Journal of Medical Education Research

About the Journal

The Journal of Medical Education Research is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in relation to the training of healthcare professionals, in particular in undergraduate education.  While it is based at Buckingham, it draws from academic authors beyond its borders who have an established track record in their field.  The journal has a special focus on curriculum (design and implementation), evaluation, assessments, professionalism, and evidence-based medicine.  It is published annually, and the first Issue of Journal of Medical Education Research is focused on technology enhanced innovations in curriculum-design and delivery.

The University of Buckingham Medical School (UBMS) is one of the newer schools in the United Kingdom and the first independent not-for-profit medical school.  It offers a 4.5-year course versus the usual 5-year MBChB course and there is a resonance with innovation and fresh thinking at its core. This journal is a further manifestation of this, as we seek to showcase ideas and concepts and not simply become an organ of academic activity.  All articles published by the Journal of Medical Education Research will be made freely accessible online immediately upon publication without subscription charges.

Journal of Medical Education Research accepts the following types of article:

• Research Articles
• Commentaries
• Watch this space
• Letters to the Editor

Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English.

Preparing Your Paper

Research articles:

• Should be around 2500-5000 words, written with the following elements in this order: title page, abstract, key words, main text-introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement, declaration of interest statement, references, tables with caption (on individual pages), figures with caption (on individual pages)
• Should contain a structured abstract of 300 words
• Should contain between 5 and 10 keywords

For further details click here

Commentaries

• Commentaries should be around 1500-2000 words and discuss findings, implications, and research on a specific topic. They are short, focused comments either on articles recently published in the journal, or trends within its field. Commentaries offer author’s original ideas or personal experience on a current hot topic or elaborate on a widely researched subject.  A current hot topic may be on a subject that is important or one that challenges the current zeitgeist.

Watch This Space

• The Journal accepts short papers, not exceeding 1,500 words with one table or figure, primarily for the purpose of publishing early important results or innovations within curriculum design and delivery, to begin the exchange of educational ideas within the Medical Education community.
• All articles should document some form of evaluation or planned evaluation of the innovation/educational research.
• The article should be written with the following elements: What We Did, How We Did It, What We have Learned, Take Home Points.
• Should contain a structured abstract of 150 words.
• Should contain between 5 and 10 keywords.

Letters to the Editor

• Letters to the Editor will be a brief communication on a topic relevant to the journals should be concise pieces of no more than 800 words and not include original research, tables, or figures.
• Due to the volume of letters submitted to the editors it is not always possible to provide feedback on every submission.

Peer Review Process

Each article is peer reviewed. Initially the articles are reviewed by the editor and their assistant editors. The Journal of Medical Education Research has an editorial board, and its members cover a wide range of disciplines within the educational field. All the members of the board have an established track record in academic publication.

Once articles are accepted to peer-review they are then sent to selected peer reviewers. Each article is peer reviewed by at least two reviewers and each reviewer will submit their review including comments and a recommendation when to accept for publication, reject or to request revisions to the articles.

The process for Peer Review is as follows:

1. Submission of Paper

The corresponding or submitting author submits the paper to the journal. In virtually all cases this should be via our online platform.

2. Editorial Office Assessment

The editorial team checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against the journal’s Author Guidelines to make sure it includes the required sections and stylizations. The quality of the paper is not assessed at this point.

3. Appraisal by the Editor

The lead Editor checks that the paper is appropriate for the journal and is sufficiently original and interesting. If not, the paper may be rejected without being reviewed any further.

4. Editor Assigns an Associate Editor

Most Issues of JMER have Associate Editors who handle the peer review. If they do, they would be assigned at this stage.

5. Invitation to Reviewers

The handling editor sends invitations to individuals they believe would be appropriate reviewers. As responses are received, further invitations are issued, if necessary, until the minimum number of two reviewers per article is confirmed.

6. Response to Invitations

Potential reviewers consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They then accept or decline. If possible, when declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers.

7. Review is Conducted

The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper several times. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise they will read the paper several more times, taking notes so as to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revision (usually flagged as either major or minor) before it is reconsidered.

8. Journal Evaluates the Reviews

The handling editor considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

9. The Decision is Communicated

The author receives a decision email including any relevant reviewer comments. As JMER operates a blind review process the author will not see the personal details of the reviewer.

10. Next Steps

If accepted, the paper is sent to production. If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the handling editor should include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article. If the paper was sent back for revision, the reviewers should expect to receive a new version, unless they have opted out of further participation. However, where only minor changes were requested this follow-up review might be done by the handling editor.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate gold open access under a CC-BY-NC licence to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Author Publication Charges

There are no charges for authors to publish their work in the journal.

Self-Archiving and Institutional Repositories

UBP offers a publishing model that enables wide access to academic research, global readership for our authors and ensures the long-term preservation of published content. As a result, we permit authors to archive their contributions to this Journal. This can be either via authors' own websites, or via their institution’s or funding body’s online repository or archive

In addition, all published articles are archived by UBP at a number of repositories including LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, PKP and The British Library.

Licensing

Content is available on Open Access basis under the following license: CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (for more information visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

•  The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
•  The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
•  Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
•  The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
•  The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Author Guidelines

We request the following information for research articles. 

Title page- The first page of the manuscript should contain the following information:

1. The title of the paper
2. A short title not exceeding 50 characters for use as a running head

• Names of authors

1. Names of institutions at which the research was conducted
2. Name, address, telephone number and email address of the corresponding author.

Abstract

The abstract should not exceed 300 words.  The abstract must include the following sections:

• Introduction - the context and purpose of the study
• Methods- how the study was performed, and statistical tests used
• Results- the main findings
• Conclusions- brief summary and implications
• Keywords- five to ten key words

Main text

Introduction

The background section should provide a background to the study, a summary of existing literature and the aims of the study

Methods

The methods section should include the aims, setting and design of the study

Characteristics of participants

Clear description of process and any interventions

Results

This section should include the findings of the study, including appropriate results of statistical analyses, which must be included in text or as tables and figures.

Discussion

This section should discuss the implications of the findings in the context of existing research and highlight any limitations of the study.

Conclusions

This section should report the main conclusions, provide an explanation of importance and relevance of the study provided.

Notes on contributors

Declarations

All manuscripts must have the following:

• Ethics and consent to participate
• Competing interest

Journal of Medical Education Research requires all authors to declare all competing interests in relation to their work.  All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘competing interests’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests.  Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read- ‘The authors declare that they have no competing interests.’

• Funding
• Authors contributions
• Acknowledgements

Citation

Journal of Medical Education Research uses Harvard reference style for its publications.

Reference Examples

Book

Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title. Edition (if not first edition). Place of publication: Publisher.

Example:

Salway, J.G. 2016. Metabolism at a glance. 4th ed. Chichester: Wiley- Blackwell.

Editor(s)

If you are referencing a book with an editor rather than an author, this should be indicated in the reference.

Family name, INITIAL(S) (of editor). ed(s). Year. Title. Edition (if not first edition). Place of publication: Publisher.

Example:

Herrington, C.S. ed. 2014. Muir’s textbook of pathology. 15th ed. Boca Raton: Taylor Francis

Chapter in a book

If you are referencing a book with chapters written by different authors, you need to give details of the chapter, and the book in which you read it.

Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Chapter title. In: Family name, INITIAL(S) (of editor). ed(s). Title of book. Edition (if not first edition). Place of publication: Publisher, page numbers.

e-book online

Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title. [Online]. Edition (if not first edition). Place of publication: Publisher. [Date accessed]. Available from: URL

Example:

Ng, R. (2015). Drugs: from discovery to approval [Online]. 3rd ed. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. [Accessed 18 June 2018]. Available from: https://www.dawsonera.com/abstract/9781118907221

Journal Article

One author

Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title of article. Journal Title. Volume (issue number), page numbers.

Example:

Corcoran, N. 2018 Exploring International Students' Food Choices Using Photovoice Techniques.  Journal of International Students 8 (1), pp175-193.

Two authors

Family name, INITIAL(S) and Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title of article. Journal Title. Volume (issue number), page numbers.

Example:

Lindberg, C. and Oldfors, A. 2012 Prognosis and prognostic factors in sporadic inclusion body myositis Acta Neurologica Scandinavica 125, pp.353–358.

More than two authors

Family name, INITIAL(S), Family name, INITIAL(S), Family name, INITIAL(S) and Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title of article. Journal Title. Volume (issue number), page numbers.

Cochrane Review

Family name, INITIAL(S), Family name, INITIAL(S) and Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title of article. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. [Online]. Issue number, article number. [Date accessed]. Available from: URL

Example:

Fisher C.A., Hetrick, S.E. and Rushford, N. (2010). Family therapy for anorexia nervosa. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. [Online]. Issue 6, Art. No.: CD004780. [Accessed June 22 2018]. Available from: http://cochranelibrary-wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004780.pub2/full 

Website

Family name, INITIAL(S) (or company name). Year. Title. [Online]. [Date accessed]. Available from: URL

Example:

Arthritis Foundation [no date] What is Osteoarthritis? [Online]. [Accessed 25 June 2018]. Available at: https://www.arthritis.org/about-arthritis/types/osteoarthritis/what-is-osteoarthritis.php

Newspaper article

Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title of article. Newspaper title. Date, page number(s).

Example:

Bee, P. 2018. Could stinging nettles cure hay fever? The Times. 26 June, pp. 6-7.

Newspaper article (online)

Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title of article. Newspaper title. [Online]. Date. [Date accessed]. Available from: URL

Phillips, D. 2018. 'There are a lot of unknowns': British scientists set to work on Zika vaccine. The Guardian [Online]. 9 March [Accessed 26 June]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/mar/09/british-scientists-work-on-zika-vaccine-brazil-recife-birth-defects

Leaflet

Family name, INITIAL(S) (or company name). Year. Title. [Leaflet]. Place of publication: Publisher.

For informal publications, such as leaflets, provide what details you can:

Example:

Cancer Research UK. 2003. Skin cancer: how to be sunsmart and reduce your risk. [Leaflet]. London: Cancer Research UK.

For more examples of references covering different types of source see any of the books referenced in the bibliography below.

Neville, C. (2007) The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism. London: Open University Press.

Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2016) Cite Them Right: The Essential Referencing Guide. 10th ed. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

Williams, K. and Carroll, J. (2009) Referencing and Understanding Plagiarism. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

Plagiarism

Like all academic journals, we take plagiarism extremely seriously. We reserve the right to and routinely check articles using appropriate software. If there is a cause for concern the editor will arrange to discuss the potential problem with the contributor. We are happy to consider articles which have been submitted to other journals with the relevant permissions and attribution and the intellectual property rights of the submitted text remains with the author.

Copyright Notice

Articles are published online within Gold Open Access under a CC-BY-NC licence.

Authors retain copyright and full publishing rights for their written text.

Make a Submission

Make a Submission

Permissions

For UK permissions, visit PLS Clear

For international permissions, visit Copyright Clearance Center

Information

• For Readers
• For Authors
• For Librarians

Editorial Team

Chief Editor:

Dr Bharathy Kumaravel

Editorial team:

Prof Joanne Harris
Dr Andy McKeown
Dr Andrew Thompsett
Dr Emma Spikings
Andrea Petrella
Suhaib Abdurrezag Ghula
Prof Oliver Pearce
Dr Varadarajan Baskar

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Contact

c/o University of Buckingham Press 51 Gower Street London WC1E 6HJ

Principal Contact

Bharathy Kumaravel

bharathy.kumaravel@buckingham.ac.uk

Support Contact

Christian.muller@legendtimesgroup.co.uk

Christian.muller@legendtimesgroup.co.uk