Ideas for journals in which to submit case reports

[HarryMTieboutMD]

I have a case report I am going to submit (confirmed neurosyphilis manifesting as purely psychotic symptoms- incl Schneiderian FRS), and I am debating to which journal I should submit it. Impact factor, time to response, etc do not matter all that much.

The caveat is that more and more journals are 1) doing away with case reports entirely and 2) require consent from the patient (unable to be obtained as the pt was lost to f/u/likely moved, etc - and not worth the effort to have legal documentation that I explored every avenue to try to obtain consent).

BMJ case reports would be ideal except for the whole consent thing. As far as I can tell Journal of Clinical Psychiatry accepts case reports, and they do not require consent. I will likely submit it here first. Even though this is a low impact factor journal it's still pretty widely circulated among psychiatrists, so my chances of getting it published here are not great.

None of my attendings write case reports anymore (obviously), and my co residents who have published them don't have the consent issues or submit them to highly specialized journals (ie, this topic would not be appropriate). I am OK with submitting it to the AmJPsych resident's journal if there really isn't an indexed journal option.

Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, trolling, etc

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[WisNeuro]

JAMA Neurology, Neurocase. The NEJM still does some, but they accept few.

 

[SmallBird]

I have a case report I am going to submit (confirmed neurosyphilis manifesting as purely psychotic symptoms- incl Schneiderian FRS), and I am debating to which journal I should submit it. Impact factor, time to response, etc do not matter all that much.

The caveat is that more and more journals are 1) doing away with case reports entirely and 2) require consent from the patient (unable to be obtained as the pt was lost to f/u/likely moved, etc - and not worth the effort to have legal documentation that I explored every avenue to try to obtain consent).

BMJ case reports would be ideal except for the whole consent thing. As far as I can tell Journal of Clinical Psychiatry accepts case reports, and they do not require consent. I will likely submit it here first. Even though this is a low impact factor journal it's still pretty widely circulated among psychiatrists, so my chances of getting it published here are not great.

None of my attendings write case reports anymore (obviously), and my co residents who have published them don't have the consent issues or submit them to highly specialized journals (ie, this topic would not be appropriate). I am OK with submitting it to the AmJPsych resident's journal if there really isn't an indexed journal option.

Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, trolling, etc

You could try AJP who does publish case reports rarely; they have a variety of subsections including 'clinical case conference' - I got quite favorable peer review there and then told they don't publish case reports by residents, but I'm not sure that was really the reason. Psychosomatics may be interested in this depending on the context in which the patient was seen. The neurology journals continue to publish more case reports and you could consider Neurology although I don't think the case report is sufficiently novel for them. Lower impact options include Harvard Review of Psychiatry which is indexed.

The consent thing is insane and frustrating.

 

[splik]

tbh there is nothing case report worthy about neurosyphilis presenting with psychosis. 100 years ago that would have been a very common presentation (including without any other signs - that is GPI for you) and there are contemporary case reports already published in bottom of the barrel journals. If you are insistent on adding this detritus to the literature you might consider doing a review of the literature/systematic review of case reports for GPI psychosis which Psychosomatics would probably take. I'm not sure why you think J Clin Psych is a "low impact factor" journal - it has a very favorably IF for psychiatry. General Hospital Psychiatry would probably consider it too (they only do case reports online). if you have an image, you could consider it for Neurology but doesn't sound like you have an image (who doesn't like to see spirochetes?) You might also consider J neuropsych and clin neurosci which also only publishes case reports online, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology might be another option.

AJP only publishes cases as letters to the editor and this is not case report worthy. They do have a "clinical case conference" section which actually frequently publishes papers by residents (so not sure why they told small bird otherwise) however the case must have been discussed at a case conference by experts in the field of the paper.

Also it is not quite true that journals in general are doing away with case reports. only in psychiatry is this happening. in general medicine (and to a lesser extent neurology) case reports have made a massive comeback in recent years, especially in the major journals. it is only psychiatry with its complex about being perceived as too woolly that has got rid of case reports. and to my knowledge it's only really the British journals that require consent (which has been the case for 20+ years), American journals still don't seem to care.

