Authors

BMJ Military Health publishes high quality research, reviews and other invited articles, which pertain to the practice of military medicine in its broadest sense. It welcomes submissions from both civilian and military authors. It is intended not only to propagate current knowledge and expertise but also to act as an institutional memory for the practice of health within the military for years to come.
The journal publishes a variety of article types, some of which are generally invited submissions from the Editorial Board. Suggestions for topics and authors are welcome. Authors who feel they could contribute an article to an ongoing series are asked to contact the Editor.

Editorial policy

BMJ Military Health adheres to the highest standards concerning its editorial policies on publication ethics, scientific misconduct, consent and peer review criteria. To view all BMJ Journal policies please refer to the BMJ Author Hub policies page.

Plan S compliance

BMJ Military Health is a Plan S compliant Transformative Journal. Transformative Journals are one of the compliance routes offered by cOAlition S funders, such as Wellcome, WHO and UKRI. Find out more about Transformative Journals and Plan S compliance on our Author Hub.

Copyright and authors’ rights

Articles are published under an exclusive licence or non-exclusive licence for UK Crown employees or where BMJ has agreed CC BY applies. For US Federal Government officers or employees acting as part of their official duties, the terms are as stated in accordance with our licence terms. Authors or their employers retain copyright. Open access articles can be reused under the terms of the relevant Creative Commons licence to facilitate reuse of the content; please refer to the BMJ Military Health Author Licence for the applicable Creative Commons licences. More information on copyright and authors’ rights. When publishing in BMJ Military Health, authors choose between three licence types – exclusive licence granted to BMJ, CC-BY-NC and CC-BY (Creative Commons open access licences require payment of an article processing charge).
As an author you may wish to post your article in an institutional or subject repository, or on a scientific social sharing network. You may also link your published article to your preprint (if applicable). What you can do with your article, without seeking permission, depends on the licence you have chosen and the version of your article. Please refer to the BMJ author self archiving and permissions policies page for more information.

Preprints

Preprints foster openness, accessibility and collaboration by allowing authors to make their findings immediately available to the research community and receive feedback on an article before it is submitted to a journal for formal publication. BMJ fully supports and encourages the archiving of preprints in any recognised, not-for-profit server such as medRxiv. BMJ does not consider the posting of an article in a dedicated preprint repository to be prior publication.
Preprints are reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed; Preprints should therefore not be used to guide clinical practice, health-related behaviour or health policy. For more information, please refer to our Preprint policy page.

Peer review

BMJ Military Health operates double anonymised peer review whereby the names of both the reviewer and the author are anonymous to each other. All submissions are reviewed by at least one reviewer. If there is uncertainty about acceptance after review, papers are reviewed by the editors. For more information on the peer review process, please consult the BMJ Author Hub – the peer review process.
Anonymised manuscript This should be free from:
  • Any author names, institution or contact details
  • Acknowledgements
  • Declarations of interest
This may include:
  • Statements of ethical approval with all references to your institution replaced with "[redacted for peer review]"; e.g. “This research was approved by the University of North Carolina Institutional Review Board” becomes “This research was approved by the Institutional Review Board of [redacted for peer review].” This statement should appear in the methods section of your manuscript.
The anonymised file will be automatically converted to PDF once uploaded through the online submission system (ScholarOne) and will be made available to the reviewers.

Editorial decisions

The Editorial Board understands that the requirements of the Journal’s readership differ across specialties and settings and this guides the Board’s decisions on acceptance. The aim is to provide a broad mix of articles of educational value and interest to all members of the Defence Medical Services, as well as an international medical audience. Submission of work previously presented at a meeting or published as an abstract is acceptable if this is declared on submission. The Editor in Chief reserves the right to edit submissions into house style without further discussion with the author(s). The Editor cannot enter into correspondence about papers rejected for publication, and the Editor’s decision in these matters is final.

Data sharing

The BMJ Military Health adheres to BMJ’s Tier 2 data policy. We strongly encourage that data generated by your research that supports your article be made available as soon as possible, wherever legally and ethically possible. We also require data from clinical trials to be made available upon reasonable request. To adhere to ICMJE guidelines, we require that a data sharing plan must be included with trial registration for clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after 1st January 2019. Changes to the plan must be noted in the Data Availability Statement and updated in the registry record. All research articles must contain a Data Availability Statement. For more information and FAQs, please see BMJ’s full Data Sharing Policy page.

ORCID

BMJ Military Health mandates ORCID iDs for the submitting author at the time of article submission; co-authors and reviewers are strongly encouraged to also connect their ScholarOne accounts to ORCID. We strongly believe that the increased use and integration of ORCID iDs will be beneficial for the whole research community. Please find more information about ORCID and BMJ’s policy on our Author Hub.

