Submitting to MedEdPORTAL: Do it right the first time

Abstract

Medical educators at Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) are encouraged to publish in MedEdPORTAL: The Journal of Teaching and Learning Resources. Published by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), MedEdPORTAL is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for medical education scholarship. These publications contain complete curricula, including objectives, instructor guides, slides, and assessments, ready to be implemented in the classroom. When faculty members apply for promotion, MedEdPORTAL can demonstrate the quality of their work through peer-review, citation counts, and other usage reports. Despite submitting high quality learning modules, medical educators receive rejections from the MedEdPORTAL 62% of time. Reasons for rejection include insufficient educational context and assessment, mismatch of educational objectives and instructional content, and failure to build on existing curricula. Of immediately rejected submissions, 90% also have copyright issues. MedEdPORTAL is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and therefore has strict requirements for copyright and licensing images in the education materials. These requirements are difficult to navigate. For faculty who are not familiar with copyright and licensing, these barriers can be frustrating enough to deter them from submitting curricula. This workshop introduced MedEdPORTAL, described the submission process, and shared our strategies for putting together a successful submission. By the end of the workshop, participants were able to: • Identify curricula they have developed that would fit with the goals of MedEdPORTAL’s publishers • Use template to complete the Educational Summary Report (ESR) • Classify content as that which requires copyright permission, is in the public domain, or has a Creative Commons license • Navigate the process of manuscript submission and revision