Call for papers - Publication dynamics

Guest Editors

Mueen Ahmed KK, PhD, Phcog.net, India
Igor Burstyn, PhD, Drexel University, USA
Gokhan Tazegul, PhD, Marmara University Faculty of Medicine, Türkiye
Demeng Xia, MSc, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University, China

Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 30 June 2025

BMC Medical Research Methodology is calling for submissions to our Collection on Publication dynamics.

Science is not an ivory tower. It is responsive to technical innovation and knowledge advancements, but also to the broader society it belongs to. A certain major event, such as movement restriction policies, the introduction of AI-based technologies, or the implementation of a citation metric, can affect the way research is validated, circulated, and used in the community. Patterns of validation and dissemination of scientific ideas are not only affected by external factors: once a particular claim is made in methodological research, it is usually used by other academics, in several ways that might be quite different.

This collection welcomes studies investigating the use of methodological research and how an event or a policy can change the way research is conducted, validated, and disseminated within the research community, a subject that we refer to as publication dynamics. Please note that descriptive studies such as bibliometric analysis will not be considered: an underlying mechanism should be at least proposed.

Submit to Collection

Meet the Guest Editors

Back to top

Mueen Ahmed KK, PhD, Phcog.net, India

Dr Ahmed is an experienced professional with over 23 years in academia, IT, entrepreneurship, and editorial roles. He has extensive experience on international advisory boards and consulting, and currently serves as Managing Editor for Phcog.net. Dr Ahmed published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and reviewed more than 300 papers for different journals. He has attracted investments from national and global organizations at various career stages, completing projects in editorial management, journal development, and publication ethics.

Igor Burstyn, PhD, Drexel University, USA

Igor Burstyn, PhD, is an educator and researcher in the field of environmental and occupational health, with training in both epidemiology and occupational hygiene. His research primarily focuses on the identification of sources and the health impacts of occupational and environmental exposures. Dr Burstyn's methodological expertise lies in the areas of measurement error, misclassification, and confounding as they apply to observational data in epidemiology. His achievements have been recognized by the Canadian Journal of Statistics Award (2022) for contribution to a paper on dose-response modeling and the Outstanding Contribution to Epidemiology Award (2019) from the American College of Epidemiology.

Gokhan Tazegul, PhD, Marmara University Faculty of Medicine, Türkiye

Dr Tazegul is an associate Professor of Internal Medicine and prominent academic at Marmara University, Faculty of Medicine. He is an expert in publication metrics and inequalities in reach to publishing research. His research interests focus on understanding how research is validated, circulated, and disseminated within the research community.

Demeng Xia, MSc, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University, China

Demeng Xia's main research direction is precise treatment of trauma, elucidating the etiology and mechanisms of trauma related diseases from interdisciplinary perspectives such as multi omics, molecular biology, materials science, bioinformatics, etc., to achieve rapid disposal and efficient repair of trauma. In terms of methodology, he is proficient in Mendelian randomization analysis, bibliometrics, and construction of big data prediction models. Currently, Demeng has 47 SCI papers have been published as first author/corresponding author (including co-authors), with a total impact factor of 265.193 and a highest impact factor of 34.915.

About the Collection

BMC Medical Research Methodology is calling for submissions to our Collection on Publication dynamics.

Science is not an ivory tower. It is responsive to technical innovation and knowledge advancements, but also to the broader society it belongs to. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on science production and scientific publishing has blatantly demonstrated that a certain event, such as major movement restriction policies or the introduction of AI-based technologies, can affect the way research is validated or circulated. Similarly, the implementation of a certain citation metric would impact the way published results are cited, distributed or used in the community.

Patterns of validation and dissemination of scientific ideas are not only affected by external factors: once a particular claim is made in methodological research, it is usually used by other academics, in ways that are usually not subject of specialized investigations. For example, it is generally not known what it means that a methodological article was cited, whether its results are being refuted, replicated, used to support similar claims, used to improve on the cited method, or used to support erroneous claims. How are methodological articles used, without any regard for citation metrics, which usually fail to examine this aspect?

This collection welcomes studies investigating the use of methodological research and how an event or a policy can change the way research is conducted, validated, disseminated within the research community, a subject that we refer to as publication dynamics. Please note that descriptive studies such as bibliometric analysis will not be considered: an underlying mechanism should be at least proposed.

Image credit: Monika Wisniewska / stock.adobe.com

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

Back to top

This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Publication dynamics" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.