2018 peer review criteria
Peer reviewers will be asked to assess the soundness of your scholarship and the extent to which your abstract aligns with the conference themes and aims.
Soundness of the scholarship
The following areas will be considered by reviewers when scoring presentation abstracts for oral and poster submissions:
1) Importance of the problem or topic
- Is the problem (or topic area) original/important/relevant to academic primary care?
- Are the aims of the study clearly described?
2) The approach (design/methods)
- Is the study design appropriate for the stated research question(s) and aims?
- Are the methods/ methodological approach clearly described?
- What is the overall quality of the study methods employed (or proposed)?
3) Findings
- Are the key findings clearly described?
- How confident is the reviewer in the strength/trustworthiness of the findings and/or conclusions/discussion presented? (For work in progress reviewers will be asked to assess the quality of the conclusion and/or discussion, taking into account interim findings/conclusions and how well the author describes plans for progressing the research)
4) Consequences (significance)
- How important are these research findings?
- How and to what extent are the findings likely to influence clinical or research practice, education or policy? (For work in progress reviewers will be asked to consider the potential of the project to influence clinical or research practice, education or policy)
Alignment with conference themes / aims
In addition to an assessment of the soundness of your scholarship, reviewers will also be asked to consider the extent to which the submission aligns with the conference themes and aims as described in the call for abstracts. These include: learning from Europe, populations on the move; expert generalism; novel methodologies. Please refer to the call for abstracts for full details.
The SAPC Annual Conference aims to:
- Showcase new, emerging and best scholarship (education, research and innovation) in primary care
- Provide primary care academics with opportunities to present, debate and share their work
- Support primary care academics at all stages of their career to develop their experience and skills in engaging with audiences to maximise the impact of their work and scholarship
- Engage an audience from across the primary care practice and policy community
Peer review process
All submitted abstracts will be reviewed independently by at least two peer reviewers. The aim of this process is to ensure a high quality programme of presentations and a lively, informative meeting. We welcome interesting, well designed and well conducted work at all stages of development / delivery and ask reviewers to give equivalent weight to abstracts relating to work-in-progress and completed work. The main focus of our peer review process is the extent to which submissions meet the criteria for quality, relevance and importance.
Reviewers are asked to mark abstracts using the full range of scores stated for each of the criteria. Each criterion has a score range with 1 being the lowest, and higher scores representing higher quality abstracts (e.g. 1=poor, 5=excellent).
A high scoring abstract will:
- identify an important problem (one which responds to a clear gap in the literature; a practice or policy priority; a topic which is fundamental to primary care)
- describe a clear research question and aim
- set out an appropriate study design which is capable of meeting the stated aims
- offer a clear description of methods and methodological approach
- include findings which are trustworthy, or - for work in progress - a compelling conclusion and/or discussion which justifies the approach being taken in the ongoing research
A lower scoring abstract is likely to include poorly focused research that is not highly relevant to primary care or which is poorly designed or executed.