Information for authors

Medicine Today aims to promote the highest possible standards of patient care by presenting doctors with practical, well-illustrated, evidence-based reviews and clinical information that will assist them in reviewing and updating their knowledge and sharpening their skills in diagnosis and management. Although the content of Medicine Today is focused primarily on the needs of general practitioners, the journal enjoys a large readership among specialists and other health professionals reading outside their own field to keep up with advances in general medicine.

Article types

We commission and welcome submissions for several types of articles.

Feature Articles
These are full-length articles (about 2500 to 3000 words in length) that review in depth the diagnosis, investigation and/or management of a particular condition.

Regular Series
These are shorter articles (averaging about 1500 to 2000 words in length) that focus on a theme. We publish a selection of these articles each month and regularly commission new series to feature in this section. Examples include Clinical Case Review, Dermatology Clinic, Gastroenterology Clinic, Ophthalmology Clinic and Psychological Medicine Clinic.

Further details on these article types are given in the Instructions to authors below.

Other items that may be submitted to Medicine Today are:

Please note that we do not publish research articles.

Authorship

The credibility, wisdom and practical clinical insights gained from years of experience at a senior level are essential components of authorship for articles published in Medicine Today. Invited authors are selected based on their reputation among peers and hence qualification to express authoritative opinions (following best practice guidelines when appropriate). Our readers expect content authored by highly experienced senior clinicians who are well recognised in their field of medicine. Coauthors are welcome but they must be experienced, qualified medical practitioners at registrar level or higher, or suitably qualified allied health professionals. Senior authors are expected to take responsibility for the clinical content of the manuscript. As a review journal focusing on issues of clinical practice, Medicine Today does not accept undergraduate students as coauthors.

To avoid bias, or the perception of it, we do not accept papers sponsored by pharmaceutical companies (directly or indirectly), public relations firms or other commercial entities. Papers written by an author with a significant financial interest in a company (or its competitor) that makes a product discussed in the manuscript are also unacceptable. All authors are required to complete a competing interest declaration (see below for further details).

We recommend that authors take the time to download and read our Instructions to authors below.

Ethics and patient consent

Authors should prepare the manuscript in accordance with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals provided by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; www.icmje.org), especially in regard to ethical considerations.

We support the requirement that all research on human or animal subjects should comply with the standards of the relevant institutional or NHMRC ethics committee, or the Helsinki Declaration (2013) or International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare, respectively.

To maintain patient privacy, no identifying information about living patients will be included in published articles unless essential for scientific purposes. If identifying information is essential then the authors must obtain a signed statement from the patient or their guardian giving informed consent for the publication of the identifying material, including photographs (a consent form is available here and at the end of this page). The completed consent document should be securely retained by the authors, and a statement included in the manuscript attesting that specific consent has been obtained and archived.

Competing interests

All authors of articles published in Medicine Today are required to disclose any direct, indirect or potential commercial or financial associations relevant to the submitted manuscript that might create a competing interest. We request that you let us know of any potential competing interests when submitting your manuscript. On acceptance of an article for publication, all authors are required to complete and submit the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest (available at http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest). A competing interest statement is included at the end of each published article.

Submitting the manuscript

Authors should submit their manuscripts as Microsoft Word documents. Ideally, images should be submitted electronically as high resolution jpegs, pdfs, or line drawings or sketches for professional rendering. Please read our Instructions to authors below for more details on image specifications.

We prefer to receive manuscripts and images by email. Refer to the Instructions to authors below for further information.

Review process

All manuscripts submitted to Medicine Today undergo single-blind review. Feedback from at least two specialists in the field and one general practitioner (who represents our main readership) is sent to the authors, who may be required to revise the text or respond to specific comments before their manuscript is accepted for publication.

The editors may reject articles if they are deemed unsuitable for publication, either before peer review or on the advice of the reviewers.

Transfer of copyright

Once an article has been accepted for publication, authors are required to complete our Copyright assignment form to transfer copyright of their article to Medicine Today Pty Ltd. The completed form must be returned before the article can be published.

Agreement to submit a manuscript to Medicine Today is agreement to Medicine Today Pty Ltd to publish the article in electronic formats and in print worldwide.

Editing process

When a manuscript has been assigned to a particular issue of Medicine Today, it will be edited for length, clarity and conformity with the journal's style. Authors should take note of the recommended word counts for each article type; manuscripts exceeding the word limit may be shortened to that length.

Authors receive page proofs of the edited manuscript, copies of any relevant artwork and a layout copy of the article for approval before publication.

Progress enquiry

To enquire about the progress of a manuscript through our peer review or production processes, authors may contact the editorial department using the Contact Us form or by phone (02 9908 8577).

Publication

Authors will be sent a pdf of their article on publication for their own personal use (e.g. for handing out to colleagues or patients or reproducing for teaching purposes). Please contact the editorial department if you wish to use the pdf for any other purposes. 

Propose a submission

Although we commission most of our articles, we also consider unsolicited submissions. If you are thinking about submitting an article to Medicine Today, please first contact the editorial department, either using the Contact Us form or by phone (02 9908 8577), to discuss the topic idea. Once you have received general approval from us on the topic, please review our Instructions to authors below before submitting your article. All unsolicited manuscripts undergo the same peer review process as commissioned articles.

Instructions to authors

We recommend that authors take the time to download and read the relevant instructions to authors before starting to write an article. Much time may be saved in the long run by spending a few minutes now. Before submitting a completed manuscript, we suggest that authors take advantage of the checklist at the end of the instructions to ensure that all of the necessary requirements have been met.

Feature Articles

Regular Series