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. All work submitted will be subject to checks for plagiarism.
Please submit papers for publication to the editor: jcpc@me.com
The guidelines are drawn up in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals”. Articles submitted should be in line with their recommendations and make that explicit in their submission letter (you may need to copy this and paste it into a web browser) http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf
Publication charges: The Editorial Board reserves the right to charge for publication once the paper is accepted on the following basis:
Individuals in full or more than 50% employment - £30
Individuals in less than 50% employment - £15
Individuals who are retired, or not in active employment (including medical students) - no charge
Individuals who are members of either the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical of the Bristol Medico Historical Society - no charge
In order for a person to be given credit for authorship they should have significant input and contribution including
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.
Papers are only accepted in electronic form, by e-mail..
All text, figure legends and tables should be in one double-spaced electronic document, preferably word doc, docx or pages.Two copies of each manuscript should be submitted, one with all references to the author(s) and their place(s) of work removed. This version will be sent for referee reviewing.
Text should also be submitted separately with the following parameters: Text should be submitted in a non-serif font (Calibri, Arial etc) with the following directions.
Main Heading: Bold 24 point
Authors: 12 point regular
Paragraph headings: 14 Bold
Main body of text: 11 regular
References: 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. Arrows should be imbedded in the JPEG image if required.
Photographs of patients must either be anonymised or accompanied by written permission from the patient (or parent/guardian if a minor). Written premission is preferable to attempts at anonymisation.
References should be double-spaced and numbered consecutively as they are cited using the Vancouver system. All authors should be listed if 6 or less but when there are seven or more list the first three followed by et alia (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
2) Jones A, Smith B, James C and Rogers D. Medical writing over the years. Annals of the Connaught Medical Society 2012; 111: 34-38.
Generic names should be used.
SI units should be used with Imperial units in parenthesis
Suitable articles will be refereed by the editorial board. Authors are invited to suggest names of reviewers but the editorial board reserve the right to choose the reviewers. We will endeavour to return articles
We welcome submissions from all walks of medicine and from all grades of medicine, including undergraduates. Examples of submissions that may be considered include: