Hello and welcome back to the Thought Broadcast, the trainee-led podcast from Australasian Psychiatry. My name is Michael Tarant, and I'm the current trainee editor for Australasian Psychiatry. Joining me today as host is one of our regular voices, Dr. Michael Whiteman.

Thanks, Michael. It's a pleasure to be here.

Great to have you. Today, we are fortunate to be joined by Associate Professor Jeffrey Loy, the current editor-in-chief for Australasian Psychiatry, to discuss publishing with the journal and what editors might be looking for. Welcome, Jeff.

Thanks very much, Michael, and look forward to the discussion.

Thanks very much for joining us today, Jeff. Before we dive into the podcast, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Uh yeah. Well thanks for the invitation. I've been a clinical academic psychiatrist for most of my career, and I entered psychiatry with interest in both clinical practice and academic work. The journey over to the journal came through that way. I originally started working out in neuroscience research, and then with the advent of the pandemic, started to move into more public health and epidemiology type research, and that kind of got me more interested in broader issues relating to the journal and things that were covered in Australasian psychiatry. I've always also had an interest in advocacy, and that was part of the reasons that I became interested in a broader approach that present in Australasian psychiatry. And I very much see Australasian psychiatry working with the fantastic team that we have, including both of yourselves, that it's it's a really good platform to encourage people with interest in academic careers to have opportunities to edit, review, publish in the journal, work together as a team and understand how it is because you often the currency still in academic circles is about publication and research grants, and seeing behind the veil of that is really important. And I see part of our role as Australian Psychiatry is to build a network that facilitates the development of people in academic careers, and we want to have a mentoring and supportive relationship so that people can enter, as you you do yourself. You support all the associate trainee editors, and Michael has supported them for a long time and still joined us as a formal editorial committee member. So we've got a pathway too. People can move on to higher editing role because it's all voluntary work. I I'll I I won't mind saying that again. All of you volunteer time, and that contributes to the benefit for our readers and for our members in the college. But without that, we couldn't really get through you know the processes. So yeah.

One of the things you alluded to there is something that I experienced myself joining the group that editing peer review felt like a little bit of a black box. What exactly do you do as the editor-in-chief and what what's your role with the journal?

So the editor-in-chief role is trying to help coordinate things and assist all the other editors and to make some of the strategic decisions together with the the deputy editors. Very fortunate that the journal that we've had the opportunity to make considerable renewal and get a very diverse and interesting group of people on board. And we've also had it's important to acknowledge contributions of foundational trainee editors, you know, like Ed Miller, who's done such a fantastic job, and now has graduated to another way at his request to be an editorial advisor because he's very busy as a new specialist. But his work was immense working because I know that you both worked with him and he's done a fantastic job. And we I think it's trying to support people, trying to keep in touch with people. Final decisions about what's published do rest with the editor-in-chief, but we discuss them amongst the editorial committee if needed. I will often ask a deputy editor if I need some advice about things. And it's also to try and back up if there are choices of reviewers and things that you need and some advice on who to find. And also, like just touching base when people say, I'm not sure if this is really for a journal. Can you have a look at it and just have a quick look at it? Up until fairly recently, and I still review papers, you know, as one of the deputy or associate editors, but not as much now, because it we've got a much bigger group of people, and and we've got specialized people like Paul McGuire, who does the book reviews. The book reviews aren't peer-reviewed, so he gets the bulk of that work. But uh, I guess it's like conducting an an orchestra of people. All the talent is before you. You're just waving your arms in the air, mostly, but trying to help people. Yeah.

I do like that orchestra analogy. And I was wondering maybe for people who are less familiar with uh the makeup of the journal, if you could tell us a little bit about some of the other roles in the in the journal, such as uh the editorial committee, the handling editors, peer reviewers, what kind of role do they play in the journal's processes?

