Kids Education School Gallery: Medical education

INFOMATION
Medical education
Medical Educationis an international, peer-reviewed, journal with distribution to readers in more than 80 countries. The journal seeks to enhance its position as the pre-eminent journal in the field of education for health care professionals and aims to publish material of the highest quality reflecting world wide or provocative issues and perspectives. The contents will be of interest to learners, teachers and researchers. It aims to have a significant impact on scholarship in medical education and, ultimately, on the quality of health care by prioritising papers that offer a fundamental advance in understanding of educationally relevant issues. The journal welcomes papers on any aspect of health professional education.
Papers not correctly formatted will be returned to the authors for correction and resubmission. Manuscripts should be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/medicaleducation. Full instructions and support are available on the site. A user ID and password can be obtained on the first visit. All parts of the manuscript must be available in an electronic format; those recommended are: generic rich text format (RTF) or Microsoft Word for text, and JPEG, GIF, TIFF, EPS, PNG, Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel for graphics. It is recommended that, where possible, figures are embedded into a single Microsoft Word document. Identifying details are now requested during the submission process rather than in a separate document. Please ensure that individual information is provided for each author. If you cannot submit online, please contact the Editorial Office (Medical Education,ITTCBuilding, TamarSciencePark, Davy Road, PlymouthPL6 8BX, UK;Email: med@mededuc.com).
Medical Education employs a plagiarism detection system. By submitting your manuscript to this journal you accept that your manuscript may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works.
3. Criteria for manuscripts
All manuscripts should meet the following criteria: the writing is clear and the information important and likely to be of interest to an international audience. For research papers, the study methods should be appropriate and the data valid; and for both discussion papers and research papers, the conclusions should be reasonable and supported by data or evidence. Papers are selected for peer review and publication on these criteria. We publish around 20% of manuscripts received each year.We welcome contributions from authors whose first language is not English, although it is recommended that before submitting your manuscript to the journal you ask a colleague familiar with written English to read it through. All authors are encouraged to review the peer review criteria (see Med Educ 2009;43:2-4) prior to submitting their manuscripts.
4. Editorial and peer review process
All submitted manuscripts are read initially by the editor. One or more associate editors may also be involved in early decision making. Papers with insufficient priority for publication are rejected at this stage - sometimes with advice about resubmission in a different category. Other manuscripts are sent to experts in the field for peer review. The review process is usually double-blinded so that authors' and reviewers' identities are not disclosed to either party. However, we encourage reviewers to sign their reviews in the interest of providing responsible feedback. Guidelines for reviewers are available www.mededuc.com. We aim to give an initial decision within 12 weeks. All accepted manuscripts are edited according to the journal's style and returned to the author as page proofs for approval. Authors are responsible for all statements made in their work.
5. Categories of manuscript
Medical Education publishes original research papers, review articles, special feature pieces, short reports of research in progress or of educational innovation, commentaries, and letters to the editor. Specific guidelines are shown below:
Original Research: Generally less than 3,000 words, but longer papers will be accepted if the context warrants the inclusion of more text. A structured abstract of no more than 300 words must be included and the paper should contain a maximum of five tables or figures with references included in the Vancouver style. The paper will usually be organised using the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) structure. The context of the work (i.e., findings from the existing literature) and your choice of methods must be made clear in the text. Qualitative and quantitative research approaches are equally welcome. All papers must make it clear how the findings advance understanding of the issue under study. Quality assurance papers that are predominantly of local interest or relevance do not meet this latter criterion.
The anonymous manuscript

A full version of the manuscript as well as an fully anonymised version should be submitted. In the anonymised version,for review, authors should NOT identify themselves or their institution. This includes ensuring that neither the filename nor the footer/header contains the authors' names or initials. We encourage the use of the active voice, short sentences and clear sub headings in the text. Chambers Guide to Grammar and Usage (1996) can give advice on matters of style. The manuscript should be double-spaced with a wide margin (at least 3 cm) on either side. All pages should be numbered. Do not use abbreviations. All scientific units should be expressed in SI units. Before submission please remove fields from automatic referencing programs and switch off change tracking. Please supply a word count. Where figures, tables or illustrations from other publications have been used, appropriate permissions should be obtained prior to submission.

Referencing should be set out in double spacing in the Vancouver style. Authors are advised to consult the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (see http://www.icmje.org/) for details of the Vancouver reference style.
Authors should restrict titles to 15 words or fewer (90 characters including spaces), and the editor reserves the right to edit titles. The main text should start on a separate page and sections within the text should be appropriately sub-headed. Spelling should conform to the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Both numbers and percentages should be given (not percentages alone) when relevant. Where statistical methods are used in analysis their use should be explained in the setting of the study and an appendix given if the method is particularly unusual or complex. For all research-oriented manuscripts a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach used should be included.
Keep a copy of the original manuscript for reference. An email acknowledgement of receipt will be sent by the journal. Any material sent to the Editorial Office will not be returned.

We reserve the right to copy edit papers to house style before final publication, but substantive changes will be the responsibility of the authors.

The identifying information
A separate identifying document is no longer required. However, the corresponding author should ensure that the following information is provided during the submission process:

a) The full address, institution and contact details of all authors. It is the corresponding author's responsibility to ensure that each author holds a user account on the submission system and the details held are current.
b) The individual contributions made by each author to the work described in the paper.
c) Details of any funding
d) Details of any acknowledgements
e) A statement indicating whether ethical approval was sought for the research described. All work involving research on human subjects must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki (http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm) and authors must confirm, where appropriate, that informed consent was given. We expect ethical approval to have been sought from an appropriate body, such as an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Independent Ethics Committee (IEC), where such bodies exist to review educational research. Both the manuscript itself and details concerning ethical approval input by the submitting author should indicate the outcome of the application, even when the decision was that no ethical approval was required. Where no formal framework for ethical approval is currently available, please provide a statement confirming if ethical considerations were made by a qualified person outside the group directly involved in work reported in this paper. There should also be a statement confirming the following points: That the work was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, including, but not limited to there being no potential harm to participants, the anonymity of participants is guaranteed, and the informed consent of participants was obtained. See Med Educ 2009;43:194-5.
f) Details of any potential conflict of interest. A conflict of interest exists when professional judgement concerning a primary interest (such as patients' welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by secondary interests (personal matters such as financial gain, personal relationships or professional rivalry).

The copyright assignment form.
A copyright assignment form (available from 'instructions and forms' on http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/medicaleducation) must be completed and signed by all contributing authors and uploaded as a separate file during the submission process; alternatively it may be emailed to mededuc.com as a pdf file or sent by fax and post to the Editorial Office at the time of electronic submission. We cannot accept submissions without this document.

7. Proofs
Proofs will be sent to the corresponding author via e-mail as an Acrobat PDF file. Your e-mail server must be able to accept attachments up to 4MB in size. Acrobat reader is required to read these proofs and it can be downloaded free of charge from www.adobe.com/. This will enable the proof to be opened, read on screen and printed out for any corrections to be made. Authors are required to provide corrections promptly; if you are going to be out of email contact for an extended period, please supply us with the contact details of someone who can attend to the proofs in your absence.

Medical education