Is this the right journal for my case report?

Case Reports Ltd publishes two journals devoted to medical case reports. Manuscripts that are unsuitable for one journal will be passed to the other, but to save time, and hopefully get your case report published sooner, please check the scope of the journals below to make sure you submit to the right one.

Case reports from both journals will be aggregated into the same case reports database, which will allow users to search for relevant case reports by symptoms, diseases, drugs and patient demographics. All case reports will be indexed in PubMed and PubMed Central immediately on publication.

Cases Journal has broad acceptance criteria - it will publish any case report that is understandable, ethical, authentic, and includes all essential information. Case reports do not have to be based only on new and unusual events and conditions - 'everyday' case reports are encouraged. Case reports do not need to provide a clinical lesson in their own right. For more information, please read 'The policies of Cases Journal ' by Richard Smith, Editor-in-Chief. The journal values common or negative case reports as much as unusual case reports or those with positive outcomes.

Each manuscript is reviewed by one member of the Editorial Board, and if your manuscript is accepted, it will be subject to a £99 article-processing charge. Authors will usually receive a decision on their manuscript within 2 weeks.

See below for information on how to submit to Cases Journal.

Journal of Medical Case Reports is a more selective journal that aims to publish original and interesting case reports that contribute significantly to medical knowledge.

Manuscripts must meet one of the following criteria:

1. Unreported or unusual side effects or adverse interactions involving medications
2. Unexpected or unusual presentations of a disease
3. New associations or variations in disease processes
4. Presentations, diagnoses and/or management of new and emerging diseases
5. An unexpected association between diseases or symptoms
6. An unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient
7. Findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect

Manuscripts are reviewed by the Editorial Board and two external referees, and if your manuscript is accepted, it will be subject to a £375 article-processing charge. Authors will usually receive a decision on their manuscript within 8 weeks.

Find out more about the journal here

Case Report articles

Cases Journal welcomes well-described case reports in any area of medicine. To be accepted for publication, case reports must be understandable, ethical, and include all information essential to their interpretation.

To help you format your case report, please download our template, and use this as a guide.

Authors must seek signed, written, informed consent to publish from the patients or their guardians prior to submission. Please ask the patient (or next of kin) to complete the consent form that you can download here.

The manuscript must include a statement confirming that the patient gave consent for publication. Please include a 'Consent' section, as follows: "Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and accompanying images. A copy of the written consent is available for review by the Editor-in-Chief of this journal"

This should be amended as appropriate if consent was given by the next of kin or if the case report describes several patients.

The editorial office may request a copy of the consent form at any time.

Patients should also be invited to contribute their own account of the case, to be included as the "Patient's perspective". The patient should be encouraged to write (or dictate) a passage describing their experience of the symptoms, tests, treatments and outcome. There is no length restriction, but we suggest the section be around 300 words long.

Accepted format for case report articles

Manuscripts submitted to Cases Journal must be submitted in the format described below. Articles that do not meet the journal’s style will not be peer reviewed or considered for publication. Please ensure that your manuscript is written to a good standard of English — non-native speakers may like to get their manuscript reviewed by a native English Speaker or professionally copy-edited before submission. Manuscripts will not normally be copyedited by the journal before publication, so please ensure that you read the manuscript carefully to ensure that medical terms and drug names are written correctly, and that the case is reported in an unambiguous way.

There is no word limit, but we recommend that your manuscript be no more than 600 words long, with a maximum of 10 references and 3 figures.

Case reports should be formatted as follows - the essential sections are marked *:

• Title page*
• Abstract*
• Introduction
• Case presentation*
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• Patient’s perspective (optional)
• List of abbreviations used (*if any)
• Consent*
• Competing interests*
• Authors' contributions*
• Acknowledgements
• References*
• Illustrations and figures
• Figure legends (*if any)
• Additional data files (*if any)

You can download a template (Mac and Windows compatible; Microsoft Word 98/2000) for your article. For instructions on use, see below.

Title page

The first page of the manuscript should be a dedicated title page, including the title of the article. The title should accurately describe the case and include the study design, i.e. . For example:

A presenting with B in C: a case report

This will help your case report to be found through PubMed and database searches.

The full names, institutional addresses and email addresses for all authors must be included on the title page. The corresponding author should also be indicated.

Abstract

The abstract should start on the second page and be a brief summary (up to 100 words) of the case presentation. There should be no abbreviations or references in the abstract. The abstract will help your case to be found via PubMed and database searches.

Introduction (optional)

The introduction section should explain the background of the case, including the disorder, usual presentation and progression and an explanation of the presentation if it is a new disease. If it is a case discussing an adverse drug interaction the introduction should give details of the drug’s common use and any previously reported side effects. You may like to include a brief literature review.

Case presentation

This should present all relevant details concerning the case. In order to provide all information that could be useful to readers, please include the following background information about the patient:

• Age
• Sex
• Occupation
• Ethnicity
• Weight
• Height
• Medical history (diagnoses and operations)
• Family history (major or relevant diagnoses of parents, siblings, children)
• If female, the number of pregnancies and their outcomes
• Whether the patient smokes, and how much
• Whether the patient drinks alcohol, and how much
• Current medications separate to this case

If any of this information is unknown, please state this in the report.

Please ensure that your description of the case itself includes the following information:

• Symptoms presented with
• Signs on presentation
• Diagnostic tests
• Any imaging carried out
• Primary diagnosis
• Any subsequent diagnoses
• Pharmacological treatments - including dose and duration
• Surgical interventions
• Any other interventions
• Outcome of the case

Discussion (optional)

This is an optional section for additional comments that provide any additional relevant information not included in the case presentation, and that put the case in context or that explain specific treatment decisions.