Article transfer service

BMJ is committed to ensuring that all good quality research is published. Our article transfer service helps authors find the best journal for their research while providing an easy and smooth publication process. If authors agree to transfer their manuscript, all versions, supplementary files and peer reviewer comments are automatically transferred; there is no need to resubmit or reformat. Authors who submit to the BMJ Military Health and are rejected will be offered the option of transferring to another BMJ Journal, such as BMJ Open.
Please note that the article transfer service does not guarantee acceptance but you should receive a quicker initial decision on your manuscript. Contact the Transfer Editor at transfers@bmj.com

Article processing charges

During submission, authors can choose to have their article published open access for 2,840 GBP (exclusive of VAT for UK and EU authors). Publishing open access has multiple benefits including wider reach, faster impact and increased citation and usage. There are no submission, page or colour figure charges.

Waivers and discounts

If authors choose to publish their article open access, an APC waiver may be available. Before applying for an APC waiver please consider: (1) Does your institution have an open access agreement with BMJ? If it does, then this may cover all or part of the APC for your article. Check BMJ’s open access agreements page to find out whether your institution is a member and what discounts you may be entitled to. (2) Have you received funding from a funder with an open access mandate or policy that covers paying APCs? If so, BMJ expects that the APC will be paid in full. If neither (1) nor (2) above apply then consider (3) Are all the authors of your article based in low-income countries*? If so, you are eligible to apply for a full or partial waiver from BMJ. Visit our author hub to learn more about our waivers policy and how to request one. Please note that regardless of the funding situation, authors can still choose to publish with us at no cost, and articles will be made available to our subscribers. *This list is reviewed annually and is based upon HINARI Core Offer Groups A and B, and the World Bank Country and Lending Groups.

Rapid responses

A rapid response is a moderated but not peer reviewed online response to a published article in BMJ Military Health; it will not receive a DOI and will not be indexed. Find out more about responses and how to submit a response.

Submission guidelines

Please review the below article type specifications including the required article lengths, illustrations, table limits and reference counts. The word count excludes the abstract, tables, acknowledgements, contributions and references. Manuscripts should be as succinct as possible. For further support when making your submission please refer to the resources available on the BMJ Author Hub. Here you will find information on writing and formatting your research through to the peer review process. You may also wish to use the language editing and translation services provided by BMJ Author Services. We encourage authors who wish to submit a case report to submit as an Image in clinical practice article.

Editorial

Concept: Authors wishing to submit an editorial must contact the Editor in Chief first or will have been invited by the Editor in Chief or an Associate Editor.
Word count: A maximum of 1500 words. Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 3 combined. Images should not be composite images and should be each an individual picture or diagram. References: A maximum of 20 references. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed.

Analysis

Concept: such articles seek to address an area of uncertainty, controversy, contrasting evidence or a research gap in military medicine and stimulate debate. They analyse and interpret new and existing data to form an articulated argument that is supported by evidence to present a clearly reasoned argument and clear message. The aim is to address topical clinical, scientific, ethical, and policy issues that matter to military healthcare. These articles do not present original data or provide opinion.
Word count: A maximum of 2000 words. Abstract: A maximum of 250 words. Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 6 combined. Images should not be composite images and should be each an individual picture or diagram. References: A maximum of 30. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed. Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should comprise 3-5 single sentences, each as a bullet point. No references should be included. The structure of this should revolve around: What is already known on this topic, What this study adds, How this study might affect research, practice or policy. This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article. 

Original research

Concept: Such articles aim to increase the knowledge within the medical literature. Additional information over the word count may be placed on the web site as a data supplement and referenced within the body of the text. All original research papers should include an ethics statement within the methods section. All papers publishing research on animals such conform to the ARRIVE guidelines. Research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Mixed methods reviews, etc) should be submitted as Systematic reviews.
Structured abstract: A maximum of 300 words. This should be structured into: introduction, methods, results and conclusions Word count: A maximum of 3000 words (excluding references and abstract) Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 6 combined. Images should not be composite images and should be each an individual picture or diagram. References: A maximum of 30. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed. Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should comprise 3-5 single sentences, each as a bullet point. No references should be included. The structure of this should revolve around: What is already known on this topic, What this study adds, How this study might affect research, practice or policy. This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article. 

Invited review

Concept: Authors wishing to submit an invited review must contact the Editor in Chief first or will have been invited by the Editor in Chief or an Associate Editor. Review articles provide concise in depth reviews of established areas relevant to the practice of Military Medicine. Research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Mixed methods reviews, etc) are classified by the journal as Systematic reviews and must be submitted as such.
Title: We would expect the word ‘military’ to be within the title to demonstrate relevance to our journal. Abstract: maximum of 250 words. Word count: maximum of 3000 words (excluding references and abstract). Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 6 combined. Images should not be composite images and should be each an individual picture or diagram. References: A maximum of 30 references. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed. Key messages: This section should comprise 3-5 single sentences, each as a bullet point. No references should be included. The structure of this should revolve around: What is already known on this topic, What this study adds, How this study might affect research, practice or policy.

