The National Open Journal of Medicine (NOJM) is a multidisciplinary open peer-reviewed journal focusing on impactful clinical and foundation medical research. NOJM publishes original articles, reviews, protocols, clinical cases, and commentary. All submitted works must be understandable, authentic, educational, and relevant to an international audience of clinicians and surgeons in related specialties.
All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed and if accepted for publication in the Journal, Authors will be notified of this decision. Authors will NOT be required to pay processing fees. Upon publication, articles will be made universally available at no charge through the journal's website, www.nojm.io.
In addition to the article appearing on the NOJM website, NOJM will send to PubMed Central (PMC) the final authoritative version of the published article. NOJM will authorize its public posting on PMC, and PMC mirror sites, immediately, and these sites will also link directly to the journal article which will be made universally accessible on NOJM's websites Online. Submission and peer review of all papers is conducted entirely online, increasing efficiency for editors, authors, and reviewers, and enhancing publication speed. Authors requesting further information on online submission are strongly encouraged to view the system.
You may also provide the names and contact addresses (including e-mail) of two potential reviewers that have not been involved with the case and are not a co-worker. These may or may not be used at the Editor's discretion.
Our guidelines generally follow the `Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The complete document appears at http://www.icmje.org.
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.
At the end of the text, under the subheading 'Conflict of interest statement', all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.
All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgment at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.
Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and fully informed written consent which should be documented in the paper. Authors must obtain written and signed consent to publish the case report from the patient (or, where applicable, the patient's guardian or next of kin) prior to submission. Authors will be asked to confirm as part of the submission process that such consent has been obtained, and the manuscript must include a statement to this effect in a consent section at the end of the manuscript, as follows: “Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and accompanying images. A copy of the written consent is available for review by the Editor-in-Chief of this journal on request”. Patients have a right to privacy. Patients' and volunteers' names, initials, or hospital numbers should not be used. Images of patients or volunteers should not be used unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been given as part of the consent If such consent is made subject to any conditions, the Editor in Chief must be made aware of all such conditions. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.
In general, articles should conform to the conventional structure of Abstract, Introduction, Presentation of Case, Discussion, Conclusion, Consent, Conflict of Interest Statement, and References plus figures and/or tables.
Papers should not exceed 3500 words (excluding the abstract, figure, table legends, and references), 50 references, Figures/Tables: up to 6. An abstract of no more than 250 - 300 words should also be included.
Your title page, numbered as 1, should give the title in capital letters (not exceeding 100 letters), a running title (not exceeding 50 letters), and the authors' names (as they are to appear), affiliations, and complete addresses, including postal (zip) codes. The author and address to whom correspondence should be sent must be clearly indicated. Please supply the phone number, and e-mail numbers for the corresponding author.
Manuscripts should use the Vancouver style for references, which should be numbered consecutively (using superscript numerals) in the order in which they are first cited in the text and listed at the end of the paper. For journal references, all authors should be included when there are six or fewer (first three followed by `et al. when seven or more), followed by the title of the article, name of the journal abbreviated according to Index Medicus (see http://www.nih.nlm.gov), year, volume, and first and last pages.
Figures of good quality should be submitted online as separate files. For detailed instructions on the preparation of electronic artwork, consult the Artwork Instructions to Authors: http://www.nojm.com/nojm/artworkinstructions. Permission to reproduce illustrations should always be obtained before submission and details included with the captions.
Tables should be submitted online as a separate file, bear a short descriptive title, and be numbered in Arabic numbers. Tables should be cited in the text.
A list of three to six keywords should be supplied; full instructions are provided when submitting the article online.
Systeme Internationale (SI) units should be used, with the traditional equivalent in parentheses where appropriate. Conventions for abbreviations should be those detailed in Baron DN, ed. Units, Symbols, and Abbreviations: A Guide for Biological and Medical Editors and Authors. 5th edition. London: Royal Society of Medicine Services, 1994.
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a Journal Publishing Agreement. This includes details of the rights that you retain as the author. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a Journal Publishing Agreement form. Authors generally retain all rights to their work. You will be required to grant NOJM the right to publish the work under the creative commons license.
If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article.
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, which they are requested to correct and return within 48 hours. NOJM sends PDF proofs that can be annotated.
If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting the line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return a scan of the pages via e-mail.
Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness, and correctness of the text, tables, and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as the inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that we may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.
The corresponding author will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.
Visit https://nojm.io/nojm/submissions for the facility to track accepted articles and set email alerts to inform you of when an article s status has changed. The website also provides detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions, and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those related to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.