Podcast Interview Transcript
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Podcast Interview Transcript
In each volume of Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, the PCHP editors select one article for our Beyond the Manuscript podcast interview with the authors. Beyond the Manuscript provides authors with the opportunity to tell listeners what they would want to know about the project beyond what went into the final manuscript. Beyond the Manuscript podcasts are available for download on the journal’s web site (http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/pchp). This issue’s Beyond the Manuscript podcast was conducted by Deputy Editor Darius Tandon and features Cathy Jordan and Shannon Pergament, the lead author and community partner for “CES4Health.info: An Online Tool for Peer Reviewing and Disseminating Diverse Products of Community-Engaged Scholarship.” The following is an edited transcript of the Beyond the Manuscript podcast.
Cathy and Shannon, thank you for your excellent submission to PCHP on CES4Health. You make the point that community-engaged scholars and community partners are aware of the limited impact that journal articles may have on community stakeholders, because community stakeholders may have limited access to scholarly literature.
There may be less applied language used in journal articles. But researchers do value the peer review format for dissemination. I’m wondering are there ways for the products reviewed by CES4Health to be integrated into the peer reviewed journal format to make them more accessible to researchers, or whether you even think that this is an approach that should be pursued?
It’s important to support CES4Health products as credible, standalone publications that don’t necessarily need to also be submitted to journals. While researchers do access traditional literature, CES4Health products are completely open-access. Researchers can and do access them. The accompanying application with the product is also part of that published product. The content of that application actually covers a lot of what would be in a manuscript in terms of scholarly grounding, rigor of the approach, and impact.
A lot of what would be in a manuscript is already built into the CES4Health published package. However, I think there are potential opportunities. For instance, joint calls for submission where CES4Health issues a call for products and a collaborating journal issues a call for accompanying articles. The article might provide details about evaluation of the product’s impact or development of the project that led to the product. Authors might do this on their own, independent of a call for submissions, as well. There are lots of opportunities there.
However, I don’t want to take away from the idea that a CES4Health product can be a credible, standalone publication. [End Page 201]
The next question is something certainly I’d be interested in both of your perspectives on. You note in the manuscript that most of the authors who have submitted to CES4Health were affiliated with academic institutions. And I’m curious if there are processes in place or some sort of development that you’re thinking about for encouraging community partners to submit materials to CES4Health?
We advertise through CCPH, Community Campus Partnerships for Health, which does reach a number of community partners. The CES4Health website encourages community authors to submit – but given that a primary emphasis of CES4Health is the peer review part, I think it’s just more likely that academics are going to see that as relevant and highly valuable. I think it’s just part of the academic culture and not as much part of the community culture. But Shannon, do you have a perspective on how we might encourage community members to take that lead in submitting products?
It’s a process that will build on itself. As academic partners become more familiar with the opportunity they’ll pass that information on to their community partners who, in turn, might take the lead on submitting a product, or who could educate others who might be interested. As a community reviewer, I’ve promoted CES4Health to the communities I’m working with in CBPR partnerships. So involving more community members in the review process could be another avenue.
My sense...
