The Medical Journal of Australia aims to be the premier forum for information and commentary on clinical medicine and healthcare in Australia. To achieve this, the MJA publishes original clinical research, reviews and educational articles, together with commentary and informed debate on standards of clinical practice, and on social, ethical, legal and other issues related to healthcare. The Journal welcomes articles in all these categories.

Please note: Word counts refer to main text only, excluding abstract and references.

Editorials are peer-reviewed authoritative commentaries on topics of current interest or that relate to articles published in the same issue of the MJA. Editorials may be about any important topic related to medicine or health.

• Editorials are usually commissioned
• Unsolicited editorials should be discussed with the editor before submitting
• Editorials should have a maximum of two authors

Perspectives are opinion pieces which discuss challenging and controversial questions relating to medicine, and health. Articles should be scholarly and well argued, and assertions must be supported by appropriate references. Some articles in this section, such as the leading Perspective and the "Opposing views" articles, are usually commissioned, but if you would like to suggest a topic for an Opposing views discussion, please contact the Editor at mja@mja.com.au. Authors may also submit other Perspectives articles for consideration.

• Perspectives should have a maximum of two authors

Letters should have no more than 3 authors, and comments about MJA articles should be submitted within 2 months of that article's publication. Letters should be appropriately referenced in the same style and format as other MJA articles (see References below). Research letters are peer reviewed.

The "Clinical focus" section includes critical analyses of topics of current clinical interest in the form of systematic and narrative reviews, meta-analyses, guidelines articles with a practical focus on recent advances in diagnosis and/or management of clinically relevant problems, potential clinical application of new research or technology, and evidence-based, state-of-the-art articles on recent advances in pharmacotherapy.

• Clinical focus articles other than systematic reviews, meta-analyses or guidelines should have a maximum of three authors
• Systematic reviews are preferred, but comprehensive narrative reviews are also welcome
• Meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials must follow the PRISMA statement including the checklist and flow diagram, see http://www.prisma-statement.org/

The structured abstract for systematic reviews should contain the following headings:

• Objectives
• Study design
• Data sources
• Data synthesis
• Conclusions

This section includes guidelines, position statements and consensus statements from medical specialty associations, government agencies, other learned bodies and special interest groups.

Describe the guideline development process and the evidence base, and include levels of evidence. Refer to:

• the NHMRC's "A guide to the development, evaluation and implementation of clinical practice guidelines" and
• the GRADE approach to grading the quality of evidence and strength of recommendations for guidelines or articles including quality of evidence or strength of recommendations.

You may wish to register your guideline with the National Institute of Clinical Studies.

The MJA will generally publish a 2-page "Executive summary" of the guideline in the print version of the Journal, and the whole guideline document online only (very long guidelines require negotiation with the Editor). Guidelines submitted for publication in the MJA must not have been published previously elsewhere, including on the internet.

The MJA considers original research relevant to clinical medicine (not animal or laboratory work) and of interest to a general medical audience.

• IMRAD format (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion).
• A structured abstract, which should contain the following headings:
  • Objectives: a clear statement of the main aim or hypothesis of the study
  • Design: eg, prospective, randomised, placebo control, case control, crossover, etc; include study dates
  • Setting: include the level of care (eg primary care, tertiary referral hospital) and number of participating centres
  • Participants: include selection criteria and participation or response rate
  • Intervention: what, how, when and for how long
  • Main outcome measures:
  • Results: include absolute event rates (not just proportions), 95% confidence intervals, level of statistical significance, number need to treat/harm, as appropriate
  • Conclusions: conclusions and their implications must directly relate to data in the study
  • Trial registration: (if applicable) registry and registration number for clinical trials.
• Data that are original and as timely and current as possible.
• Signed patient permission if any patients are potentially identifiable in the text or images (download form here).
• A statement that ethics approval was obtained for the study (or that it was not required), including the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board.
• A statement giving the details of all sources of funding for the study, outlining any role the funder had in any part of the study, and that the researchers were independent from the funder.
• A statement that the authors had full access to all of the data (including statistical reports and tables) in the study.
• Copies of any non-standard questionnaires used in the research.
• Copies of published articles based on the same research, especially if the methods have been published elsewhere.

