Many trainees and early-career academics devote substantial time to research projects that stall or ultimately never reach publication. The problem is rarely effort or knowledge; it is the absence of a clear, repeatable system to move from idea to accepted manuscript.

The Research Publishing Playbook provides that system. Rather than re-teaching statistics or study design, this book focuses on execution: how to select the right projects, build productive habits, manage teams efficiently, write effectively, avoid common analytical pitfalls, and navigate submission and revision with precision.

For students and trainees, this book offers a direct blueprint to translate “activity” to “productivity.
 For faculty and advisors, it provides a scalable framework to build productive, high-functioning research teams.

This book distills practical, often unspoken strategies used by high-output academic groups to consistently produce peer-reviewed publications. This is not a theoretical overview; this is an operational playbook for turning academic effort into measurable output.

Dr. Choi is an incoming trauma and acute care surgeon at Mass General Brigham and faculty at Harvard Medical School. He is a surgeon-data scientist trained at Stanford University, where he completed medical school, graduate training in epidemiology and biomedical informatics, general surgery residency, and surgical critical care fellowship. He has authored nearly 100 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals, including JAMA, JAMA Surgery, and Annals of Surgery.

Dr. Choi has mentored students and trainees across multiple institutions, helping many achieve their first or high-impact publications. He was the founding instructor for Stanford School of Medicine’s “Practical Introduction to Research Skills,” a course designed to systematically teach efficient academic productivity. His work focuses on building reproducible systems that transform research ideas into tangible, publishable outputs.