It is not about how to write papers or abstracts, but about getting the most from your writing efforts, for example by choosing the best meetings and journals. It also covers the many rules and conventions of peer reviewed publications.

The course has 10 units and students study one unit each week. This should involve about 10 hours of study per week.

View an Example Course Unit

You can view one of our course units by visiting http://openmoodle.conted.ox.ac.uk and setting-up your own username and password -- follow the on-screen instructions for creating a new account. Existing OpenMoodle registered users can alreadly gain access to this course by clicking on the "All courses" link in the "My courses" box.

This example unit has been chosen to illustrate to you how our online course in Getting Research Published is actually delivered and will also give you an insight into the types of activities, personal tasks and weekly readings that you can expect to undertake as an online student.

Course Tutor

Liz Wager

Elizabeth (Liz) Wager provides training, writing, editing and publication consultancy services. She has run workshops and given presentations in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, the UK and the USA.

Liz is a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Scientific Advisory Group on trial registration, the CONSORT statement group, the BMJ’s Ethics Committee, and the World Association of Medical Editors Ethics Committee. She is Secretary of the Committee on Publication Ethics and a Visiting Fellow of the UK Cochrane Centre. She is a regular peer-reviewer for several journals including the BMJ, the Journal of Medical Ethics, PLoS Medicine and JAMA.

As well as writing Getting Research Published (the course textbook) she is a co-author of How to Survive Peer Review (BMJ Books, 2002) and has written three chapters in Godlee & Jefferson's Peer Review in Health Sciences (BMJ Books, 2003). She is a co-author of Good publication practice for pharmaceutical companies (CMRO, 2003) and the EMWA guidelines on the role of medical writers (CMRO, 2005).

She got into medical publishing after a zoology degree from Oxford. Her first job was as an editor for Blackwell Scientific Publications. She moved to the pharmaceutical industry in 1992, working first for Janssen-Cilag, then for GlaxoWellcome, where she was the UK Head of International Medical Publications.

She lives in a small town in Buckinghamshire (UK) with her husband, in a 200-year-old cottage which lent its name to her company (it faces sideways onto the street). She relaxes by running (occasionally managing a half marathon) and playing with her four tortoiseshell cats.