Guidelines for Submission of Articles to the West of England Medical Journal
The Editorial Board of the West of England Medical Journal will consider manuscripts containing original material if neither the article nor any part of its essential substance, tables, or figures has been or will be published before appearing in the WEMJ. Abstracts from meetings and press reports are an exception to this rule.
The guidelines are drawn up in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” which should be studied for further ethical consideration.
http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html
Authorship
In order for a person to be given credit for authorship they should have significant input and contribution including
- Design of study and analysis of data
- Drafting and revision of the article
- Final approval of the version to be published.
Assurances
Where applicable it must be recorded on the submission that relevant ethical committee approval has been granted.
Any conflict of interest should be notified in the covering letter to the West of England Medical Journal.
Electronic Submission
Papers are only accepted in electronic form, either by e-mail or on CD or memory stick.
All text, figure legends and tables should be in one double-spaced electronic document, preferably word doc (not docx).
Text should also be submitted separately with the following parameters:
Main Heading: Times New Roman, Bold 24 point
Authors: Times 12 point regular
Paragraph headings: Trebuchet MS 14 Bold
Main body of text: Trebuchet MS 13 regular
References: Times regular 9 point
In addition Figures should be submitted as separate JPEG files at a minimum of 300 pixels per sq inch. The figure files must be named in accordance with figure legends in the word document but figure legends should not be included on the actual figure
Photographs of patients must either be anonymised or accompanied by written permission from the patient (or parent/guardian if a minor).
References should be double-spaced and numbered consecutively as they are cited. All authors should be listed if 6 or less but when there are seven or more list the first three followed by et al
For example
1) Beasley MP, Graham PR, Briggs GP, et al. Advances in Stem Cell Therapy, The Yak Medical Journal 2008; 120: 322-330
Drug names
Generic names should be used.
Units
SI units should be used with Imperial units in parenthesis
Review of Submitted Articles
Suitable articles are refereed by the editorial board. Authors are invited to suggest names of reviewers but the editorial board reserve the right to choose the reviewer.
Category of Article
Examples of submissions that may be considered include:
- Original research
- Clinical Cases
- Quiz cases
- Review articles
- Technical reports
- Book reviews
- Images of classical conditions (suitably anonymised or with written permission)
- Multiple choice questions
- Historical articles
- Obituaries
- Editorials
- Opinions
- Letters to the editor