Submission guidelines

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Please read the guidelines in full before submitting your manuscript.
Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

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This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the author responsibilities section on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with our Editorial Policies and our Publication Ethics Policies.

Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions and peer review from a diverse range of authors and reviewers from across all countries and backgrounds. Read our diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge.

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal. Open access options are available – see below.

Please read the guidelines below then submit your manuscript here.

Access: Subscription
Accepts preprints? Yes
Identity transparency: All identities visible

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.

Optional open access publishing is available for a fee via the Sage Choice program, and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Open Access agreement eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation matching an agreement at acceptance. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access.

For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.

Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.

The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.

Article types

Commentaries

Think pieces on clinical medicine or health policy, written in an essay style. 1500 words for the main body of the text plus up to two tables or figures. Usually few references but up to 15 references can be allowed. Ideas for illustrations are welcome.

Series

Linked articles on a given topic published in sequential issues of JRSM. Frequently guest-edited. Generally 2000 words for the main body of the text plus up to two tables or figures and up to 15 references. Proposals for series should be discussed with the Editor.

Letters

Communication in response to articles previously published in JRSM. 300 words for the main body of the text and up to 3 references. In addition, Letters should start with the following greeting: Editor,.

Reviews

Authoritative updates of management and/or recent advances on major clinical topics to update JRSM’s multispecialty readership. We require a clear account of the methods by which the evidence for the review was gathered. Reviews are up to 3500 words for the main body of the text, up to five tables or figures, and up to 30 references.

Research

Original research on important clinical and professional topics. 3500 words for the main body of the text, up to five tables or figures, and up to 30 references.

Grand Round

Case reports. Should be either be first observation or useful reminder on an important clinical topic. 1000 words, two tables or figures, and up to 10 references.

Media

Short articles on medicine in culture, including visual arts and literature. For discussion with editor, but generally 1000 words for the main body of the text, and up to 10 references.

From the James Lind Library

Commentary articles on the history of evidence-based medicine, reproduced with the permission of the James Lind Library. Unsolicited articles will not be considered for publication.

Podium

Personal views on clinical and professional topics. 1000 words for the main body of the text, generally no references.

All papers except Letters should have the following declarations:

Declarations

Competing interests

Specify any potential conflicts of interest with the standard wording below. Please enter your statement after the colon and use initials for author names.

The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: ALG receives collaborative research funding from Orion Pharma, outside of the submitted work. MP reports grants from Sanofi, grants and personal fees from Gilead Sciences and personal fees from QIAGEN, outside the submitted work. The rest of the authors have no competing interest. 

If there are no conflicting interests, please use:

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 

 

Funding

If you have received funding, please use the following disclosure statement and modify details in the example after the colon.

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: I-CARE is supported by a grant from the NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Program (NIHR157268). 

 

If you have not received funding, please use the following wording:

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 

Ethical approval

Please indicate if ethical approval was received for this paper. If ethical approval was not required, please indicate why it was not required. Please also use this heading to indicate if consent was received.

 

Guarantor

Please indicate who the guarantor is by initials. For example: AB

 

Contributorship

Please indicate how each author contributed to the paper. For example: JC conceived and submitted the idea. GH conducted the preliminary research.

 

Acknowledgements

This heading is optional. If you wish to acknowledge people, please do so under this heading.

 

Provenance

This information will be obtained by the journal.

 

Supplemental material

This heading is optional. If you do have supplemental material files, the following statement will be used: Supplemental material for this article is available online.

 

ORCID iDs

This heading is optional. Validated ORCID iDs will be included here. Please note that each author that wishes to include his or her ORCID iD in th e paper must validate his or her own ORCID iD in Sage Track before the paper is accepted.

 

Use of generative AI

Please indicate if generative AI was used in the preparation of your paper. If not, please use the following statement: No generative AI was used during the preparation of this manuscript.

Letters will only have the competing interests wording

Clinical trial registration

The journal conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first participant enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

Reporting guidelines

Your manuscript must follow the relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines, depending on the type of study. The EQUATOR wizard can help identify the appropriate guideline. You will need to upload the appropriate checklist with your submission.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.

Formatting your manuscript

Accepted file types

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. You do not need to follow a template, but please ensure your heading levels are clear, and the sections clearly defined.

The LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTeX template is available on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Your article title, keywords, and abstract all contribute to its position in search engine results, directly affecting the number of people who see your work. For details of what you can do to influence this, visit How to help readers find your article online.

Title

Your manuscript’s title should be concise, descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reflect the precise contents of the manuscript. A descriptive title that includes the topic of the manuscript makes an article more findable in the major indexing services.

Abstract

Please include a structured abstract of 300 words between the title and main body of your manuscript that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions. If your research includes clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract. Submissions that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.

For clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

The abstract of no more than 300 words must accompany all Review, Research and Grand Round articles. For Reviews and Grand Round this abstract should be a single, unstructured paragraph. Research articles require structured abstracts with the following subheadings: Objectives, Design, Setting, Participants, Main outcome measures, Results, Conclusions.

Keywords

Please include a minimum of 5 keywords, listed after the abstract. Keywords should be as specific as possible to the research topic.

Artwork, figures, and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please read Sage’s artwork guidelines.

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. If you have requested color reproduction in the print version, we will advise you of the costs on receipt of your accepted article.

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).

Photographic illustrations:

Photographic illustrations should be rendered with at least 300 dpi; please use CMYK color conversion if possible. Graphs made with Office software such as Microsoft Excel, can be provided in their original format to facilitate conversion into printable format with preserved quality. Any other line graphs/illustrations should preferably be provided in EPS format with a resolution of at least 600 dpi to prevent ragged lines when printed. A figure image should be at least 160 mm in width at the appropriate resolution. For further guidance on how to prepare your digital image see http://art.cadmus.com/da/index.jsp.

Abbreviations:

Abbreviations should be avoided. Authors should not create new abbreviations and acronyms. Only widely accepted abbreviations, for example, NHS, WHO, and ECG are permitted.

Units:

All measurements should be expressed in SI units.

Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Statements and declarations

Please include a section with the heading ‘Statements and Declarations’ at the end of your submitted article, after the Acknowledgements section [and Author Contributions section if applicable] including each of the sub-headings listed below. If a declaration is not applicable to your submission, you must still include the heading and state ‘Not applicable’ underneath. Please note that you may be asked to justify why a declaration was not applicable to your submission by the Editorial Office.

Ethical considerations

Please include your ethics approval statements under this heading, even if you have already included ethics approval information in your methods section. If ethical approval was not required, you need to explicitly state this. You can find information on what to say in your ethical statements as well as example statements on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

All papers reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must state that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board approved the study, or waived the requirement for approval, providing the full name and institution of the review committee in addition to the approval number. If applicable, please also include this information in the Methods section of your manuscript.

Please include any participant consent information under this heading and state whether informed consent to participate was written or verbal. If the requirement for informed consent to participate has been waived by the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (i.e. where it has been deemed that consent would be impossible or impracticable to obtain), please state this. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section. More information and example statements can be found on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

Submissions containing any data from an individual person (including individual details, images or videos) must include a statement confirming that informed consent for publication was provided by the participant(s) or a legally authorized representative. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. Please do not submit the participant’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent to publish but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file in addition to the statement confirming that consent to publish was obtained within the manuscript text. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The journal requires a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors so that a statement can be included in your article. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, see our policy on conflicting interest declarations and the ICMJE recommendations.

If no conflict exists, your statement should read: ‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.

Funding statement

All articles need to include a funding statement, under a separate heading, even if you did not receive funding. You’ll find guidance and examples on our Funding page.

Data availability

The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

  • Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
  • Include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.
  • Cite this data in your research

Reference style and citations

The journal follows the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms.

Every in-text citation must have a corresponding citation in the reference list and vice versa. Corresponding citations must have identical spelling and year.

Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.

EndNote

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver EndNote output file.

Supplemental material

This Journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Author Services. Visit Sage Author Services for further information.

Acknowledgments

If you are including an Acknowledgements section, this will be published at the end of your article. The Acknowledgments section should include all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship. Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your manuscript.

Writing assistance and third party submissions: if you have received any writing or editing assistance from a third-party, for example a specialist communications company, this must be clearly stated in the Acknowledgements section and in the covering letter. Please see the Sage Author Gateway for what information to include in your Acknowledgements section. If your submission is being made on your behalf by someone who is not listed as an author, for example the third-party who provided writing/editing assistance, you must state this in the Acknowledgements and also in your covering letter. Please note that the journal editor reserves the right to not consider submissions made by a third party rather than by the author/s themselves.

As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Statistical Guidelines

These guidelines are designed to help authors prepare statistical data for publication and are not a substitute for the detailed guidance required to design a study or perform a statistical analysis. Each section of a scientific paper is addressed separately.

Summary

The number and source of data must be stated and conclusions which have a statistical basis must be substantiated by inclusion of pertinent descriptive statistics (mean or median, standard deviation [SD] or interquartile range, percentage coefficient of variation [%CV], 95% confidence limits, regression equations, etc.).

