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Author Guidelines
The mission of Journal of Clinical Pathways® (JCP®) is to provide a platform for original research, insights, and perspectives on clinical pathways and other value-based approaches in health care. The convergence of innovations in big data and incentives for practicing value-based medicine has brought clinical pathways to the forefront as a means to drive precision and optimization of care for patients. The journal provides a forum for discussions of advancements in real-world data and the development of defined treatment pathways in order to address rising costs, mitigate patient risk, reduce variability, and achieve better, more predictable outcomes.
JCP accepts articles on issues related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of clinical pathways. Relevant topics include comparative-effectiveness research; big data analytics; methods in clinical pathway development; optimization of clinical pathway implementation and adherence; health economics and outcomes research; patient-centered outcomes; and alternative payment and value-based care models. Although oncology is a particular area of focus, JCP accepts articles pertaining to all disease treatment settings.
JCP is published in conformance with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. No fees or charges are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal. While revenue for JCP is ad-based, editorial content is evaluated and published independent from advertising influence.
ETHICS
The author is responsible for the contents submitted in the paper. Authors must comply with FDA guidelines, human studies guidelines, and animal welfare regulations of the authors’ institution.
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors should include signed consent forms with their submissions from human subjects who can be identified in photos or in text and indicate in the paper that human subjects have given informed consent. Any instances of research and publication misconduct will be handled in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.
Authors should note if and from where IRB approval was received for their work. If the work did not require IRB approval, the circumstances under which the study was exempt from IRB approval should be noted.
Opinions expressed by authors are their own and not necessarily those of HMP, the editorial staff, or any member of the editorial advisory board. No claims made by authors or advertisers are guaranteed by the publisher or the editors.
SUBMISSION
Authors interested in submitting to JCP should follow the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. All articles submitted to JCP must be original; the journal does not accept manuscripts whose content has been previously published elsewhere, in print or online.
Manuscripts may be submitted online. Authors should fill out the requested information and then upload their manuscript and supporting files (Cover Letter, Author Disclosure forms, Copyright form) in the required formats.
By submitting your manuscript to Journal of Clinical Pathways, you agree to a plagiarism screen via iThenticate. All submissions will be screened for plagiarism before being reviewed by the peer review panel.
To facilitate blind peer-review of manuscripts, please do not include author names, affiliations, or contact information in the submitted manuscript document. Please provide this information separately in the Cover Letter submitted with the manuscript. The manuscript as well as the Cover Letter should be submitted as Microsoft Word files.
Disclosures of funding sources and financial conflicts of interest must be provided for all authors at the time of manuscript submission. Each author must complete and sign an Author Disclosure form. As a matter of editorial policy, we will not publish manuscripts that have been written by, or whose development was funded by, a pharmaceutical company, public relations agency, or similar outside source without full disclosure.
Authors must submit a completed Copyright Release form shortly after submission.
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission and paying fees to reproduce any tables, figures, or other illustrations that were originally published elsewhere; written documentation of this permission should be submitted with the manuscript.
For photographs in which patients are identifiable, authors must include a signed Patient/Parent Consent form. Permission and Consent forms can be requested via email at: JCPeditors@hmpglobal.com.
STYLE
On the title page of the manuscript, please provide a title and up to six keywords for your article. An abstract of 100–175 words should be included in the manuscript document. It should be factual, not descriptive, and outline the main points of the paper. Manuscript text should be should be 500–3000 words in length, not including the Abstract and References.
Values should be reported using conventional units of measure. All medications should be referred to by their generic names throughout the manuscript and in all illustrations.
All references should be cited in full and provided in American Medical Association (AMA) style. Please do not use EndNote formatting, as this makes editing difficult. References should be cited in chronological order in the text using superscripted Arabic numerals and included in a citation list at the end of the article.
Tables and figures that reflect the general subject matter of the article are encouraged and should accompany the manuscript when first submitted (preferably in their original Word, Excel, or PowerPoint formats).
For print-ready figures and photos, high-resolution (300 dpi, 4" x 5") JPEG images are preferred. Other acceptable image formats include EPS, PICT, BMP, and TIFF. Please submit images separately from Microsoft Word files. All graphics should be numbered in proper sequence. Legends should be included in the manuscript document.
ARTICLE TYPES
JCP accepts for consideration the following types of manuscripts: Research Report, Review, From the Field, Case Study, Perspectives, Viewpoint, and Letter to the Editor.
Research Reports are reports of original research pertaining to health economics and outcomes research, clinical pathway development, the evaluation of real-world data, and other investigations related to determination of value in health care.
Review articles provide a thorough, critical, up-to-date overview of the existing literature on a topic relevant to the journal’s mission.
From the Field articles should present timely information on new methods being used to provide value-based care. These articles should have a practical focus and should provide sufficiently detailed information that the reader can implement the approach in their own setting.
Case Studies should present real-world outcomes of using clinical pathways and other value-based treatment approaches in a particular setting. These articles should include detailed information about the approach that was used as well as the methods for evaluating outcomes.
Perspectives articles are less formal in style and should provide unique and evidence-based insights into issues pertaining to the use of clinical pathways and the pursuit of value-based care.
Viewpoints and Letters to the Editor include opinions and commentaries on topics of interest to JCP readers. Letters to the Editor should be written in response to a particular article appearing in a previous issue of the journal or on the JCP website. These submissions are evaluated by at least one expert reviewer prior to acceptance. The Editors reserve the right to decide whether these submissions require full peer review and may invite a response from another contributor to present a counterpoint to the piece.
REVIEW PROCESS
All manuscripts submitted to JCP for consideration are first reviewed by the Editors for quality and appropriateness for the journal. Selected manuscripts then undergo double-blinded peer review by two or more referees. The corresponding author is notified of the reviewers’ decision within approximately 6–8 weeks of submission. During the review process, the reviewers or Editors often request that the authors revise their manuscript. The final decision on acceptance for publication can be made only after the revised version of the manuscript has been reevaluated.
Accepted manuscripts are edited according to AMA and house style. The corresponding author will receive a copyedited manuscript for review prior to publication.
All articles published in print are subsequently published open access on the JCP website.
CORRECTION AND RETRACTION POLICY
JCP stands behind the quality of the manuscripts that it published and the integrity of our peer review process. However, we recognize that even with the highest rigor, situations will still occur where corrections or retractions are required. In general, JCP follows industry best practices on these matters and follows guidelines from organizations such as ICMJE and COPE. Further details are provided below.
Author-Identified Errors
If authors discover an error in their article after publication, they should contact JCPEditors@hmpglobal.com as soon as possible. The authors should clearly communicate the error(s) and if new data/information can or will be provided. The JCP editorial team, including the Editor in Chief, Editorial Director, and members of the Editorial Board with applicable expertise, will review the published article and the information from the authors to decide the appropriate approach to rectify the error.
If a revision or correction will be undertaken and may take some time and may involve further peer review (for example, if it is a data error or other fundamental error that may require a significant revision to the article by the authors), JCP will publish an Expression of Concern to alert its readership that the article is being evaluated to correct a substantial error. The authors will be responsible for the additional research and revisions to the article, and will have to address any comments from the additional peer review process.
If a revision or correction will be undertaken that is relatively minor and easy to fix (for example, a typo that changed the interpretation of a finding), JCP will fix it immediately in the online version of the article and will add a note that the article has been revised, with details about the revision and the date of the revision. A formal correction notice will then be published in the next available issue of JCP. The authors will approve the revised article and the correction notice for accuracy prior to publication.
Notices will be labeled as corrigendum if it was an error introduced during the editing or production process after submission. Notices will be labeled as erratum if it was an error present in the initial submission (data or otherwise).
If the JCP editorial team recommends a retraction as the best course of action, following ICMJE, COPE, and other standards developed by scholarly organizations, they will work with the authors to create the retraction notice. It will be published online immediately, and the retraction will be effective immediately, and the notice will then also be published in the next available issue of JCP. The online version of the article will be updated to reflect its retracted status and the date of its retraction, and if the article is indexed, all proper steps will be followed to ensure the article is marked as retracted in those databases.
Reader-Identified Errors
If a reader believes they have found a substantive error in a JCP article, they should contact JCPEditors@hmpglobal.com as soon as possible with the article DOI, title, and the nature of the error they believe they have found and as many additional details as possible. The JCP editorial team, including the Editor in Chief, Editorial Director, and members of the Editorial Board with applicable expertise, will review the information.
If they agree with the reader or cannot determine the accuracy of the information, they will reach out to the authors either to request a response, a revision, or to ask the authors to address the reader concerns and explain if there was a misunderstanding or if a correction is needed.
If it was a misunderstanding or can be easily explained, the reader and authors may be invited to formally document this discussion as a Letter to the Editor and a Response Letter from the authors.
If it is determined there is an error, the remainder of the process will follow the steps outlined in the previous section.
PREPRINT SERVER POLICY
JCP will consider manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers as long as they are posted to the preprint server prior to submission. These submissions should follow our other guidelines, and in the cover letter the authors must mention and provide a URL and/or DOI for the preprint version of the manuscript. The submission will go through our standard editorial evaluation and peer review processes as outlined above; if accepted, the preprint version must link to the final, published version of record at JCP once it is available.
Want to submit to the Journal of Clinical Pathways?
All articles must be uploaded through our online submission system at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/jclinpath/default2.aspx. If you do not have an author account in our system, you will be required to make one. Please proceed to the "Register" link in the top header. If you already have an author account, you may proceed directly to "Login" in the top header. Authors who have lost or forgotten their login credentials should use the "Send Username/Password" link. Once logged in, click the "Submit New Manuscript" link and follow the instructions.
