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<b><h4>Why should researchers publish?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Peter West-Oram, Lecturer in Bioethics, Brighton and Sussex Medical School</b>

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I think being an academic is fundamentally about communicating knowledge or discovering new knowledge. So, publication is the way that you share your knowledge with other people, whether that's within the academia more generally, or society as a whole. I think also, publishing information is a way of getting feedback on your ideas. That's more of a self-interested or selfish argument, but I think it's fundamental to what researchers do. And it's a way of contributing to public debates and shaping public policy, ideally. 
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<b><h4>How do you choose what to publish and where?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Peter West-Oram:</b> When I'm thinking about what to publish, I focus mostly on what's of particular interest to me at any given moment, or sometimes what's annoying me in public debates. So I'm motivated by trying to make a change. So I'm looking at those things, which have most impact and which are most interesting. And when I'm trying to decide where to publish, I think about the reputation of a journal for example. It's not the most important thing, but if it will have the most impact on that debate. So it would be, perhaps, whether people that I'm engaging with, in what I'm trying to publish, have published in a particular journal, if it focuses on a specific issue that I'm interested in, and whether it'll have a wide reach. Because I want my writing to have an impact on my community and on public policy. 
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<b><h4>What was your experience with your first publication?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Peter West-Oram:</b> My first publication was from-- It was published in a collected edition based on a conference that I presented it at. It was very exciting because it was during my PhD. So it felt like I was being a real academic. It took a very long time due to some delays with the publisher. So it ended up being published, I think, a year or two after I finished my PhD, when it got accepted in my first year. It was very exciting. 

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It was a bit surprising, I think how long it took, but I was quite naively thinking that it would be a lot quicker. And I was quite surprised at how much work went into actually making that publishable material when I thought well, this is fine. This has been accepted. It's fine. And it took a lot of extra work going through sort of the peer, responding to the peer review comments and things like that. But I had a lot of guidance from my PhD supervisor, which was really helpful. And they were sort of, steering me in the right direction, explaining why it was taking so long. So it was a very helpful process in my, sort of, development as an academic, I think.