Instructions for Authors

American Journal of Case Reports is an international, peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes single and series case reports in all medical fields.
American Journal of Case Reports is issued on a continuous basis as a primary electronic journal. Print copies of a single article or a set of articles can be ordered on demand. American Journal of Case Reports is internationally indexed in EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, ESCI - Emerging Sources Citation Index, Clarivate, H-Index, Index Medicus/MEDLINE, NLM, NIH, PubMed / PubMed Central, NLM, NIH, SCOPUS CiteScore, SNIP, SJR.

American Journal of Case Reports editors endorse the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki and expect that all investigations involving humans will have been performed in accordance with these principles. All human studies must be approved by the investigator's Institutional Review Board.

Patients' confidentiality. Changing the details of patients to disguise them is a form of data alteration. However, authors of clinical papers are obliged to ensure patient privacy rights. Only clinically or scientifically important data are permitted for publication. Therefore, American Journal of Case Reports editors ask for written consent from the patient or their guardian to publish reports using patient data, including photographs, prior to publication. The description of race, ethnicity, or culture of a study subject should occur only when it is believed to be of strong influence on the medical condition involved in the study. When categorizing by race, ethnicity, or culture, the terms should be as descriptive as possible and reflect how these groups were assigned.

Anti-plagiarism verification. At every stage of the submission and review process, your manuscript will be electronically checked for plagiarism by more than one electronic method. Because some online publications may have a delay in their availability and access by electronic identification, we are obliged to do repeated checks up to the time of pre-publication. Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, that is detected at any stage will result in rejection of the manuscript and all paid processing fees will be forfeited.​

Preprint Publication Services: American Journal of Case Reports is not associated with preprint publication services. Previous publications of manuscripts in preprint form that are then submitted to American Journal of Case Reports will be regarded as non-original and will be rejected.

Conflict of interest. Authors should disclose at the time of submission any financial arrangement they may have with a company whose product figures prominently in the submitted manuscript or with a company making a competing product. Such information will be held in confidence while the paper is under review and will not influence the editorial decision, but if the article is accepted for publication, the editors will usually disclose this information in the Authors section. If there is none, then so state. Journal policy requires that reviewers, associate editors, editors, and senior editors reveal in a letter to the Editor-in-Chief any relationships that they have that could be construed as causing a conflict of interest with regard to a manuscript under review. The letter should include a statement of any financial relationships with commercial companies involved with a product under study.

Permissions. Any material taken from other sources must be accompanied by a written statement from both the author and publisher giving permission to the Journal for reproduction. Obtain permission in writing from at least one author of papers still in press, unpublished data, and personal communications.

Copyrights. American Journal of Case Reports has adopted the Open Access publishing model. All articles are published under Creative Common Attribution-Noncommercial-No derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), allowing others to download articles and share them only if they credit the authors and the publisher, but without permission to change them in any way or use them commercially.

Disclaimer. Every effort is made by the Publisher and Editorial Board to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion, or statement appear in the  American Journal of Case Reports. However, they wish to make it clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements herein are the responsibility of the contributor, sponsor, or advertiser concerned. Accordingly, the Publisher and the Editorial Board accept no liability whatsoever for the consequences of any such inaccurate of misleading data, opinion, or statement. Every effort is made to ensure that drug doses and other quantities are presented accurately. Nevertheless, readers are advised that methods and techniques involving drug usage and other treatments described in this Journal should only be followed in conjunction with the drug or treatment manufacturer's own published literature in the reader’s own country.

The Editorial Board of American Journal of Case Reports takes under consideration for publication original single and series case reports in all clinical disciplines with the understanding that neither the manuscript nor any part of its essential substance, tables or figures have been published previously in print form or electronically and are not taken under consideration by any other publication or electronic medium. Copies of any closely related manuscripts should be submitted to the Editor along with the manuscript that is to be considered by the Journal. The Journal discourages the submission of more than one article dealing with related aspects of the same study.

If your manuscript uses human subjects, animals, or any related specimen that require an ethical approval from your institution also known as your Institutional Review Board (IRB), independent ethics committee (IEC), ethical review board (ERB), research ethics board (REB), or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), please upload it to our system along with your submission files. If the ethical approval is entirely in another language other than English, please have a certified translator translate this ethical approval into English and have them sign. Please upload the original and translated copies.