• follow CONSORT guidelines (including checklist and flowchart, see www.consort-statement.org).
• be registered in a public trials registry (see below) and include the trial registration.
• include the original protocol or a reference to it, with a brief explanation of any deviations from the protocol.

The use of checklists for other study types are encouraged (see also EQUATOR Network):

• GRADE for guidelines or articles including quality of evidence or strength of recommendations.
• PRISMA checklist and flowchart for a systematic review or meta-analysis of randomised trials and other evaluation studies.
• MOOSE checklist for a meta-analysis of observational studies.
• STARD checklist and flowchart for a study of diagnostic accuracy.
• STROBE checklists for cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies.

These are unique cases with features that have not previously been reported, or are new in the Australian context. Clinical photos are encouraged and patient permission is required (download form here).

These are cases which are not novel but have an important and clear clinical message relevant to a general audience. They may describe an unusual presentation or a complex diagnostic or management pathway. Clinical photos are encouraged and patient permission is required (download form here).

These articles discuss ethical or legal issues related to patient care. They should have a clinical focus, and case scenarios should be considered to help illustrate important points.

Feature articles are usually commissioned. If you would like to suggest a topic or present a proposal for a feature article, please contact the Editor at mja@mja.com.au.

Personal views are essays based on personal opinion or experience in the practice of medicine - they may be critical, instructive or humorous. References are not required.

History articles are scholarly essays on interesting aspects of the history of medicine. An Australian perspective is preferred but not essential.

Submit as a digital photograph, with a brief description of the message that the artwork is conveying. Send as a tiff or jpeg file format at 300 dpi (minimum width 9 cm).

The Dr Ross Ingram Memorial Prize is an annual prize for an outstanding essay or artwork that presents original and positive ideas aimed at promoting health gains and health equity for Australia's Indigenous peoples. The competition is open to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person who is working, researching or training in a health-related field.

For further information, including the prize value, closing date judging process and links to previous years' finalists and winners, see http://www.mja.com.au/public/information/RossIngramPrize.html.

Reviews of newly released books or other media are usually invited by the Editor. If you would like to suggest an item for review, please contact the Editor at mjalibrary@mja.com.au. Reviews should tell readers something new or interesting about the subject in addition to appraising the book or media. Reviews are published online in the MJA Bookroom; some are also published in the print Journal.

• Submit book reviews by emailing them to the MJA Librarian, mjalibrary@mja.com.au

Obituaries for the MJA are brief overviews of a medical person's life and works. Please include the person's birth and death dates, place of birth, names and cities of the major institutions in which the person trained and worked, where and when they obtained each qualification, positions of importance held, other interests outside medicine, personal traits which define character, and cause of death. Please supply a photo (which does not need to be recent). It would be helpful if you could notify us as soon as possible after the person's death if you plan to submit an obituary, to ensure that we don't duplicate efforts by also commissioning one from elsewhere.

Original poems with a medical flavour, not published elsewhere, will be considered.

Other short items will be considered as "fillers". They might be instructive, entertaining or humorous and could include anecdotes about situations that have influenced your practice or appreciation of medicine.

Manuscripts submitted to the MJA must conform with the Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. See here.

Manuscripts must be offered exclusively to the Journal. This means that manuscripts should not be simultaneously submitted to other journals nor made available to others, including news reporters, while they are being considered for publication in the MJA. This embargo continues up to noon on the day before the publication date for manuscripts that are accepted.

The MJA uses the "Editorial Manager" system for online manuscript submission. Online submission is fast and allows authors to track the progress of their submissions through the peer-review and the editorial decision-making processes. The MJA Editorial Manager site is at http://www.editorialmanager.com/mja/.

