Collaborate

Engage in productive writing for the dissemination of interprofessional scholarship and products across professions, disciplines, and institutions.

 

Audience

This Toolkit is designed for IPE researchers of all levels interested in improving how they collaborate in interprofessional teams to conduct scholarly writing. No prerequisites are necessary, however, familiarity with the research process, scholarly writing, working in teams, and IPE competencies is advised.

Purpose

The purpose of the Interprofessional Team Writing Toolkit is to educate IPE researchers of all levels on how to more successfully and efficiently collaborate across professional, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries in the creation and dissemination of IPE scholarship and products by providing written instruction with rationale and shareable resources for use throughout the interprofessional team writing process.

Contents

Interprofessional writing for scholarly publication is inherently complex.  Our team has been successful in writing across professions, disciplines, and institutions by adhering to the strategies and principles outlined in our Interprofessional Education and Practice Guide published in Journal of Interprofessional Care entitled, “Interprofessional Team Writing to Promote Dissemination of Interprofessional Education Scholarship and Products” (Vogel et al., 2018). This article is available from Taylor & Francis Online at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/hWq8R2iNB9V9gBfjFssd/full.

The lessons learned from our team’s experience with interprofessional team writing has led to the development of the team writing primer and this accompanying  online “Interprofessional Team Writing Toolkit” Copyright © 2018 University of Washington Center for Health Sciences Interprofessional Education, Research & Practice.

In this toolkit, we provide resources we have developed for use in our own interprofessional writing teams to help establish common ground rules, set expectations, and prevent misunderstandings. We have found that providing team members with these resources at the onset of each project helps them begin with a mutual understanding for effectively engaging in the collaborative writing process.

1. How To Use This Toolkit

The Interprofessional Team Writing Toolkit is meant to be specific to one product at a time (manuscript, curriculum, or training module), and should be accessible by the entire writing team. Team writing tools may be used by the whole team to chart progress and to determine needs for revising, editing, or providing additional information. The Interprofessional Team Writing Toolkit helps  the team identify the roles of the multiple authors—which need to be clearly described at the time of submission for some journals. Please feel free to use and adapt the tools we have provided as you see fit to benefit your interprofessional writing team.

 

2. Team Writing Tools

a. Project Overview Form: Outlines the project aims, methods, and outcomes.

b. Project Planning Checklist: Outlines steps to complete the project in chronological order.

c. Authorship Agreement Form: Outlines the requirements for team members to participate as an author. In signing the Authorship Agreement Form, the author(s) agree to be engaged in writing throughout the process (i.e. responding to emails in a timely fashion) and agree to the proposed timeline, roles and responsibilities and authorship order. Once signed, each member is given access to the online Tracking Form.

d. Online Tracking Form: Describes roles and responsibilities of each member of the writing team; tracks progress and assignment changes; includes dates that writing assignments are due and or completed; provides a comment section for notes from team members or phone conferences; and tracks time/date stamp of participation by member (Google analytics).

e. Team Document Review Table: Outlines the list and order of reviews by other authors.Used to facilitate team review of manuscripts and other deliverables, the interprofessional writing team can use the tool to discuss and agree upon who will review the document, in what order, by when, and any particular areas of focus for each reviewer based on their interests and expertise.

f. Example Agenda for Writing Retreat: Outlines a typical agenda for a team writing retreat.

 

3. Additional Supplies Needed

  • Shared electronic space for version control and transparency (e.g. Dropbox, OneDrive, Google docs, shared drive.)
  • Reference software
  • Telecommunications platform (telephone, conference call line, Skype, Zoom)
  • Access to primary literature

 

4. References

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. (2017a). Defining the role of authors and contributors. Retrieved from http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. (2017b). Defining the role of authors and contributors. Retrieved from http://www.icmje.org/news-and-editorials/icmje-recommendations_annotated_dec17.pdf

Smith, E., & Williams-Jones, B. (2012). Authorship and responsibility in health sciences research: a review of procedures for fairly allocating authorship in multi-author studies. Science and Engineering Ethics,18(2), 199–212. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9263-5

Vogel, M. T., Abu-Rish Blakeney, E., Willgerodt, M. A., Odegard, P. S., Johnson, E. L., Shrader, S., Liner, D., Dyer, C. A., Hall, L. W. & Zierler, B. (2018). Interprofessional education and practice guide: interprofessional team writing to promote dissemination of interprofessional education scholarship and products. Journal of Interprofessional Care, DOI: 10.1080/13561820.2018.1538111

 

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the patients, families, students, staff, and faculty with whom we have had the honor to work and collaborate on IPE over the years including Dr. Brian Ross for his work on IPE.

This project was supported in part by a generous grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation under Award Number B15-02. This project was also supported in part by the National Center For Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number TL1 TR002318. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Content Authors Include:

Mia T. Vogel, MPH, MSW (University of Washington School of Nursing)
Erin Abu-Rish Blakeney, PhD, RN (University of Washington School of Nursing)
Mayumi A Willgerodt, PhD, MPH, RN (University of Washington School of Nursing)
Peggy Soule Odegard, BS Pharm, PharmD, CDE (University of Washington School of Pharmacy)
Eric L. Johnson, MD (University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences)
Sarah Shrader, PharmD (University of Kansas School of Pharmacy)
Debra Liner, BA (University of Washington School of Nursing)
Carla A. Dyer, MD (University of Missouri School of Medicine)
Leslie W. Hall, MD (University of South Carolina School of Medicine)
Brenda Zierler, PhD, RN, FAAN, (University of Washington School of Nursing)