Systematic review

Concept: Such articles should establish answers to specific questions relevant to the practice of Military Medicine. In doing so authors should make critical appraisal of the review findings and recommend directions for future research. This article type includes all research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Mixed methods reviews, etc). As a generalist military medical journal we do not publish ‘scoping reviews’, as we consider them more appropriate to sub-specialist journals.
Title: This must be single short sentence and include the words systematic review. Methods section: In accordance with BMJ policy, all systematic reviews must conform to PRISMA guidelines. Additional information may be placed on the website as online-only supplementary material. We only consider systematic reviews using other methodological searches following prior approval from the editor in chief. Structured abstract: A maximum of 300 words. This should be structured into: introduction, methods, results and conclusions. The method in the abstract should state that PRISMA was used. Word count: A maximum of 3000 words (excluding references and abstract). Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 6 combined. Images should not be composite images and should be each an individual picture or diagram. The first figure should be the PRISMA flowchart. References: Although there is no maximum in this regard, restraint is advised and references that exceed 60 in number would be unusual. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed. Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should comprise 3-5 single sentences, each as a bullet point. No references should be included. The structure of this should revolve around: What is already known on this topic, How this study might affect research, practice or policy. This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article. 

Images in clinical practice

Concept: such articles are a more contemporary manner of demonstrating interesting clinical cases. Authors who wish to submit a case report should submit to this article type.
Abstract: None. Word count: 600 words. Images: submissions should include a maximum of two high-quality images with clinical relevance. References: a maximum of 3 references. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed. Consent: submissions must comply with BMJ patient consent policy. Tables: Must not be included.

Letter

Concept: Short clinical or laboratory observations (eg preliminary or confirmatory data) may be presented as a Letter. Case reports may be published as a letter if the case is of exceptional importance and interest. Letters undergo the same review process as full length papers.
Abstract: None. Word count: A maximum of 500 words. Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 2 combined. Images should not be composite images and should be each an individual picture or diagram. References: a maximum of 5 references.

Response

Responses to articles published in BMJ Military Health are welcomed and should be submitted online via the journal’s website. Contributors should go to the abstract or full text of the article in question and click on the ‘Responses’ tab. Contributors will be asked to agree to our response terms and conditions. Responses relating to previously published items in the journal will be reviewed by the editor. They may be sent to the authors of the original article, who will be invited to reply. Responses are moderated but not peer reviewed; they do not receive a DOI and are not indexed. Occasionally BMJ Military Health publishes selected responses in journal issues, together with the author’s response where applicable. If a response is selected for publication in an issue, the contributor will be notified and asked to upload this to the journal’s submission system as Correspondence. Correspondence articles will receive a DOI and be indexed. The title of your submission should follow this format: ‘Correspondence on “Article title” by “Author(s)”‘.
Abstract: None. Word count: A maximum of 500 words. Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 2 combined. References: a maximum of 5 references.

Consensus statement

Concept: The journal is interested in publishing consensus statements from working groups on subjects relevant to military health in its widest sense. Authors should contact the Editor at info.bmjmilitary@bmj.com to discuss their manuscript prior to submission.
Word count: A maximum of 2000 words. References: A maximum of 30 references. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed. Illustrations and tables: A maximum of 3 tables or images are accepted.

Footnotes and end pieces

Concept: The journal, on occasion, publishes original articles of historical note that are relevant to the practice of military medicine in its widest sense. These typically comprise one or two high-quality images illustrating an interesting clinical or military medical phenomenon, or an historical vignette. The editor will review every such submission personally and reserves the right to reject the article without review, should it not be deemed relevant to the readership
Word count: A maximum of 1000 words. References: A maximum of 5 references. References to websites should include the title, authors and the date accessed.

Supplements and special editions

The BMJ Publishing Group journals are willing to consider publishing supplements to regular issues. Supplement proposals may be made at the request of:
  • The journal editor, an editorial board member or a learned society may wish to organise a meeting, sponsorship may be sought and the proceedings published as a supplement.
  • The journal editor, editorial board member or learned society may wish to commission a supplement on a particular theme or topic. Again, sponsorship may be sought.
  • The BMJPG itself may have proposals for supplements where sponsorship may be necessary.
  • A sponsoring organisation, often a pharmaceutical company or a charitable foundation, that wishes to arrange a meeting, the proceedings of which will be published as a supplement.
In all cases, it is vital that the journal’s integrity, independence and academic reputation is not compromised in any way.
For further information on criteria that must be fulfilled, download the supplements guidelines. When contacting us regarding a potential supplement, please include as much of the information below as possible.
  • Journal in which you would like the supplement published
  • Title of supplement and/or meeting on which it is based
  • Date of meeting on which it is based
  • Proposed table of contents with provisional article titles and proposed authors
  • An indication of whether authors have agreed to participate
  • Sponsor information including any relevant deadlines
  • An indication of the expected length of each paper Guest Editor proposals if appropriate