• First time users should select "Register" from the menu at the top of the Editorial Manager web page and enter the requested information. Once successfully registered, you will be sent an email containing your username and password. You need these to log in.
• Registered users should select "Login" from the menu at the top of the Editorial Manager web page and provide their username and password. Then, log in as "Author". This will enable you to submit your manuscript and track its progress through the system.

For further information on the Editorial Manager system please download the Tutorial for Authors available at http://www.editorialmanager.com/mja/.

Authors who cannot access the Editorial Manager submission system should contact the Editorial office (mja@mja.com.au, or by phone +61 2 9562 6666).

Submissions should consist of three documents:

• your covering letter (see below)
• your title page, set out on our template (click here to download the title page template)
• your manuscript (all articles, including Letters to the Editor), set out on the correct template (click here to download the manuscript template)

Note: Do not include author-identifying information in your manuscript. The manuscript you submit online may (if appropriate) be forwarded to peer reviewers. The MJA uses "double blind" peer review, in which reviewers are not told the identity of the authors, nor are the authors told the identity of the reviewers. To preserve blinding, your manuscript should not contain author-identifying information.

Your covering letter should be submitted online with your manuscript. It can contain author-identifying information as it will not be shown to peer reviewers. It should include:

• why the article should be published in the MJA
• confirmation that the manuscript content (in part or in full) has not been submitted or published elsewhere.

At the time when you submit your manuscript, we require:

• A Competing interests statement for your article, as you would like it to appear in print in the Journal if your article is accepted. This statement should be provided in the title page template part of your submission.
  You should include all relevant potential conflicts for all authors (this is in addition to the ICMJE form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, below).
  If there are no conflicts, please write "Competing interests: No relevant disclosures".
  If there are potential conflicts, please provide a detailed statement. Examples are:
  
        John Brown receives financial support from the American Heart Association,
        Melbourne Health, the University of Sydney and Queensland Health.
  
        Mary Mild has received consultancy fees from Pfizer and speaker's fees for
        meetings organised by Roche.
  
        Tony Citizen has undertaken clinical trials with anti-inflammatory drugs for
        GlaxoSmithKline and other companies. John Brown has received honoraria for
        educational lectures from Merck. Mary Mild holds shares in GlaxoSmithKline.
  
        John Brown has served on the board of Schering Plough.

  (If we offer to publish your article, we will require standard disclosure forms from The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to be completed individually by every author listed on your submission before the article can be formally accepted. We suggest that you read this form before composing the above statement. Please click here to download the form.)

• Acknowledgements (THESE ARE OPTIONAL). Acknowledgements must be brief. Acknowledge funding sources and people who have contributed to the study but who do not qualify as authors (see Authorship). Do not include secretarial staff.  Note:
  Permission to be acknowledged. Any person listed in your acknowledgements must indicate that he or she has approved being acknowledged in your article. The corresponding author should collate and forward such permissions. Emails are acceptable. It is the responsibility of the principal author to obtain permission to acknowledge individuals; if permission is not obtained, the names cannot be published.

• Use abbreviations sparingly (spell out at first use).
• Use minimal capitalisation.
• Give all measurements in SI units (except blood pressure, which is in mmHg).
• Provide reference intervals when reporting laboratory findings.
• Refer to drugs by their generic (not their proprietary), names.

• The accuracy of references is the responsibility of authors.
• Compile a reference list at the end of the text.
• Do NOT submit references in endnote or footnote format as our automated systems cannot process these.
• Use the "Vancouver style" and abbreviate journal names as in PubMed. Give surnames and initials of all authors (or only the first three authors [et al] if there are more than four) and cite first and last page numbers in full (these two requirements are slightly different from the Vancouver style). Specify the type of reference (eg, a letter, an editorial, an abstract, a supplement).
• Cite personal communications and unpublished papers in the text, not in the reference list and obtain written permission from people cited, giving their titles, positions and affiliations.
• For all non-journal references, including conference publications, newspaper articles and electronic media, please consult the National Library of Medicine's "Citing Medicine" for the required detail and format.
• Tip for accurate journal references: Typing errors often render references inaccurate. For accurate references to biomedical journals, check the reference in PubMed’s Single Citation Matcher and copy the PubMed citation into your document. The PubMed citation is not in the Vancouver style, but it is acceptable for new submissions to the MJA.
• For examples of references, click here.

