Western Journal of Emergency Medicine Submission

This page is designed to help you ensure your submission is ready for and fits the scope of the journal.

Before submitting you should read over the guidelines here, then register an account (or login if you have an existing account)

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Important Migration Notice

WestJEM has migrated editorial systems from OJS to Janeway.

All previous papers/submissions/reviews/decisions have been moved to Janeway. You will be able to find all manuscripts with the same authors and titles, but the manuscript numbers have necessarily changed.

To use Janeway:

  • Returning users will have to reset their password. Your username remains the same.

  • New users will have to create a new account.

Should you have any questions, please email us at inepomuceno@westjem.org. Thank you!

About

Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health

Emergency Medicine is the specialty which most closely reflects societal challenges and consequences of public policy decisions. The emergency department specifically deals with social injustice, health and economic disparities, violence, substance abuse, and disaster preparedness and response. This journal focuses on how emergency care affects the health of the community and population, and conversely, how these societal challenges affect the composition of the patient population who seek care in the emergency department. The development of better systems to provide emergency care, including technology solutions, is critical to enhancing population health.

Focus and Scope

WestJEM focuses on how the systems and delivery of emergency care affects health, health disparities, and health outcomes in communities and populations worldwide, including the impact of social conditions on the composition of patients seeking care in emergency departments.

Submission Checklist

Instructions to Authors: Submission Guidelines

The Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health (WestJEM) solicits contributions for publication through www.westjem.com.

Before submitting, please review the Submission Guidelines or see below.

 

In order to improve the reporting of studies in WestJEM, authors must include a checklist that addresses the recommended reporting items as an appendix during the submission process.

Observational studies: STROBE
Clinical trails: CONSORT
Systematic Reviews: PRISMA
Diagnostic/Prognostic studies: STARD
Qualitative Studies: SRQR or COREQ as appropriate
Quality Improvement Studies: SQUIRE
Economic evaluations: CHEERS

Checklist templates and examples can be obtained at https://www.equator-network.org.


Guidelines: 

Category Word Count Limit Figure, Tables and Images Limit (combined) Abstract Limit
Original Research 4000 7 350
Brief Research Report 1500 2 350
Educational Advances 4000 5 350
Brief Educational Advances 1500 2 350
Review 4000 5 350
ALiEM Peer-Reviewed Online Media and Pedagogical Technologies 3000 5 350
Editorials (Invited) 2000 None None
Letters to the Editor 700 None None

 

For detailed Case Report and Images in Emergency Medicine guidelines, please click here. WestJEM adheres to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf).

If this is the first time you have submitted this paper to a scholarly emergency medicine (EM) journal, please follow the “Instructions to Authors” very carefully, as outlined below.

If this paper has been declined after peer review from another top-tier, reputable EM journal, and this is a resubmission of the same paper, you need not take the time to reformat the paper specifically for WestJEM prior to submission. We will accept any of the usual formats from the other EM journals (Annals of EM, Academic EM, American Journal of EM, Journal of EM) and subspecialty journals (Pediatric EM, Prehospital and Disaster Medicine) for example. We do ask you to include the same sections of our paper requirements (i.e. Original Research papers must have an abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, limitations, conclusion, and references). The minor WestJEM formatting requirements (i.e. spacing, format of references, etc) can be deferred until after the paper has passed through initial WestJEM peer-review, and is being seriously considered for publication. If there was prior peer-review, we strongly encourage you to respond to this critique, and submit an improved version of the paper to WestJEM. 

We hope this can streamline the resubmission process, save time and expedite publication. We are proud to serve as innovators in EM publication, emphasizing collaboration over any sort of competition in scholarly publishing. We look forward to reading your work. 

If this paper passes through peer review for WestJEM and receives a decision of “accept,” “revisions required,” or “resubmit for review,” at that time we will require proper formatting for WestJEM.

Please note in your cover letter if this is a resubmission of a previously declined manuscript (you don’t have to specify which journal), so that, on our end, we can dispense with the initial format check.

 

Submission Checklist

To facilitate prompt peer review, before submitting, please adhere to the following guidelines. Papers submitted without these features will be returned to the authors for completion.

Papers that have been declined by another mainstream emergency medicine journal need not be reformatted according to these guidelines prior to submission. Please include this fact, and absence of reformatting, in your cover letter. You need not divulge the previous declining journal. After peer review, if revisions are requested by the editor, then you will need to conform to the formatting requirements to follow.

  • Upload manuscript as a Microsoft Word document
    • Entire paper in one document (but without title page) including abstract, text with tables and figures embedded within the paper in the order in which they are cited, and references.
    • For research papers, the abstract must include the major quantitative findings, including sample size, response rate, descriptive statistics, and statistical comparisons of major hypotheses and findings.
    • Anonymize with all author information and study locations removed throughout
  • Each individual table/figure with its associated legend and footnotes (if present) on the same page (All legends must be sufficiently explanatory that they could be understood without reference to the article itself.)
  • Appendices and Supplementary Materials should be included at the bottom of the main manuscript file unless they are in PDF format. PDFs should be uploaded as separate documents under “Supplemental Files.”
  • Cover letter including corresponding author and first author contact information
    • Brief statement of justification, importance, and fit with the niche of the journal
    • Conflicts of interest (outside jobs, consultations, stocks, research support, financial interests, honoraria, speaker fees, military support, etc.)
    • Address and complete contact information for corresponding author and all other authors
    • 3-5 reviewer recommendations for the manuscript. They should be board eligible or certified in Emergency Medicine or Pediatric Emergency Medicine and have at least one publication in the field
    • List any grants received for the manuscript both in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript as well as in the cover letter. If it was an NIH or CDC grant, provide the grant number.
    • Include in the cover letter if any authors are members of one of WestJEM’s sponsoring societies: ACOEP, California ACEP, & Cal/AAEM. Please list the relevant authors’ names.
  • Title page should include (not to be shared with reviewer to maintain anonymization):
    • Authors with respective titles (MD, PhD, MS, etc), institutions, and departments, city, state, and contact emails (12 author limit).
    • Which meeting (if any) where the research was presented.
    • Word count
    • Corresponding author and first author with complete contact information including phone number(s) – (please use institutional email addresses, personal emails will not be accepted) as well as email addresses of all listed authors.
    • Conflicts of interest (outside jobs, consultations, stocks, research support, financial interests, honoraria, speaker fees, military support, etc.)
    • Funding Statement (public funding agencies and/or private funding sources or the sponsor of the study)
  • Individual files for figures, tables, and videos
    • Images in original format (.jpeg and or .png)
      • Do not upload .tif files
    • Videos must be in .mov, .mp4, or .flv format
    • Tables in Microsoft Word documents
    • Upload individual files under “Supplementary Files” section
  • Signed patient waiver and permissions form acknowledging potential publication and accessibility on the internet for figures/videos containing a patient’s face, eyes, or other identifiers

 

Format

  • Include title at the top of the first page (limited to 100 characters including spaces). Spell out all abbreviations no matter how obvious, for example, “emergency department”
  • Include abstract before body
    • Structured abstract: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion
    • Non-structured abstract (Review and Brief Educational Advances manuscripts only): Paragraph narrative
  • Continuous line numbering is included in left-hand margin [WORD directions: Page Layout →Line Numbers →Continuous]
  • Text in 12 point Times New Roman font
  • Entire manuscript is double-spaced including references
  • All footnote numbering must be in superscript format (Ctrl shift +) with the number following punctuation per this example: …to develop a standard of care.23

 

Headlines

  • List major headlines in BOLD, UPPERCASE lettering without colon
    • Subheadings are in bold and in title case lettering (first letter of each word is capitalized)
  • Original Research: ABSTRACT, INTRODUCTION, METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION, LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES
  • Brief Research Report: ABSTRACT, INTRODUCTION, METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION, LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES
  • Review: ABSTRACT, INTRODUCTION, METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION, LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES
  • Educational Advances: ABSTRACT, BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVES, CURRICULAR DESIGN, IMPACT/EFFECTIVENESS, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES
  • Brief Educational Advances: ABSTRACT, BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVES, CURRICULAR DESIGN, IMPACT/EFFECTIVENESS, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES

 

Figures/Tables/Videos

  • For the ease of peer-review, all figures/tables/videos are to be referenced within text of manuscript in the order that they appear, and all figures/tables are presented at the point of which they are referenced in the text (as opposed at the end of the manuscript)
  • Must include original file used to create graphs/figures (e.g. excel, word, etc.). Videos should be uploaded separately as Supplemental Files
  • Remove any titles and/or bold fonts in graphs/figures
  • Fully descriptive legends for each figure and table such that they could stand alone if removed from the context of the larger paper.
    • Table legends are above the Table and Figure legends are below the Figure
  • Abbreviations in figures/tables must be spelled out or notated in legend or footnote, even if already done so in text
  • All line art figures have a minimum resolution of 600 dots per inch (DPI) and images 300 DPI
    • To check DPI: Right click image file, Click “Properties”, found under Details
    • To change DPI: Open image using Photoshop, Click “Image”→Image Size→ Resolution→ 600 pixels/inch
  • Every figure/video includes contrasting black or white arrows clearly pointing to important (even obvious) findings
  • Tables are made in a Microsoft Word document using “Insert Table” function
    • Each column must have a heading
    • Minimum size of 2 X 2
    • Every row/column, including subcategories (i.e. female and male subcategories below gender category) should be split into own cells. This includes corresponding data for each sub-category.
    • Subcategories should be indented by 0.125 inches
      • Sub-subcategories should be indented by 0.25 inches

Example Table: Type fully descriptive legend here. (List all abbreviations here).

Heading 1 Heading 2
Gender 0.00
     Female 0.00
     Male 0.00

 

Videos

  • Up to 1 minute for radiologic findings such as ultrasound, CT, or MRI
  • Up to 5 minutes for other videos (e.g. demonstrations of a procedure)
  • Videos must be narrated or annotated

 

References

  • All submissions must contain references
  • References created by a citation generator such as EndNote and Zotero applications will not be accepted. If you use these applications, you can use the “convert to plain text” option in their tab in WORD.
  • They must be listed in the order in which they first appear in text (not alphabetically)
  • References follow the American Medical Association Citation Style Guide. ((https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/ama_style/) except:
    • Authors: List up to three authors, before putting et al.
    • Remove DOI
    • Delete spaces between publication year, volume, issue, and page numbers
    • If a website is included , please include the date the source was accessed.
  • In-text reference numbers should be placed after the period as a superscript, like this.1
    • Arabic numerals (i.e. 1,2,3) are used instead of roman numerals (i.e. i, ii, iii)
  • Journal names must be abbreviated and italicized according to the official journal abbreviation in the US National Library of Medicine (MedLine, PubMed)

 

Study Design Reporting Guidelines
Randomized controlled trial (RCT) superiority design CONSORT Statement (Begg et al, JAMA 1996, 276(8), 637-9) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8773637
RCT with non-inferiority/equivalence design Modified CONSORT Statement (Piaggio et al, JAMA 2006: 295, 1152-1160) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23268518
Systematic review of therapeutic interventions PRISMA Statement (Moher et al, Int J. Surg. 2010, 8: 336-341) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10584742
Diagnostic test performance study STARD Statement (Bossuyt et al, Clin Chem 2003, 49: 1-6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12507954
Standards for Reporting Implementation Studies (StaRI) Statement

Standards for Reporting Implementation Studies (StaRI) Statement (H Pinock et al, BMJ 2017, 356)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5387970/

Additional Resources: Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIORE): http://www.squire-statement.org/ For Step-by-Step directions on how to upload your article, click for a PDF here: Instructions for Uploading a New Submission

For additional reporting guidelines please visit http://www.equator-network.org.

 

Copyright Notice

The following is an agreement between The Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health (the Journal) and the submitter (the Author), governing the work currently being submitted, including the primary contribution as well as any supporting materials such as an abstract, data sets, media files, figures, or tables created by the Author and any co-authors (the Submission).

The Journal is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to readers or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

1. As consideration for publication in the Journal, the Author grants the Journal the following rights:
1.1. A non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free right to publish, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform and distribute the Work in perpetuity throughout the world in all means of expression by any method or media now known or hereafter developed; and
1.2. A non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free right to license others, including databases or printing vendors, to do any or all of the above on a non-exclusive basis.

2. The Author warrants that:
2.1. The Author is the author of the Submission, or is authorized to act on behalf of the author(s) and copyright holder (if different from the author(s)), and has the power to convey the rights granted in this agreement.
2.2. If the Submission has multiple authors, the other authors are identified in the Submission, and the Author will inform the other authors of the terms of this agreement.
2.3. Any textual, graphic or multimedia material included in the Submission that is the intellectual property or work of another is identified and cited in the Submission.
2.4. If the Submission reproduces any material that is the intellectual property of another, the Author has received permission to publish that material in the Submission, or the material is being incorporated based on an informed, reasonable, and good faith application of fair use.
2.5. The Submission is the original work of the Author(s). To the best of the Author’s knowledge, it does not contain matter that is obscene, libelous, or defamatory; it does not knowingly violate another’s right of privacy, right of publicity, or other legal right; does not contain false or misleading statements; and is otherwise not unlawful.
2.6. The Submission has not been previously published, and is not pending review elsewhere. If this is not the case, the Author will provide the Journal with information about the other locations where the Submission appears or is pending review. Prior distribution of a Submission, including on a preprint server or in a repository, does not disqualify a Submission from potential publication; the Journal is primarily concerned with other appearances in similar publications.
2.7. If the Author is a student, the Author agrees to share their work and waive any privacy rights granted by FERPA or any other law, policy or regulation, with respect to the Submission, for the purpose of publication. If the Author has any student co-authors, the Author will obtain a signed copy of this agreement from those co-authors.

3. Indemnification
The Author will indemnify and hold the Journal harmless against loss, damages, expenses, awards, and judgments arising from breach of any of the above warranties.

4. Author’s Rights and Obligations
4.1. Nothing in this agreement constitutes a transfer of the copyright by the Author. As such, the Author retains all rights not expressly granted herein, including but not limited to, the right:
        4.1.1. To reproduce and distribute the Submission, and to authorize others to reproduce and distribute the Submission, in any format;
        4.1.2. To post the Submission in an institutional repository or the Author’s personal or departmental web page.
        4.1.3. To include the Submission, in whole or in part, in another work.
4.2. If the Author distributes the Submission on another website or in another publication (as described above), the Journal will be cited as the source of first publication.

5. Rights for Readers
The Journal and the Author agree that the Submission will be distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), or other later version of the same license, that allows others to copy, distribute, translate, adapt, and build upon the Submission, even commercially, as long as they provide appropriate credit to the author(s). Anyone who uses or redistributes the Submission under this license must indicate any changes that were made, must link to the license, and cannot imply that the author(s) endorse them or their use. More information about this license is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

6. Termination
The Author agrees to the terms of this agreement for the Submission being considered for publication. If the Submission is declined, this agreement is terminated.

Peer Review

This journal operates a open/single anonymous/double anonymous, peer review policy.

Licences

Western Journal of Emergency Medicine allows the following licences for submission:

  • CC BY 4.0
    Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Fees

This link allows authors with accepted WestJEM manuscripts to submit the APF of $1250 or contact us to become a department subscriber.

If the first or last author of the accepted article is a full-time member of a WestJEM subscribing department, the article processing fee (APF) for up to two manuscripts per academic year is waived for an accepted article. Although we encourage department subscriptions for the ability to waive and save on the APF (and to also financially support the journal), the fee can also be discounted if the first or last author is a full voting member of one of our major society sponsors (California ACEP, ACOEP, and Cal/AAEM).*  Please contact info@westjem.org with any questions. This fee is only required for accepted manuscripts.

Additional benefits of a $1000 faculty department subscription include:

  • Waived WestJEM article APF for up to 2 accepted research manuscripts with first authors that are faculty members from a subscribing department (up to $2500 waiver in WestJEM APF per subscription year). APF for additional accepted WestJEM manuscripts will be discounted by 20%. There is never a fee to submit a manuscript to WestJEM or CPC-EM.
  • Discount of 20% on APFs of an accepted manuscript in the Clinical Practice and Cases in Emergency Medicine (cpcem.org) when the first or last author is a faculty member from a subscribing department.
  • Free electronic full text issues of WestJEM and CPC-EM to all faculty and residents of department sponsors.
  • Free WestJEM special issue print distribution.
  • Free WestJEM.com postings of your department’s CME advertisements that are consistent with the ethical policies of our journal sponsors and align with AAEM’s mission. This can substantially save on the cost of advertising.
  • Free online advertising of your department’s job postings on our Academic Job Board that are consistent with the ethical policies of our journal sponsors. This can save further on required job postings.
  • Early-bird announcements of open reviewer and section editor positions

If you would like to become a department subscriber click here. In order to become a department subscriber, the yearly fees must be paid directly by an academic department. This option is not available for individual physicians. If you have any questions, please contact sales@westjem.org or call 1-800-884-2236 (and ask for the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine).

WestJEM is able to offer to waive the article processing fee after the article has been accepted for articles in which the first author is paying independently and comes from a low income or lower middle income countries. Waiver requests are assessed on a case-by-case basis. Please contact info@westjem.org to learn more.

Please click here for the article processing fee payment portal.

*Please note that discounts are not cumulative.

 

Publication Cycle

This journal published continuously all year round/publishes in issues every 2 months.

Sections

Section or article type

Public Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Indexed

Brief Research Report (Limit 1500 words)

Original Research (Limit 4000 words)

Review Article (Limit 4000 words)

Editorials (Limit 2000 words)

Letters to the Editor (Limit 700 words) (commentary on previous published WestJEM papers)

Educational Advances (Limit 4000 words)

Brief Educational Advances (Limit 1500 words)

Systematic Review (Limit 4000 words)

Education Special Issue - Editorial

Education Special Issue - Best Practices (Limit 3500 words)

Education Special Issue - Original Research (Limit 3000 words)

Education Special Issue - Brief Research Report (Limit 1500 words)

Education Special Issue - Educational Advances (Limit 2000 words)

Education Special Issue - Brief Educational Advances (Limit 1000 words)

Education Special Issue - Systematic Review (Limit 3000 words)

ACOEP Abstracts (by Invitation Only)

ACOEP Original Research (by Invitation Only)