Yeah, that's a good question, Michael, because they're not immediately transparent unless you're in in the journal as we are. So people deserve an explanation of that, especially since we're working for the membership. So the deputy editors are people who are the next most senior level, and in fact, they probably what we'd call co-equal because any of them can act as the editor-in-chief if you know I'm away or any position. So we've got a range of people in there. I won't list them because I haven't got the listing exactly in front of me. I I think I can remember them, but I don't want to forget. So I'll just talk about the individual roles. And we've got associate editors, such as you know, Michael, who moved on from being in the trainee area. And associate editors are not less in status, they often have specific areas they work in. Like for Michael, if you don't mind, you're interested in education, medical education, and we've got people who are interested in forensic psychiatry. So they lend a kind of expertise. We've got an associate editor for Europe to try and solicit that. We'd like to get someone for Southeast Asia. We've got a new editor joining from New Zealand as a deputy editor. So they'll be starting in July because we've been looking for somebody for a long time. So the associate editors and the deputy editors, together with the trainee editors, do the same sorts of things. We handle articles, including me. We look at the articles that are sent to us and then we try to send them to reviewers. The associate trainee editors are under mostly under Michael's supervision and with working with people like Michael Whiteman, and they review articles under your supervision. Most of the and I've asked sometimes too, the other editors can ask the associate trainee editors. The editorial committee is more like a group of people that have agreed to review articles for us, at least a couple of articles, but most of them go beyond the call of duty. And we've got people in sub-specialty areas, so each of them works in some specialty. So the committee themselves don't handle articles with direct editorial work, but they do reviews.

Yeah, I I guess for our listeners, in case they're not aware, that something that I'd like to expand on is the difference between the handling editing side of things and the peer review part of that process. What does that look like?

So when we're handling articles that are sent in to us from uh people who submit to the journal, those articles are assigned to a handling editor. In some journals, they all pass through the hands of the editor-in-chief. I made the choice to work with the team to kind of democratize it so that allow all people with the opportunity to contact me if they're concerned about the article, but all the deputy editors and the associate editors and the trainee editor to have that say to look at the article. So the first desk assessment, whether you take it or not, in the journal. So that's what happens at the first step. And once that's decided, we invite for reviewers, and that handling editor tries to invite a trancha people. There's no secret about this. We're happy to make this transparent for the readers. We try to send off in tranches of at least five people because the response rate is very low now for reviews, and that's one of the reasons that we're in medical publishing getting a lot of delays. So we generally try at least three rounds, and sometimes we try harder if we've got someone to reply already. But we try to be fair. And also, if we can't get reviewers, it's probably an article that isn't for the journal, and we try to return it to the authors in a timely manner. It's one of the biggest challenges at the moment is just getting reviewers. And so we we often talk. So the handling letters sometimes ask each other for advice, including the deputy editors and me, you know, who might be suitable. And the the go-to is the you know, the editorial committee. You can ask the people of the editorial committee because they've agreed, and you can see on our lists how often they've been asked. So if they've had a lot of work recently, you may not ask them because they can do that. And then as it goes through the rounds of review, when you get the review back, then the handling editor interprets what to do with that and then makes a recommendation to me, and then I review that and work with you to make a decision on that. But usually it's quite clear, most articles very rarely would get through without a revision. So if you say your revision, we do that, and my job is to work with you and support. And of course, because everyone's a volunteer and using their expertise, the trust is important. I trust people trying to do their job to the best of their ability, and that's like that you know, analogy with being the conductor. People know how to play the instruments, they know how to do their roles, and if you need advice, I'm there. I've given that kind of personal contact details so people can get in touch with me and get support and we can talk through things. I think it's hard because some of the aspects are because we're all we're across two countries, and we're also more than that because some of our editors are, for example, one of our editors is in Sweden, so the European editor. So the time zone differences and our editorial assistants that we work with are based in London. So there's a time zone difference.

One of the questions that that I had was around how you, as an editor-in-chief, decide what articles you say are uh appropriate to go to peer review, and if they go through that process, how you decide when they might be published.

I think that I haven't tried to put too many rules around that, and that's why I've kept it free form for all the editors, because the reason that I encouraged you that to get a broader editorial board is that your views are important where you think it's something might be of relevance, because it's been very useful. People saying, I don't really think that that, you know, our readership would be interested. And it's not for me to dictate that view as the editor-in-chief. I see it again conducting that the reason that we wanted to get people on board, like all the editorial team, is for their expertise and then trust them to do their jobs because you know, with goodwill. And if there are concerns to um raise them with me to discuss. So my role is more to facilitate and support. Now, the rare occasions where we might intervene are when something has become particularly fractious. I can only recall very few occasions when somebody has been abusive to like an editor or things without going into detail. Then I might step in with other editorial support if needed. But I don't really needed to do that, except when people are rude, which you can usually just cut off communication if they become inappropriate. Yeah, but it doesn't happen very often with these sorts of in the journal setting. So the lines are more about sort of comportment behavior. But I can't recall the last time that we actually had an issue since I came on that was substantial. I know it's happened for other journals. Sometimes authors will actually try to sue each other. I've heard that in other journals, and then we're not involved in that process. I do have the final say, that's the role of the editor-in-chief, but it's like a reserve role, and it's there to support your recommendations. I value every single one of your assessments and contributions, and we keep an open mind, without which we couldn't get some really interesting articles. Like we've had some research on effects on mental health in Ukraine, which was a really interesting article that's coming out soon. So that this like the depth and breadth, and we've had from the Indian subcontinent articles as well. So we got more Asian and we had a Pacific Islands issue.

So touched on a few other challenges of the role there, Jeff. I'm wondering if perhaps we could talk a bit more about some of the things that you've encountered over your time as editors in chief that have been difficult to navigate and the kinds of things that you've been using to navigate those problems.

This will probably sound like the thing that probably most editors are concerned about, but I think it's true for all scientists as well. Is the right of free inquiry and free speech in a medical journal such as ours is paramount. And to expand on that a bit, there are different roles. We have articles that are peer-reviewed, and even our correspondence, unusually for some journals, is peer-reviewed. But our book reviews are not because they're book reviews and they don't pretend to be anything else than a book review, which is an opinion. And we have editorials, and I know that some of the editorial team are working on. We've invited editorials from people, and they're more commentaries on current situations or topical situations with people's expertise. They're not peer-reviewed, but they're similar to the format of editorials that occur in other medical journals, such as the Lancet or the BMJ, where you comment on topical issues that are important and they're identified. In some journals, they're they're anonymous. I think it's still useful if they're identified, and we try not to censor viewpoints on it unless someone says something particularly personally that might be concerned, like potentially libel or something like that. And the point is to allow people a voice because that's one of the roles of the editors, because it it also gives a reflection of the people doing the the editing as well. That you see some of the things that you're interested in. For example, we had a really good editorial from Sharon Roytons talking about older persons in forensic settings. And though I, you know, for conflict interest, I was involved in that, it was Sharon's interest. She's an expert in the area, and I know up and coming, we we can say it because it's transparent. Michael Whiteman has approached about an article, and we we're interested in his and we've had articles from Michael Turin and team as well with their trainee, and the whole December issue is reserved for the trainees to write editorials without that sort of censorship. There's a distinction with the editorials that we try to get a bit of colour and interest in those sorts of things, but we try not to. We don't always have editorials. So the last issue we had no editorials, and we'll have a couple of editorials, but we're not trying to stack it with that. We we don't technically have a page limit with the journal, but we try to keep a reserve because sometimes production can slow, and we've got a lot. For example, last year we published 968 pages, even though it states that we had 90 articles, which seems less. 968 pages was more than the two previous years in terms of numbers of pages. So there are a lot of media articles there, and they weren't just editorials or perspectives. We want perspectives because they're often from clinicians, and we want commentaries from clinicians because we're still interested in clinical matters.

I think with the importance of free speech, that speaks to the correspondence section of the journal as well. There's a good opportunity there for authors who have to disagree with something to be able to have their own thoughts heard and play out in the academic discourse.

That's a good point, Michael. Um, and that's why we decided to peer review them to allow they feel like it's fairly arbitrated, because we generally allow a person a comment and then a right of reply from the author. People can decline, and that's okay, but we generally allow that, and then we try to publish those two things next to each other when possible. It's not always possible, but to put them adjacent. And that one of the reasons was to have that fair arbitration because at least correspondence which is shorter is easier potentially to review. So we can get advice from people like they're saying something that's a little bit too direct or maybe too forceful, and then we can say to the author, maybe you need to consider your how you're expressing yourself and those things. So that that's the guarantee to allow people to have the opportunity for correspondence. Now, sometimes there may be correspondence that we might consider that's not you know suitable, and that's for any articles without going into any specifics. There may be topics that are of general interest to media or other situations, but they don't, they're not for medical journal, maybe commentary on some broader societal uh political situation, but we're not really a political science journal, we're not a journal economics per se, but we're interested in health economics. So these things may be of interest, but they're not necessarily for our journal. Ours is like clinical psychiatry and psychiatric epidemia, all of the sizes, all the sciences related to that. We have much interest in psychotherapy, and we welcome that. Uh, we had an article uh where we had the cover Edwin Harari, who was an eminent psychotherapist, and the authors wrote a nice scholarly paper on his contribution to the field. And so we are interested in aspects of history as well, but it should be around the practice and uh interests, you know, in psychiatry, clinical psychiatry, because we're the clinical kind of arm, but also the clinical sciences arm of with our sister journal, which has much more of the advanced basic science research, including genetics, etc. It's not to say that we wouldn't consider it, but most people who were doing that sort of more basic science research would send to the ANZJP, which is the flagship for the college in terms of the science side.

You've touched on uh the the December issue and that being reserved for trainees. Yes. Would you have any advice or tips for trainees who are looking to get published, either publishing a scholarly project or publishing other research that they might be doing as part of their work day to day clinically?

I think that most of the things that potentially in the scholarly project lend themselves to some ability to write out. And probably the easiest format potentially for a lot of trainees to is to write a clinical update or commentary, which is about a 2,000-word article, which is not meant as a systematic review, but a short takeaway summary that's useful for practicing registrars and clinicians. And we've had, for example, before I joined the editorial board, I wrote something on a background about gaming and gaming culture for psychiatrists, which was a just it wasn't meant as a systematic review, but it was like a primer, so you get some background. And the other things that we've had before are brief summaries, management of neuropsychiatric conditions. So we welcome those sorts of things that you could do. By all means, people could do systematic reviews, and we got a format specifically for that. And the other ones are people have written about their personal experiences of training. I think one of the associate training editors did too, and that can be like in a perspective, which is also 2,000 words, but more like a personal view on a situation and viewpoints where people are expressing interest or comments, which are more in a debate type format, and they're about 1,500 words, whereas the uh perspectives and the commentaries are about 2,000 words. Now, in the past, we used to have case reports, but it's challenging, very hard to often get reviews of case reports nowadays, and so we try not to do that. There's still possibilities in relation, potentially depends how much detail people have done because the college does have these case series for the scholarly project. I don't think we have a kind of fixed view about whether the case series, because they can be quite detailed. The challenge is often just trying to get a good review of it because they're short, because they're gathered together a small amount of material, you can get quite polarized views. And I think the other thing is also we'd encourage trainees to write correspondence if they want to comment on something. And quite a lot of trainees have commented on things like in response to articles like the trainee takeover issue in December, about the challenges that people face trying to enter academic psychiatry. So they're the current ones that I at the moment, and uh, but I'm happy to continue to work with their troll team to see what other options we can look at in the future for articles. I I think to come back to again, one of the biggest challenges is I know because you're all working hard trying to find reviews. It's just so hard to get anyone to review anything. It's often difficult. I think it's good because you're actually running a journal within a journal, Michael Tarrant. You've got all your associate people reviewing as well, and you've got the other resources, so you can see some of that. And Michael and I will be trying to send out to people, and sometimes people just they're like ghosting you. You got no responses. And I think that's important to keep transparent to things, and there's no there's no favoritism. I can say it's finally published now. I think article on which I was an author 400 days before it was accepted. So there's no favoritism that I cannot, because of conflict of interest, I cannot intervene in matters relating to any of the papers and what happens when Michael or either of the Michaels here, you know, involved. Your articles are sent to other editors who are not involved in the paper. That's why we've got a large audience. I think it's important that our editors are actively involved in writing, publishing in the journal, because that gives you the other experience. You'll say, like, actually, that took a long time to get reviewed. I was like, yeah, and I've seen at both ends. So then you see what's going on. On. And I think that we're still trying to iron out some changes and things with the journal, but we want to encourage people to be involved.

So, Jeff, on that challenge of finding reviewers for papers, what are your thoughts on the role of both trainees and early career psychiatrists as potential peer reviewers for oscillation psychiatry?

We're extremely grateful if people want to participate. There's no harm in trying and reviewing because there's nothing like that first-hand experience of trying to review a paper. Then you actually think, hmm, I don't really understand these stats. I'm going to look it up, see if I can figure it out. If not, I'll probably have to put in the review. I don't understand their stats. You might need to ask another reviewer. And sometimes people have, you know, cold feet that say, like, I can't do it. But any feedback you give is better than not, because people are volunteering their time. But then you also see the other side of reviewing things. When we look at things like in a journal club or something, it's a little bit different, it's academic. But when you're reviewing papers in a journal, you see the kind of wrinkles. It's like they forgot to put this section in their paper. Some of the references, they don't look right. Like I had a review back the other day said, like some of the references don't exist. So that that's like a sign of AI hallucination. You know, they don't actually exist. And so so those are kind of important things. So I think we're really grateful for registrar's reviewing. I think it's good, a good experience because it's part of that experience with research, because the articles that they ask you to learn about in your training, they're all based on the peer review system, Warts and all. And so many of them will be reviewed by registrars or other people. And that's the whole point of anonymous peer review. Like there's different camps on this. They do have ones they have published reviews, but they there are wrinkles in that too, because people might be extraordinarily circumspect in a published review. And I'm sure you've all received peer review feedback that you almost want to redact because it's a little bit too direct. But we don't. We don't generally redact stuff only if somebody said something personally offensive, but I can't actually recall that. And it's for the authors to rebut because sometimes the reviewers will say these things, and the author says, no, that's not actually correct. We're meant to arbitrate, we're not trying to decide on one side or the other. We're like the referees there.

Yeah, so it's it's great to hear that there's a general encouragement for trainees to get involved as well. And um it might be worth talking for um for fellows as well about the opportunity for CPD points as well for reviewing. Understand that it counts in section three, practice improvement, which is often a an area that people find difficult to find hours for.

Yeah, and and preparing articles, you don't have to publish them. You can do the research for articles, is also part of practice improvement. Because not everyone gets everything published. Even someone asked me years ago, the most famous ones, of course, anything, especially when I was working in neuroscience, anything that's got a null result. Good luck with getting anything with a null result published, because they'll say it's underpowered or something. And there's a whole there's a whole other issue there, which we we don't need to go into today. But yeah, I think it's it's good to be involved. And I think train trainees is a really good experience because the first time an academic mentor asked me to review something, I said, okay, so this is what it's like trying to review paper. It's not actually that easy, actually. I don't really understand this. And then you have to go back to the mentor and say, and that's what I I really value you, you know, all the editorial team members, because everyone's been encouraging trainees and you give them advice on what to do and support them. So it's part of a learning experience too, to see how science actually works at the peer review end. It's not perfect, but it's an opportunity to learn, and it's better than being, in a way, slightly divorced as even in a journal club, like being an armchair critic. Because when you're looking at the peer review stage with the authors, like the author said, Oh, and you see the explanation, we couldn't do this study because people said we're not allowed to, you know, and then you're like, okay, that's why they did that population. The ethics committee said we couldn't do this. Oh, okay. So you you see, and then oh, somebody objected to this, and and that that's that's a really good view of the real nuts and bolts of science. And I think that that, I think the thing that it really gives all fellows and trainees is the appreciation of the work behind the science and the limits around the science. A thing I commonly say when I'm working in clinical practice with patients is yes, we've got the evidence on one side, and then we've got to tailor and see if the evidence actually suits you, whether there's a case that's relative to you that's suitable, and whether it actually applies to you. Otherwise, we're gonna have to go to what we can get in terms of evidence. So that helps, I think, in the clinical appreciation of the research, but also the limits our knowledge, which we always need to as clinicians. You know, our role in supporting patients is to know the limitations of you know the knowledge and the skills. Our job is to support patients to the best of our abilities, and that means sometimes you need to ask for help to help care for someone, because no one is expert in everything. And the reviewing process helps because that gives that scientific and clinical humility. I think that's that's the beneficial thing.