But if you really insist on inflicting this crap on the world, why not do a poster presentation at some conference? perhaps your program will even pay for a free trip or give you an additional week off? they may publish the abstract in the journal proceedings

 

[Blitz2006]

1. Psychosomatics - http://www.psychosomaticsjournal.com/content/authorinfo
FREE

2. Annals of General Psychiatry - http://annals-general-psychiatry.biomedcentral.com/about
$2500 Fee.

4. Harvard Review of Psychiatry - http://journals.lww.com/hrpjournal/Documents/HRP Instructions for Authors January 2016.pdf
FREE

I don't think Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Neurosciences accept case reports:
http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/neuro_ifora

They take "Clinical Reports", which sounds more like a case series.

I think the realistic journals you should consider that are Free/Cheap and pubmed indexed are:

1. Case Reports in Psychiatry - $400 APC
2. BMJ Case Reports - $330 Membership Fee
3. The Neurologist - Free
4. Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience - Free
5. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry - Free


Of course, AJP Residents' Journal is last resort. But honestly, I personally believe being pubmed indexed is overrated. There are lots of good journals that are not pubmed indexed, but indexed in Embase (which is mainstream in Europe).

 

[splik]

ummm. neither psychosomatics nor general hospital psychiatry are open access. it is free to publish in them. it only costs if you wish to make your article open access.

and i think people were giving suggestions of journals that accept case reports, not saying that the above was something that would necessarily be published in JAMA Neurology or NEJM (I would be very surprised if they would be interested in this). I was making the point that there was nothing novel about the proposed topic. However I suggested it could be made more publishable by contextualizing it as a lit review, or having it as an educational article with a teaching point ("never forget syphilis!") for residents etc. Too often, people publish stuff for the sake of it.

 

[Blitz2006]

ummm. neither psychosomatics nor general hospital psychiatry are open access. it is free to publish in them. it only costs if you wish to make your article open access.

and i think people were giving suggestions of journals that accept case reports, not saying that the above was something that would necessarily be published in JAMA Neurology or NEJM (I would be very surprised if they would be interested in this). I was making the point that there was nothing novel about the proposed topic. However I suggested it could be made more publishable by contextualizing it as a lit review, or having it as an educational article with a teaching point ("never forget syphilis!") for residents etc. Too often, people publish stuff for the sake of it.

My apologies, you're right about Psychosomatics/General Hospital being Free. But it looks like the other 2 (Annals of General Psych/Harvard) is Fully Open Access.

Yeah, I figured you weren't reccomending AJP for this case! But just wanted to make sure the OP wasn't banking on NEJM/JAMA/AJP!!

 

[SmallBird]

You have to also remember that some of these journals are Open Access, and therefore have hefty Article Processing Charges (APCs). So I'm not sure if your hospital will "fund it". I know my hospital flinches if above >$500 for a case report....

1. Psychosomatics - http://www.psychosomaticsjournal.com/content/authorinfo
$3000 Fee.

2. General Hospital Psychiatry - http://www.ghpjournal.com/content/authorinfo
$3000 Fee.

3. Annals of General Psychiatry - http://annals-general-psychiatry.biomedcentral.com/about
$2500 Fee.

4. Harvard Review of Psychiatry - http://journals.lww.com/hrpjournal/Documents/HRP Instructions for Authors January 2016.pdf
$2000 Fee

I don't think Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Neurosciences accept case reports:
http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/neuro_ifora

They take "Clinical Reports", which sounds more like a case series.

I'm a bit confused at this thread, as splik calls your case report "crap/detritus/non-worthy", yet I see suggestions of NEJM, AJP and JAMA Neurology. I obviously haven't read your case report, but I think to get accepted into these journals your case has to be pretty damn good/novel/original. Just my hunch though, I'm not an expert.

If money is an issue, I think the realistic journals you should consider that are Free/Cheap and pubmed indexed are:

1. Case Reports in Psychiatry - $400 APC
2. BMJ Case Reports - $330 Membership Fee
3. The Neurologist - Free
4. Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience - Free
5. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry - Free


Of course, AJP Residents' Journal is last resort. But honestly, I personally believe being pubmed indexed is overrated. There are lots of good journals that are not pubmed indexed, but indexed in Embase (which is mainstream in Europe). I mean lets be honest, at the end of the day, you're doing this to put another 1-2 lines on your CV.....

This post has a good number of errors. Harvard review of psychiatry is also free; they have an open access option but it is not compulsory.

Being pubmed indexed is not overrated. If you are publishing just so that you can say "that was fun, someone printed my work!", sure, it doesn't matter. But if you are looking to be cited, have people take your work seriously, pursue promotion within an academic track, be seen as having scholarly productivity when applying for job, it is important that the journal be pubmed indexed. There may be occasional very rare journals that are good but not pubmed indexed but in terms of ones appropriate for psychiatric case reports I can't think of any.

 

[Blitz2006]

This post has a good number of errors. Harvard review of psychiatry is also free; they have an open access option but it is not compulsory.

Being pubmed indexed is not overrated. If you are publishing just so that you can say "that was fun, someone printed my work!", sure, it doesn't matter. But if you are looking to be cited, have people take your work seriously, pursue promotion within an academic track, be seen as having scholarly productivity when applying for job, it is important that the journal be pubmed indexed. There may be occasional very rare journals that are good but not pubmed indexed but in terms of ones appropriate for psychiatric case reports I can't think of any.

I agree to some extent, but I meant that I know of some journals that are Embase indexed, and not pubmed. I think EMBASE is just as good as PubMed.

But yeah, I made the corrections to my post.

Also, General Hospital Psychiatry actually doesn't accept case reports anymore:

http://www.ghpjournal.com/content/authorinfo
"The journal will not accept case report submissions as of December 2015, but can consider for publication articles that include discussion of one or more cases as part of a comprehensive topical review (typically 50-75+ references)."

So really it looks like for pure psych case reports, Case Reports in Psychiatry or Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Also, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

http://www.psychiatrist.com/pages/authors.aspx

IF: 5.847

Thats not low...

 

[HarryMTieboutMD]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! After reading this thread and talking to some more people, I think I have a good submission list

1) I know the topic isn't necessarily novel or exciting, and yes, before malaria therapy it would be just another mundane case of GPI as confirmed by Wasserman's reaction, but the point is since the Advent of HIV and HAART noncompliant patients, it's making a comeback and should at least be on the ddx. There are far less interesting psych case reports regularly published. I'm at one of the country's biggest medical centers with a large urban population, and we only see a handful of cases a year.

2) Obviously I am not aiming for AJP or JAMA anything or NJEM... don't be ridiculous. And case reports don't matter for academic advancement anyway- it's just something that's fun to write and publish

3) My comments regarding J Clin Psych were that despite a low impact factor (compared with other major psych journals- the four I regularly read- Biological Psychiatry, JAMA psych, AJP, Molec Psych), it is widely circulated and is probably more selective than some others, so chances of submission are probably less

 

[Guyton]

I have a case report I am going to submit (confirmed neurosyphilis manifesting as purely psychotic symptoms- incl Schneiderian FRS), and I am debating to which journal I should submit it.

Consider Clinical Schizophrenia & Related Psychosis. They publish case reports commonly. It is a rag, but its a MEDLINE/PubMed indexed rag without an APC.

 

[deleted736562]

3) My comments regarding J Clin Psych were that despite a low impact factor (compared with other major psych journals- the four I regularly read- Biological Psychiatry, JAMA psych, AJP, Molec Psych), it is widely circulated and is probably more selective than some others, so chances of submission are probably less

Just to nitpick here, 5.5 is not "low" by any stretch. For a specialized journal, that's intermediate to borderline high. For comparison, Schizophrenia Research is a very well respected journal with an IF of 4.7.

 

[pisekar]

I strongly discourage you to submit to AJP Resident Journal unless you are planning to submit to a special issue. I submitted an article which was accepted at the end of last year, still waiting