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). Text should be spaced one and a half with 12-point typeface. Margins should be 2.5 cm (1 inch) at top, bottom, right, and left. The manuscript should include: Title Page, Summary Page, Text Pages, References, Tables, Figures, Photographs, Units of Measurement, and Abbreviations and Symbols. The details of the manuscript sections are below:
The Title Page should include the following information: full names of all authors; name of the department and institution in which the work was done; affiliations of the authors; manuscript full title; running (short) title; full name, address, telephone, and/or fax number of the author responsible for manuscript preparation; e-mail address to speed contacts with authors; and source(s) of financial support in the form of grants (quote the number of the grant), equipment, drugs, etc.
Prior to submission, it is expected that the authors of the manuscript obtained signed authorization of the subject or the subject's legal representative in cases where the subject is deceased to use the information disclosed in the case report.
The Abstract in structured form, not exceeding 250 words, should consist of three paragraphs labeled: Background, Case Report, Conclusion. Each summary section should begin in a new line and briefly describe, respectively: the purpose of publishing the case; the main details of the case; and the principal conclusion that authors draw from the case report.
MeSH Keywords (3 to 6) or short phrases should be written at the bottom of the Summary page, after the Abstract.
Information regarding MeSH Keywords may be found at the U.S. National Library of Medicine
The text of the article should be divided into separate sections labeled:
1. Background should contain scientific rationale and the reason for publishing the case report (see Categories of Articles section).
2. Case Report should include:
- Patient information: age, gender, ethnicity if relevant, age at diagnosis of related medical problem if different from the patient’s age, etc. Be sure to protect the patient’s privacy and provide only the information that is medically relevant.
- information about health hazards (tobacco smoking, alcohol, substance abuse)
- objectives for case reporting
- main medical problem
- co-existing diseases
- related medication and diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. The drugs and other chemicals should be precisely identified including generic name, dose and route of administration.
- clinical solution of the described problem. Report treatment complications.
3. Discussion: discuss your case in reference to clinical practice and literature. Discussion should deal only with new and/or important aspects of the study. Do not repeat in detail data or other material from the Background or the Case Report section. Include in the Discussion the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research. The discussion should confront the results of other investigations especially those quoted in the text.
4. Conclusions. State new hypotheses when warranted. Include recommendations when appropriate. Unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by the obtained data should be avoided.
5. Acknowledgements. List all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship, such as technical assistants, writing assistants or head of department who provided only general support. Financial and other material support should be disclosed and acknowledged.
Unpublished observations and personal communications cannot be used as references. If essential, such material may be incorporated in the appropriate place in the text.References must be up-to-date and must be numbered consecutively as they are cited. References selected for publication should be chosen for their importance, accessibility, and further reading opportunities. References first cited in tables or figure legends must be numbered so that they will be in sequence with references cited in the text. The style of references is that of PubMed/MEDLINE. List all authors when there are six or fewer; when there are seven or more, list the first three, then “et al”. The following are sample references:
:: Standard journal article: Lahita R, Kluger J, Drayer DE, Koffler D, Reidenberg MM. Antibodies to nuclear antigens in patients treated with procainamide or acetylprocainamide. N Engl J Med 1979;301:1382-5.
:: Article with published erratum: Koffler D, Reidenberg MM. Antibodies to nuclear antigens in patients treated with procainamide or acetylprocainamide [published erratum appears in N Engl J Med 1979;302:322-5]. N Engl J Med 1979; 301: 1382-5.
:: Article in electronic form: Drayer DE, Koffler D. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 1995 Jan-Mar [cited 1996 Jun 5]; 1(1):[24 screens]. Available from: URL:http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/eid.htm
:: Article, no author given: Cancer in South Africa [editorial]. S Afr Med J 1994;84:15.
:: Book, personal author(s): Ringsven MK, Bond D. Gerontology and leadership skills for nurses. 2nd ed. Albany (NY): Delmar Publishers; 1996.
:: Book, editor(s) as author: Norman IJ, Redfern SJ, editors. Mental health care for elderly people. New York: Churchill Livingstone; 1996.
:: Book, Organization as author and publisher: Institute of Medicine (US). Looking at the future of the Medicaid program. Washington: The Institute; 1992.
:: Chapter in a book: Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, editors. Hypertension: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management. 2nd ed. New York: Raven Press; 1995. p. 465-78.
:: Conference proceedings: Kimura J, Shibasaki H, editors. Recent advances in clinical neurophysiology. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of EMG and Clinical Neurophysiology; 1995 Oct 15-19; Kyoto, Japan. Amsterdam: Elsevier; 1996.
:: Conference paper: Bengtsson S, Solheim BG. Enforcement of data protection, privacy and security in medical informatics. In: Lun KC, Degoulet P, Piemme TE, Rienhoff O, editors. MEDINFO 92. Proceedings of the 7th World Congress on Medical Informatics; 1992 Sep 6-10; Geneva, Switzerland.
Avoid using abstracts or review papers as references.
Unpublished observations and personal communications cannot be used as references. If essential, such material may be incorporated in the appropriate place in the text.
Tables. Save each table in a separate file. Do not submit tables as printed photographs. Name table files consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text, and supply a brief title for each. Give each column a short or abbreviated heading. Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Explain in footnotes all nonstandard abbreviations that are used in each table. For footnotes, use the following symbols, in this sequence: *, **, etc. Identify statistical measures of variations such as standard deviation and standard error of the mean. Do not use internal horizontal and vertical rules. Be sure that each table is cited in the text. If you use data from another published or unpublished source, obtain permission and acknowledge them fully.
Figures should be professionally prepared (each in a separate file) at a preferred resolution of 300 dpi, in the following formats: jpeg, tiff, eps, psd, or pdf.
Letters, numbers, and symbols should be clear and even throughout and of sufficient size that when reduced for publication each item will still be legible. Titles and detailed explanations should be listed at the end of the text file. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they were first cited in the text. If a figure has been published, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material. Permission is required irrespective of authorship or publisher, except for documents in the public domain.
Photographs should be color or black and white, saved in separate files, with numbers and descriptions at a preferred resolution of 300 dpi, in the following formats: jpeg or tiff. Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background. If photographs of people are used, either the subjects must not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use the photograph.
Legends for Illustrations. Detailed explanations should be listed at the end of the text file with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations. When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend. Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photographs.
Units of Measurement. Measurements of length, height, weight, and volume should be reported in metric units (meter, kilogram, or liter) or their decimal multiples. Temperatures should be given in degrees Celsius. Blood pressures should be given in millimeters of mercury. All hematological and clinical chemistry measurements should be reported in the metric system in terms of the International System of Units (SI). Alternative or non-SI units should be added in parenthesis.
Abbreviations and Symbols. Use only standard abbreviations. Avoid abbreviations in the Title and Abstract. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.
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.
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.
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