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Guidelines for Authors

Journal Policy

Military Medicine accepts feature articles, review articles, clinical/case reports, guest editorials/perspectives, and letters to the Editor for publication.

Contributions are suitable for consideration by Military Medicine if they represent original material, have not been published previously, are not being considered for publication elsewhere, and have been approved by each author. The Guidelines for Authors are in accordance with the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" as published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors at www.icmje.org.

In accordance with the standards of the ICMJE, "When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national)….When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed."

Authors submitting articles that fit the description in the US Copyright Act of 1976 of a "US Government Work," are responsible for obtaining any required clearance from the appropriate federal agency prior to submission.

Military Medicine corresponds with only one author per manuscript. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to forward information to the other authors, maintain the author account, and obtain and forward publication documents.

The current status of a manuscript submitted for review can be followed through Editorial Manager at www.editorialmanager.com/milmed/after logging into the corresponding author’s account.  There are several behind the scenes steps to each process, so it may appear that your manuscript is not moving through the process when in fact it is.

The time limit for author revisions is 30 days. If no communication has been received within the 30 days time limit, the contribution will be considered withdrawn.

An accepted manuscript will be held for a publication date until all required copyright documents have been received. If no communication is received within 60 days, the manuscript will be withdrawn from further consideration.

Military Medicine maintains a peer review system for all submissions. ALL contributions (including editorials/perspectives, but excluding letters to the editor) must pass peer review before they are considered for publication. Peer reviewer names are kept confidential, author names are not.  Letters to the editor may need to pass peer review at the discretion of the Editor.

A manuscript that does not comply with these Guidelines for Authors, does not fit the general submission criteria, or whose use of the English language makes it difficult to understand will not be reviewed. The submitting author will be notified via email.

Authors alone are responsible for the content and opinions expressed in the paper.

 Military Medicine is a copyrighted journal. While some papers submitted fit the description of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 of a "U.S. Government Work" and are therefore considered to be Public Domain Information, Military Medicine reserves the right to copyright its design and layout of that information.

Categories of articles that are acceptable for review and publication:

Feature Articles cover original research such as prospective clinical trials, laboratory research, retrospective clinical analyses (e.g. case series), meta-analyses, or other original scholarly work relevant to the practice of federal medicine. These articles are limited to 4,000 words of text plus an abstract of not more than 200 words. When counting the word total; do not include the abstract, references, or illustrative materials. References, tables, and figures should be sufficient in number to reasonably support the content of the manuscript. As a general rule, together they should increase the number of print pages by fewer than 50%, and references should in general be less than 10 years old.

Review Articles include scholarly reviews and practice guidelines that thoughtfully summarize and integrate the current literature with the goal of guiding future policy or practice. Review articles should not exceed 4,000 words plus an abstract of not more than 200 words. The Methods section should clearly describe inclusion and/or exclusion criteria for the articles that are used in the review. The listing of references should not exceed 50 and they should generally be selected from those that have been published within the past 5-10 years.

Brief Reports present new research findings, data from pilot studies, worthwhile replication studies, or novel therapeutic interventions. Brief reports are limited to 3,000 words, plus an abstract of not more than 200 words. When counting the word total, do not include the abstract, references and illustrative material.

Case Reports describe noteworthy clinical cases, generally a single case but sometimes 2-3 similar cases. The number of references, tables, and figures should be appropriate for the overall length of the paper. In general, no more than 2 tables or 2 figures are indicated. Case Reports are limited to 3,000 words, plus an abstract of not more than 200 words. When counting the word total, do not include the abstract, references and illustrative material. Note that per recent changes in journal policy and practice (see the Editors Message to the Readers of Military Medicine in the December 2012 issue, Mil Med 2012;177(12):iv), Case reports are now listed in the Table of Contents with the prefix "e," and the abstract is published in full in the print journal. However, the full case report will henceforth be available only on-line. Case reports will still be searchable using PubMed and other on-line search resources. This is the first step in transitioning to more use of on-line publishing which will have a number of advantages including easier access, color images, and supplemental materials.

Guest Editorials/Perspectives describe viewpoints, opinions, or proposals that are presented in a scholarly and well supported manner and discuss current knowledge concerning a subject of interest to the readership. Guest Editorials/Perspectives should not exceed 1,500 words and while some references are appropriate these should be kept to a minimum, generally not more than 10. Tables or figures will generally not be accepted with Editorials/Perspectives. 

Commentary is a special category of article that is used at the discretion of the Editorial Board. In general, Commentaries address important, evolving, highly visible, and often controversial topics. These articles may contain an amalgam of literature review, new original data, and speculative synthesis, with some opportunity for injecting the authors' experiences and opinions. As such, the article content may be more closely aligned with the Original Articles or Reviews, but with some features of Editorials or Commentaries.

Letters to the Editor are means of communication to the readership permitting publication of current commentary or responses to issues raised in the contents of Military Medicine. Letters may explain, amplify, correct, or make other comments and may not exceed 1,000 words. References may NOT be cited in a Letter to the Editor unless specifically requested by the Editorial Staff. Should the author wish, the phrase "References available from the author(s)" may be placed at the end of the letter. If deemed appropriate by the Editor, the author of the original paper will be invited to provide a response that will be published with the letter. Letters may be edited and may be held for publication until space is available. Letters are not acknowledged.