Case-based submission guidelines

Overview

Guide to submitting

Number of submissions

There are no restrictions on the number of submissions you can submit or on the number of submissions you may present.

Structure and word limits

There’s a word limit for each section of your submission:

• Introduction (100 words): a short introduction should put the submission into context, and briefly explain its significance

• Description (300 words): details of the patient, including medical history | How/why the patient presented | Diagnostic evaluation (examination, investigations carried out) | Treatment given (thus far) | Progress and outcomes (thus far – as applicable)

• Discussion (300 words): use this section to discuss why you made your clinical decisions, what you have learned so far, and why you think this is an interesting case. Raise any outstanding questions or issues for discussion if your case report is presented orally

• Key learning points (300 words): please pick out the main learning points for you so far and the learning objectives you would like to gain from the conference

Tables

Tables are optional but please note only one table is permitted per submission and reduces your word count by 100 words. Tables must be referenced in the submission and have a title. Please ensure that a legend is included where necessary and any symbols/keys are explained.

Tables can be copied from a Word document directly into any of the boxes (e.g. introduction, description, discussion, key learning points) after selecting ‘Enter your submission text’. You will still be able to edit the table using the ‘Edit Data’ and ‘Edit Format’ tools to amend your table should you need to.

Tables can be copied from a Word document into the ‘submission content’ boxes rather than creating a new table via the site.

References

Please don't include references in your submission. Should your submission be accepted, and references are included, they will be removed when the submission is published. Please include your references in the slides of your oral presentation or your poster presentation.

Special characters and formatting

To ensure special characters are published correctly, please click here and enter the character(s) by using copy and paste (Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher). If you're experiencing any difficulties inserting them into your case report, please contact us.

Title

Don't put your title in quotes, use acronyms or include abbreviations or information in brackets. Don't use bold or italics and please don't include tradenames.

Submission titles will be published and printed in uppercase in Rheumatology Advances in Practice.

Authors

Please enter all authors' full first and last names in the order they should appear, in the heading of the submission. You'll need to include their email addresses so they can be informed that the submission has been submitted on their behalf.

If you (the Contact Author) aren't the presenter on a submission, please provide full contact information for them.

Institutions

Enter all department and institutional affiliations (Department, Institution, City, (State) and Country). For example Rheumatology, King’s College London, London, UK. Should these be incomplete you may be contacted by our copy editor to provide them.

Disclosures and conflicts of interest

When completing the author information, you'll be asked to enter any relevant, direct or indirect, financial or personal disclosures. You do this by clicking ‘add’ in the table shown under ‘additional information’ in the author section.

For each disclosure please describe the conflicts in full, including description and company names, and use the initials of the author. For example: ‘D.P. has received funding for research from Roche, Pfizer and BMS’.

Funding statement

Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be included at the end of the submission body. The following rules should be followed:

• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies)

• Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’

• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding, the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'. For example: ‘Funding statement: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789]’

Ethical approval and informed patient consent

All submissions in which experiments on patients or healthy volunteers, patients' case histories or use of genetic material are reported should have approval from the relevant institutional review board(s)/ethics committee and informed consent from participants.

Patient consent

We follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' (ICMJE) guidelines for reporting about patients. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without prior informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has given written informed consent for publication.

Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should never be altered or falsified to attain anonymity. We understand that complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt.

For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. For submissions that contain detailed patient information about a living individual, the patient's explicit consent must be obtained before submission. It is the submitting author’s responsibility to obtain a signed patient consent form from each patient.

This form needs to be retained by the submitting author in the event that it should be needed. By submitting, the author confirms that this requirement has been met where appropriate. For submissions that contain detailed patient information about a deceased patient, written consent should be sought and obtained from the patient’s next of kin.

Pre-submission case report proof

Carefully check the proof of your submission. Make sure all special characters and formatting displays properly in your proof. If you find errors, return to the appropriate page by clicking on the page name in the sidebar menu, and make your corrections.

Submitting your case report

If you haven't completed all required sections/items you won't be able to submit. When all required information is entered, you will see a ‘Complete’ message in the ‘review my work’ section.

You can opt to send an email confirmation of your submission. Once the submission is complete it will be sent for review (after the deadline). Please be aware you can edit your submission(s) until the submission deadline.

Technical support

Please contact our events team at events@rheumatology.org.uk or (+44) 207 842 0900.