Instructions for Authors

Here you will find information about how to prepare your manuscript and details of our submission and peer review processes.

BMJ Case Reports does not accept case series. However, if we feel that an article makes a point better by including more than one case, we will consider the article. If your case report involves more than three patients, please contact the editorial office so that we can assess your case. We do not publish case reports that assess the efficacy or effectiveness of interventions. This includes case reports of patients enrolled in phase II trials.

Each case will be peer reviewed by at least two external referees as well as the Editor, Deputy Editor or Associate Editor. Accepted cases will be copy edited and you will be provided with an edited version to approve before publication.

What cases do we wish to publish?

We want to publish cases with valuable clinical lessons. Common cases that present a diagnostic, ethical or management challenge, or that highlight aspects of mechanisms of injury, pharmacology or histopathology are deemed of particular educational value. It is essential that the learning outcomes of the articles are important and novel.

In addition, we encourage reports of global health cases and medicine practiced in unusual settings, eg, expedition medicine, humanitarian work, refugee health, conflict, violence, sexual violence, human trafficking, humanitarian aid, telemedicine and e-health and health innovations. Global health case reports should focus on the causes of ill health and access to healthcare services, whether economic, social or political – global health issues as they impact on individual patient’s lives. These cases require a comprehensive review of the relevant global health literature and an in depth understanding of the anthropological background of the case you present.

Authors wishing to submit a case report reporting adverse drug reactions and complications, novel treatment including a new drug/ lifestyle/treatment intervention or the use of an established drug or procedure in a new situation are advised to contact the Editor in Chief with a presubmission enquiry at eic.bmjcases@bmj.com prior to taking out a fellowship. We do not publish case reports that assess the efficacy or effectiveness of interventions. This includes case reports of patients enrolled in phase II trials.

We want to publish cases worthy of discussion, particularly around aspects of differential diagnosis, decision making, management, clinical guidelines and pathology. The advantage is that we learn from real cases. An example of the kind of cases we want to publish can be found in our 10th anniversary cases special edition booklet.

How to write for BMJ Case Reports

To ensure that cases are published in an easy to find, easy to read format we require all authors to submit using our Word templates.

We have also created a pre-submission checklist to help you with your submission.

There is no official word count for full cases and global health articles. For full case reports we recommend a maximum of 2000 words and for global health articles we recommend a maximum of 4000 words (excluding abstract and references). Images in … articles should be no more than 500 words. Images in… articles may include videos as well as still images. Please see below for further information on how to submit your videos.

Please anonymise the patient’s details as much as possible, eg, specific ages, ethnicity, occupations. Please see the author hub for BMJ’s standard on anonymisation.

On submission you will be asked to upload one Word template, any figures and accompanying files and a patient consent form.

BMJ has prepared a guide that explains how to write a useful case report. For further support when making your submission please refer to the resources available on the BMJ Author Hub. Here you can also find general formatting guidelines across BMJ and a formatting checklist. You may also wish to use the language editing and translation services provided by BMJ Author Services.

Authors wishing to submit a case report reporting adverse drug reactions and complications, novel treatment including a new drug/ lifestyle/treatment intervention or the use of an established drug or procedure in a new situation should contact the Editor in Chief with a presubmission enquiry at eic.bmjcases@bmj.com prior to taking out a fellowship.

Editorial policy

BMJ Case Reports adheres to the highest standards concerning its editorial policies on publication ethics, scientific misconduct, consent and peer review criteria. The journal follows guidance produced by bodies that include the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To view all BMJ Journal policies please refer to the BMJ Author Hub policies page, including information about our Editors’ roles and responsibilities.

We take seriously all possible misconduct. If an Editor, author or reader has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behaviour they should forward their concerns to the journal. The publisher will deal with allegations appropriately following ICMJE and COPE guidelines.

If your submission is a modification of a conference poster or abstract please ensure that you mention it in your cover letter.

Copyright and authors’ rights

BMJ Case Reports authors are required to grant BMJ an assignment of the copyright in the report unless an author is a Crown employees or where BMJ has agreed CC BY applies, in which case a non exclusive licence is granted to BMJ. For US Federal Government officers or employees acting as part of their official duties, the terms are as stated in accordance with our author agreement. Open access BMJ Case Reports can be reused under the terms of the relevant Creative Commons licence to facilitate reuse of the content; please refer to the BMJ Case Reports Author Agreement or the applicable Creative Commons licences.

