Instructions to Authors

About the Journal

Editorial Policies

Data Policy

Submission

Manuscript Preparation

Production

About the Journal

Clinical and Experimental Dermatology (CED) is a hybrid access peer-reviewed journal that publishes 12 issues per year online. Once a paper is accepted CED will publish a pre-copyedited, pre-proofed version of the paper online within 48 hours of receiving a signed licence. This is replaced by a copyedited, proofed version of the paper as soon as it is ready. Please read the instructions on this page carefully and follow them closely. The Editors may return manuscripts that do not follow these instructions. 

Scope of the Journal

CED delivers excellence in dermatology education, it is the British Association of Dermatologists education journal for practicing clinicians and dermatological researchers. It aims to advance the understanding, management and treatment of skin disease and improve patient outcomes and incorporates CPD modules, original articles, reviews and concise reports.  

Editorial Policies

Details of Oxford University Press’s editorial policies are available. 

Peer Review

CED follows a single-blind process of peer review, where the reviewers know who the authors are, but the authors are not aware of the reviewers. Members of the editorial team, including the Editor, who submit papers (with the exception of editorials) are blinded to the process and are not involved in the peer review or any aspect of decision making. 

CED’s peer review process is as outlined in this flowchart. We aim to provide fast first triage, and all papers that undergo peer review are assessed by at least two members of CED’s editorial team. 

Patient Policy

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. 

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should never be altered or falsified to attain anonymity. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve and informed consent for publication should be obtained if there is any doubt. Masking the eye region in photographs of patients is not allowed and offers inadequate protection of anonymity. 

Authors must take adequate measures to protect participants’ privacy in the reporting of any qualitative research submitted to the BJD, for example by anonymizing the names of individuals and locations. 

The journal requires that informed patient consent for publication is obtained for all case reports and for all clinical images, whether or not the patient is identifiable. Confirmation of patient consent for publication in accordance with the BAD publications patient consent form is required at the time of submission. 

The BAD publications patient consent form can be downloaded  here. If the patient is a minor then the parent or guardian’s consent must be obtained. For any patient who is deceased, where possible patient consent for publication from the next of kin must be taken. 

Data Policy

Availability of Data and Materials

Where ethically feasible, CED strongly encourages authors to make all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. Authors are required to include a Data Availability Statement in their article. 

We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. Information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, is available here.

Data Availability Statement

The inclusion of a Data Availability Statement is a requirement for articles published in CED. Data Availability Statements provide a standardised format for readers to understand the availability of data underlying the research results described in the article. The statement may refer to original data generated in the course of the study or to third-party data analysed in the article. The statement should describe and provide means of access, where possible, by linking to the data or providing the required unique identifier. 

The Data Availability Statement should be included in the endmatter of your article under the heading ‘Data availability’. 

More information and example Data Availability Statements can be found here. 

Data Citation

CED supports the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and requires that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI). Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite:  

• [dataset]* Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier 

*The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list. 

Preprint Policy

Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels, and this does not prevent submission to the journal. For further information see our Online Licensing, Copyright and Permissions policies. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including your published paper’s DOI, as described on our Author Self-Archiving policy page.  

Self-Archiving Policy

You may self-archive versions of your work on your own webpages, on institutional webpages, and in other repositories. If you want more information about the reuse rights you retain if you publish with us, please visit our Author Self Archiving Policy page. 

Conflict of Interest

When submitting a paper, you and your co-authors must declare any potential conflicts of interest. You must do this by providing the relevant details on our online submission site and by including a Conflict of Interest statement in your submitted manuscript. 

A detailed definition of conflicts of interest is available. 

Submission

We will consider your manuscript as long as 

• it is your own original work and does not duplicate any previously published work, including your own; 
• it is not under consideration, in peer review, or accepted for publication in any journal other than CED; 
• it has not been published in any other journal; and 
• it contains nothing abusive, defamatory, libelous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal. 

Authors should observe high ethical standards and obey publication best practices. The following are all unacceptable: 

• data falsification or fabrication 
• plagiarism, including duplicate publication of your own work without proper citation 
• misappropriation of work 

We treat any case of ethical or publication malpractice very seriously. We will address them in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. Further information about OUP’s ethical policies is available. 

Publication Criteria

• The study has not been published elsewhere except a preprint server or as an abstract for a conference. 
• Experiments, statistics and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail to ensure replication of the study. 
• Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data. 
• The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English. 
• The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity. 
• The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability. 

How to Submit

You must submit your paper via our web-based submission system, which may be found at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ced. If you have not published with Clinical & Experimental Dermatology before, you will need to create an account. More information is available on the ScholarOne Manuscripts FAQ and help page. Questions about submitting can be sent to the editorial office at [email protected]. 

Third-Party Permissions

If you wish to reproduce any material for which you do not own the copyright—including quotations, tables, or images—you must obtain permission from the copyright holder. The permissions agreement must include the following documents: 

• nonexclusive rights to reproduce the material in your article in Clinical and Experimental Dermatology
• both print and electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium 
• lifetime rights to use the material 
• worldwide English-language rights 

Further information on obtaining permissions is available. 

Manuscript Preparation

Article Type

Clinical and Experimental Dermatology invites the following types of submission:

Review Articles

We publish concise, high-quality Review Articles covering both clinical and experimental aspects of dermatology. Review Articles may be solicited by the Editor or may be submitted by authors for publication, but they will still be subject to peer review.

Requirements for submission

Review Articles should include:

• an abstract (maximum 250 words),
• a body of text not exceeding 3000 words,
• a bulleted list of up to 6 'learning points', which should synthesize the key take-home messages and convey how the Review Article will improve patient health outcomes,
• Illustrations and figures, and
• 5 multiple choice questions (MCQs) that test the knowledge of the reader.

Occasionally, the submission of Review Articles of longer length, with more references, may be permitted. If the review does not fit these categories and more material is offered, it may be possible to submit as ‘part 1’, ‘part 2’ and so on. All such submissions must be discussed with the Editor before submission.

If you are writing a review about a particular condition, we would encourage the inclusion of images to demonstrate the range of presentations if altered by age, sex or skin of colour etc.

Original Articles

Original Articles are clinical or experimental studies, not individual case reports.
We encourage authors to submit their datasets to a well-established public data repository.

Requirements for submission

Original Articles should include:

• a structured abstract (maximum 250 words),
• a body of text not exceeding 3000 words,
• no more than 4 figures,
• bulleted statements (maximum 70 words) in answer to the questions ’What is already known about this topic?’ and ’What does this study add?’ 

Concise Reports

Concise Reports are short original clinical or experimental reports. They should not include solitary cases, as these submissions are more suitable as CPD articles or correspondence. Case series may make appropriate Concise Reports.

Requirements for submission

Concise Reports should include:

• an abstract (maximum 150 words, no subtitles),
• followed by the body text formatted into an introduction, report and discussion,
• no more than 1200 words (excluding references),
• no more than 10 references,
• a bulleted list of up to 6 'Learning Points', which should synthesise the key take-home messages and convey how the Concise Report will improve patient health outcomes,
• a maximum of three figures are permitted.

Correspondence

The correspondence section aims to reflect a wide number of issues relevant to clinical and experimental studies in dermatology, as well as encompassing personal views on clinical practice or dermatological research. These submissions take the form of Letters to the Editor and Patient Viewpoints.

Letter to the Editor

A letter to the editor may be in response to issues arising from recently published articles, or short, free-standing pieces expressing an opinion. Most correspondence submissions are case reports or short case series.

Requirements for submission

Letters to the Editor:

• should be formatted in one continuous section,
• should not exceed 800 words,
• are limited to 5 references, 2 tables and 2 figures.

Patient Viewpoint

This should be a joint article, predominantly written by the patient.

Requirements for submission

A Patient Viewpoint article should include:

• up to 800 words of body text, with up to 250 words additionally provided by the clinician(s), to be included separately in a textbox, and
• up to 5 references.

Teaching and Learning Guides

As an education journal, CED aims to provide resources to trainees, medical students, and registrars to help them prepare for exams and scenarios that may be encountered.

Specialty Certificate Examination case

The aim of these articles is to construct a case or question that matches the format and level-of-difficulty which might be encountered in the UK dermatology SCE. The article should commence with a short dermatological scenario/clinical case, followed by a single multiple-choice question (MCQ).

There should be 5 possible (a-e) answers to this MCQ, only one of which may be correct. True/false style MCQs are not acceptable.

This should be followed with revealing the correct answer to the MCQ, followed by a short discussion on the subject featured in the question, including an explanation of the reasons behind the correct response and why the other options are incorrect.

Requirements for submission

The Specialty Certificate Examination Case should include:

• No more than 800 words.
• Up to 5 references
• No more than 1 image. Images included may be clinical photos, histological images, or dermoscopic images.
• No article title beyond which category the MCQ falls into, which must match one of the categories in the UK dermatology SCE blueprint (https://www.mrcpuk.org/sites/default/files/documents/Dermatology_Blueprint_2015.pdf). For example, 'Cutaneous allergy'.

Ethical Dilemma

The aim of each “Ethical Dilemmas” article is to focus on a problem that raises issues outside the usual scientific framework of our specialty. These problems are usually rooted in our professional behaviour: they may provoke anguish or disagreements and be difficult to know how to navigate. Often participants in these scenarios have not encountered the problem before, may never have discussed it or even thought about it, and feel that they are alone in trying to deal with it. But there are recurring issues that, if highlighted in this section, can help to guide us through some thorny situations. Each article should focus on one major ethical dilemma, but of course secondary matters will often be raised.

1. The opening part of the article should describe a particular dilemma.
2. This is followed by an MCQ that is designed to check understanding of, or appropriate response to, the dilemma.
3. This is followed by an explanation of the pros and cons of the different possible MCQ answers, including the possible consequences of each, acknowledging that there is often no absolute right or wrong about handling ethical dilemmas.

Requirements for submission

• No more than 600 words
• References are not essential, but if helpful to the understanding of an issue, maximum 5 references
• No more than 2 tables or figures, these may not be required, but a drawing or photograph can sometimes focus the reader on the main issue.
• 1 MCQ. This MCQ should be structured with a very brief introduction and question, followed by a maximum of 5 possible answers, only one of which is correct.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

The journal aims to publish regular, peer-reviewed educational features relevant to the practice of clinical dermatology. The main types of article are listed below.

Clinicopathological Cases

These cases should provide a test of the reader's diagnostic skills. For this reason, the diagnosis should not feature in the title. The clinical history, pathology and illustration(s) should be presented first (on one printed page of the journal). This should be followed by the diagnosis, discussion and learning points.

Requirements for submission

Clinicopathological Cases should:

• be limited to two printed pages of the journal including the text and figures,
• have no more than 800 words and be limited to 6 references,
• include 2 multiple choice questions (MCQs) that test the knowledge of the reader.

Noteworthy Publication

The aim is to draw the reader’s attention to a paper or guideline that may have gone unnoticed and will educate or change practice in dermatology. This article allows you to promote the merits of a published paper that has made an impact on the author’s management of patients and more importantly should alter the wider audience’s practice too.

Requirements for submission

Noteworthy Publication articles should include:

• no more than 800 words and 6 references,
• 2 multiple choice questions (MCQs) that test the knowledge of the reader.

A Memorable Patient

These should report a case that made an impact on the author. The case need not be completely original (and if it is not it needs to have good educational value to the reader), but it is preferable that it is novel to some extent and that it clearly outlines why it is unique.

Requirements for submission

A Memorable Patient article should include:

• only 800 words,
• no more than 2 figures and 6 references,
• 2 multiple choice questions (MCQs) that test the knowledge of the reader. 

Genetic Report

These should report a dermatological case involving genetics or a genodermatosis that has made an impact on the author.

Requirements for submission

Genetic Reports should include:

• no more than 800 words,
• no more than two clinical figures including a histological figure or an electrophoretogram
• up to 2 tables and 6 references,
• 2 multiple choice questions (MCQs) that test the knowledge of the reader.

Therapeutic Vignette

These should describe, and preferably illustrate, a therapeutic technique regularly employed and considered especially useful by the author. This may be surgical or medical, or may relate to other therapeutic and cosmetic modalities such as cryotherapy, lasers etc.

Requirements for submission

Therapeutic Vignettes should include:

• no more than 2 illustrations,
• no more than 800 words and up to 6 references,
• 2 multiple choice questions (MCQs) that test the knowledge of the reader.

Video

The section aims to highlight procedural techniques.   

Videos should be educational, relevant and pertinent to a senior dermatology specialist trainee or general dermatologist.

Examples might be of simple flaps, good examples of commonly undertaken techniques or useful modifications to existing techniques. Non-surgical procedural videos would also be appropriate such as patch/prick testing, taking hair pluckings, creating a fungal slide etc. 

Good technique should be displayed throughout the video with due consideration to appropriate haemostasis, suturing etc.   

A brief descriptive article should also accompany each video as well as brief background commentary.

Requirements for submission

Video articles should include:

• A video of up to 10 minutes in length.
• no more than 300 words and up to 5 references,
• 2 multiple choice questions (MCQs) that test the knowledge of the reader. Detailed guidelines for authors for authors for writing MCQs.

Third-Party Permissions

If you wish to reproduce any material for which you do not own the copyright—including quotations, tables, or images—you must obtain permission from the copyright holder. The permissions agreement must include the following documents: 

• nonexclusive rights to reproduce the material in your article in CED 
• both print and electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium 
• lifetime rights to use the material 
• worldwide English-language rights 

Further information on obtaining permissions is available. 

Presubmission Language Editing

If you are not confident in the quality of your English, you may wish to use a language-editing service to ensure that editors and reviewers understand your paper. Oxford University Press partners with Enago, a leading provider of author services. Prospective authors are entitled to a discount of 30% for editing services at Enago, via this link: https://www.enago.com/pub/oup.  

Enago is an independent service provider, who will handle all aspects of this service, including payment. As an author you are under no obligation to take up this offer. Language editing is optional and does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted. Edited manuscripts will still undergo peer review by the journal. 

General Guidance

• Manuscript text must be saved in Word (.doc or .docx) or rich text format (.rtf). Tables are considered textual and should be supplied in the same format. Please do not submit text in a PDF format (.pdf). 
• Figures must be saved as separate figure files. GIF, JPEG, PICT or BMP files are acceptable for submission, but only JPEG, TIFF or EPS files are suitable for printing. After acceptance, you will be contacted to provide print-quality figures if you have not already done so. Please note that if you supply figures in PDF format only, they must be distilled using the ‘print optimized’ option. 
• Abbreviations must be defined when first used in the abstract and in the main text, as well as when first used in table and figure captions. 
• All relevant files must be included with each revision of the paper. 
• Repetition of information or data in different sections of the manuscript must be carefully avoided. 

Title Page

The first page of all manuscripts should contain the following information: 

• The title of the paper. 
• A running head not exceeding 70 characters (not needed for correspondence-type items). 
• Manuscript word, table and figure counts. 
• Names of authors as first name(s) followed by surnames. Middle names, if applicable, can be given as initials (e.g. John A. Smith) 
• Names of the institutions at which the research was conducted, clearly linked to the respective authors using superscript Arabic numbers. 
• Name and email address of the corresponding author. 
• A statement of all funding sources that supported the work. 
• Any conflict of interest disclosures. 
• Details of ethics approval and informed consent, if applicable. 
• For Original Articles, bulleted statements (maximum 70 words per answer) in answer to each of the following questions: ‘What is already known about this topic?’ and ‘What does this study add?’ 
• For Review Articles and Concise Reports: up to six learning points, which should be single, short sentences. 

Abstract

• Authors submitting Original Articles should note that structured Abstracts (maximum of 250 words) are required. The Abstract should adopt the format: Background, Objectives, Methods, Results, Conclusions. 
• Case Reports and Review Articles require unstructured Abstracts (maximum 250 words). 
• Abstracts should contain no reference citations to previously published work. 
• Correspondence-type items do not require Abstracts.

Graphical Abstract

Authors submitting Original Articles and Review Articles are encouraged to provide a Graphical Abstract.

General guidance

• Graphical Abstracts should concisely communicate a paper’s main findings and reflect key parts of the Abstract (Background, Objectives, Methods, Results and Conclusions).
• Text should be kept to a minimum – the Abstract is the written summary of your work; the Graphical Abstract should focus on imagery and clear statistics where relevant.
• Think about your target audience before drafting your Graphical Abstract and consider Graphical Abstracts that had captured your attention and were easily understood.
• We encourage you to use images relevant for the Graphical Abstract, rather than re-using figures from your paper.
• This example shows the key elements of a good Graphical Abstract.
• You may wish to use tools such as TidBit or Canva in preparing your Graphical Abstract.
• Please upload your Graphical Abstract as a separate document, titled ‘Graphical Abstract’ at the time of submission. Your Graphical Abstract will be peer reviewed, so please ensure you retain an editable copy. If your manuscript is accepted, then the Graphical Abstract will appear in both the print and online versions of your article.

Technical requirements

• Please refer to the CED guidance on Figures; use a font size larger than 11 to make the Graphical Abstract more legible.
• If possible, for branding consistency, please use the following fonts: Roboto Bold (headline texts), Open Sans Semi Bold (subtitle texts), and Open Sans Regular (body text). If these fonts are not available, please use Arial.

Structure

For most Original Articles, the text should in general be divided into sections with the headings Abstract, Introduction, Materials and methods (or Patients and methods), Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References, Supporting Information, and Figure Legends.  

Continuing Professional Development

CED has an important focus on dermatological education, including Continuous Professional Development (CPD), and CPD questions:  

• These are questions that examine the reader’s knowledge of the topic discussed in the article. 
• Review Articles should have five CPD questions; all other CPD articles should have two questions. Original Articles, Concise Reports and correspondence are not CPD articles, and thus do not require questions. 
• The question section begins with a Learning Objective, outlining that the questions also require a learning objective to lay out what the reader is expected to gain from completing the task. This is required by the online quiz system to allow the questions to be added, so its inclusion is essential. 
• The questions are laid out in a single-best-answer, multiple-choice format, with five possible answers: 1 correct and 4 incorrect. For further information, please read this Editorial for more details. 

References 

References should be in Vancouver format and appear as consecutive, unbracketed superscript numbers in the text, e.g. in our previous reports^1,2 and those of Smith et al.,^3–5 and should be listed numerically in the reference list at the end of the article.  

Format references as below, using standard (MEDLINE) abbreviations for journal titles. If there are more than four authors, include the first three authors followed by et al. If there are more than six editors of a book, include the first five authors followed by et al.  

1. de Berker DAR, Baran R, Dawber RPR. The nail in dermatological diseases. In: Baran and Dawber’s Diseases of the Nails and Their Management (Baran R, Dawber RPR, de Berker DAR, Haneke E, Tosti A, eds), 3rd edn. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd, 2001; 172–92.  
2. Shuster S. The nature and consequence of Karl Marx’s skin disease. Br J Dermatol 2008; 158:1–3.  
3. Graham-Brown R, Burns T. Lecture Notes: Dermatology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.  
4. Smith A. Select committee report into social care in the community. Available at: http://www.dhss.gov.uk/reports/report015285.html (last accessed 7 November 2003).  

If a reference falls into a different category (e.g. conference proceedings, prescribing information), or if in doubt, please provide as much information as possible.  

We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote for reference management and formatting. 

Tables 

• Tables should be included at the end of the manuscript, each on a separate page.  
• We would like tables to be no more than 1.5 pages long in Word so please consider the information you put into the table. 
• Please submit tables in an editable format in Word or Excel, but not as an image or PDF. 
• Tables should be numbered as Table 1, Table 2 and should be referred to at the appropriate place in the text, e.g. (Table 1). Each table must have a legend that explains its purpose without reference to the text.  
• If the Editor considers that there are too many tables in an article, they may either request some of the tables be moved to Supporting Information or request a summary table. 

Figures

• Figures must be submitted as a separate file or files. 
• Figures should be referred to in text as follows: Figure 1, Figures 2–4. 
• Where a figure has more than one panel, each panel should be submitted as a separate file with a brief description of each panel given in the figure legend. Please ensure that each file is named appropriately (e.g. Figure 1a, Figure 1b). each panel should be labelled in the top left-hand corner using lower-case letters in parentheses i.e. ‘(a)’, ‘(b)’. 
• Ideally figures should have a maximum of six panels, but exceptions can be made at the Editor’s discretion. 
• Please ensure that all text in figures will be easily readable when the figure is printed on an A4 page. 
• Colour illustrations are welcomed, and all colour is published free of charge in CED. 
• Authors should obtain permission to reproduce previously published figures or tables. Please provide any accreditation text required by the copyright holder. 
• Digital images should not be manipulated (e.g. contrast, brightness) unless the manipulation is applied to the whole image and does not modify the information in any way. Where images have obviously been cropped the full image should be submitted as a supplementary file for review (for example an entire image of a Western blot with molecular-weight markers). 
• A certain degree of image processing is acceptablebut the final image must faithfully represent the original data. Image acquisition and processing software must be included in the methods. Authors should be prepared to supply the editors with original images on request.  
• Histopathology slides and graphs should be separate figures and not subpanels of the same figure. Please provide details of the stain used, and scale bars or the level of magnification used. 
• Vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) should be saved in encapsulated postscript format (.eps) at a minimum of 800 dpi. 
• Bitmap files (e.g. photographs) should be saved in tagged image file format (.tif) or JPEG at a minimum of 300 dpi. 
• We require all clinical images to have patient consent for publication (see Editorial policies on patient privacy). Eye bars or masking of the eyes does not protect the anonymity of the patients, where possible please provide an image without eye bars or masking. All case reports must have patient consent for publication before submission. 

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Supporting Information 

CED encourages the submission of underlying datasets, appendices, video files etc. as online-only Supporting Information. Supporting Information should be uploaded during manuscript submission using the file designation ‘Supplementary file for review’. CED has no restrictions around the amount of Supporting Information.  

• Supporting Information should be important ancillary information that is relevant to the main article and is published online only. Authors may also be requested to publish really large tables as Supporting Information. 
• Reference to Supporting Information in the manuscript should be sufficiently specific to allow readers to understand what is being referenced. All tables and figures included in the Supporting Information should be cited in the manuscript. 
• Please label Supporting Information in the format ‘Table S1’, ‘Figure S1’. Any Supporting Information consisting of just text should be ‘Appendix S1’ etc. 
• Supporting Information will be published as submitted and will not be corrected or checked for scientific content, typographical errors or functionality. 

Data Presentation 

• It is recommended that data are displayed in their raw form and not in a way that conceals their distribution. Individual data should be presented as dot plots next to the average for the group with appropriate error bars. The methods should be described in enough detail that the experimental conditions can be repeated in another laboratory. If any equipment or specific reagent used is detailed, provide the name of the manufacturer, city, state (if applicable) and country. 
• Any materials generated during the study (e.g. cell lines, animals, plasmids or antibodies) should be made available to other researchers, where this is practicable. 
• Novel DNA or amino acid sequences should be submitted to a public database such as GenBank or the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the accession number quoted. 

Reporting statistics 

Good reporting is important as it ensures a manuscript can be understood by a reader, replicated by a researcher, used to make a clinical decision and included in a systematic review.  

Reporting methods 

• Describe the type of study, e.g. randomized clinical trial phase III, pilot, case–control, meta-analysis etc. 
• Indicate the aim of the statistical analysis (primary objective, secondary objective, exploratory or ancillary analysis). 
• Describe the statistical methods in the order in which they are used in the results. 
• Make it clear which statistical test was used for which variable. 
• State if any assumptions were checked and how. 
• Describe how missing data were handled (if data are missing). 
• Describe any planned sensitivity or subgroup analyses. 
• If relevant, include a sample-size calculation, with sufficient detail so it can be verified, and report the minimal clinically important difference (if possible).  
• Report the alpha-level (one or two sided) and the statistical package used. 
• Describe with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. 
• Provide the manufacturer’s details for any branded products used. 

For more details about reporting standards, please see the ICJME recommendations.  

Reporting results 

• Present results in the same order of importance as described for Methods. 
• Include effect sizes and their 95% confidence intervals with the appropriate degree of precision, in addition to P-values. 
• Adjusted data for multiple testing. 
• Include both absolute and relative measures. 
• Provide enough detail that the results can be incorporated into other analyses, for example, in future meta-analytical studies. If reporting a continuous outcome, provide mean (standard deviation), while for categorical outcomes when reporting relative summary statistics, please include the frequency of the outcome (numerator) over the total sample observed (denominator). 

In addition to these recommendations, all applicable general and study-specific SAMPL guidelines should be followed.  

Production

Licence to Publish and Open Access Options

You will have the option to pay an open access fee so that your paper will be made freely available online immediately upon publication. 

After your manuscript is accepted, you must sign a licence to publish agreement on our Author Services website. You may choose between the open access options, which carry a charge and allow your paper to be freely accessibly to all users; or a standard licence, which does not carry a charge and makes your paper available to journal subscribers. 

CED articles can be published under the following types of licences: 

• Standard licence to publish (Oxford University Press (OUP) Journals, Standard Publication Model) 
• Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY)  
• Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence (CC BY-NC) 
• Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND) 

Your funding agencies may have specific requirements for what type of open access licence to use. Please see Creative Commons licences for more information, and please see the Licences, copyright and re-use rights page for more information about our standard licence to publish. Please check with your funding body if you are unsure of any licence requirements. 

Manuscript Charges

Author Services

You can pay open access charges on the same Author Services site you used to sign your licence to publish. You can pay immediately online or request an invoice by email or post. You may also refer the charges to an institutional prepayment account. Any applicable discounts can also be applied prior to payment. 

You can pay your open access charges immediately after you sign your licence. 

OA Licence Charges

Charges for the open access licence options offered by CED are listed below. The standard licence to publish does not carry a charge.  

Creative Commons Attribution licence £2,329

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence £2,329

AI and Authorship

CED follows COPE’s policy that artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT,  cannot be a named author. These tools can neither meet the requirements for authorship as defined by the ICMJE criteria nor declare conflicts of interest or manage copyright and license agreements.

If AI tools have been used to write the paper, for the production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, please disclose it in the Materials and Methods section of the paper including what tool was used and how. Authors are responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.​