About the Journal

The Journal of Medical Education Research is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in relation to the training of healthcare professionals, in particular in undergraduate education.  While it is based at Buckingham, it draws from academic authors beyond its borders who have an established track record in their field.  The journal has a special focus on curriculum (design and implementation), evaluation, assessments, professionalism, and evidence-based medicine.  It is published annually.

The University of Buckingham Medical School (UBMS) is one of the newer schools in the United Kingdom and the first independent not-for-profit medical school.  It offers a 4.5-year course versus the usual 5-year MBChB course and there is a resonance with innovation and fresh thinking at its core. This journal is a further manifestation of this, as we seek to showcase ideas and concepts and not simply become an organ of academic activity.  All articles published by the Journal of Medical Education Research will be made freely accessible online immediately upon publication without subscription charges.

Journal of Medical Education Research accepts the following types of article:

  • Research Articles
  • Commentaries
  • Watch this space
  • Letters to the Editor

Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English.

Preparing Your Paper

Research articles:

  • Should be around 2500-5000 words, written with the following elements in this order: title page, abstract, key words, main text-introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement, declaration of interest statement, references, tables with caption (on individual pages), figures with caption (on individual pages)
  • Should contain a structured abstract of 300 words
  • Should contain between 5 and 10 keywords

For further details click here

Commentaries

  • Commentaries should be around 1500-2000 words and discuss findings, implications, and research on a specific topic. They are short, focused comments either on articles recently published in the journal, or trends within its field. Commentaries offer author’s original ideas or personal experience on a current hot topic or elaborate on a widely researched subject.  A current hot topic may be on a subject that is important or one that challenges the current zeitgeist.

Watch This Space

  • The Journal accepts short papers, not exceeding 1,500 words with one table or figure, primarily for the purpose of publishing early important results or innovations within curriculum design and delivery, to begin the exchange of educational ideas within the Medical Education community.
  • All articles should document some form of evaluation or planned evaluation of the innovation/educational research.
  • The article should be written with the following elements: What We Did, How We Did It, What We have Learned, Take Home Points.
  • Should contain a structured abstract of 150 words.
  • Should contain between 5 and 10 keywords.

Letters to the Editor

  • Letters to the Editor will be a brief communication on a topic relevant to the journals should be concise pieces of no more than 800 words and not include original research, tables, or figures.
  • Due to the volume of letters submitted to the editors it is not always possible to provide feedback on every submission.

Peer Review Process

Each article is peer reviewed. Initially the articles are reviewed by the editor and their assistant editors. The Journal of Medical Education Research has an editorial board, and its members cover a wide range of disciplines within the educational field. All the members of the board have an established track record in academic publication.

Once articles are accepted to peer-review they are then sent to selected peer reviewers. Each article (except letters and editorials) is peer reviewed by at least two reviewers and each reviewer will submit their review including comments and a recommendation when to accept for publication, reject or to request revisions to the articles.

The process for Peer Review is as follows:

  1. Submission of Paper

The corresponding or submitting author submits the paper to the journal. In virtually all cases this should be via our online platform.

  1. Editorial Office Assessment

The editorial team checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against the journal’s Author Guidelines to make sure it includes the required sections and stylizations. The quality of the paper is not assessed at this point.

  1. Appraisal by the Editor

The lead Editor checks that the paper is appropriate for the journal and is sufficiently original and interesting. If not, the paper may be rejected without being reviewed any further.

  1. Editor Assigns a Section Editor / Associate Editor

Most Issues of JMER have Section Editors / Associate Editors who handle the peer review. If they do, they would be assigned at this stage.

  1. Invitation to Reviewers

The handling editor sends invitations to individuals they believe would be appropriate reviewers. As responses are received, further invitations are issued, if necessary, until the minimum number of two reviewers per article is confirmed.

  1. Response to Invitations

Potential reviewers consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They then accept or decline. If possible, when declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers.

  1. Review is Conducted

The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper several times. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise they will read the paper several more times, taking notes so as to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revision (usually flagged as either major or minor) before it is reconsidered.

  1. Journal Evaluates the Reviews

The handling editor considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

  1. The Decision is Communicated

The author receives a decision email including any relevant reviewer comments. As JMER operates a blind review process the author will not see the personal details of the reviewer.

  1. Next Steps

If accepted, the paper is sent to production. If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the handling editor should include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article. If the paper was sent back for revision, the reviewers should expect to receive a new version, unless they have opted out of further participation. However, where only minor changes were requested this follow-up review might be done by the handling editor.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate gold open access under a CC-BY-NC licence to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Author Publication Charges

There are no charges for authors to publish their work in the journal.

Self-Archiving and Institutional Repositories

UBP offers a publishing model that enables wide access to academic research, global readership for our authors and ensures the long-term preservation of published content. As a result, we permit authors to archive their contributions to this Journal. This can be either via authors' own websites, or via their institution’s or funding body’s online repository or archive

In addition, all published articles are archived by UBP at a number of repositories including LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, PKP and The British Library.

Abstracting and Indexing Information 

Submissions to indexes include:

  • Crossref
  • Google Scholar
  • Directory of Open Access Journals


Policies on Conflict of Interest, Human and Animal rights, and Informed Consent

JMER requires authors to declare all competing interests in relation to their work. All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘competing interests’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial).

Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.” Editors may ask for further information relating to competing interests. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.

Competing interests may be financial or non-financial. A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations.

Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial
competing interests that may cause them embarrassment if they were to become public after the publication of the article.

Human and Animal Rights

All research must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. If there is suspicion that work has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, editors may reject the manuscript & can immediately contact the author(s)’ethics committee.

If an editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.

Research involving human research participants must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors must identify the ethics committee approving the research, including the name and reference number of the committee in submitted manuscripts. If the study has been granted exemption from requiring ethics approval, details of the committee granting exemption should be included in the manuscript. Manuscripts must also include a statement affirming that informed consent was obtained from all human research participants.

Informed Consent

A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the manuscript. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption). 

On the rare occasion when animals have been used in the research, JMER will take into the account animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research. In rare cases, editors may contact the ethics committee for further information. Research Studies and other non-experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or appropriate permissions or licenses must be included in the manuscript.

Data Sharing Policy

JMER supports the principles of open research and scholarship and encourages authors to share their research data in openly available repositories once their article is accepted for publication. JMER supports the FAIR principles of research data sharing and encourage authors to submit data availability statements where relevant, regardless of journal requirements.

Licensing

Content is available on Open Access basis under the following license: CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (for more information visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)