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Physician assistants/physician associates (PAs) looking for places to publish their work have plenty of options. Perhaps too many. The search for an article’s ideal landing spot can overwhelm any author.
PAs may be most familiar with two journals associated with major physician assistant organizations: The Journal of the American Academy of PAs (JAAPA) and The Journal of PA Education (JPAE), which is affiliated with the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA). Both journals are reputable publications and important pillars of the PA profession, but they serve two very different purposes.
So, how do PA authors know if they should submit their work to JAAPA, JPAE, or another journal entirely?
Understand a Journal’s Scope and Audience
Before you can select the right journal for your work, you need to figure out two things about any journal you consider: its scope and its audience.
What is a journal’s scope?
The scope of a journal is the content of interest for that journal. This is what a journal and its editors would consider their “territory.” For example, the journal CHEST covers medicine penitent to… well… stuff inside a patient’s chest. They cover clinical topics related to pulmonology, critical care, and sleep medicine. That’s all they care about and they even say so right on their website. While some journals explicitly describe their scope, they best way to really understand a journal’s scope is to read the journal.
A journal’s scope is important. Editors are likely to reject an article submission simply because it falls outside of the journal’s scope. When my co-editors and I looked at the reasons we rejected original research submissions at JAAPA, we found that over 40% of rejections were because an article fell outside of JAAPA’s scope!
What is a journal’s audience?
The audience of a journal is the ideal reader the journal intends to reach. While anyone can pick up a journal and flip it open, publishers and editors (and advertisers, for that matter) are always hoping to reach a specific type of person. Using CHEST as an example again, the audience of this journal is physicians and other clinicians practicing medicine in the settings of pulmonology, critical care, and sleep medicine. They likely won’t directly address nurses, even critical care nurses, and likely won’t write content aimed at non-medical readers, like a patient’s guide to sleep apnea.
The Scope and Audience of the Major Physician Assistant Publications
Luckily for us, the major PA journals each have a very clearly defined scope and audience. Let’s look at each of them.
The Scope and Audience of JAAPA
The scope of JAAPA is relatively broad. The journal is interested in clinical topics related to areas in which PAs practice. That means most, if not all, of medicine. But the journal is also interested in non-clinical topics related to PAs and may publish articles related to PA workforce issues, PA practice and policy, legislation affecting PAs, the economics of PA practice, and even PA history. Essentially, if a sizable chunk of the 150,000 practicing PAs might be interested in it, JAAPA might publish it. (Of course, articles also need to have academic merit, meaning you aren’t likely to open JAAPA and find an article about the sexiest scrub tops of the summer, popular as it may be.)
The audience of JAAPA is broad but well-defined: it includes all clinically practicing PAs. Certainly, other professionals, like nurse practitioners, would find much of the information relevant and other groups, such as hospital leaders and administrators, could benefit from topics like PA workforce research. But when the journal’s editors picture their ideal audience, it is a clinically-practicing PA. Submissions should be written as if that person is reading them.
Want some practical help on getting an article published in JAAPA? This article gives you a six-step guide to the process!
The Scope and Audience of JPAE
The scope of JPAE is narrower than that of JAAPA. It focuses on issues “germane to PA educators,” meaning the content must be related to PA education, PA program faculty, or PA students and is often related to all three. While this makes JPAE a more niche journal, it also makes it much easier for authors to determine what is (and is not) within this journal’s scope. Some things that fall within this scope include PA school admissions, student well-being, faculty career issues, student assessment, and teaching theory and methodology.
The audience of JPAE is similarly more focused. The journal’s publisher and editorial board expects it to be consumed mostly by PA educators, specifically the core, principal faculty of PA education programs. (The membership of PAEA consists of all accredited PA programs, so this group is well-defined). This is a very specific audience, one that faces many of the same challenges regardless of variables like geographic location. The needs of this group often differ from those of other faculty in higher education and from those of PAs who are purely clinical, so editors of JPAE will be very discerning in their selection criteria for published articles.
Oversimplified, if an article is about medicine or the PA profession as a whole, authors should submit it to JAAPA. If an article is about PA education, PA faculty, or about PA students, authors should submit it to JPAE. Often, it’s as straightforward as that. But sometimes it’s not, so let’s look at some examples in the table below and decide where to place them.
Examples of Article Topics and Target Journals
| Article Topic | Recommended Journal |
| Using bedside ultrasound to assess cardiac function | JAAPA |
| PA Student confidence after an ultrasound workshop | JPAE |
| The demographic trends of PAs in dermatology | JAAPA |
| The demographic trends of PA school applicants | JPAE |
| Barriers to PA practice in the United Kingdom | JAAPA |
| Barriers to establishing PA programs in the United Kingdom | JPAE |
| Measuring outcomes of a post-graduate PA surgical residency | Either* |
Here’s a twist: you may want to intentionally mismatch a topic with a journal’s scope or audience. For example, I wrote this commentary article about issues surrounding the PA admissions process, clearly a PA education topic. However, I wanted the larger PA community to know and care about this issue, so I tied it to a bigger concern, the profession’s (lack of) diversity, and submitted it to JAAPA. By making a very focused case that all PAs should care about this “niche” topic, I was able to bring more attention to an important issue.
Like most writing advice, once you understand the rules, you can decide when to break them.
What about other journals?
Of course, there are more than two academic journals on the planet. PA authors should always consider submitting to the journal that best supports their goals and intended impact. Often, that won’t be a journal that caters specifically to a PA audience.
So, when should you consider submitting outside of the PA profession’s established journals? Here are a few instances to consider:
When your audience is non-PAs.
It seems obvious, but we often gravitate towards friendly faces and perceive that our ideas and our work will find a better reception among other PAs. However, sometimes we will have a larger impact by injecting our voices where they are more foreign. Journals with a physician audience or a mixed professional audience may allow our ideas to reach (and change) new minds. It also allows us to provide positive representation of our profession in the eyes of other professionals and can elevate our own individual status by proving our academic merit in new arenas.
When your subject matter is very specific
As discussed above, the scopes of the two main PA journals really revolve around general medicine (in the case of JAAPA) and/or PA issues (in the cases of JAAPA and JPAE). However, you likely have interests in other areas. Maybe your clinical interests are very specific (like pediatric neurology) or maybe you are involved in non-clinical work (like health policy). In those cases, you might be better served by finding a niche journal with a scope and audience tailored specifically to the content in which you specialize.
When you are in a rut.
We all cling to our comfort zones. While it is easier to stick to what we know and attempt to replicate proven results, sometimes we need to change it up. If you find yourself submitting the same type of article to the same journal over and over again, you might be in a professional rut. Looking for new journals may force us to try a new type or article or reach out to a new audience. Consider submitting to journals that force you to try something new.
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