Many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was editing a journal that wanted to
increase its relevance to practitioners. Borrowing a good idea from a life sciences journal
(with appropriate attribution) we introduced ‘Practitioner notes’ - a text box on the first
page of every article that set out three bullet point lists:
a. What is already known about this subject?
b. What does this research add?
c. What should the reader do differently as a result of these findings?
Under each heading there should be three (but not more than four) bullet points.
There is no need for references or detailed descriptions of the methodology, just short
statements in simple language.
We quickly discovered that, as well as being welcomed by the readers, the reviewers
found them very useful as an introduction to what they were about to read. These three
questions set the agenda for the submission and they could then assess how well the
questions had been answered.