Write for the Student BMJ

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Who can write for us?

• Medical students
• Junior doctors (maximum two years experience as a doctor)

All Education articles and Editorials need at least one expert coauthor. The coauthor must fulfil certain criteria for authorship thinking through and discussing with you the ideas in the article, writing or rewriting it, and approving the final version. Simply adding the expert's name is not enough and neither is mere acknowledgement of their contribution.

Which section can I write for?

Section	Submissions accepted from students?	Expert coauthor needed?	Word limit?	Reference limit?
Letters	Yes*	No	450	12
News	No†	-	-	-
Editorials	Yes‡	Yes	900	12
Life	Yes‡	Maybe	900-1800	12-24
Careers	Yes‡	Maybe	900	12
People	Yes‡	No	900-1800	None
Education	Yes‡	Yes	900-1800	12-24
Research Explained	No†	-	-	-
Research News	No†	-	-	-
View and Reviews	Yes‡	No	450-900	None
Eyespy	No†	-	-	-
Blogs	Yes‡	No	450	Hyperlinks

* Send a rapid response to an article at student.bmj.com
† Articles in these sections are commissioned by the student editor.
‡ Submit your article via BenchPress, at http://submit.bmj.com

Getting started

• Posting a rapid response to an article is a good way to start writing; the best will be published in the Letters section. Writing a blog or a Review or Viewpoint is also a good way to build confidence.
• We accept unsolicited articles for the Editorials, Life, Careers, Views and Reviews, and Education sections. We do not pay authors for submissions.
• Email the student editor before you start writing an article to make sure your idea is suitable (email studenteditor@bmj.com). Please confine your pitch to 150 words and put the word ‘pitch’ in the subject heading. Please be patient in waiting for a reply; we receive a very high number of pitches and cannot always reply to all of them. If your article is time dependent then it is advisable to submit it without checking with the editor.
• What is the aim of the piece? Is it important to medical students? Does it have international appeal?
• Search www.student.bmj.com to see if we have covered the topic recently.
• Are you writing about patients? We need to see their written informed consent.
• Are you criticising a person or organisation? Make sure that what you write is fair and based on verifiable facts. The United Kingdom, where the Student BMJ is published, has strict laws on libel.
• Also see 'how to write' and 'Effective writing'

What we do not accept

• We do not accept elective reports. We are currently redesigning a web page to host elective reports but this will not be launched in the near future.
• We do not accept education articles that look at rare diseases or articles on topics that are very specialised. Please make sure your submission is appropriate to a medical student and junior doctor audience.
• The News, Research Explained, Frontiers, and Eyespy sections are commissioned by the editor and we do not accept submissions for these.
• We do not publish original research.

Rapid responses

Length up to 400 words; can include references

Do you feel strongly about an article that you've read in the Student BMJ? Do you have something to add-an experience to share or some related information? You'll find the "Respond to this article" link on the top right corner and at the bottom of every article on student.bmj.com. Try to make one clear point. The best responses are published as letters. We have a low threshold for posting rapid responses, but your response will not be posted if it is libellous. See also bmj.com policy.

News

News articles are almost always commissioned by the editor. But if you have an interesting idea then pitch it to the editor.

Editorials

Length 800 words; 12 references; expert coauthor mandatory

Editorials discuss controversial areas of medicine in a balanced way. They must be evidence based and properly referenced.

Read 'Writing an editorial with an expert coauthor'.

Life

Length 900-1800 words with up to 24 references

Life articles can look at anything to do with medicine and being a medical student, and mostly they don't need an expert coauthor, but facts need referencing. More technical topics might need expert coauthorship-check with the student editor if you are unsure. They should be fun because you have more creative licence than with other articles. You can write about a personal experience or something topical. We do not publish electives or exchanges here.

Read 'How to write a good feature' and 'Writing from an author's perspective'.

