General guidance on the preparation of manuscripts for submission is available at ICMJE and specific comments on BJGP requirements are below.
We have a paper-short/web-long policy for articles in the research section of the journal. Articles are published in full online, and as one-page summaries in the print version. This page covers the following topics:
To help streamline submissions to BJGP we’ve adopted a format-light submission process. This means that when initially submitting to us, you no longer need to format your article to our full requirements.
We understand that detailed re-formatting for different journals is a time-consuming process that is potentially a significant burden on authors. It is important that manuscripts have a basic structure that ensures the editors and peer reviewers can evaluate them accurately. We are prepared to be flexible on this, but we do reserve the right to ask for revisions if, in the editors’ opinion, the manuscript is presented in such a way to significantly hamper assessment.
When you are ready to submit, please do so via the ScholarOne submission system.
- Please ensure your word counts for both article and title conform to our guidelines.
- Along with your cover letter, upload your manuscript including text, figures, and tables. Figures and tables can be placed within the text, which makes it considerably easier for editors and reviewers, or uploaded as separate files. Please also upload any supplementary data files.
- On the first page of the manuscript file, include the full names and institutions for all authors. Corresponding authors must provide an ORCID iD. Please also provide ORCID iDs for other authors where available. More information on ORCID and the benefits of using an ORCID iD is available here.
- All manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to evaluate a manuscript (Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, Figures, and Tables with captions).
- You should also include any information on funding, ethical approval, data availability, and competing interests.
- Your references may be submitted in any style or format, but please ensure formatting is consistent throughout and includes author(s) name(s), journal title/book title, article title (where required), year of publication, volume & issue /book chapter, and the pagination. Including the DOI is highly encouraged.
Following editorial and peer review:
- If you are asked to revise your manuscript after editorial or peer review, the journal will then request that the revised manuscript to be formatted according to the journal guidelines.
Title
The title should be a clear description of the topic of the research and the methods and setting used for the study. It should not exceed 12 words. Dividing the title into two clauses may be helpful, for example 'Prevalence of problem gambling in young people: cross-sectional study in general practice'.
Authors
Include the full names, main qualifications, job titles, and institutional addresses for all authors. If giving more than one affiliation (only if necessary) please provide a job title for each. Corresponding authors must provide an ORCID iD. Please also provide ORCID iDs for other authors where available. The e-mail address of the corresponding author should also be included. If you put your name to an article you must fulfil the standard requirements for authorship. The order of authors on the submission form will be the order of authors used in the Author Accepted Manuscript. To avoid confusion, please ensure that the order of authors in the manuscript matches that on the submission form.
Abstract
All research articles should have a structured abstract of no more than 250 words. This should be set out with the following headings: Background, Aim, Design and Setting, Method, Results, Conclusion, and Keywords. The abstract will form the basis for the short version of the paper appearing in the print edition of the BJGP so please make use of, but do not exceed, the full word count, so that it contains as much information about your study as possible. In particular please ensure that the most important results are fully reported and that the Conclusion is as specific as possible about the implications of your work for practice and research.
Keywords
You can include up to six keywords, which should be MeSH headings. Ensure that primary health care, family practice, or general practice are included where appropriate.
How this fits in
Summarise, in no more than four short sentences, what was previously known or believed on the topic and what your research adds, particularly focusing on the relevance to clinicians.
Main text
Articles should follow the traditional format of Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion. We recommend that the main text does not exceed 2500 words, excluding tables and figures as described below. Articles may be returned without review if this guidance is ignored.
Generic names of drugs should be used wherever possible. We discourage the use of non-standard abbreviations for medical terms, except where it would otherwise make the text unwieldy.
Footnotes are not included in the main text and will be removed.
Introduction
This should be a succinct and up to date review of the key publications informing the intellectual background to the study. It does not need to be a systematic review, but should avoid obviously selective citation of the literature. The introduction should lead to the framing of the research question being asked, and this should be clearly stated.
