Intended for healthcare professionals

BMJ Christmas issue

We publish a special two-week issue of The BMJ over Christmas and New Year. We are pleased to consider all kinds of articles, including reports of original research, for this issue.

Submission deadlines for The BMJ Christmas issue are earlier than one might imagine. For the 2024 Christmas issue:

The deadline for research submissions is 31 July 2024.
The deadline for non-research submissions is 31 August 2024.

While we welcome light-hearted fare and satire, we do not publish spoofs, hoaxes, or fabricated studies.

Submissions for the Christmas issue fall into two categories:

Research

Research papers in the Christmas issue adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigour, reporting transparency, and readability as the regular issue. Christmas papers are subject to the same competitive selection and peer review process as all research papers. Please see our general advice for authors of research articles for more details about article requirements.

Non-research

We welcome features, essays, and other article types for the Christmas issue. We receive many submissions each year and consider very few for publication. Submissions are peer reviewed as per our usual process, and we discuss and make decisions on Christmas submissions over the course of several editorial committee meetings in the second half of the year.


Christmas archive

For previously published Christmas papers see our Christmas archive, a 2016 article on Christmas highlights, and a data visualisation by Will Stahl-Timmins


Submissions

Please send us your article through the online submission system

If you have an idea for the Christmas issue that you would like to discuss, or have any other questions, please contact Richard Hurley (rhurley@bmj.com).