Conclusions (optional)

This should state the main conclusions of the case report and give an explanation of their importance and relevance.

Patient's perspective (optional)

This section is an opportunity for the patient to add a description of the case from their own perspective. The patient should be encouraged to state what originally made them seek medical advice, give a description of their symptoms, whether the symptoms were better or worse at different times, how any tests and treatments affected them, and how the problem is now. See our patient information and consent page for more details.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided, which should precede the consent section.

Consent

Manuscripts will not be peer-reviewed if a statement of patient consent is not present.

This section is compulsory. It should provide a statement to confirm that the patient has given their informed consent for the case report to be published. The editorial office may request copies of the consent documentation at any time. We recommend the following wording is used for the consent section: "Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and accompanying images. A copy of the written consent is available for review by the Editor-in-Chief of this journal."

You can use the consent form to gain consent for publication from the patient, or a form from your own institution or region if you prefer. You do not need to send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication). The consent form is also available in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Chinese, Swahili and Russian.

If the patient has died, then consent for publication must be sought from the next of kin of the patient. If the patient is a minor, or unable to provide consent, then consent must be sought from the parents or legal guardians of the patient. In these cases, the statement in the 'Consent' section of the manuscript should be amended accordingly.

Competing interests

Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

When completing your declaration, please check BioMed Central's competing interest policy.

Authors' contributions

In order to give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section.

An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.

We suggest the following kind of format (please use initials to refer to each author's contribution): FC analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the hematological disease and the transplant. RH performed the histological examination of the kidney, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Authors' information

You may choose to use this section to include any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader’s interpretation of the article, and understand the standpoint of the author(s). This may include details about the authors' qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials. Note this section should not be used to describe any competing interests.

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Please also include their source(s) of funding. Please also acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study. Authors may also like to acknowledge (anonymously) the patient on whom the case report is based.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements.

Please list the source(s) of funding for the study, for each author, and for the manuscript preparation in the acknowledgements section. Authors must describe the role of the funding body, if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

References

There should be no more than 15 references. All references must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any in tables or legends. Reference citations should not appear in titles or headings. Each reference must have an individual reference number. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.

Only articles and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text. Notes/footnotes are not allowed. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited author(s) is the responsibility of the author. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Citations in the reference list should contain all named authors, regardless of how many there are.

Examples of the Cases Journal reference style are shown below. Please take care to follow the reference style precisely; references not in the correct style may be retyped, necessitating tedious proofreading.

Links

Web links and URLs should be included in the reference list. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/cancer_links.html]

Cases Journal reference style

Article within a journal

1. Koonin EV, Altschul SF, Bork P: BRCA1 protein products: functional motifs. Nat Genet 1996, 13:266-267.

Article within a journal supplement

2. Orengo CA, Bray JE, Hubbard T, LoConte L, Sillitoe I: Analysis and assessment of ab initio three-dimensional prediction, secondary structure, and contacts prediction. Proteins 1999, 43(Suppl 3):149-170.

In press article

3. Kharitonov SA, Barnes PJ: Clinical aspects of exhaled nitric oxide. Eur Respir J, in press.

Published abstract

4. Zvaifler NJ, Burger JA, Marinova-Mutafchieva L, Taylor P, Maini RN: Mesenchymal cells, stromal derived factor-1 and rheumatoid arthritis [abstract]. Arthritis Rheum 1999, 42:s250.

Article within conference proceedings

5. Jones X: Zeolites and synthetic mechanisms. In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Edited by Smith Y. Stoneham: Butterworth-Heinemann; 1996:16-27.

Book chapter, or article within a book

6. Schnepf E: From prey via endosymbiont to plastids: comparative studies in dinoflagellates. In Origins of Plastids. Volume 2. 2nd edition. Edited by Lewin RA. New York: Chapman and Hall; 1993:53-76.

Whole issue of journal

7. Ponder B, Johnston S, Chodosh L (Eds): Innovative oncology. In Breast Cancer Res 1998, 10:1-72.

Whole conference proceedings

8. Smith Y (Ed): Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Stoneham: Butterworth-Heinemann; 1996.

Complete book

9. Margulis L: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1970.

Monograph or book in a series

10. Hunninghake GW, Gadek JE: The alveolar macrophage. In Cultured Human Cells and Tissues. Edited by Harris TJR. New York: Academic Press; 1995:54-56. [Stoner G (Series Editor): Methods and Perspectives in Cell Biology, vol 1.]

Book with institutional author

11. Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification: Annual Report. London; 1999.

PhD thesis

12. Kohavi R: Wrappers for performance enhancement and oblivious decision graphs. PhD thesis. Stanford University, Computer Science Department; 1995.

Link / URL

13. The Mouse Tumor Biology Database [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/cancer_links.html]

Microsoft Word template

Although we can accept manuscripts prepared as Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, RTF or PDF files, we have designed a Microsoft Word template that can be used to generate a standard style and format for your article. It can be used if you have not yet started to write your paper, or if it is already written and needs to be put into Cases Journal style.

Download the template (Mac and Windows compatible Word 1998/2000) from our site, and save it to your hard drive. Double click the template to open it.

Simply replace the example text with your own.

For extra convenience, you can use the template as one of your standard Word templates. To do this, put a copy of the template file in Word's 'Templates' folder, normally C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates on a PC. The next time you create a new document in Word using the File menu, the template will appear as one of the available choices for a new document.

Note - From version 6, EndNote includes a full set of structured article templates for BioMed Central journals. Users of EndNote are encouraged to upgrade if necessary and make use of these templates. More information is available here.