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Specific instructions and guidelines for submitting eGEMs articles are outlined below. Please use this document as a resource to help you decide whether eGEMs is the right journal for your work, and also to learn more about suggested paper types and eGEMs' formatting and production requirements.
Submitted articles that do not follow these instructions and guidelines are more likely to be rejected or to require major revisions before being sent on for peer review. Questions and comments are welcome at egems@academyhealth.org. The following sections outline the submission process from the point of deciding whether to submit to eGEMs to the production considerations for accepted manuscripts.
The following sections outline the submission process-from the point of deciding whether to submit to eGEMs, to the production considerations for accepted manuscripts.
AcademyHealth created eGEMs to publish and rapidly disseminate innovative methods, strategies, and "lessons learned" using electronic health data for comparative effectiveness research (CER), patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), and quality improvement (QI). All eGEMs submissions undergo a rigorous, double-blind peer-review before publication and are published upon acceptance.
eGEMs submissions must discuss uses or potential uses of electronic health data (electronic health record data, electronic patient-reported outcomes data, mobile health, data initially generated for clinical purposes, etc.) and must be relevant to CER, PCOR, QI, or the learning health system. The journal's audience includes government officials, payers, industry, delivery systems, patients and consumers, policymakers, and researchers.
Who can Submit?
Anyone may submit work to be considered for publication in eGEMs provided the author owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception to this in the nonacademic world might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).
Authors may submit any one of the following seven submission types for consideration. Please refer to the appendix for additional information about each submission type.
If the author has questions about which submission type is appropriate, the author should contact eGEMs editorial staff by emailing egems@academyhealth.org.
Authors should submit visualizations and media submissions under one of the seven types listed above along with a description (minimum one-page) of the work and how it is useful to the community.
eGEMs is open to publishing other submission formats provided they are appropriate and relevant to the scope of eGEMs and if the file format can be supported by the Ubiquity Press platform. We encourage authors who are interested in submitting materials not currently listed in the submission types to contact editorial staff.
The eGEMs journal conforms to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals(ICMJE).
By submitting to eGEMs, authors agree to be subscribed to the eGEMs mailing list-to ensure receipt of updates on eGEMs' policies and new publications. Authors may opt out of this mailing list at any time.
All work published in eGEMs is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY License.
Full editorial policies can be found here.
To ensure an efficient review process and to maximize the likelihood of a positive review, eGEMs editors recommend the following:
Manuscripts are submitted through the website. All manuscripts must be blinded, excluding author names and affiliations.
Use Vancouver style for all references. Cite references in text using superscripted numbers in order of use; this can be achieved using the 'endnotes' function in Word.
Do not use footnotes.
Submit the manuscript, including tables, figures, and appendices, as a single file. All tables and figures should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Large tables or figures should be on a page by themselves. In addition, upload editable design files for all figures as “Additional Supplemental Content” in the submission form.
Full-length manuscripts, including text and any notes, should be no longer than 5,000 words (abstract, references, tables, and figures are not included in this word count). Commentaries and editorials should not exceed 2,500 words. Short, well-crafted manuscripts that coherently cover all the necessary points typically score better with reviewers than manuscripts that are overly long and difficult to follow.
Abstracts for all manuscripts should follow the organizational structure of the manuscript and should be no longer than 250 words. The number of tables and figures should not exceed five (this does not include figures, tables, and data sets uploaded as supplemental material).
Manuscripts that exceed these word limits or include more than five figures and tables may be considered if there is compelling justification for their inclusion in the paper. Please include any request to waive these maximums in your cover letter at the time of submission. If you have additional questions regarding word limits or limits to figures and tables, please contact the Editors at egems@academyhealth.org.
Please upload other media files as "Additional Supplemental content" or upload to a streaming site or data repository and provide a link in the manuscript.
Along with relevant keywords used in the field, eGEMs encourages authors to include keywords that align with major MeSH headings used by the National Library of Medicine. In particular, authors are asked to include MeSH headings that may not appear in either the manuscript title or the abstract. This will ensure the most accurate search results for readers who use the PubMed and PubMed Central databases. The use of acronyms as keywords is discouraged since these can be ambiguous in search results.
Below is a list of recommended MeSH keywords that will likely apply to eGEMs articles; however, selecting terms from this list is not required.
On receipt of a manuscript, the corresponding author is notified, and all authors are informed about the decision. If at any time authors have questions about the status of a manuscript, please contact egems@academyhealth.org.
The four steps of the editorial and review process are outlined below. At each step, the junctures at which authors will be notified or contacted for feedback or revision are indicated.
Subsequent to peer review, the corresponding author receives an email with reviewer comments and one of the following decisions:
In some cases the editor may request revisions prior to peer review or may reject a paper and invite a resubmission with guidance on strengthening the manuscript.
Instructions on how to submit the revised manuscript will be provided at the bottom of the decision letter. If authors are instructed to make minor or major revisions, authors must make edits using their word processor’s “tracked changes” feature directly in the manuscript and provide a point-by-point response to the reviewer comments in a cover letter to the editor. The revised manuscript should be uploaded through the website and the cover letter pasted into or attached to a letter to the editor, sent through the system.. Authors will have two weeks to complete minor revisions and three weeks to complete major revisions.
The seven specific submission types; and recommended formats, content, and headers.
Case Study / Comparative Case Study / Review / Commentary or Editorial / Model / Framework / Empirical Research / Protocol
Case studies cite specific details of the particular interventions or other research experiences.
"Journey" papers that describe the development of an innovative or novel approach are also appropriate for this type of submission.
Comparative Case studies clearly articulate key questions, considerations, or alternatives for comparison, and they discuss these options in a structured, comparative format.
Tips for AuthorsReviews may be one of the following four submission types and should be clearly identified as focusing on one of the following areas:
Systematic reviews may follow a more traditional format such as:
Commentaries present perspectives on a relevant issue. Commentaries also include critiques and discussion of relevant topics. Opinions should be supported by data to add credibility to the argument.
Editorials are authored by editorial staff and/or senior editors to discuss a timely topic of high interest to policy, business, or research. Editorials are also authored by guest editors to contextualize and synthesize work from a collection of papers or to introduce a special issue.
Editorials may also include interviews with leaders in the field. They detail current projects, best practices, and future projects or collaborations.
For submissions to eGEMs, the terms "model" and "framework" are synonymous and may be one of two types.
Conceptual frameworks present a new (potentially interactive) representation of major lessons learned, framing the relationship of components or considerations for the field in a compact yet coherent way. Each framework should be accompanied by sufficient text to enhance understanding of key components.
Process models or frameworks should clearly outline process innovations and explain how to implement new processes.
Empirical Research reports findings based on actual observational or experimental studies, including evaluations. Quantitative studies demonstrate results or outcomes that can be quantified numerically. Qualitative studies may rely on text analysis, interviews, or focus groups. Mixed methods blend qualitative and quantitative results.
eGEMs papers in the Methods domain that are tagged as Empirical Research are studies to test or validate new methods.
Protocols are a predefined, written procedural method for the design and implementation of studies using electronic health data.
Protocols are published to promote dissemination and discussion of innovative study designs using electronic health data.
Depending on the maturity of the project, protocols should either highlight innovative aspects of the study design or other features of the study that the authors are evaluating, or should share lessons learned based on implementing the protocol.
Note: *Submissions with a limited basis of empirical results should be framed as commentaries or frameworks to guide future research. These papers should offer a set of recommendations or describe new approaches or strategies. Examples of alternative formats include the following:
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.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
eGEMs and AcademyHealth remain committed to open science, open access, and to keeping research and lessons learned accessible to the public. To make this possible now that the AHRQ grant that helped launch the journal has closed, we need to ask authors to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC).
The regular APC is $1,800 per accepted article, although this charge may be reduced under certain circumstances, as described below. A portion of the APC ($500) covers the publisher's costs -- technical checks, type-setting, indexing, archiving, DOI registration, web hosting, etc. -- while the remainder of the charge covers AcademyHealth's costs of manuscript preparation, editorial review, peer review administration, author correspondence, and dissemination activities.
eGEMs has a limited number of APC waivers available each year. If a corresponding author is unable to pay the full APC, he or she should contact the managing editor to discuss the potential for an APC waiver or discount.