BMJ
How to submit your article to the BMJ
PLEASE DO NOT SEND ARTICLES TO THE BMJ BY POST. Please send all
submissions electronically to our online editorial office - except letters to the editor, which
should be sent to bmj.com as rapid responses to articles we have published. Please ensure
that you have prepared your manuscript in line with the BMJ's general requirements for
articles and our specific advice on the different article types.
Article requirements
Please ensure that anything you submit to the BMJ conforms to the uniform requirements
for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals, drawn up by the International Committee
of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
The ICMJE requirements are long and comprehensive, and the BMJ also has specific
requirements for different types of articles and particularly detailed ones for research
articles: we urge you to look carefully at all of these.
Here, however, is an overview of the requirements for all BMJ manuscripts:
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Title - All manuscripts
Names, addresses, and positions of all authors plus email address for corresponding
author - All manuscripts
Copyright/licence for publication - All manuscripts - Our preferred way of receiving
the granting of this licence is by a statement in the manuscript (“The Corresponding
Author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors and does grant on behalf of all
authors, an exclusive licence (or non exclusive for government employees) on a
worldwide basis to the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and its licensees , to permit this
article (if accepted) to be published in BMJ editions and any other BMJPG products
and to exploit all subsidiary rights, as set out in our licence
(http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/checklists-forms/licence-for-publication)”)
We will also accept the above statement in an email. We no longer need to see a hard
copy of the signed form.
A competing interest statement - All manuscripts- A statement in the manuscript
describing the interests of all authors or a declaration in the manuscript that "All
authors declare that the answer to the questions on your competing interest form are
all No and therefore have nothing to declare". We no longer need to see a hard copy
of the signed form.
Details of contributors and the name of the guarantor - All original research articles
Signed patient consent form, which is available in multiple languages at
http://group.bmj.com/products/journals/patient-consent-forms. Publication of any
personal information about a patient in the BMJ, for example in a case report or
clinical photograph or within a subsample described in detail in a research article,
will normally require the signed consent of the patient. Please download and print
the BMJ's consent form to give to the patient and then send to us. You can get the
form to us by post, or scan it and send it as an email attachment or upload it at our
online editorial office as a supplemental file to your article.
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For research we will need statements regarding ethics approval (or a statement that it
was not required) and of seeking informed consent from participants; funding; the
role of the study sponsor in study design and the collection, analysis, and
interpretation of data and the writing of the article and the decision to submit it for
publication; the independence of researchers from funders and sponsors; and the
access of researchers to all the data - All original research articles
If you are submitting a report of a randomised controlled trial please send with your
manuscript a completed checklist and flowchart in accordance with the appropriate
CONSORT guidelines, the trial protocol, and the registration details of the trial. In
accordance with ICMJE uniform requirements, trials commenced after July 2005
must have been registered prospectively before patient recruitment; for older trials
retrospective registration will be acceptable but only if done before submission of the
manuscript to the journal.
If you are submitting a report of a:
 a systematic review or meta-analysis of randomised trials and other
evaluation studies please follow the PRISMA guidelines (these have
superceded the QUOROM guidelines)
 a meta-analysis of observational studies please follow the MOOSE guidelines
 a study of diagnostic accuracy please follow the STARD guidelines
 an observational study please follow the STROBE guidelines
 a health economics paper please follow our health economics checklist
 a clinical guidelines paper we would encourage you to follow the
GRADE guidance for grading evidence, but will not insist on this
Because we aim to improve BMJ papers’ reporting and increase reviewers’ understanding
we ask our research authors to follow such reporting guidelines and to complete the
appropriate reporting checklist before submission (or before external peer review if not done
sooner). We do not, however, use reporting guidelines as critical appraisal tools to evaluate
study quality or filter out articles.
These and other reporting guidelines are collected together in one place: the website of
the EQUATOR Network. This network seeks to improve the quality of scientific
publications by promoting transparent and accurate reporting of health research.
Article types
Thank you for considering the BMJ as the right place for your article.
