About Cases Journal

What is Cases Journal?

Cases Journal is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that publishes case reports from any area of medicine. The journal will publish any report that is understandable, ethical, authentic, and includes all information essential to its interpretation.

All case reports published in the journal will be aggregated into a database, which will allow users to search for case reports by disease, drug, patient demographics and more, to find cases of most relevance to their clinical practice or research interests.

We believe that aggregating the articles in a database in this way makes every case important - hence we welcome submission of 'everyday' cases as well as rare disorders or unusual events. Case reports with negative outcomes are as welcome as those with positive outcomes. The journal aims to publish thousands of case reports - many more than any other medical journal.

Cases Journal accepts submission of case reports from any physician. Authors are encouraged to invite the patient to contribute to the case report - each article can include an optional 'Patient's perspective’ section, where the patient describes their experience of the disorder and treatment.

We do not see publication of your case report as the end of the process. Once your case report is published, you will be able to add extra information in response to comments from the reviewers. Readers may post questions on your published case report, and we strongly encourage you to post a reply. We will also invite you to share information on any follow-up to the case - we will contact you one year after your case report is published to invite you to share with readers any changes that may have occurred with the patient.

Peer review policies

Each case report will be subject to immediate screening by the editorial team. Appropriate manuscripts will be reviewed by at least one member of the Editorial Board.

Editorial Board members will be asked to answer the following questions:

• Can you understand the case report?
• Do you think that it is authentic?
• Do you see any ethical problems?
• Is there any missing information that you think must be added before publication?

In addition to answering these questions, the Editorial Board members will be able to add comments and ask questions of the authors. Case reports will be accepted unless our Editorial Board give adequate justification for rejection.

Cases Journal is a sister publication to Journal of Medical Case Reports. JMCR is a more selective journal, publishing only those case reports that are the first of their kind. Case reports published in JMCR will be aggregated into the same database as those from Cases Journal. If the Editorial Board feel that a manuscript submitted to Cases Journal is of sufficient importance and interest to meet the acceptance criteria, we will offer authors the chance for their case report to be considered by the Editorial Board of JMCR.

Cases Journal has a policy of open peer review, meaning that the name and comments of the Editorial Board member handling each manuscript will be published with the article online.

Every effort will be made to give authors a decision on their manuscript within two weeks of submission.

Manuscripts will not be reviewed unless the authors can confirm that the patient gave written, informed consent for publication in an open access journal. Please use our patient consent form that can be downloaded here. Authors will need to confirm that this has been completed, and the editorial office may request a copy at any time.

Manuscripts will not be reviewed until every effort has been made to ensure the anonymity of the patient.

Edited by Richard Smith, Cases Journal is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Cases Journal

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central.

Articles in Cases Journal should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Cases J 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Cases Journal does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Cases Journal, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Cases Journal using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Cases Journal is published by Case Reports Ltd, in association with BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Cases Journal however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Cases Journal's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Cases Journal will be available.

Cases Journal is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.