Aaron Ross Powell It's that balance between the the science of it, the objectivity, and the the art of the peer review and the art of soliciting those reviews.

Yeah, and the art in practice is similar and the art even with the the clinical practice because it it's not all just the evidence-based. It must be based defensibly for the best interest of patient on evidence, but people have their own wishes, their culture, their needs, and that's the art of it, how we tailor it to the person's story. So something commonly in clinical practice, because sometimes patients are at an extremist and they approach us, and you the right approach, where it is part of what this process in the journal, uh, I think, and with all sciences, it's their story, not ours. We try to help them with living their story to the best of things. Obviously, there's always limits about safety and other issues, but aside from that, we have to try and help interpret the evidence, let them make their decision about what they want in terms of their care. Because in many of our areas, there's so many options, and it's bewildering. And that's our job to navigate. I think that's what a journal should do. And that's why we have the clinical articles like, for example, we're providing care. One of our most popular articles was the moral dilemmas facing a forensic psychiatrist, you know, the challenges of ethics, because that reflection is important in daily practice, and I think that was one of our most viewed articles. Um, so I I think that these these are all good opportunities. Can I ask you a question? Is it is it okay?

Of course.

First, Michael, in Adelaide, what you found, because you've you've been involved with the journal for quite a long time now, what you found that you've gained out of being involved in the journal.

I think it's been a wonderful experience for myself, particularly so early in my career, to get a a sense of how publishing works from the other side. I'd before I joined the journal, I'd been involved with a couple of papers. But being part of particularly that peer-reviewed process initially as a trainee really helped improve my own writing, thinking about what made a good paper, developing a proposal for future research that was really helpful with that as well, and an opportunity to perhaps you know read papers that I might not otherwise have and think more deeply about the ways that they were put together and the strengths and weaknesses of it. So I think it's been really helpful in improving my own skills in in critical appraisal of uh of pages. Um and it's been great to be with a sort of community of practice of um like-minded psychiatrists as well. So had an opportunity to work with people like Ed Miller and Michael Tarron and and others with the training group, made some really good connections and collaborations with that, opportunity to do things like the podcast, uh like we're doing now as well. It's um it's led to a lot of really wonderful opportunities and and friendships as well. So yeah, there's a lot that I've um been able to take out of it.

Oh, thanks, Michael. If I'm allowed by the host to ask the host. Yeah, absolutely.

Uh it's as still a trainee being involved in this, starting as an associate trainee editor and now the trainee editor, it's been a really it's been a really interesting process. It's been a learning journey for me uh from the start. I think I mentioned the start of the podcast, the black box. The idea that as a trainee who had a little bit of an interest in research and trying to publish, you kind of put your paper out and get this feedback back. And uh, not having a knowledge of that process and what that looks like, there was this kind of sense that, oh, that feedback needs to be addressed 100% and everything needs to be right. But now being in that process, I think the big perspective it's given me is the understanding that everyone's volunteering their time, has very levels of expertise, might have their own interpretation of what something means, and that it can be that dialogue that I can push back on something and say, No, yeah, I think you've missed the point of what I was trying there, or this is the reason that we did it this way. And that's been a really useful part of this experience has been kind of illuminating that black box and seeing actually it's not that mysterious, it's quite a human process, there's an art to it, and that there are people behind those reviews, there are people handling the paper who are soliciting those reviews, and at every step the sense that I've gotten is everyone has the best intentions, and seeing that from that perspective has actually made it a lot easier on the other side to try to publish. And it's also given me the opportunity to work with a really wonderful group. Ed's been a great mentor, Michael Waitman. Everyone's kind of really got a lot of knowledge to give and has been very forthcoming with that knowledge. Um I feel really lucky to have that opportunity.