• Provide a meaningful title for each table.
• Simplify the information in tables as much as possible.
• Keep the number of columns to a minimum and column headings short.
• Information in tables should not be duplicated in the text.
• Tables should be designed to fit comfortably onto a Journal page.

• Images may be embedded in Word files when you submit your article for consideration, but these will not be suitable for publication.
• If your article is accepted, you will need to provide separate image files in their native electronic formats.
• Preferred image file formats are EPS, TIFF, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop.
• JPEG images are acceptable, but do not use JPEG compression to reduce image size, as this also reduces image quality. JPEG images must be saved at their maximum size. ZIP compression is acceptable.
• Provide a letter of permission from the copyright holder for the use of images from other publications.

• Photographs must be of high resolution. Generally speaking, an acceptable image must be at least 8.75cm across when printed at 300 dots per inch (dpi).
• If the photograph is small to begin with, it cannot be turned into a high resolution image by increasing the resolution in image editing software, as this will produce a blurry image when printed.
• Photomicrographs require internal scale markers. State the original magnification and stain.

• As graphs will be redrawn or modified inhouse to comply with MJA style, please provide the data from which the graph was generated.

• The preferred file format for illustrations and flowcharts is EPS.
• Flowcharts may be submitted as Powerpoint or Word documents.

All authors are asked to transfer copyright to the Australasian Medical Publishing Company (AMPCo) Ltd before their article is published. Manuscripts that are accepted may not be published elsewhere, in whole or in part, without written permission from AMPCo.

To download this form click here

Authorship should be based on substantial contribution to (a) the concept and design of the article, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (b) drafting of the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (c) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions (a), (b) and (c) must all be met, and each author must be prepared to take public responsibility for the article. Authors may be asked to sign a declaration to this effect (authors will be notified after submission if this is required for their manuscript). The order of authors should be the joint decision of all authors.

Any change in authors and/or contributors (eg, additions, deletions or change of order) after the manuscript is first submitted must be approved by all authors. An explanation for the change must be provided to the Journal, signed by all authors, including the added/moved/removed author(s).

Authors must declare whether they had help with study design, data collection, data analysis, or manuscript preparation (including writing) from others not listed as authors. The identity of the individuals who provided this assistance and any entity that supported the assistance must be disclosed in the published article.

• All experimental investigations on humans should have received ethics approval and the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board that gave approval for the study must be stated in the Methods section of the report.
• The name of the ethics committee that gave approval for the study must be stated in the Methods section of the report.
• Ethics approval may also be required for case reports.
• All experimental investigations on humans must include a statement in the Methods section that the subjects gave their informed consent.
• Studies involving Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people must also state that they have been approved by the relevant local Indigenous representatives.
• Patient anonymity must be preserved, and identifying information should not be published unless it is essential for scientific purposes. If identifying information is essential, the authors must provide a signed statement from the patient(s) giving approval for the publication of the identifying material, including photographs, at the time of submission (Click here to download a patient permission form).
• All case reports, including letters, in which living patients are described and there is any possibility of identification in the text or images (even if this is just by the patient him- or herself) must include a signed statement from the patient(s) giving approval for the publication of the personal or identifying material, including photographs (Click here to download a patient permission form).

