Mandatory forms
Instructions
In accordance with the recommendations of the World Association of Medical Editors and the Committee of Publication Ethics, the British Society for Rheumatology has created author disclosure forms and patient consent forms for Rheumatology. The author disclosure form will be sent to the corresponding author when the paper is accepted by the editor for publication. The corresponding author should ensure that the disclosure form is distributed to all co-authors on the paper. All authors are required to submit a completed disclosure form to the editorial office. The patient consent form can be downloaded from the journal website (see above link). A manuscript will not be considered formally accepted and will not be processed for publication until the required forms have been received from all authors. The formal acceptance date will be the date after editorial acceptance of the paper. The Licence to Publish form will be sent to the corresponding author by the publisher with their page proofs.
Individual Author Disclosure Form:
The author disclosure form consists of two parts, an authorship statement and a conflict of interest statement.
Authorship statement: All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. The order of authorship should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based on substantial contribution to conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of data. All authors should be involved in drafting the article or revising it critically, and must have read and approved the final version. All authors will be required to submit a statement confirming that they meet these authorship criteria.
Conflict of Interest statement: All papers when submitted should contain a disclosure statement indicating any potential conflict of interest that might constitute an embarrassment to any of the authors if it were not to be declared and were to emerge after publication. Such conflicts might include, but are not limited to, shareholding in or receipt of a grant or consultancy fee from a company whose product features in the submitted manuscript or which manufactures a competing product. If no conflict of interest is declared then this should be stated in the article. The disclosure statement is not designed to discourage authors from involvement in outside activities or from receiving financial support for their scientific work from commercial sources. Rather, it is designed to maintain the scientific and professional integrity of the journal.
Licence to Publish Form:
It is a condition of publication in Rheumatology that authors grant an exclusive licence to the Journal, published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently and will also allow the article to be as widely disseminated as possible. In assigning the Licence, Authors may use their own material in other publications provided that the journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication, and Oxford University Press is notified in writing and in advance. The Licence form may be signed by each author or the corresponding author may chose to assume the responsibility on behalf of all the authors. The publisher will only send the Licence to Publish form for accepted papers. The publisher will send out the form to the corresponding author when they send the page proofs for the accepted paper.
Patient Consent Form:
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. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should never be altered or falsified in an attempt to attain anonymity. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article.