Methods

Experimental design, subject selection and randomization procedures should be described and analytical precision quoted when appropriate. The hypotheses to be tested by a statistical procedure must be stated and where appropriate power calculations for the sample size used should be given (it is recommended that the power is X80%). In case-control studies clearly define how cases and controls were selected and what matching has taken place.

We would advise authors to consider the STARD,1 CONSORT2 and STROBE3 statements for studies reporting diagnostic or clinical trials. They offer guidance on writing reports with complete clarity.

Results

Unnecessary precision, particularly in tables, should be avoided. Rounded figures are easier to compare and extra decimal places are rarely important. Descriptive statistics require an additional digit to those used for the raw data. Percentages should not be expressed to more than one decimal place and not be used at all for small samples.

Graphs showing data of comparable magnitude should be of a similar size and design. All individual points should be displayed where possible by displacing overlapping points. Error bars showing the standard error of the mean (SEM) or interquartile range, as appropriate, can be used to aid interpretation of the data.

Discussion

Statistical significance should not be equated to importance and P values should not be compared between different data sets or different statistical tests. Association should not be interpreted as causation without additional evidence.

Preprints

The journal will consider submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Please enter the preprint DOI in the designated field when submitting your manuscript. We advise that you inform the Journal Editorial office about your posted preprint at submission.

Note that you should not post an updated version of your manuscript on a preprint server while it is being peer reviewed.

Learn more about our preprint policy.

Submission site

Submit your manuscript online via Sage Track.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.

Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

Authorship

Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

Files

  • Cover letter. To help the Editor in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the manuscript suitable for publication.
  • Title Page with all required identifying information as laid out in Preparing your manuscript for submission (above). 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. The correct order for declarations is: competing interests, funding, ethical approval, guarantor, contributorship, acknowledgements.
  • Your manuscript, properly formatted according to all stipulations above, and within the scope of the journal.
  • Figures and images.
  • Supplemental material. This journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images, etc) alongside the full-text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

Other information required for submission

  • ORCID ID of the submitting author.
    • It is strongly encouraged that all co-authors ensure their ORCID IDs are linked to their accounts in the submission system prior to article acceptance, as this is the only way to have their ORCID ID present on the published article. ORCID IDs cannot be added to manuscripts after acceptance/publication. Please note that each co-author must log in to the submission system to add their own ORCID ID to their account. To add an ORCID ID, edit your account, click the link when prompted, and sign into your ORCID account to validate your ID. You will then be redirected back to the submission system and your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata.
    • Please create an ORCID ID if you do not already have one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
  • Complete list of authors, with their institutional affiliations.
    • The author information you enter at submission must exactly match what is included on your manuscript and/or title page, including full names, academic affiliations, and corresponding author contact details.
    • The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript.
    • All listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship (above).
    • All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission.
    • All authors must have given consent for the manuscript to be submitted in its current form.
  • Keywords: During submission, you may be asked to select or enter keywords for your manuscript. These keywords are used to match appropriate reviewers to your manuscript.
  • The number of figures, tables, and words in your manuscript.
  • Funder information: Name, grant/award number.
  • You may be required to enter your declaration of conflicting interest as part of the submission process, in addition to listing it on your manuscript and/or title page. Please have it on hand.
  • If you have posted your manuscript to a preprint server, you will be asked to supply the DOI (this does not prohibit submission, but no changes should be made to the preprint version while your manuscript is under evaluation in this journal). Please see our guidelines on prior publication. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your manuscript is accepted, you must include a link in your preprint to the final version of your published article.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency: All identities visible
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: Reviewer identities

Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.

After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.

The journal adheres to an open peer review process in which both the author’s and reviewer’s names are known to each other.

To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.

All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision on all manuscripts, including those appearing in a special issue or special collection. The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

As a COPE member we engage with multiple forms of post-publication discussion in line with wider guidance from Sage: Commentaries, Critiques and Responses.

You can view our complaints and appeals policy here.

Read Sage's complete peer review policy.

Plagiarism

The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.

Contributor’s Publishing Agreement

Before publication, we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Preprints

If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.

Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.

Publication

OnlineFirst publication: This enables us to publish final articles online immediately, without waiting for assignment to a future issue of the Journal. This usually significantly reduces publication lead time. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite OnlineFirst articles.

Access to your published article: We provide you with online access to your published article. The online access link is provided to the corresponding author for sharing with their co-authors.

Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.

The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.

You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.

Contact us

You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office:

jrs.pra@sagepub.com