Things to think about:

• Is the subject entertaining?
• Is it something medical students can learn from?
• Discuss the idea with friends
• Get consent if you are writing about a patient
• Make sure we haven't published anything similar recently
• Is your piece objective and does it give both sides of the argument?
• Use good sources of information and get quotes from experts. Facts should be backed up with references. You should consider writing the article with an expert. This will help your piece to be accurate and up to date.
• Consider including boxes for 'further reading', 'key points' 'patients perspective' or to summarise information.

Careers

Length up to 1800 words with 24 references; might need expert coauthor

Careers articles try to answer some of these questions:

• What should I specialise in?
• How can I improve my CV?
• How can I get involved in research?
• What is a typical day for a cardiologist, for example?
• I don't want to be a doctor when I graduate, what else can I do?
• I want to take some time out of medicine, what should I do?

If you've recently had a career question answered, then write about it here. Maybe you've had an unexpectedly good or bad experience on a placement. Is there a specialty that you think doesn't get enough coverage? These articles should generally be written with the help of someone working in the field you are writing about.

People

Length 900 words with no references

People articles are interviews with interesting biomedical personalities-students or professionals. They should be more than a catalogue of achievements: they should give us a sense of the person behind them. You should include the reasons for any decisions made; any regrets or disappointments; and some advice for others. Write the interview in a common question-answer format-check the archive for previous People articles. Try to think of original questions and do be afraid to ask difficult questions either. Suggestions include:

• Is there anything you hate about your job?
• Is there anything you don't think you're very good at?
• When was the last time you made a mistake?
• Do you have any criticisms of your charity/ organisation?

You must submit at least one picture of your interviewee.

Education

Length up to 1800 words with 24 references; expert coauthor mandatory

We don't want anything here that you can already find in a textbook. Education articles should be about subjects that are poorly covered or poorly understood in undergraduate syllabuses. Present the topic in a novel way-for example, with case studies (for which you need to get patient consent), scenarios, and key points. Diagrams and boxes should be referred to in the article's text.

Picture quizzes

Length 900 words with 12 references; expert coauthor mandatory.

We do not publish rare cases. Make sure that your subject is suitable for an undergraduate audience. These Education articles need the patient's written informed consent to publication. You must supply clear images).

Research Explained

These articles critically appraise an original research paper that has been published in the BMJ. This requires expert skills so we don't consider submissions from students for this section. All Research Explained articles are commissioned by the editor.

Views and reviews

Personal Views

Length up to 500 words with no references

You can use these short articles as your soapbox to have a rant or to recount your own experience of something. We like these to tackle controversial subjects.

Reviews

Length 450-900 words

It's good to chose something that will be open or accessible for a while. You can review anything with a link to medicine-for example, workshops, plays, films, websites, exhibitions, CD Roms, podcasts, books, and so on. We rarely publish reviews of academic textbooks. Include as much information as you can about the subject of your review and give it a rating out of four, where four stars means excellent.

What's on the Web?

Length 450 words

These summarise the web resources available about a specific topic-for example, anatomy. They probably discuss 3-4 websites.

Blogs

A blog or weblog is personal/ first person web content that is topical. Blog about your passions. Blogs are not meant to be mature and complete like a journal article. Keep to a word limit of about 450 words and use quotes and links to articles, etc, to add flavour. Email the student editor if you have an idea for a blog.

How to submit

• All articles for the Student BMJ should be submitted through our online editorial office, BenchPress. Most articles are peer reviewed, and this is organised through BenchPress.
• Register as an author at http://submit.bmj.com and follow the instructions to submit your article.

Pictures

• You can upload diagrams with your article, and we will have these redrawn.
• You must submit images for Picture Quizzes and People articles. Submit pictures as supplementary files, not in your manuscript.
• Photographs and radiological imaging must be high resolution (at least 300 dpi) and at least 10 x 10 cm large. We prefer JPEG or TIFF formats.
• You can supply written suggestions for pictures at the end of your article to help us commission illustrative pictures.