The BMJ’s Impact Factor is 12.827 (ISI Web of Science, 2008). About 1.3 million unique
users download 5.9 million pages from bmj.com each month (ABCe audit, October 2008).
Overall requirements for all articles
Please ensure that anything you submit to the BMJ conforms to the International Committee
of Medical Journal Editors uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical
journals and also to the BMJ's general article requirements.
Research articles
For detailed advice on preparing and submitting original research articles please follow the
highlighted link or click on the menu item to the left of this column. Articles should be
submitted as “Research" via our online editorial office.
All original research articles are submitted, although we may invite submission (without
promising acceptance) if we come across research being presented at conferences, see it in
abstract form or on a research registry, or if the authors make an inquiry about the suitability
of their work before submission.
However, it is not always possible for us to answer all presubmission inquiries, particularly
at busy times of the year, and we hope that this checklist may help you decide whether the
BMJ is the right journal for your research. In addition, this editorial explains what kind of
research we give priority to, and what services we offer to authors of research: Why submit
your research to the BMJ? If you're still unsure about your choice of journal, these hints may
help you to decide.
Open access. The full text of every research article published in the BMJ is immediately
accessible on bmj.com to everyone at no charge. The full text of all research articles is also
sent, without further intervention from the author, to PubMed Central, the National Library
of Medicine's full text archive, which makes it fully accessible without delay. This means
that the BMJ immediately fulfils the requirements of the US National Institutes of Health,
the UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and other funding bodies to make
publicly funded research freely available to all.
We audit the performance of all BMJ research articles, using a wide range of indicators to
assess their impact on readers and their dissemination to the wider world.
Case reports
The BMJ does not publish standard case reports. However we do publish articles about real
cases as long as they are suitable for presentation in specifically educational formats. These
include Lesson of the Week, Interactive Case Report, Evidence Based Report, Drug Point
(all of which appear in the Practice section), Endgames case reports and picture quizzes, and
as very brief reports accompanying Minerva pictures. For each of these you will need to
provide a signed BMJ consent form from the patient.
If you would like to submit a more straightforward case report, or if your submission to the
BMJ in one of the above cateories does not succeed, you might like to try submitting to our
sister journal BMJ Case Reports. Full information is at
http://casereports.bmj.com/instructions-for-authors
The BMJ rarely publishes case series because they do not usually provide evidence that is
sufficiently useful or robust for our general readers.
Other article types
We are pleased to consider submitted articles for these sections, which carry a mix of
commissioned and submitted articles (please click on the highlighted words below or the
links in the index on the left to see specific advice on these article types):
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editorials
analysis
research methods and reporting
clinical review
practice.
For advice on:
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rapid responses and letters to the editor
obituaries
personal view
fillers
Minerva pictures
Endgames
please scroll down this page.
Note that some types of BMJ article - news, features, observations, head to head, views and
reviews - are generally commissioned by the editors.
Letters (Rapid responses)
Please note that all letters to the editor must be submitted as Rapid responses to articles
published on bmj.com. Use Search on http://bmj.com to find the article you are responding
to and then click on the link at the top of the page marked "Respond to this article". This is
the only way to submit a letter to BMJ: all letters that appear in the print BMJ and on
bmj.com have arrived initially as Rapid responses.
Obituaries
We welcome obituaries for doctors within the first year of their death. Please send as a Word
file to obituaries@bmj.com. We assume that material is sent exclusively to us, and we
publish the full versions we receive on bmj.com. We produce the short obituaries in the print
issue from these full versions. They are a maximum of 150 words, including biographical
details: the last position held, date of birth, place and year of qualification, postgraduate
qualifications if applicable, and date and cause of death. We publish pictures, which can be
sent electronically or as photographs, when we can. We generally commission the full page
obituaries from professional writers.
Personal view
These are opinion-based essays, usually including up to 850 words of highly readable and
compelling text by a single author, with no references. We can, however, publish references
in a web extra supplement on bmj.com, and we will consider personal views written by more
than one author. We publish anonymous personal view articles only by special arrangement
when it would be impossible for the article to appear with the author's name. These articles
should be submitted as “Personal View" via our online editorial office.
Fillers
These should be submitted as “Fillers" via our online editorial office. We try to make the
best use of every page of the printed BMJ, so we use small gaps to publish fillers. Most
fillers have the added advantage of entertaining readers and making them think. We
welcome articles of up to 600 words (we also like and need much shorter ones) on topics
such as:
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A patient who changed my practice
A memorable patient
A paper that changed my practice
The person who has most influenced me
My most informative mistake
Any other story conveying instruction, pathos, or humour
Endpieces - quotations of no more than 80 words (often fewer) from any source
If the filler refers to an identifiable person we will need written consent to publication from
that person or a relative.
Minerva pictures
These should be submitted as “Minerva" via our online editorial office and should follow
our specific advice on submitting images. Please provide two or three sentences (no more
than 100 words) explaining the picture, and please send us the signed consent to publication
from the patient. We need written consent from every patient, parent or next of kin,
regardless of whether the patient can be identified or not from the picture.
Please make sure that the text includes all authors’ names together with their job titles and
addresses (including departments’ and hospitals’ names) at the time the patient was seen,
and the email address of the corresponding author. We also need to recieve statements of
competing interests and copyright/licence to publication.
Pictures we are more likely to accept are those which offer an educational message and
which will publish clearly and depict the abnormality obviously. Minerva pictures with the
following characteristics are not usually accepted because they lack educational value for
general readers:
1. showing foreign bodies
2. showing the results of gross trauma
3. with poor image quality, even if the story is sound and interesting
4. with pictures and stories which are simply "text book" presentations
5. reporting cases of very rare clinical presentations
6. submissions which simply criticise other clinicians, or the patient.
Endgames
This BMJ section aims to help doctors prepare for their postgraduate examinations. We
welcome submissions of two types of article:
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Case reports
2.
Picture quizzes
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Planning your article: we prefer questions on common topics rather than clinical
rarities. To avoid duplication please check which Endgames topics we have already
published on.
Style and structure: give your Endgame a title that doesn’t give away any answers.
Case reports and picture quizzes share the same four headings: case history,
questions, short answers, and long answers:
Case history: the maximum wordcount is 200. The history should contain details of
how that patient presented, preferably using the patient’s own words (eg “chest pain”
rather than “myocardial infarction”), and any additional details needed to answer the
questions. As we want genuine rather than fictional scenarios, you’ll need to get the
patient’s written consent to publication before submitting your Endgames to us.
Questions: we would like something between three and five questions. Each question
should have only one part. Bear in mind that all questions are visible to the reader at
the outset, so don’t reveal the answer to an early question in a later one. If you’re
asking sequential questions don’t start with a difficult one, as it risks turning
potential readers off.
Short answers: each question should have a concise answer, ideally in no more than
one sentence. This will appear in the print BMJ.
Long answers: each question should have a long answer, which should expand on the
short answer and will be available online. The combined length of the answers
should not exceed 800 words. The content of the answers should be up to date and
evidence based. Please don’t copy long passages from textbooks or journal articles.
Credit anything you quote to the sources. You can illustrate long answers with
pictures, figures, and boxes.
Illustrations: picture quizzes should include a maximum of two illustrations
(photographs, images, electrocardiograms etc), submitted as jpeg files of 300 dpi.
Please provide two versions of each picture: a “clean” image, and one with the
abnormalities labelled. The total space for illustrations in the print BMJ for a picture
quiz is approximately 7.2 cm by 7.2 cm. Please consider whether the feature(s)
you’re trying to demonstrate will be visible when your illustration is reduced to that
size. Remember that if you have two pictures the individual images will be smaller.
It’s very hard to interpret small radiographs.
Before submission: show your article to one or more doctors who are taking the
relevant postgraduate exam. This will help you to fine tune any questions that readers
don’t understand.
Things to remember with your Endgames submission: signed BMJ patient consent form,
statements in the manuscript accepting the BMJ licence for publication and declaring any
competing interests, name and current post and work address for all authors, email address
for the corresponding author.
Then please submit your articles as a Word document via our online editorial office. Ensure
that you choose “Endgames” as the article type.