|
The West London Medical Journal |
|
Submission |
|
Articles for publication should be emailed as word files to
Mrs Chris Ward, Education Services Manager, Ealing Hospital at chris.ward@eht.nhs.uk
Post – The West London Medical Journal Postgraduate Centre Ealing Hospital Southall Middlesex UB1 3HW
Prior Publication
Duplicate/redundant publication is not permitted . This includes papers, or letters to the Editor reporting the same information including data published in any journal. Abstracts of papers presented at meetings and published in the proceedings of such meetings do not constitute duplicate publication, but should be disclosed. Disclosure should be made by a separate letter that accompanies the manuscript submission stating the meeting, venue, and when presented. References must be provided.
Authors should declare that any republication of the data (e.g. in a secondary analysis or translation) will not constitute redundant publication, will not breach copyright, and will reference the original publication.
Patient Consent
Patient's or healthy control person’s, written consent is needed not only for full papers, but also for case reports. The written consent needs to include agreement to undergo treatment, or participate in an experiment or Randomised Control Trial where applicable. Consent should have been obtained also for publication of anonymised patient information and data in a scientific journal. If the patient is not alive, consent from their relatives will be required, before publication.
Ethics approval
All clinical studies need to be approved by an appropriately constituted Ethical Committee. All authors are expected to adhere to the ethical/research standards as described in the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
We do not publish any articles involving what would be best described as an experiment on human volunteers or patients.
Any manuscript that includes studies involving animals must be accompanied by a statement describing how any suffering was attenuated.
Statistical analysis
A statement must be submitted with the manuscript as to how statistical analysis was performed and by whom, where applicable.
Contribution of each author to the study/manuscript and their approval for publication of manuscript
Please state briefly how each of the authors contributed to the study, to data analysis and to the writing of the manuscript. In addition, please confirm that every the author has read and approved entire manuscript as submitted to West London Medical Journal.
Authors must acknowledge any support that they were given (e.g. provision of writing assistance, literature searching, data analysis, administrative support, supply of materials). If/how this assistance was funded should be described and included with other funding information.
Authors should provide copies of permission letters for any material reproduced from other, copyrighted publications (e.g. tables or figures).
Authors should declare that the submitted work has not previously been published in full, and is not being considered for publication, elsewhere.
Clinical trials should have been registered and manuscript must include the registration number and name of the trial register.
Conflict of interest
Any financial support from the pharmaceutical company, biomedical or any other commercial source in the form of research grants, laboratory fees, consultancy or lecture fees, travel expenses, registration fees, consultancy appointments must be disclosed. Posts held in the pharmaceutical industry biomedical industry or equipment manufacturers,stock holdings in the company, unpaid supply of pharmaceuticals etc must also be disclosed. These should be stated in relation to each author.
If conflict of interest is present, we will seek the author’s permission to publish a statement to that effect as a foot note in the paper.
We recommend that all authors read the Blackwell Publishing best practice guidelines on publication ethics before submitting any article to the West London Medical Journal.
(Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher's Perspective is reproduced with permission from International Journal of Clinical Practice Graf C, Wager E, Bowman A et al. Int J Clin Pract 2007; 61 (s152):126.
Peer Review Process
All manuscripts submitted are initially reviewed by one of the Editors in Chief.
The manuscript is examined for suitability to be published in the West London Medical Journal by any one of three Editors in Chief.
All manuscripts (Research publications, review articles, letters and editorials) considered suitable for publication in the WLMJ are submitted to a peer review process. Book reviews are not published by WLMJ.
The peer review process is conducted in an open review process and authorship is not anonymised.
The external peer review board consists of four expert clinicians. This enables a speedy response and consistency in judgment. Two of the four reviewers would provide a detailed response recommending acceptance without revision, further consideration of acceptance subject to revision or rejection. The names and expertise of our reviewers who constitute the external peer review board are published in our journal.
Where the external peer review board feel that the manuscript falls outside their area of expertise the manuscript is reviewed by two other experts known for their known expertise in the topic being addressed.
The journal does permit publication of articles which include any of the editors or peer reviewers of WLMJ subject the standard review process as described above. Any such author withdraws from discussions in relation to publication of articles in the editorial decision making process.
Authors are notified of the decision of the journal along with reviewer’s comments when articles are rejected. Appeals are considered by the Editors in Chief.
The members of the external peer review board are not compensated for their time and undertake the review process on a voluntary basis. They are not employees of the journal and have no financial interest in the journal.
The sub editor examines the accepted manuscript for errors and conformity with publishing guidelines of the International committee of Medical Journal editors.. The sub editor is compensated for his/her time commitment.
The Editors in Chief do not hold any financial interest in the journal nor are they compensated for their time commitment.
The journal does not accept any advertisements and does not accept funded articles.
The Editors have complete editorial freedom and the publishers and the sponsoring body (the Postgraduate Department of Ealing Hospital) have no role in editorial decisions.
|
|
ISSN Print 1757-756X ISSN Online 1757-7578 |