Checklist before submitting

• Editorials and Education articles need an expert coauthor
• Is it the right length?
• Is it properly referenced?
• Picture Quizzes and People articles need high resolution pictures
• Include the copyright statement in your manuscript: "The corresponding author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors and does grant on behalf of all authors, an exclusive licence (or non exclusive for government employees) on a worldwide basis to the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, and its licensees to permit this article (if accepted) to be published in BMJ editions and any other BMJPGL products and to exploit all subsidiary rights, as set out in our licence at http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/checklists-forms/licence-for-publication)." (See http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/editorial-policies/copyright)
• Include a competing interests statement in your manuscript: "All authors declare that the answer to the questions on your competing interest form, http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/checklists-forms/competing-interests, are all No and therefore have nothing to declare." or list your competing interests (See http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/editorial-policies/competing-interests)
• Include patient consent, if needed.
• Include the details of all authors-name, position, phone number, email, and institutional address.

What happens next?

• There is no guarantee that we will publish your article. The editor's decision is final and may not always accord with the views of advisers and reviewers.
• We sent most submitted articles for review to two of our medical student advisers. We have more than 120 student advisers from around the world. (Interested in becoming a reviewer? E-mail studenteditor@bmj.com) They each write a report on the article's importance, relevance, and content and advise the student editor whether to accept, reject, or return the article to the author for revision.
• We also send more technical articles, especially Editorials and Education articles to one or more specialist peer reviewers.

Once your article is accepted

• If your article is accepted for publication, it will be edited. If we make substantial changes the technical editor will send it to you to approve. If you are emailed to check your article we need you to get back to us within three days if we are to consider any further changes you make.
• We try to publish accepted articles as soon as possible, but some delay may be inevitable. We usually publish accepted article within 2 months after acceptance.
• If you submit work to the Student BMJ you may not submit it elsewhere for publication without our explicit consent. We hold the exclusive licence to publish your article. Also we will not publish an article that has been published elsewhere.

Patient consent

• If patients are identifiable to themselves or others, in images or text, you need to give us their full consent to publication. Having consent to interview or examine a patient or to read his or her clinical notes is not enough: we need to see every patient's written consent to have information about them published in the Student BMJ.
• To obtain consent please ask all patients to sign the form at http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/checklists-forms/patient-consent-form
• We follow the BMJ's requirements. See http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/advice/editorial_policies.shtml and http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/editorial-policies/copy_of_patient-confidentiality
• You may remove some or all of a patient's identifying details from a Student BMJ article to make them feel less exposed, but we will still need to see their written consent to publication. Do not change the personal details of patients to try to disguise them: this is bad scientific practice because it could mislead readers.
• We also need patients' written consent to publication of all pictures of patients, including radiographs, scans, and clinical photos of any part of the body or anything else relating to a specific patient's clinical story.

Plagiarism

• Plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas, words, or other intellectual property without attribution or permission and presenting them as original rather than derived from an existing source.
• The intent and effect of plagiarism is to mislead the reader. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, ethics committee applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format.
• We now have a system to detect plagiarism called i-thenticate.

Libel

• The United Kingdom has strict libel laws. You can be sued for libel "if you lower someone's standing in the eyes of his or her peers."
• To defend itself against an accusation of libel, a publication has to prove that the statement it published was true, that it was published without malice, and, where possible, was in the public interest.
• If an allegation turns out to be false (based on incorrect facts), we will find it hard to defend, so fact checking is imperative. But we may have a small chance of defending ourselves if the allegation has been shared fully with the "accused" and he or she has had a chance to respond, and if that response has been forwarded unedited to us.

Here are a few musts for authors of articles which criticise people or organisations:

• Ensure that you check all your facts
• Ensure that all articles are balanced. If you are publishing an allegation against someone, you must give the accused a chance to reply.
• When you approach the accused, you must reveal in detail what your allegations are, so that he or she can have a chance to answer them in full. If, for example, you are going to claim that a hospital employed a doctor who was not properly qualified, and it did not investigate complaints against that doctor, you must put all the allegations in full to the hospital management, so that it has the chance to answer each and every one of the allegations.
• It is no defence to say that an allegation has already been published elsewhere. If an allegation about a doctor or a drug company has appeared in a newspaper in Spain, for example, we cannot rely on that fact to defend ourselves. Firstly, that local newspaper might have got the facts wrong; secondly, the libel laws might be different in that country. So although the doctor or company might not have sued in that location, he or she could come after the BMJ in the UK.

