Critical Appraisal Internship

APJCP is a reputable journal in the field of cancer sciences, and it receives many manuscript submissions per day. This has brought a unique opportunity for junior scientists to utilize the journal as a means of learning and promoting the skills of critical appraisal. For this, the journal’s management team, in collaboration with its editorial team and the Department of Social Medicine of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences is offering an internship in critical appraisal of scientific manuscripts complemented with a credible certification.

The Critical Appraisal internship (CAI) serves two main objectives:

  • promoting the advancement of critical appraisal skills among junior scientists, and
  • Utilizing the journal’s infrastructure in a learning environment (serving the very aim of the Asian Pacific Organization for Cancer Prevention).

The Critical Appraisal internship is a flexible and unique model in which, the skills of critical appraisal are practiced in a real-life scenario where the manuscripts being appraised are the actual manuscripts that will be published in the journal. By relying on the experience of the journal’s editorial team and by completing an online critical appraisal course, this internship will provide favorable guidance which serves the scientific aim of APOCP, in particular, the WAOCP chapter and its dependent journals.

The components of the internship include:

  • Training – offered by the journal’s editorial team,
  • Involvement in conducting a comprehensive critical review of at least five manuscripts, after which a certificate of achievement is issued if approved by the editorial team.

Who is eligible to take part in the Critical Appraisal Internship?

Applicants who intend to take part in the Critical Appraisal Internship must first complete the application form and then the journal’s editorial team will guide them on how to proceed.

After the initial acceptance for the Critical Appraisal Internship, the intern will be asked to complete a web course titled “Translating Critical Appraisal of a Manuscript into Meaningful Peer Review” that is offered by the Harvard School of Public Health and it is located in this public domain:

https://courseplus.jhu.edu/core/index.cfm/go/course.home/coid/8126/

It is essential for the intern to have sufficient English proficiency to be able to utilize the course. The course is very useful and interesting because it is a combination of a research methodology course and a critical appraisal course. For additional training, the prospect intern will sit in another two hours training session for orientation (this is distance learning and is managed through Skype or other video streaming facilities). The purpose of this training is to get the students familiarized with using evaluation forms and how-to-apply the forms to an actual appraising process of a manuscript. After the intern successfully completes the course and orientation class, the editorial team will assign 5 manuscripts to the intern to review. In the end, if the editorial team approves the comprehensive critical reviews of the intern, they will be issued a certificate of achievement. As well, the researcher whose manuscript underwent the review will be granted the opportunity to be listed as a prospective reviewer for WAOCP’s journals.

Applicants who successfully complete the internship can apply to become an official in-house reviewer for WAOCP’s journals and enjoy its many privileges (including being invited to APOCP conferences, having processing fees waived for their submission to any WAOCP’s publications, etc ). To participate in the Critical Appraisal Internship program, please and email us at “journal@waocp.org”.