New Author Mentoring

1. The Editor of JPPT will receive the manuscript and send the first draft to a mentor, preferably with experience in the particular therapeutic area.  Manuscripts should be practice-related research / projects or case reports rather than review articles. 
2. Mentors will be selected from the Research Committee and from the general membership, if additional mentors are needed.  
3. Mentors will make initial comments and suggestions for improvement.  Comments will be global in nature but will include an assessment of structure, flow, and content.  In general, the mentor will not rewrite the paper nor provide significant intellectual input (such as data analysis) without authorship.  The mentor's role is to serve as an initial (risk-free) review of the paper and to provide constructive feedback to the author to improve the quality of the submission. 
4. If more substantive input from the author is desired, the primary author may request that the mentor serve as a coauthor, especially for mentors with content expertise.  In that case, the mentor will work one-on-one with the PI to write the manuscript.      
5. The reviewed paper will be returned (by way of the Editor) to the author for revision.
6. The revised paper will be sent to the same mentor for a second set of comments and if necessary, editorial changes using "track changes" in Word.
7. The paper will be returned to the author for final draft after which the paper will be submitted to JPPT for official review.  The mentor may be chosen by the editor of JPPT to also serve as an official reviewer of the manuscript.
8. Any person taking advantage of the mentoring program will be required to submit a signed agreement that he/she will submit the manuscript to JPPT for publication.