References

• Authors must verify references against the original documents before submitting the article.
• These should be numbered in the order in which they appear in the text. At the end of the article the full list of references should follow the Vancouver style.
• Please give the names and initials of all authors (unless there are more than six, when only the first six should be given followed by et al).
• The authors' names are followed by the title of the article; the title of the journal abbreviated according to the style of Index Medicus; the year of publication; the volume number; and the first and last page numbers.
• References to books should give the names of any editors, place of publication, editor, and year.
• In the text, reference numbers are given in superscript. Notice that issue number is omitted if there is continuous pagination throughout a volume, there is a space between volume number and page numbers, page numbers are in elided form (51-4 rather than 51-54) and the name of journal or book is in italics.

Examples:

Nantulya V, Reich M. The neglected epidemic: road traffic injuries in developing countries. BMJ 2002;324: 1139.

Murray C, Lopez A. Alternative projections of mortality and disability by cause 1990-2020: global burden of disease study. Lancet 1997;349: 1498-504.

Soter A, Wasserman SI, Austen KF. Cold urticaria: release into the circulation of histamine and eosinophil chemotactic factor of anaphylaxis during cold challenge. N Engl J Med 1976;294:687-90

Land Transport Safety Authority. New Zealand household travel survey. Wellington: Safety Standards Branch, Land Transport Safety Authority, 1991.

World Health Organization. International classification of diseases, 9th revision: clinical modification. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, 1980.

Department of Health. National service framework for coronary heart disease. London: DoH, 2000. www.doh.gov.uk/nsf/coronary.htm (accessed 6 Jun 2003).

Osler AG. Complement: mechanisms and functions. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976.

Information from manuscripts not yet in press, papers reported at meetings, or personal communications should be cited only in the text, not as a formal reference.

Authors should get permission from the source to cite personal communications.

Electronic citations

You may know of other websites that will interest people reading your article. If you know the web addresses (URLs) of those sites, please include them in the relevant places in the text of your article.

Illustrations and photographs

Include relevant photographs, figures, or other illustrations when you're submitting articles to the Student BMJ. However we won't always have room for these images.

You must seek the patient's written consent to publication in the Student BMJ if there is any chance that he or she may be identified from a picture, from its legend or other accompanying text. Patients are almost always willing to give such consent. We no longer publish pictures with black bands across the eyes because bands fail to mask someone's identity effectively. We can only accept our Consent Form (http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/checklists-forms/patient-consent-form) to be able to publish the article.

We can use an image that has been published before only if it has no copyright or if the copyright holder has given us permission for its use on bmj.com, in the print BMJ and in associated publications such as Student BMJ. If you would like to use in a Student BMJ article an illustration that has already been published elsewhere in a journal or book please ask the publishers to give permission. Most will agree as long as the Student BMJ credits the original publisher, although some will charge you a reproduction fee.

If an image has no copyright, please tell us the precise details of where you obtained it and who gave you permission to use it in the Student BMJ. Please note that many medical illustration departments expect to be acknowledged. If images come from your colleagues you will need to seek their written permission and check whether the photographs have been published previously in other books and journals. If you are using line drawings or tables that have been taken from or adapted from published papers, then you are responsible for getting the publisher's permission to republish or adapt them. We would then publish such an image with a legend saying something like "Adapted with permission from...[ref]" or "Reproduced with permission of the American Academy of Sciences from xxx et al[ref]".

Resolution - We need a picture to have a pixel strength of 300 dots per inch. Please supply image files at least 100% of the intended printed size. We are unable to enlarge images by more than 5% from the original size supplied without a corresponding loss of quality.

The Student BMJ redraws all technical figures and line drawings, so please supply these in a clear enough format for our artist to follow.