6 Practical Steps to Publishing an Article in JAAPA

The Journal of the American Academy of PAs (JAAPA) is the most well-known journal focused on the physician assistant/physician associate (PA) profession. When I ask PAs about their writing goals, inevitably “publish in JAAPA” is on the list. But how do you go from having a great idea to reading your own words in the pages of JAAPA? This article will focus on the practical steps of submitting an article to the PA profession’s flagship journal.

Disclosure: This article’s author, Harrison Reed, currently serves on the JAAPA editorial board and as the Clinical Editor.

Why Should You Publish in JAAPA?

 Several features make JAAPA worthy of your submission:

First, JAAPA has a large, broad PA audience. If you want to address the entire PA profession at once, this is your journal.

Second, JAAPA has a relatively high impact factor for a small niche journal. An impact factor is a measure of how often a journal’s articles are cited. This means other journals frequently cite the work published in JAAPA, raising the profile of JAAPA, its authors, and their work.

Third, JAAPA has social capital, especially among PAs. Most PAs have heard of the journal and respect its quality and authority. That means your work will have reach and influence beyond the hardcore research crowd.

Fourth, JAAPA publishes a wide range of article types, and its scope extends far beyond clinical research topics, or even research in general. That means you can likely contribute to the journal without a degree in statistics or a large research grant.  

While JAAPA is not the only journal PA authors should consider, it should be on the radar for anyone looking to address PA issues and/or a PA audience. Supporting PA journals is also a service to the profession, an important “big picture” impact.

How Do You Publish in JAAPA?

Here are six practice steps to publishing an article in JAAPA:

1. Find your article idea
2. Ensure your idea matches JAAPA’s scope and audience
3. Search JAAPA for your article topic
4. Review the JAAPA article types/departments and author guidelines
5. Write the article
6. Prepare and submit the manuscript

Let’s break down each step in detail.

1. Find your article idea

The first step in any manuscript creation is to find and focus the main idea of the article. To be published in an academic journal, an idea should be both important and novel, which means it has not been published in other places before (and certainly not in your target journal). That seems like a daunting task, but the trick to a novel article is to narrow the focus. Rather than trying to tackle a large, broad topic, explore a smaller slice of that topic with an excellent execution. I highly recommend you use my free guide for this portion of the process.

2. Ensure your article matches JAAPA’s scope and audience

One of the quickest ways to find rejection at the hands of a journal editor is to submit an article that does not fit their journal. To determine an article’s “fit,” you should ensure it matches two main features of the journal: the scope and the audience. This means that the article’s content should fall within the territory of the journal and that the article is written with that journal’s ideal reader in mind. I wrote an entire article on matching the scope and audience of a journal (using JAAPA as an example), so check out that article and the video below. In short, the best way to understand a journal’s scope and audience is to read that journal.

How to Choose a Journal (Video)

3. Search JAAPA for your article topic

This step is designed to prevent headache and heartache. In my many roles at JAAPA, I often served as a manuscript’s judge, jury, and (sadly) executioner—often all at once. One of the easiest ways to lighten my workload was to take a new manuscript submission and type the topic in JAAPA’s search bar. If that article (or a very similar one) was recently published, I would have to sentence it to rejection.

You can save yourself this trouble before you even write an article by doing the exact same thing. Go to JAAPA.com and type your article idea into the search bar. See what’s out there. If you find the exact same article (or a very similar one) already exists in JAAPA, you might have to pivot.

A few caveats:

• If the article your search reveals is very old, you might want to see what has developed since that article’s publication and write an update article (rather than a complete article) on the topic.
• There may be a role for covering the same topic in different departments. For example, a case report on an unusual presentation of a disease wouldn’t stop you from writing a comprehensive CME article on the broader topic.
• Big topics can usually be thin-sliced. You might want to take a new angle or a deeper dive on a focused portion of a big topic, especially if a prior article glossed over that area.

When in doubt, it’s OK to shoot an email to the journal’s editor to see if your approach would be of interest to the journal.

4. Review JAAPA departments, article types, and author guidelines

JAAPA provides an array of articles to its readers, usually in distinct departments and article types. Many of these departments and article types have their own focus and format. Before you start writing your article, you should review the options JAAPA offers to find the type of article and/or journal department that best suits your needs. I wrote an article describing article types across all medical journals, but JAAPA’s more specific list can be found here. Look for the article type that best suits your purpose, your topic, and your resources and abilities.

Once you have selected the article type that best suits your manuscript, carefully read the author guidelines that pertain to that article. You want to ensure that you stay within the suggested word count and that the content and format of your article match that department. Often, editors are in charge of just one department, and they may not have the insight or opportunity to send your manuscript to a different department if it’s not a good fit.

5. Write the article

At some point you just have to put the words on the page. I can’t include an entire universe of writing advice within this article, but you can find additional writing advice, including advice specific to different article types (like commentaries), on this website. Shut out distractions and treat your rough draft like a job. Sit down and don’t get up until you have 500, 600, or 1,000 words on the page. You can do this!

6. Prepare and submit the manuscript

Don’t stumble at the finish line! The final phase of the writing and publication process is to prepare and submit your manuscript to the journal itself. JAAPA uses a specific portal called Editorial Manager to handle submissions, so you’ll need to create an account and navigate that system.

Review the specific requirements for preparing and submitting a manuscript here. While JAAPA editors are kind, understanding human beings, you don’t want to leave anything to chance, so make sure you hit all the manuscript preparation requirements. Manuscript and reference formatting can be a tedious process, but it’s an important one to ensure you have the best chance of publication.

Getting a decision

The three main decisions that journals make are: accept, revise, or reject.

Accept means you’re in. Congrats!

Expect revisions. Very few manuscripts are accepted on the first pass without any suggested changes. But revision is a good thing: it means you are still on track to publication. Respond to editorial requests as soon as you can and completely address all of the concerns that are raised.

Rejection is OK. If your manuscript doesn’t find a home in JAAPA, all is not lost. You can submit it to a different journal or re-tool it for a different purpose. Maybe your article is better suited as a blog post or as a conference presentation. Don’t give up on your idea just because you hit a speed bump.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you’re feeling stuck, don’t forget to download this free guide to get you started. It also gets you on my email mailing list so that I can continue to send you helpful resources for your writing: