British Journal of Dermatology

An Official Journal of the British Association of Dermatologists

Edited by:
Dr Tanya O. Bleiker, Derby, UK

Print ISSN: 0007-0963
Online ISSN: 1365-2133
Frequency: Monthly
Current Volume: 162 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 4/43 Dermatology
Impact Factor: 3.489

TopAuthor Guidelines

NEW (20 October 2009)

Authors are now required to provide bulleted statements (maximum 70 words) in answer to each of the following two questions: i. What's already known about this topic? ii. What does this study add?

BJD FORMS

Exclusive Licence Form
Patient Consent Form
Author Consent Form

1. AIMS & SCOPE

British Journal of Dermatology (BJD) publishes papers on all aspects of the biology and pathology of the skin. Originally the Journal, founded in 1888, was devoted almost exclusively to the interests of the dermatologist in clinical practice. However, the rapid development, since the 1950s, of research on the physiology and experimental pathology of the skin has been reflected in the contents of the Journal, which now provides a vehicle for the publication of both experimental and clinical ethical research and serves equally the laboratory worker and the clinician.

2. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES

BJD invites the following types of submission:

Review articles

The Journal aims to publish concise, high-quality review articles of recent advances in laboratory or clinical research. Review articles may be solicited by the Editor or may be submitted by authors for publication subject to peer review. Review articles must include an unstructured abstract (maximum 250 words), and should not exceed 3000 words of body text. Use of illustrations and figures is encouraged. Review articles must include bulleted statements (maximum 70 words) in answer to the following questions: what's already known about this topic?; what does this study add?

Original articles

Original articles are the Journal's primary mode of communication. Original articles must include a structured abstract (maximum 250 words), and should not exceed 3000 words of body text. Original articles must include bulleted statements (maximum 70 words) in answer to the following questions: what's already known about this topic?; what does this study add?

For purposes of presentation only, accepted original articles are divided into the following sections:

Cutaneous biology
Clinical and laboratory investigations[1]
Contact dermatitis and allergy
Dermatological surgery and lasers
Dermatopathology
Epidemiology and health services research
Paediatric dermatology
Photobiology
Therapeutics

Concise communications

Concise communications usually describe completed laboratory[2] or clinical work and are restricted to no more than 1100 words, 15 references, one table and two figures. Concise communications must include a structured abstract. Concise communications must include bulleted statements (maximum 70 words) in answer to the following questions: what's already known about this topic?; what does this study add?

Case reports

BJD includes only case reports of novel and extraordinary significance. Case reports must include an unstructured abstract. Case reports must include bulleted statements (maximum 70 words) in answer to the following questions: what's already known about this topic?; what does this study add?

Gene corner

The Gene corner section provides a forum for unusual case reports illustrating a novel phenotype associated with mutation in a known gene. No abstracts are required.

Correspondence

Correspondence (Letters to the Editor) may be in response to issues arising from recently published articles, or short, free-standing pieces expressing an opinion. Items of correspondence should be formatted in one continuous section and should not exceed 800 words, 10 references and two figures. All letters are subject to expert review.

3. SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

All submissions should be made online at the BJD ScholarOne Manuscripts site (formerly known as Manuscript Central). New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site, submissions should be made via the Author Centre.

Submissions should be accompanied by a completed Exclusive Licence Form. Authors of all manuscripts are required to license copyright in their paper to the British Association of Dermatologists. Copyright licensing is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless copyright has been licensed.

4. PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Manuscripts must be written in British English.

Manuscript text must be saved in Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf). Do not submit text in PDF format (.pdf). Authors should note that Word 2007 is not yet compatible with journal production systems. Unfortunately, the journal cannot accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents until such time as a stable production version is released. Please use Word's 'Save As' option therefore to save your document as an older (.doc) file type. Figures must be saved as separate figure files. GIF, JPEG, PICT or Bitmap files are acceptable for submission, but only TIFF or EPS files are suitable for printing. After acceptance, you will be contacted to provide print-quality figures if you have not already done so. NOTE: If you're able to supply figures PDF format (.pdf) only they must be distilled using the 'Print Optimised' option.

Abbreviations must be defined when first used in the abstract and in the main text, as well as when first used in table and figure captions.

Manuscripts must be as succinct as possible. Repetition of information or data in different sections of the manuscript must be carefully avoided. Text must comply with the word limits defined in Section 2, and, where appropriate, include:

Title Page

The first page of all manuscripts should contain the following information:

1) the title of the paper
2) a running head not exceeding 50 characters (not needed for correspondence items)
3) 2-6 article keywords. These should be MeSH terms if possible - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/2008/MBrowser.html
4) manuscript word, table and figure count
5) names of authors as initial(s) followed by surnames
6) names of the institutions at which the research was conducted, clearly linked to respective authors
7) name, address, telephone and fax number, and email address of corresponding author
8) a statement of all funding sources that supported the work
9) any conflict of interest disclosures (see Section 5)
10) bulleted statements (maximum 70 words) in answer to each of the following questions: what's already known about this topic?; what does this study add?
11) names and email addresses of possible manuscript referrees.

Abstracts

Authors submitting original articles and concise communications should note that structured abstracts are required. The structured abstract should adopt the format: Background, Objectives, Patients/Methods, Results, Conclusions.

Review articles and case reports require abstracts but they need not be structured.

Abstracts should contain no citations to previously published work.

Correspondence and gene corner articles do not require abstracts.

Text

This should in general, but not necessarily, be divided into sections with the headings: Summary, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References, Figure legends.

Tables and Figures

Tables should not be inserted in the appropriate place in the text but should be included at the end of the manuscript, each on a separate page.

Figures must be submitted as a separate file or files.

Tables and figures should be referred to in text as follows: Fig. 1, Figs 2-4; Table 1, Table 2. Each table and/or figure must have a legend that explains its purpose without reference to the text. Where a figure has more than one panel, each panel should be labelled in the top left-hand corner using lower case letters in parentheses, i.e. '(a)', '(b)' etc. and a brief description of each panel given in the figure legend.

Colour illustrations are welcomed and all colour is published free of charge to the author.

Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce previously published figures or tables. When an individual is identifiable in a photograph written permission must be obtained (see Section 5 below).

Electronic Artwork

If submitting artwork electronically, please read the information on the Wiley-Blackwell Publishing website. Vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) should be saved in Encapsulated Postscript Format (EPS), and bitmap files (e.g. photographs) in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Line art must be scanned at a minimum of 800 dpi, photographs at a minimum of 300 dpi.

References

References should be in Vancouver format and appear as consecutive, unbracketed superscript numbers in the text, e.g. 'in our previous reports^1,2 and those of Smith et al. ^3-5' and should be listed numerically in the reference list at the end of the article.

Format references as below, using standard (Medline) abbreviations for journal titles. If more than four authors, include the first three authors followed by et al.

1 de Berker DAR, Baran R, Dawber RPR. The nail in dermatological diseases. In: Baran and Dawber's Diseases of the Nails and their Management(Baran R, Dawber RPR, de Berker DAR, Haneke E, Tosti A, eds), 3rd edn. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd, 2001; 172-92.

2 Shuster S. The nature and consequence of Karl Marx's skin disease. Br J Dermatol 2008; 158:1-3.

3 Graham-Brown R, Burns T. Lecture Notes: Dermatology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

4 Smith A. (1999) Select committee report into social care in the community [WWW document]. URL http://www.dhss.gov.uk/reports/report015285.html [accessed on 7 November 2003].

We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote for reference management and formatting. EndNote reference styles can be searched for here: http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp.

Standards

Manuscripts reporting randomised trials should follow the CONSORT statement. Manuscripts reporting epidemiological studies should consider the STROBE statement.

Supporting Information

BJD is able to host online supporting information. Supporting information must be important ancillary information that is relevant to the parent article but which does not or cannot appear in the printed edition of the Journal. Supporting information will be published as submitted, and will not be corrected or checked for scienfitic content, typographical errors or functionality.

Supporting information should be uploaded to Manuscript Central (see Section 3) at the time of manuscript submission using the file designation 'Supplementary material for review'.

5. DECLARATIONS

Original Publication

Submission of a manuscript will be held to imply that it contains original unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere at the same time. The author must supply a full statement to the Editor about all submissions and previous reports that might be regarded as redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships between themselves and others that might be perceived by others as biasing their work. To prevent ambiguity, authors must state explicitly whether potential conflicts do or do not exist.

Ethics

When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983. Do not use patients' names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for, or any national law on, the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. A statement describing explicitly the ethical background to the studies being reported should be included in all manuscripts in the Materials and Methods section. Ethics committee or institutional review board approval should be stated.

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential but patient data should never be altered or falsified in an attempt to attain anonymity. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity.

Authorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. Authorship credit should be based only on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2 and 3 must all be met. Acquisition of funding, the collection of data or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship. All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgments section.

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), adherence to these submission criteria is considered essential for publication in the BJD; mandatory fields are included in the online submission process to ensure this. If, at a later stage in the submission process or even after publication, a manuscript or authors are found to have disregarded these criteria, it is the duty of the Editor to report this to COPE. COPE may recommend that action be taken, including but not exclusive to, informing the authors' professional regulatory body and/or institution of such a dereliction.

The website for COPE may be accessed at: http://www.publicationethics.org.uk

6. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON ACCEPTANCE

Accepted Articles

Further to acceptance in BJD, the manuscripts of Review and Original articles are immediately made publicly available online. 'Accepted Articles' have been peer-reviewed and accepted for formal publication, but have not been subject to copyediting, composition or proof correction. The service provides for the earliest possible dissemination of research data following article acceptance. Accepted Articles appear in PDF format only and are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked. The DOI remains unique to a given article in perpetuity and can continue to be used to cite and access the article further to print publication. More information about DOIs can be found online at http://www.doi.org/faq.html.

Neither the British Association of Dermatologists nor Wiley-Blackwell can be held responsible for errors or consequences arising from the use of information contained in Accepted Articles; nor do the views and opinions expressed necessarily reflect those of the British Association of Dermatologists or Wiley-Blackwell.

Proofs

Page proofs will be sent electronically to the corresponding author and should be returned within 3 days of receipt to the Production Editor. Significant textual alterations are unacceptable at proof stage without the written approval of the Editor, and they are likely to result in the delay of publication.

The corresponding author will receive an e-mail alert containing a link to a secure web site. A working e-mail address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. In the absence of the corresponding author, please arrange for a colleague to access the e-mail to retrieve the proofs.

Please note that you have final responsibility for what is stated in the proofs of your manuscript. However, the proofs are checked thoroughly by the BJD editorial team and if we do not receive corrections after several automated reminders to the email address supplied for the corresponding author then we will assume that we have your approval for publication.

Early View

BJD is covered by the Publisher's Early View service. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made subsequent to Early View publication. Early View articles can be cited and tracked by DOI.

OnlineOpen

OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication vis Wiley InterScience, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, click here

Prior to acceptance, there is no requirement to inform the Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the Journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form: Online Open Form

Author Services

Author Services enables authors to track their article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

Offprints

Free access to the final PDF offprint of your article will be available via Author Services only. Please therefore sign up for Author Services if you would like to access your PDF offprint and enjoy the many other benefits the service offers.

Author material archive policy

Please note that unless specifically requested, the Publisher will dispose of all submitted hardcopy or electronic material 2 months after publication. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the Editorial Office or Production Editor as soon as possible if you have not yet done so.

[1] Original genetics articles should report mutation screens in large populations, new phenotype-genotype correlations identified in large case series, new genetic mechanisms or original mutations in a novel gene.

[2] Concise communications in genetics should report a single case mutation presented with substantial functional data. Single case reports caused by a novel mutation should be submitted as Correspondence.