Clinical Ethics >
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These instructions comply with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (for further details, see the ICMJE site)
1. Aims and scope
Clinical Ethics is concerned with all aspects of ethics relating to health-care delivery, research and policy. It provides a forum for cross-disciplinary research, discourse and debate on issues of contemporary relevance and concern. Articles will reflect the contributions made by practitioners and service users, academics and researchers, medical lawyers and policy-makers to the developing field of clinical ethics.
2. Editorial policy
Covering letter
The covering letter is important. To help the Editors in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the paper suitable for publication. If your paper should be considered for fast-track publication, please explain why.
Peer review
All contributions to Clinical Ethics will be considered for publication on the understanding that they are not under consideration/accepted for publication or already published elsewhere. All will be peer-reviewed, and the final decision on acceptance or rejection will remain with the Editors.
Ethical approval
All research submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee.
Patient consent
Any article containing identifiable patient information must be accompanied by a statement of consent to publication.
If there is any doubt about whether or not information is identifiable, the Editors are happy to discuss this before an article is submitted.
Reviewers will also be asked to take careful account of issues relating to patient confidentiality when reviewing articles.
Case studies are not the only kinds of article to which this rule will be applied, but they will be subject to additional scrutiny.
Not only should submissions be accompanied by a statement of consent, but the Editors also expect to be informed about the measures that have been taken to anonymise the details that could have led to parties being identified.
They also reserve the right to work with the authors to make additional anonymising changes as they or the reviewers see fit.
The Editors may also ask authors to remove personal information that, whilst interesting and colourful, does not add to the substance of an article, but does increase the likelihood of parties being identified.
The exception to this will be where the patient has indicated in writing that she/he wants to be identified, has read the material, has discussed the consequences of being identified, and has agreed to the disclosure of all the personal information contained in the article.
In order to ensure that valuable and novel issues are aired, the Editors will sometimes consider publishing cases studies that contain potentially identifiable information where it has been impossible or clearly undesirable to seek consent from relevant parties.
However, given the strong preference for consent having been sought and obtained the reasons for not seeking consent must be compelling, and the public interest arguments for publishing the case must be powerful.
In cases where consent has not been obtained, the authors must provide a statement from a Medical Director or equivalent that the hospital or medical centre is happy for the case to be published.
Competing interests and other declarations
All authors are required to declare any conflicts of interest when submitting papers for publication.
Declarations of funding sources, a guarantor and a statement of contributorship are also required.
Permissions
All previously published material must be accompanied by the written consent to reproduction of the copyright holder.
An acknowledgement of permission should be included at the relevant point in the paper, and a full reference to the original place of publication should be included in the reference list.
Copyright
Authors of accepted manuscripts will be required to allocate copyright to the publishers prior to publication.
Acknowledgements
Only the help of those who have made substantial contributions to the study and/or the preparation of the paper should be acknowledged.
3. Types of articles
It is anticipated that the length of contributions will be in the range of 3000- 4500 words plus references and up to five relevant tables or images, but given the mission of the journal to encourage and disseminate innovative and interdisciplinary research, discourse and debate, the Editors would not wish to discourage, and in fact would be pleased to consider, shorter and longer contributions.
Articles in the following broad categories are welcomed:
Case Studies
Appropriately anonymised case study material with accompanying analysis from health care professionals, service users, academic commentators/educators and postgraduate students in relevant disciplines. Such contributions may include discussion around the use of case study material in the context of clinical ethics whilst at the same time promulgating the highest possible standards of practice in relation to the use of personal information.
Public Policy and Law
Report, analysis or comment on recent legislative, legal and public policy developments with a bearing on the provision of health care and the principles upon which health care systems are based. Commentaries on the decisions of the courts are welcomed.
Empirical Ethics
The journal is committed to encouraging and publicising cross-disciplinary research on the ethics of health care. Research reports, original articles, personal reflections on the research process, or accounts of work in progress are encouraged.
Papers
As well as work falling clearly under the above headings, any work which helps develop debate and increase understanding of the complex ethical issues confronting contemporary providers and consumers of health care will be considered. This includes articles that either offer a detailed critique of a recent publication or provide a comprehensive survey of work in a particular field.
4. How to submit a manuscript
Please prepare your manuscripts in accordance with the guidelines below and submit it to the Editors
All submissions must be in English.
File formats
Text files must be saved in .doc or .rtf format. Other suitable formats include .tif for photographic images, .xls for graphs produced in Excel, and .eps for other line drawings.
5. How to prepare a manuscript
Formatting
Manuscripts must be submitted using double line-spaced, unjustified text throughout, with headings and subheadings in bold case. Press ‘Enter’ only at the end of a paragraph, list entry or heading. Avoid using footnotes and automatically numbered notes and paragraphs, and please number all pages consecutively.
Title page
The first page should contain the full title of the manuscript, a short title, the author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s), and the name, postal and email addresses of the author for correspondence, as well as a full list of declarations.
The title should be concise and informative, accurately indicating the content of the article. The short title should be no more than six words long.
Abstract
An Abstract (maximum 150 words) and up to five keywords must be provided for all contributions.
Body text
Appropriate subheadings should be provided to highlight the content of different sections of the main body of the article. Reports of original research should be structured in conventional style (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References). Where human investigations are being reported, the Methods section must include a statement confirming approval of the protocol by an ethics committee.
Tables
Tables must be prepared using the Table feature of the word processor. Tables should not duplicate information given in the text, should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text, and should be given a brief title.
Figures
All figures should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text. All figures must be accompanied by a figure legend. If figures are supplied in separate files, the figure legends must all be listed at the end of the main text file.
Line drawings should be produced electronically and clearly labelled using a sans serif font such as Arial. Graphs may be supplied as Excel spreadsheets (one per sheet). Other line drawings should be supplied in a suitable vector graphic file format (e.g. .eps)
All photographic images should be submitted in camera-ready form (i.e. with all extraneous areas removed), and where necessary, magnification should be shown using a scale marker. Photographic images must be supplied at high resolution, preferably 600 dpi. Images supplied at less than 300 dpi are unsuitable for print and will delay publication. The preferred file format is .tif.
References
Only essential references should be included. Authors are responsible for verifying them against the original source material. RSM Press uses the Vancouver referencing system: references should be identified in the text by superscript Arabic numerals after any punctuation, and numbered and listed at the end of the paper in the order in which they are first cited in the text. Automatic numbering should be avoided. References should include the names and initials of up to six authors. If there are more than six authors, only the first three should be named, followed by et al. Publications for which no author is apparent may be attributed to the organization from which they originate. Simply omit the name of the author for anonymous journal articles – avoid using ’Anonymous’. Punctuation in references should be kept to a minimum, as shown in the following examples:
Units
All measurements should be expressed in SI units.
Statistics
If preparing statistical data for publication, please read the statistical guidelines.
6. Proofs and eprints
Proofs will be sent by email to the designated corresponding author as a PDF file attachment and should be corrected and returned promptly; corrections should be kept to a minimum.
A PDF eprint of each published article will be supplied free of charge to the author for correspondence; hardcopy offprints may be ordered from the publisher when the proofs are returned.
