Authors

BMJ Open Quality adheres to the highest standards concerning its editorial policies on publication ethics and scientific misconduct. consent and peer review criteria. The journal follows guidance produced by bodies that include the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Council of Science Editors and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To view all BMJ Journal policies please refer to the BMJ Author Hub policies page, including information about our Editors’ roles and responsibilities.  Authors are required to submit a statement that their study obtained ethics approval (or a statement that it was not required and why) and that participants gave informed consent. Our Editors will consider whether the work is morally acceptable as determined by the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki. In addition to this, in line with General Medical Council guidelines, an article that contains personal medical information about an identifiable living individual requires patients explicit consent (in the format of a signed BMJ patient consent form) before we will publish it. Please find further details on BMJ research ethics policies (human participants and animals) and consent for publication; including a link to the downloadable consent form.

To make the best decision on how to deal with a manuscript BMJ Open Quality needs to know about any competing interests authors may have; this includes any commercial, financial or non financial associations that may be relevant to the submitted article. Authors must download and complete a copy of the ICMJE Conflict of Interest disclosure form. In addition to this BMJ Open Quality ensures that all advertising and sponsorship associated with the journal does not influence editorial decisions, is immediately distinguishable from editorial content and meets all other BMJ guidelines. Please find more information about competing interests and a link to the form. We take seriously all possible misconduct. If an Editor, author or reader has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behaviour they should forward their concerns to the journal. The publisher will deal with allegations appropriately following ICMJE and COPE guidelines. Corrections and retractions are considered where an article has already been published; corrections, expressions of concern or a retraction notices will be published as soon as possible in line with the BMJ correction and retraction policy.

When publishing in BMJ Open Quality, authors choose between two licence types – CC-BY-NC and CC-BY (Creative Commons open access licences require payment of an article processing charge). As an author you may wish to post your article in an institutional or subject repository, or on a scientific social sharing network. You may also link your published article to your preprint (if applicable). What you can do with your article, without seeking permission, depends on the licence you have chosen and the version of your article. Please refer to the BMJ author self archiving and permissions policies page for more information.

Preprints foster openness, accessibility and collaboration by allowing authors to make their findings immediately available to the research community and receive feedback on an article before it is submitted to a journal for formal publication. BMJ fully supports and encourages the archiving of preprints in any recognised, not-for-profit server such as medRxiv. BMJ does not consider the posting of an article in a dedicated preprint repository to be prior publication.

Preprints are reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed; Preprints should therefore not be used to guide clinical practice, health-related behaviour or health policy. For more information, please refer to our Preprint policy page.

Submissions to BMJ Open Quality are unsolicited. All articles are subject to external peer review. The journal operates single anonymised peer review whereby the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author; usually two external reviewer reports are obtained before an article is accepted for publication. Articles authored by a member of a journal’s editorial team are independently peer reviewed; an editor will have no input or influence on the peer review process or publication decision for their own article. For more information on what to expect during the peer review process please refer to BMJ Author Hub – the peer review process. BMJ is committed to transparency. Every article we publish includes a description of its provenance (commissioned or not commissioned) and whether it was internally or externally peer reviewed. BMJ requests that all reviewers adhere to a set of basic principles and standards during the peer-review process in research publication; these are based on the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Please refer to our peer review terms and conditions policy page.

Plagiarism is the appropriation of the language, ideas or thoughts of another without crediting their true source and representation of them as one’s own original work. BMJ is a member of CrossCheck by CrossRef and iThenticate. iThenticate is a plagiarism screening service that verifies the originality of content submitted before publication. BMJ runs manuscripts through iThenticate during the peer review process. Authors, researchers and freelancers can also use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting www.ithenticate.com. Reader responses, questions and comments to published content is welcomed by BMJ Open Quality; these should be submitted electronically via the journals website. Please find further details on how to publish a response and the terms and requirements.

BMJ and the Health Foundation are committed to ensuring that all good quality research is published. Our article transfer service helps authors find the best journal for their research while providing an easy and smooth publication process. As part of this service, once authors agree to transfer their manuscript all versions, supplementary files and peer reviewer comments are automatically transferred; without the need to resubmit or reformat. Authors who submit to the BMJ Quality & Safety and are rejected will be offered the option of transferring to BMJ Open Quality.

Please note that the article transfer service does not guarantee acceptance but you should receive a quicker initial decision on your manuscript. Contact the Transfer Editor at transfers@bmj.com

BMJ Open Quality is an open access journal and levies an Article Publishing Charge (APC) as follows for each article type; these charges are exclusive of VAT for UK and EU authors. There are no submission, colour or page charges. Systematic review – £2,060 Narrative review – £2,060 Research & reporting methodology – £1,545 Short report – £1,545 Quality improvement report – £1,545 Quality improvement programme – £1,545 Quality education report – £1,545 All other types – £2,060

BMJ journals offer waivers for the full Article Processing Charge (100% discount of the APC) where all authors are based in low-income countries. See full waiver list*. Requests for waivers should be made before or during initial submission**. If an article reports funding from a funder with an open access mandate or policy that covers paying APCs, BMJ expects that the APC will be paid. Visit our author hub to learn more about our waivers policy and how to request one. You might be eligible for institutional funding. A number of institutions have open access agreements with BMJ which can either cover the whole cost of open access publishing for authors at participating institutions or can allow authors to receive a discount of the Article Processing Charge (APC). Visit BMJ’s open access agreements page to find out whether your institution is a member and what discounts you may be entitled to. * These lists are based on the HINARI Core Offer Groups A and B, and the World Bank Country and Lending Groups, downloaded in July 2021. They will be updated annually. **Please note that applications for waivers or discounts should be made during initial submission and not after an article has been accepted. Editors are not involved in this process and the ability to pay has no bearing on editorial decisions. Payment will not be required unless your article is accepted. Accepted articles will not be published until payment has been received. BMJ does not refund APCs once paid.

BMJ Open Quality adheres to BMJ’s Tier 3 data policy. We strongly encourage that data generated by your research that supports your article be made available as soon as possible, wherever legally and ethically possible.

All research articles must contain a Data Availability Statement. For more information and FAQs, please see BMJ’s full Data Sharing Policy page.

BMJ encourages active patient and public involvement in clinical research as part of its patient and public partnership strategy. To support co-production of research we request that authors provide a Patient and Public Involvement statement in the methods section of their papers, under the subheading ‘Patient and public involvement’. We appreciate that patient and public involvement is relatively new and may not be feasible or appropriate for all papers. We therefore continue to consider papers where patients were not involved. The Patient and Public Involvement statement should provide a brief response to the following questions, tailored as appropriate for the study design reported (please find example statements here):

• At what stage in the research process were patients/the public first involved in the research and how?
• How were the research question(s) and outcome measures developed and informed by their priorities, experience, and preferences?
• How were patients/the public involved in the design of this study?

• How were they involved in the recruitment to and conduct of the study?
• Were they asked to assess the burden of the intervention and time required to participate in the research?
• How were (or will) they be involved in your plans to disseminate the study results to participants and relevant wider patient communities (e.g. by choosing what information/results to share, when, and in what format)?

If patients were not involved please state this. In addition to considering the points above we advise authors to look at guidance for best reporting of patient and public involvement as set out in the GRIPP2 reporting checklist. If the Patient and Public Involvement statement  is missing in the submitted manuscript we will request that authors provide it.

A rapid response is a moderated but not peer reviewed online response to a published article in BMJ Open Quality; it will not receive a DOI and will not be indexed. Find out more about responses and how to submit a response.

Please review the below article type specifications including the required article lengths, illustrations, table limits and reference counts. The word count excludes the title page, abstract, tables, acknowledgements, contributions and references. Manuscripts should be as succinct as possible. For further support when making your submission please refer to the resources available on the BMJ Author Hub. Here you will find information on writing and formatting your research through to the peer review process and promoting your paper. We encourage authors to ensure that research articles are written in accordance with the relevant research reporting guideline. You may also wish to use the language editing and translation services provided by BMJ Author Services.

Original Articles report research and studies relevant to quality of health care. They may cover any aspect, from clinical or therapeutic intervention, to promotion, to prevention. They may cover studies that describe work to implement interventions and studies that aim to improve health care delivery or they may cover studies that explore how the interaction of context and interventions impacts on improvement results. They should usually present evidence indicating that problems of quality of practice may exist, or suggest indications for changes in practice, or contribute towards defining standards or developing measures of outcome. We are particularly interested in articles that contribute to developing approaches to measuring quality of care in routine practice. The journal is interprofessional and welcomes articles from anyone whose work is relevant, including health professionals, managers, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, or information technologists. Research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Scoping reviews, Mixed methods reviews, etc) should be submitted as Systematic reviews. Following the lead of The BMJ and its patient partnership strategy, BMJ Open Quality is encouraging active patient involvement in setting the research agenda. As such, we require authors of Research Articles to add a Patient and Public Involvement statement in the Methods section. Please see more details above.

Research checklists should be uploaded during the submission process. If these are not applicable to your research please state the reason in your cover letter. Word count: 3000-4000 words Abstract: up to 300 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 5 tables or illustrations; appendices that present additional methodological details or other relevant materials that may be of interest to readers can also be included with the intention of aiding peer reviewers or providing them as online material for interested readers. Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific and accurate.

• What is already known on this topic – summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done
• What this study adds – summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before
• How this study might affect research, practice or policy – summarise the implications of this study

This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article. 