When publishing in BMJ Case Reports, authors choose between three licence types – exclusive licence granted to BMJ, CC-BY-NC and CC-BY (Creative Commons open access licences require payment of an article processing charge). As an author you may wish to post your article in an institutional or subject repository, or on a scientific social sharing network. You may also link your published article to your preprint (if applicable).

What you can do with your article, without seeking permission, depends on the licence you have chosen and the version of your article. Please refer to the BMJ author self archiving and permissions policies page for more information.

Plagiarism detection

BMJ takes publication ethics very seriously and abides by the best practice guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics. BMJ is a member of CrossCheck by CrossRef and iThenticate which is a plagiarism screening service that verifies the originality of content submitted before publication. iThenticate checks submissions against millions of published articles, and billions of web content. Authors, researchers and freelancers can also use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting www.ithenticate.com.

Every article is screened and any that are deemed to overlap more than trivially with other publications will be rejected automatically with no right of appeal.

Preprints

BMJ fully supports and encourages the archiving of preprints in any recognised, not-for-profit server such as medRxiv. BMJ does not consider the posting of an article in a dedicated preprint repository to be prior publication. Please note that this policy does not extend to case reports due to patient confidentiality concerns. BMJ will therefore not accept case reports which have been previously submitted to a preprint server.

Preprints are reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed; Preprints should therefore not be used to guide clinical practice, health-related behaviour or health policy. For more information, please refer to our Preprint policy page.

Peer review process

Articles submitted to BMJ Case Reports are subject to peer review. The journal operates single anonymised peer review whereby the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author; Manuscripts authored by a member of a journal’s editorial team are independently peer reviewed; an editor will have no input or influence on the peer review process or publication decision for their own article. For more information on what to expect during the peer review process please refer to BMJ Author Hub – the peer review process.

BMJ requests that all reviewers adhere to a set of basic principles and standards during the peer-review process in research publication; these are based on the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Please refer to our peer review terms and conditions policy page.

BMJ is committed to transparency. Every article we publish includes a description of its provenance (commissioned or not commissioned) and whether it was internally or externally peer reviewed.

Patient consent

Publication of any personal information about an identifiable living patient requires the explicit consent of the patient or guardian. This is a requirement under the UK’s Data Protection legislation. We expect authors to use the latest BMJ consent form, which is available in several languages.

You must have signed informed consent from patients (or guardians) before submitting to BMJ Case Reports. Please anonymise the patient’s details as much as possible, eg, specific ages, ethnicity, occupations. For living patients this is a legal requirement and we will not send your article for review without explicit consent from the patient or guardian. Please visit the Author Hub for further infomation on Patient Consent and Confidentiality and BMJ’s standard on anonymisation.

If the patient is dead the UK Data Protection Act does not apply, but the authors must seek permission from a relative (ideally the next of kin). If you don’t have signed consent from a deceased patient, guardian or family, the head of your medical team/hospital or legal team must take responsibility that exhaustive attempts have been made to contact the family and that the paper has been sufficiently anonymised not to cause harm to the patient’s family. Where the patient is a deceased minor, the editor will consider the possibility of future damage to the family from publication of material about them.

You will need to upload a signed document to this effect.

For “Images in …” articles where there is no personal information and very limited clinical data we may be able to waive consent.

Consent will not be waived for case reports involving living patients. Please contact the editorial office at bmjcases@bmj.com before submission if you have any queries.

Authorship

Case reports should have a maximum of four authors, of which at least one must have been involved in the patient’s care. The first author should ensure that they have “The Right to Write” and check that no one else involved in the patient’s care has plans to publish the case, particularly in large healthcare institutions where patients have been undergoing treatment for long periods.

All authors must have made an individual contribution to the writing of the article and not just been involved with the patient’s care.

The uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to medical journals state that authorship credit should be based only on a substantial contribution to the following:

All of these conditions must be met to be listed as an author. Further information on authorship is available online.

Individuals only involved in the patient’s care (including diagnosis and management) should be listed in the acknowledgements.

Please note, the corresponding author must have an active Fellowship.

Where to submit your cases

All cases must be submitted online.

On submission you will be asked to complete a series of fields as follows: