The EQUATOR publication school has arrived in Australia!

Forty-eight participants recently attended the two-day workshop presented by the Australasian EQUATOR Centre at Bond University, Gold Coast. The workshop format comprised short talks and detailed writing exercises in small groups of five or six people.

On the first day, participants learned about the key reporting guidelines, CONSORT and STROBE, to write the methods and results sections of a journal article. They concentrated on the two questions, ‘What did you do?’ and ‘What did you find?’

On the second day, the groups moved on to finish their article, writing the introduction, discussion, abstract, and title. Other topics included how to choose a journal, writing the cover letter, giving and receiving peer review, and post-publication dissemination.

We were fortunate to have Dr David Moher, director of the Canadian EQUATOR Centre as a guest presenter. David has given many similar workshops, and is a prolific author. We also appreciated that Dr Ginny Barbour, former editor-in-chief of PLoS Medicine and long-time advocate of open access publishing, came along on day 2 to talk about the role of the editor and the use of social media such as Twitter, ResearchGate, and Facebook to disseminate study results and build a network of like-minded researchers.

Feedback from the workshop was very positive. We hope to see our participants publishing excellent journal articles soon!