Intended for healthcare professionals

Analysis

How to maintain trustworthiness when doctors act as policy advocates

BMJ 2024; 386 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2024-079929 (Published 13 August 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;386:e079929
  • Status
  • Comments
  • Date

For analysis articles The BMJ has fully open peer review. This means that accepted analysis papers submitted from February 2016 onwards usually have their prepublication history posted alongside them on bmj.com.

This prepublication history comprises previous versions of the manuscript, reports from the manuscript committee meeting(s), reviewers’ comments, and the authors’ responses to comments from reviewers and editors.

In rare instances we may determine after careful consideration that we should not make certain portions of the prepublication record publicly available. For example, in cases of stigmatised illnesses we seek to protect the confidentiality of reviewers who have these illnesses. In other instances there may be legal or regulatory considerations that make it inadvisable or impermissible to make available certain parts of the prepublication record.

In all instances in which we have determined that elements of the prepublication record should not be made publicly available, we expect that authors will respect these decisions and also will not share this information.

For commissioned series of articles, the prepublication history captures the formal submissions, paper-based peer review, and revisions uploaded and registered in our online submission system. The prepublication history does not capture the proceedings of the numerous author meetings, correspondence outside the online system, and in-person editorial and peer review that often accompany the appraisal and development of commissioned series. It also does not include prepublication histories of papers commissioned but ultimately rejected from the series of articles.

Provenance statements are available on all scholarly comment articles published in The BMJ .