• The MJA supports the registration of trials as an important initiative to improve the reporting of clinical studies (see http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/183_01_040705/van10440_fm.html).
• Clinical trials that began enrolling patients after 1 July 2005 must register in a public trials registry at or before the onset of enrolment to be considered for publication.
• If you are submitting a randomised controlled trial please add the registration number of the trial and the name of the trial registry in the acknowledgements section of your manuscript.
• The Australian Clinical Trial Registry is located at the National Health and Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Centre at the University of Sydney (http://www.actr.org.au).
• Other trial registers that currently meet all of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and World Health Organization (WHO) requirements can be found at http://www.icmje.org/faq_clinical.html.

You will need to provide a letter of permission from the copyright holder for the use of material from other publications.

All accepted manuscripts are subject to embargo until 12.01 am on the day of publication. This means that manuscripts should not be made available to others, nor should any news reports about articles appear until the embargo is lifted. The embargo does not preclude authors from discussing their manuscript before the publication date with journalists who are preparing news items or stories that will appear after the embargo has been lifted. The journalist must be made aware of the embargo and agree to uphold it.

Media releases about selected articles from each issue of the MJA are issued by the Federal office of the Australian Medical Association. The authors of any article selected for media release will receive a copy of the release for approval in the fortnight before publication and should be prepared to discuss their work with journalists under the conditions of the embargo (see above).

Reprints may be ordered for all articles. Reprints with presentation covers are available. Prices are supplied with the author's proof or on request.

Submitted manuscripts are acknowledged by email.

All manuscripts are initially reviewed by the MJA's in-house editorial team and those deemed unsuitable (insufficient originality, serious scientific or methodological flaws, or a message that is too specialised or of limited interest to a general medical audience) are returned to the author(s), usually within 3 weeks.

Manuscripts are sent, blinded, to two or three experts (from our panel of over 4000). After reassessment by the editorial committee they are returned to the authors, either for revision or because they are unsuitable for publication, about 8 weeks after the date of submission. The peer review process is managed online. Authors can log in to Editorial Manager at any time to check the status of their submission. Decisions are communicated by email to the corresponding author.

A request for revision does not mean that the manuscript has been accepted for publication, but is an opportunity to present the best possible article to the editorial committee for a decision about publication. Authors are generally given 4 weeks to return the revised manuscript to us. Revisions should be prepared using Word's "Track changes" feature to enable the editors to easily see where changes have been made, and should be sent together with a letter outlining the responses to the reviewers' comments.

The final decision about publication is made by the Editor.

All accepted manuscripts are edited for brevity and clarity and to conform to MJA style (for some articles editing may be extensive).Most authors will receive a galley proof of the edited manuscript (by email) for checking of factual accuracy, which must be given urgent attention. No further major corrections are usually possible once the galley proof has been returned to us. Galley proofs may not be sent for small items, such as letters, if no substantial changes have been made.

Collections of articles on the same topic may be published as supplements, usually funded by sources other than the Journal. They are subject to the Journal's usual editorial and peer-review processes. Contact the Editor if you wish to propose a supplement.

• The journal editor must take full responsibility for policies, practices, and content of supplements. The journal editor must approve the appointment of the supplement editor(s) and retain the authority to reject papers.
• All contributions will be subject to the Journal's normal peer review process. The editor retains the right to reject articles which do not meet the Journal's standards.
• The sources of funding should be clearly stated and prominently located in the supplement.
• Together with the MJA editorial staff the supplement's external editor will be responsible for the recruitment of potential contributors.
• The sponsor(s) should have no input into articles or influence the contributors as to content.
• The supplement editor is required to declare any competing interests and if these are prohibitive will need to reconsider his/her role.
• The supplement's contributors will be required to declare any competing interests and if these are prohibitive will need to reconsider their roles.
• Honoraria are not encouraged and if granted will be indicated in the supplement.
• The supplement's articles should not favour drugs/interventions/views/products of the supporting body to the detriment of other drugs/interventions/views/products.
• Contributors to the supplement must write their own contributions. "Ghost writing" is not permitted.