Method
This section should include a description of setting, patients, intervention, the time that the study took place, instruments used to measure outcomes, statistical tests applied, and software used for analysis, stating the version number. It should also include any arrangements for data oversight.
Results
This section should contain all the information required by reviewers and readers to assess the validity of the conclusions. For quantitative studies, the section should include details of the response rates and numbers lost to follow-up, and trials should include a CONSORT flow diagram. For more information, see the specific guidance on research articles below.
Data
We strongly encourage authors to make all datasets on which the conclusions of their research rely on available to readers. We also encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main Results section or as Supplementary data whenever possible. If the dataset is publicly available please provide details including repository name, DOI, and, where possible, include a hyperlink to the URL of the dataset.
Statistics
Results of statistical analyses should be reported using estimates and confidence intervals whenever possible, to provide indications of magnitude and precision rather than just P-values. The P-value result alone is generally only useful for assessing statistical significance, not clinical significance. For serious outcomes such as mortality this is not so critical because as any reduction in mortality is beneficial, but it is important for other outcomes where a judgment needs to be made about whether the clinical improvement is worth the cost of the intervention or treatment. Where P-values are presented so that readers can judge the strength of evidence for themselves, the exact figure should be quoted to two significant figures down to P = 0.01. Any figure below this can be quoted to one significant figure down to P = 0.001, below which P < 0.001 will suffice. Examples of presentations are therefore P = 0.087, P = 0.002 but not P = 0.0005.
Discussion
Structure the discussion using these subheadings:
- Summary
This is an opportunity to state concisely what the study has found, emphasising the novelty and importance of the results if possible. You can expand on the significance of the findings for clinical practice and policy, and their implications for future research, in the final section of the Discussion.
- Strengths and limitations
As well as emphasising the strong points of the study – scale, recruitment and response rates, duration of follow-up, retention of subjects, richness of narrative material etc, use this section to be candid about the limitations of the work because, by doing so and reflecting on your methods and findings, you may be able to anticipate and perhaps mitigate criticisms that may be made during peer review.
- Comparison with existing literature
This is an opportunity to explain how your work takes the subject forward, describing how previously unanswered questions or uncertainties have now been answered or resolved, and how and why your findings agree or disagree with similar work in the field.
- Implications for research and/or practice
This is an important section in which you have the opportunity to crystallise the significance of your work for future research and, perhaps more importantly, for clinical practice or healthcare policy. This is not the place to air uncertainties or to introduce new discussions and further references: the clarity of this section is likely to reflect the clarity and precision of the research question and the subsequent findings.
Authors are expected to adopt this structure unless there are good reasons for not doing so. Additional subheadings can be used if they are likely to help readers understand the article.
Tables and figures
Up to a total of six tables, figures, or boxes are permitted in an article. Close attention should be paid to ensure clear presentation of data. This will normally mean keeping the data in each table (and the number of tables) to the minimum possible. A rough guide would be no more than five columns and rows in each table. The same general rule applies to figures.
We encourage use of graphic representation of data; please ensure that original data are also included for the purpose of redrafting where necessary. Pie charts are discouraged. All figures and tables must have a caption.
Supplementary data
Supplementary data may include additional figures, materials and methods, tables, or other items that add to the topic of the article but cannot be included within the body of the article. Authors must include the supplementary data when submitting the article and its revised versions. Please upload your Supplementary data as a single PDF and label Tables, Figures, and Boxes (for non-numerical data) with an S; for example, Table S1, Figure S1, Box S1, etc. Please cite these in the main text as Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Box 1, Supplementary Figure 1, etc. Please note, supplementary material will not be copyedited or typeset so will be published as supplied.
Additional information
At the end of the text and before the references we ask authors to report:
- Funding: name of funding body with reference number where appropriate
- Ethical approval: body giving ethics approval with reference number where appropriate
- Competing interests
- Acknowledgements
Authors should include acknowledgements of all those who have helped with and contributed to the study (including patients) who are not authors of the article. Individuals should only be acknowledged with their express permission.
References
These are presented in Vancouver style, with standard NLM title abbreviations for journals. Where appropriate, we encourage authors to cite primary literature in favour of reviews in order to give credit to the group(s) who first reported the finding (see DORA). References to personal communications in the text should include the date. Do not use automatic formatting features of your software such as footnotes and endnotes to indicate references.
The short version of the paper in the print edition of the BJGP will now be based on the Abstract submitted with the full paper, accompanied by a summary sentence, the How it Fits In box and, if possible an image, which we will ask authors to supply. The full-length version will be posted, as a citable publication, online as soon as possible after acceptance.
References will appear in the online version only.
BJGP now publishes an Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) ahead of the full publication of a Research article. The AAM is the final version of the manuscript accepted by the journal following changes made during peer review, but before typesetting, subediting, and correction. An AAM will have the same DOI as the final, fully published article, meaning that the article can be cited as soon as its AAM is posted online. If you do not want your article to be published first as an AAM, please notify the journal office by email.
Please ensure all author information is correct and up to date on the ScholarOne submission system. The order of authors on the submission form will be the order used in the AAM. Errors in the AAM cannot be corrected.
We require confirmation that the author has permission to include any third-party content in their manuscript.
Please ensure all author information on the submission system is correct and up to date as errors in the AAM cannot be corrected.
If you are required to submit a revised version of your manuscript with tracked changes, you will also be asked to provide a ‘clean’ copy as a supplementary file not for review. If this is not provided, the tracked changes version will form the AAM. The author(s) retain(s) copyright and responsibility for the content of the AAM.
Errors discovered and corrected during the subediting process may materially alter the content of the manuscript, and the latest published version (the Version of Record) should be used in preference to any preceding versions (such as the AAM).
Authors submitting randomised controlled trials should follow the revised CONSORT guidelines, including a completed CONSORT checklist and flowchart of participants in the trial.
You should also note the difficulty outlined in making statements about an intention-to-treat analysis. We acknowledge that this is a difficult area and ask that authors are candid about handling the data of patients lost to follow-up.
We welcome systematic reviews, with or without meta-analysis (up to 2500 words plus data presented in up to six tables, figures, or boxes) on areas of interest and importance to primary care. They should be written in a style suitable for the BJGP, but should aspire to the quality standards set by the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
You may find it helpful to consult the instructions for systematic reviews given on the Cochrane Collaboration website. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should conform to the PRISMA statement. Reviews should include a structured abstract, a statement of the question that you are attempting to answer, and a description of the search strategy used to answer it. Authors should attempt to synthesise results of primary care research either quantitatively or qualitatively.
Articles describing qualitative research should conform to the guidance set out in: O'Brien BC, Harris IB, Beckman TJ, et al. Standards for reporting qualitative research: a synthesis of recommendations. Acad Med 2014; 89(9): 1245-1251.
Illustrative quotes should be included in the results section of the text where the themes are described. We recommend that the total word count including main text and quotes does not exceed 4000 words.
The EQUATOR Network provides details of all the guidelines on reporting various kinds of research studies including the following:
- RECORD for studies using routinely-collected health data and electronic health records;
- STARD for studies on the evaluation of diagnostic tests; and
- STROBE for observational studies.
The BJGP operates an open access publication policy for research papers. Please see Open Access Publication on our Process and Policies page.
We now have the facility to automatically transfer articles to BJGP Open that we are unable to accept in BJGP. During the submission process we will request that you confirm whether you are happy for your manuscript to be transferred to BJGP Open if it is rejected at any point during the submission or peer review process. If you agree, all versions of the article and its supporting files will be transferred for consideration in BJGP Open if appropriate, and you will be notified by email if the transfer has occurred.
The standard peer review and decision-making process will then follow in BJGP Open. The article processing charge for publication in BJGP Open is £1000 (plus VAT where applicable).
Submit your article via the BJGP submission system: BJGP ScholarOne Manuscripts. When you register, make sure you enter your email address correctly, otherwise we’ll have no way of contacting you. If your email address changes, remember to update your profile.