Accepted papers are published in the following journal sections:

1. Diseases
-  Unknown etiology
-  Unusual clinical course
-  Rare disease
-  Congenital defects or anatomical anomaly / variation

2. Diagnosis
-  Challenging differential diagnosis
-  Mistake in diagnosis

3. Treatment
-  Unusual or unexpected effect of treatment
-  Unusual setting of medical care
-  Management of emergency care 

4. Complications and accidents
-  Diagnostic / therapeutic accidents
-  Patient complaints / malpractice

5. Drug reactions
-  Unexpected drug reaction
-  Adverse events of drug therapy

6. Other
-  Educational purpose (only if useful for systematic review or synthesis)
-  Clinical situation which can not be reproduced for ethical reasons  

PROPER FORMATTING OF YOUR SUBMISSION ENSURES PROMPT HANDLING AND PROCESSING!

Guidelines for submission in American Journal of Case Reports are in accordance with Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (N Eng J Med, 1997; 336: 309-15). 

Manuscript Formatting Guidelines:
1. Set margins as follows: Top, Bottom, Left and Right 1 inch (2.5 cm), each.
2. Use Times New Roman, 12 pt font consistently throughout the entire manuscript, including the title.
3. Align all text and headings to the left; do not center any content.
4. Set line spacing to 1.5.
5. Create space between paragraphs with a blank line; do not use indentation.
6. Do not use page breaks, line numbering, or automatic hyphenation.
7. Do not underline headings.
8. Do not number manuscript sections

The manuscript package must include:
1. Title Page file, Manuscript file, Table files (separate for each table), Figure files (separate for each figure)

Summary Page, Text Pages, References, Tables, Figures, Photographs, Units of Measurement, and Abbreviations and Symbols. The details of the manuscript sections are below:

Manuscripts are evaluated on the basis that they present new insights to the investigated topic and are likely to contribute to research progress or change in clinical practice or thinking about a disease. It is understood that all authors listed in a manuscript have agreed to its submission, and have qualified by their efforts to be included as authors. The corresponding author, by checking all legal notices during the submission process, signifies that these conditions have been fulfilled. 

Received manuscripts are first examined by the  American Journal of Case Reports editors. Manuscripts that do not meet criteria for publication are promptly rejected. Incomplete submissions or manuscripts not prepared in the journal's required style will not be sent for peer-review until the correct and complete submission has been provided. The authors are given a reference number upon manuscript registration at the Editorial Office. The registered manuscripts are sent to independent reviewers for scientific evaluation. We encourage authors to suggest the names of possible reviewers, but we reserve the right of final selection. Submitted papers are accepted for publication after a positive recommendation of the independent reviewers. Authors should return a corrected paper within 1–6 weeks, depending on the reviewers’ recommendation. The evaluation process usually takes 1–2 months. 

At every stage of the submission and review process, your manuscript will be electronically checked for plagiarism by more than one electronic method. Because some online publications may have a delay in their availability and access by electronic identification, we are obliged to do repeated checks up to the time of pre-publication. Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, that is detected at any stage will result in rejection of the manuscript and all paid processing fees will be forfeited.

Preprint Publication Services: American Journal of Case Reports is not associated with preprint publication services. Previous publications of manuscripts in preprint form that are then submitted to American Journal of Case Reports will be regarded as non-original and will be rejected.

American Journal of Case Reports uses the Open Access publishing model in which all published articles are freely available to readers directly from the Journal's website, as well as from PubMed and PubMed Central. This publishing model, however, is based on author fees. The submission of a manuscript and peer-review process are free of charge. The processing fee applies only to manuscripts accepted for publication. Online credit card payment is our preferred method of payment. We also accept bank checks and wire transfers. The payment instructions will be provided after a manuscript has been accepted for publication. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer a discount or waiver of the publication processing fee, based on the authors’ country of origin, rank, financial status, institute or publication history.

Editorial Processing $ 995,- USD Estimated processing time: 14 weeks depending on the length of the peer-review process, time required for manuscript correction by authors, speed of response to galley-proof acceptance, your institution's payment procedures, and the number of manuscripts awaiting publication.

Editors of the American Journal of Case Reports accept only electronic submissions via the Authors’ Service available on the Journal's website. Please register first if this is your first submission to the Journal, which will enable efficient communication with the editors, monitoring of manuscript status, re-submissions of corrected files, and payment. Please register or Log-in HERE.