a photo this was normally the person who took the picture or the organisation he/she works for.

If you have any questions about these guidelines please e-mail Suzanne Hardy or call 0191 222 5888.