Authorship Guidelines and Conflicts of Interest

All individuals identified as authors of the submission must meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship. In your submission, please include the following statement regarding the authors of the article:

• Corresponding author’s full contact details (institution, email address, telephone number and address for written correspondence) 

• Full names, institutional address and e-mail address for all authors

• Statement of contribution for all authors, following the four domains outlined by the ICMJE criteria

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Conflicts of Interests

Authors, editors and peer reviewers must abide by the ICMJE guidelines for reporting conflicts of interest. The ICMJE state that “a conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients' welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.” Financial relationships, personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and intellectual beliefs can all lead to such conflicts of interest.

The BSDJ asks that all authors are honest and transparent when making conflict of interest declarations.  All submissions to the journal should be accompanied by a statement of all relevant conflicts of interest of all authors, including:

• All author conflicts of interests

• Sources of support for the work, financial or otherwise, including sponsor names along with explanations of the role of those sources in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; the decision to submit the report for publication; or a statement declaring that the supporting source had no such involvement.

• Whether the authors had access to the study data, with an explanation of the nature and extent of access, including whether access is on-going.

If the authors have no conflicts of interest to declare, then this should be stated.

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Originality

All BSDJ articles must be original, meaning they should not have been previously published in any other format, in any other publication, in whole or in part. We will, however, accept work which has been presented at conferences. Please include on the cover page of your submission a statement that the work is original, and whether or not it has been previously presented. 

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Plagiarism and Misconduct

Plagiarism is a serious academic offence. Prior to submitting your article, please ensure that you check your article includes appropriate citations and references and texts are paraphrased appropriately. 

 

As an accredited member of COPE since 2018, the BSDJ screens all articles for plagiarism and strictly follows the Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines in any identified instances of plagiarism and academic misconduct. As per the COPE guidelines, if plagiarism or misconduct is detected, we reserve the right to notify the author(s) institution.

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Research Ethics

Research Involving Human and Animal Participants

The BSDJ strictly follows the ICMJE guidelines regarding informed consent and research studies involving human and/or animal participants:

• Investigators should ensure the planning, conduct, and reporting of human research are in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration (2013).

• Ethical approval for research should be sought from independent local, regional or national review body

• If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the local, regional or national review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

•  When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

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Patient Identifiable Information and Informed Consent

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. However, if patient identifiable information is required, the following guidelines must be adhered to:

• Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent/guardian) gives written informed consent for publication having been shown the manuscript to be published

• Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication

• Informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained

• If identifying characteristics are de-identified, authors should provide assurance that such changes do not distort scientific meaning

• Patient consent should be written and archived with the authors

• Authors must provide the BSDJ with a written statement showing they have received and archived written patient consent

• When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article

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De-identified Case Reports

In case reports discussing the presentation and clinical management of patients, patient identifying information should be omitted. However, due to the risk that even in de-identified form, patients coud be identified from case reports, we expect case reports to be submitted with a signed patient consent form. If patient consent in unable to be collected (i.e. because the patient was seen in the distant past or is deceased), then the case report could be written in a generalised and generic manner focusing on typical presentation of patients with the condition rather than on a specific patient's case.

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Interview Articles

The BSDJ frequently receive submissions of manuscripts containing interviews with healthcare professionals, academics, medical leaders or other experts. These manuscripts must also be submitted with a signed consent form of the interviewee that they understand that the interview is being recorded and that verbatim or paraphrased quotes from the interview will be published and attributed to them by name. In the case of interviews conducted for research purposes, including those conducted with patients, medical students or healthcare providers (in a research setting), these must always have been collected with ethical approval from a suitable institutional review board and informed consent obtained.

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The BSDJ provides template consent forms for the use of consenting patients and interview participants.​

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Equality and Diversity

The BSDJ believes all articles that are original, rigorous, academically important and relevant to medical students should be published, regardless of the discipline, institution, location, nationality, gender, race, religion or sexuality of the author(s). Any submission made to the journal will therefore be given full consideration for publication, subject to the standard editorial processes. All submissions must reflect this policy by not containing any potentially libelous or offensive content. 

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Copyright Policy

All authors submitting to the journal are required to sign the Copyright Assignment Agreement’, giving the BSDJ sole copyright ownership of the work. If publication of the manuscript is subsequently declined by the journal, then this assignment of copyright will be immediately nullified. If the submission is subsequently accepted for publication, including if minor revisions are requested, however, then the agreement will be considered irrevocable.

 

Subject to the assignment of copyright, the journal will publish the author’s work according to the following conditions:

• All individuals reported as authors of the work must meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship. The list of authors must be complete, and no individual who has the right to be considered as an author of the work should be omitted

• The work must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission, nor at any time during the editorial process of the BSDJ

• The work must not have been previously published elsewhere, in any form.

• The authors must only assign to the BSDJ intellectual property for which they have the legal rights to assign. Any aspect of the work which is not owned by the authors must be made clear, and appropriate permission for publication in the BSDJ must have been sought and agreed

• All works published in the journal will normally be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives 4.0 International License, that will allow others to share the ork as long as an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in the BSDJ is made

• Subject to the Creative Commons license, authors will be fully permitted to distribute the journal's published version of the work through any authorised means provided authors acknowledge its initial publication in the journal

• All authors agree to indemnify the BSDJ, its publisher and its editorial team against any claims or expenses arising from a breach in the ‘author’s warranty’, as detailed in the copyright assignment agreement and pre-submission article checklist. This includes, but is not limited to, any violation of any existing copyright or other third party rights, or the publication of any material of an obscene, indecent, libellous or otherwise unlawful nature