Table 1 Summary of issues that influence the likelihood of rejection without review of articles submitted to Implementation Science
From: Implementation science: a reappraisal of our journal mission and scope
Issue | Likely to be accepted | Likely to be rejected |
|---|---|---|
Potential significance | Work contextualised within existing implementation research literature | Work not contextualised within existing implementation research literature |
Contribution to implementation research articulated and potentially significant | Contribution to implementation research not articulated or relatively minor | |
Field of interest | Healthcare and population health | Anything else |
Effectiveness studies | Evaluating the effectiveness of implementation of an evidence-based practice or policy, or de-implementation of those demonstrated to be relatively ineffective or even harmful | Evaluating the effectiveness of a clinical, organisational, public health or policy intervention |
Outcome | Health or health-related | Anything else |
Implementation | Researching implementation | Doing implementation |
Validity | Maximises internal and external validity as appropriate in the chosen study designs | |
Patient decision aids | Evaluations of the implementation of patient decision aids (of known effectiveness) into healthcare settings; involvement of healthcare providers | Initial development, pilot testing or evaluation of patient decision aids |
Implementation direct to patients | Outcomes referring to evidence-based practice with some involvement of healthcare providers | Other types of outcomes |
Intervention development reports | Prepared and submitted prior to the reporting of the effectiveness of the intervention | Post hoc submission |
Going to be, (robustly) evaluated | Not going to be (robustly) evaluated | |
Providing empirical and/or theoretical rationale | ||
Process evaluation | Submitted contemporaneously with or following report of intervention effectiveness | Process evaluations submitted in advance of the conduct of the main effectiveness analysis (it cannot be clear if they are explaining an effect or the absence of an effect) |
Process evaluations that take account of the main evaluation outcomes | Process evaluations that do not take account of the main evaluation outcomes | |
Pilot studies | If appropriate criteria for conduct | No justification for conduct |
If appropriate degree of inference | Overclaim on basis of results | |
If there are plans for further evaluation | ||
Protocols | Been through peer review by a nationally recognised research agency as part of their funding | Not been through peer review by a nationally recognised research agency as part of their funding |
Received ethics review board approval | Not received ethics review board approval | |
Submitted prior to data cleaning or analysis | Have begun data cleaning or analysis (may not apply to some qualitative studies) |