This article type includes all research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Scoping reviews, Mixed methods reviews, etc). Please include the research type in your title to make the nature of your study clear. These articles should conform to the same guidelines outlined above for Original research. Detailed search strategies and other supplementary materials will be considered for inclusion as online-only appendices.

Word count: 3000-4000 words Abstract: structured, up to 300 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 5 tables or illustrations Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific and accurate.

• What is already known on this topic – summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done
• What this study adds – summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before
• How this study might affect research, practice or policy – summarise the implications of this study

This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article. 

We will consider narrative reviews of general topic areas within patient safety , as opposed to structured, systematic reviews that address the effectiveness of specific interventions. E.g., an overview of the state of the science in teamwork training or assessments of patient safety culture. Narrative reviews can also address methodological topics, such as the use of ethnographic methods in patient safety research or a primer on run charts. Research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Scoping reviews, Mixed methods reviews, etc) are classified by the journal as Systematic reviews and must be submitted as such.

Word count: up to 3000 words

Articles that aim to advance research methodology or reporting standards related to patient safety and quality improvement. These articles are distinct from Primers or How to type articles on meant to provide a useful resource for general readers (such reviews fall under the Narrative Review category above)

Word count: 3000 words or less

These articles should be summaries of improvement or implementation best practice that generate one or two learning points for the reader.  Topics might include headline results from original research projects (as per traditional Research Letters), new ways to measure improvement in routine care or how local context affected a piece of implementation.

Word count: up to 750 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 2 Tables or Figures – word count can be up to 1,000 words if only 1 (or no) Table/Figure

Articles that describe innovative approaches to imparting trainees or practitioners with concepts or tools related to quality improvement or patient safety. Articles that report a robust evaluation can have the same format as Original Research. Less ambitious reports should be less than 1500 words and have fewer than 20 references. For shorter reports, note that the literature already contains numerous descriptions of curricula for students and trainees. To be of interest, the curriculum and, or the evaluation should include some relatively novel element. Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific and accurate.

• What is already known on this topic – summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done
• What this study adds – summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before
• How this study might affect research, practice or policy – summarise the implications of this study

This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article. 

Articles which outline how quality improvement programmes are set up, their measurable benefits and lessons learnt. Authors of improvement reports are strongly encouraged to consult the SQUIRE guidelines (Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence) regarding the format and content.  Please note, authors of improvement reports must use the downloadable SQUIRE template to submit their project

Word count: up to 4000 words Abstract: 300 Figures/Tables: up to 3 tables or figures

Criteria for a Quality Improvement Report 1. Describes and evaluates an intervention that aims to improve a process or system of healthcare. The project does not necessarily have to show improvement, but should demonstrate an attempt to improve a process or system. 2. Is not an audit alone. Shows measurement, improvement, and then measurement repeatedly at least twice. BMJ Quality suggest using the PDSA model for improvement but authors may choose to use different tools. There should be three separate points where measurement has occurred and at least 2 improvement cycles. Authors describe and evaluate the variation in their data over time 3. Ideally, the project outcomes should be sustainable 4. Where the intervention is educational, the evaluation examines changes in learners’ knowledge or behaviours and/or resultant organisational change/improvement. Simply reporting learner satisfaction with the intervention is not sufficient, and authors should consider submitting their work to an educational journal. 5. Where it does not meet all criteria, the report attempts to address this in the limitations section. The report should consider the sustainability of the intervention within the limitations and detail to what extent sustainability has been assessed. Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific and accurate.

• What is already known on this topic – summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done
• What this study adds – summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before
• How this study might affect research, practice or policy – summarise the implications of this study

This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article.

BMJ are willing to consider publishing supplements to regular issues. Supplement proposals may be made at the request of:

• The journal editor, an editorial board member or a learned society may wish to organise a meeting, sponsorship may be sought and the proceedings published as a supplement.
• The journal editor, editorial board member or learned society may wish to commission a supplement on a particular theme or topic. Again, sponsorship may be sought.
• BMJ itself may have proposals for supplements where sponsorship may be necessary.
• A sponsoring organisation, often a pharmaceutical company or a charitable foundation, that wishes to arrange a meeting, the proceedings of which will be published as a supplement.

In all cases, it is vital that the journal’s integrity, independence and academic reputation is not compromised in any way.

For further information on criteria that must be fulfilled, download the supplements guidelines. When contacting us regarding a potential supplement, please include as much of the information below as possible.

• Journal in which you would like the supplement published
• Title of supplement and/or meeting on which it is based
• Date of meeting on which it is based
• Proposed table of contents with provisional article titles and proposed authors
• An indication of whether authors have agreed to participate
• Sponsor information including any relevant deadlines
• An indication of the expected length of each paper Guest Editor proposals if appropriate