Yeah, I I think as you said, that that's what we want to have, the experience, and no one would defend you know peer review as being perfect, but it's the best that we've got at the moment in terms of being able to arbitrate. There are always wrinkles in peer review, but there's a chance for people to argue before. Essentially, the role for most of the editors is like that referee. We try not to take a view, and if we have a potential conflict of interest, we can't be involved in viewing the paper. So we do sometimes when people are allocated, they said, I actually know this author, I can't really get involved in reviewing this. And you can even have humorous situations like the one of the ones that's often a no-no in in reviewing is to suggest articles from your own over to it. And it's like uh it's probably like the first thing you learn you don't do. And I still to this day have some another author, because one of my co-authors who knew me, who was in an entirely different country, had suggested one of my papers, thinks I reviewed his paper and was like still angry with me for the paper being rejected. But I had no involvement, I didn't even see his paper. It's just that in the country where I used to volunteer, I was infinitesimally famous. So they cited my paper because it was a very narrow area we were working in. But now he's used to scowl at me at the conferences and things like this. So it's one of the things you learn about trying to be fair and reasonable, and of course, people are disappointed. All of us, every I can say without any concern that I'd be contradicted, everyone would have had an article rejected, and you say, Oh, why was it rejected? And then you look at it, it's like, well, is it salvageable? Can we do something more with it? Or sometimes you just have to leave it on the shelf because the external review sometimes shows you, like, well, maybe we just didn't get on the right track with it and we didn't have the right material. Hopefully, it doesn't happen with research studies. Sometimes you have to present it better and you have to argue it better, and mostly you can find a home if you can work out you know the wrinkles in things, because sometimes journals also reject uh because they just don't have time to send it out for review. We try to send most of our things out for review, but sometimes things are just too esoteric for us. And I read that's where we rely on the team. And I think the benefit of working part of that, I think it would be almost like a to paraphrase the how people talk about democracy and say, like, it's the worst government except for all other types of government. Peer review is is similar in times of trying to arbitrate scientific disputes because it actually dates back to the time of my understanding. I'm not a historian of science, but what I read was that the Royal Society started off with peer review processes in the original Royal Societies because they would have those titans of the early science arguing with each other, saying, you're wrong and I'm right, and somebody has to arbitrate. The arbitration we would acknowledge doesn't always get it right, but we try to do the best we can. And I hope that that's where we can encourage, like yourselves, and we try to get one of the conscious things we're trying to get as diverse a representation of people with different backgrounds, specialties, different levels of career. That's why we expanded so much. And potentially that has people with different levels of expertise with editing and reviewing, but that's the whole point because we've got trainees submitting and we want it to be a more democratized. So the idea that, of course, the editor-in-chief has to have the final say, but the aim in working with a broad team such as yourself, when I took over from Bill, who managed the journal with his excellent team for uh a decade or more, you already had the existing structure that he'd established with the trainee editors, and I think that that's fantastic because it's like a journal within a journal, and that's a training role. You know, Michael has also had that experience moving through that process. So it's rewarding. Does it outweigh sometimes the frustrations? I think that's probably something more for a private conversation. Can I also thank you for asking me to come? And and I I I want to put it on air. Thank you both for all the work you done. And and that the journal would not exist without the editorial team. And a conductor without a team of talented people can't conduct anything. All you're doing is waving your hands in the air. So the work is the work of everyone in the journal, and that's important that we say that on air to recognize. And I hope that kind of spirit continues. Thanks again.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure to have been involved.

Yeah, it's been my pleasure as well. That's all we have time for today. So we'll bring the discussion to a close. I'd like to thank Jeff for coming onto the podcast today and to help us understand journal editing, but taking so much time out of your day. We we really do appreciate you coming on. Um many thanks also to Dr. Michael Waiteman for joining me as co-host today.

Thanks, Michael.

I'd like to acknowledge Nishda, Aya, and Joe Rose from the college, who give us so much support in producing and editing this podcast. We're also very thankful to Australasian Psychiatry for the opportunity to continue to make these podcasts, as well as Shady Dave for our music and Sidoni Prentice for our artwork. We encourage our listeners to rate the podcast on whatever app you have access to, as well as promoting it to other registrars or supervisors. We always love getting your feedback or suggestions for further episodes, including volunteers interested in being a guest. If you're interested at all, get in touch by email at the thoughtbroadcast.org. That's all for now. My name is Michael. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time.