SAGE Open Medicine
Sage Open Medicine is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research and review articles in medicine and health sciences. Please see the Aims and Scopes tab for further information.
Journal Highlights
- Global visibility due to international audience of multidisciplinary researchers.
- Official Impact Factor is 2.3 (ESCI), CiteScore is 3.5.
- Indexed in: Clarivate Analytics Emerging Citations Index Source (ESCI), PubMed Central (PMC), PubMed, Scopus, and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
- This journal a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
- Gold open access journal: all articles are made freely available online on our website and on PubMedCentral.
- Rigorous peer review and decision making with high standards of publication.
- Publication in the journal is subject to payment of an article processing charge (APC).
- Reviewers get credit for their work via journal partnership with Clarivate Reviewer Recognition (formerly Publons).
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement
Sage Open Medicine promotes inclusive, open science that reflects the disciplinary, human, and geographic diversity of the medical research community.
Diversity as a core value embodies inclusiveness, mutual respect, and multiple perspectives.
We welcome editors, editorial board members, peer reviewers and authors from all backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, nationalities, races, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, gender identities, mental or physical (dis)abilities, ages, career stages, socioeconomic status or any other individual status.
We are committed to continually improving our editorial and review processes whilst playing our part in eradicating bias and inequality in all forms.
Submission Information
Submit your manuscript today at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopenmedicine.
Please see the Submission Guidelines tab for more information on how to submit your article to the journal.
APC Information
Publication in the journal is subject to payment of an article processing charge (APC). The APC serves to support the journal and ensures that articles are freely accessible online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons licence. The APC for this journal is $2,000 USD.
Members of the American Society for Reconstructive Transplantation will receive a 45% discount on the APC.
The APC is payable when a manuscript is accepted for publication after peer review before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Please see further details here.
Contact
Please direct any enquiries to som@sagepub.co.uk.
Criteria for Publication
Our goal is to publish research done well. This means we look for research that adds to the academic record, either as novel or corroborative evidence, and adheres to ethical standards, uses robust methodologies that are transparent and reproducible, and uses appropriate statistical analyses to ensure clear, credible, and trustworthy results. Sage Open Medicine evaluates manuscripts based on how the research was conducted and reported.
- All manuscripts:
- must comply with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 and EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines (e.g. CONSORT for randomized, controlled trials, PRISMA for systematic reviews/meta-analyses, STROBE for most observational studies, and ARRIVE for animal studies. https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/care/).
- are subject to single-blind peer review (comments from at least two external peer reviewers).
- must follow our publishing policies.
- The journal endorses the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment. However, consistent with the AllTrials campaign, retrospectively registered trials will be considered if the justification for late registration is acceptable.
Scope
The Editors are looking for original research and review articles across all areas of medicine and health sciences. We will consider replication studies and negative/null results studies.
We welcome manuscripts across the following areas of medicine and health sciences:
Allergy/Immunology
Anaesthesia/Pain
Cardiovascular
Critical Care/ Emergency Medicine
Dentistry
Dermatology
Diabetes/Endocrinology
Epidemiology/Public Health
Gastroenterology/Hepatology
Geriatrics/Gerontology
Haematology
Health economics and outcomes research
Immunology
Infectious Diseases
Mental Health/Psychiatry
Nephrology
Neurology
Nursing
Obstetrics/Gynaecology
Oncology
Ophthalmology
Orthopaedics/Rehabilitation/Occupational Therapy
Otolaryngology
Palliative Medicine
Pathology
Pharmacoepidemiology/Drug safety
Psychopharmacology
Radiology
Respiratory Medicine
Rheumatology
Sports Medicine
Surgery
Toxicology
Urology
Women's Health
We publish original clinical research (randomized controlled trials, observational studies); Preclinical research (in vitro studies, animal studies, in silico studies); Systematic reviews and meta-analyses; Narrative/scoping/topics reviews; Case reports/series.
We do not publish the following research:
- Alternative and complementary medicine
- Bioinformatics studies without clinical, in vitro, or in vivo validation
- in vitro cell lines studies without in vivo/clinical validation; in silico studies without supporting evidence of their downstream effects in vivo or in?vitro
- Simple database studies, simple bibliographic studies, common cases
- Studies with limited international appeal that are more suited for a local or niche journal
- Life science and engineering studies: these may be suitable for our sister publication, Science Progress.
- Case reports.
Ashima Sinha | SAGE Publishing, India |
Piotr Adamski | Nicolaus Copernicus University, Bydgoszcz, Poland |
Kwok Leung Ong | University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia |
Norlea Sukor | Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
Kristina Bailey | University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, USA |
Nikoletta Rovina | Kapodistrian University of Athens, 'Sotiria' Hospital, Greece |
Robert Benamouzig | Avicenne Hospital, Paris-13 University, Bobigny, France |
Ronnie Fass | Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA |
Merryn Gott | University of Auckland, New Zealand |
Roy Soiza | NHS Grampian, Aberdeen, UK |
Karl-Anton Kreuzer, MD | University of Cologne, Germany |
Vasilios Athyros | Aristotelian University, Thessaloniki, Greece |
Myla Goldman | University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA |
Chris McGuigan | St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland |
Dechao Feng | West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China |
Maxine Sun | University of Montreal Health Center, Canada |
Michael Stewart | Mayo Clinic Florida, Jacksonville, FL, USA |
Richard Quinton | Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK |
A Wallace Hayes | Michigan State University and University of South Florida, USA |
Kai Savolainen | NanoReflections Oy, Finland |
Mohamad Abou Chakra | Sorbonne Université, Paris, France and Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon |
Sylvain Lanthier | Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM), Canada |
Marianne Lisby | Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark |
Mark Meadowcroft | Pennsylvania State University, Hershey, PA, USA |
William Novick | University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, USA |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Sage Open Medicine
- Open Access
- Article processing charge (APC)
- Article Types
- Editorial policies
4.1 Peer Review Policy
4.2 Authorship
4.3 Acknowledgements
4.4 Funding
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
4.7 Clinical Trials
4.8 Reporting guidelines
4.9 Data - Publishing policies
5.1 Publication ethics
5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement - Preparing your manuscript
6.1 Word processing formats
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
6.3 Supplementary material
6.4 Reference style
6.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
7.1 ORCID
7.2 Information required for completing your submission
7.3 Corresponding author contact details
7.4 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
8.1 Sage Production
8.2 Continuous publication
8.3 Promoting your article - Further information
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopenmedicine to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Sage Open Medicine will be reviewed.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
Sage Open Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed journal indexed in . Each article accepted after peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges, which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.
For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.
2. Article processing charge (APC)
If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons licence.
Members of the American Society for Reconstructive Transplantation will receive a 45% discount on the APC.
The APC for this journal is $2,000 USD.
The APC is payable if and when a manuscript is accepted for publication after peer review, but before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Tax-exempt status can be indicated by providing appropriate registration numbers when payment is requested. Please see further details here.
*The article processing charge (APC) is payable upon acceptance after peer review and is subject to value added tax (VAT) where applicable. If the paying author/institution is based in the European Union, to comply with European law, VAT must be added to the APC. Providing a VAT registration number will allow an institution to avoid paying this tax, except for UK institutions. Payments can be made in GBP or USD.
Original Research Papers
Sage Open Medicine strongly encourages the submission of original research with positive or negative results. Original research papers should be no more than 8,000 words and be structured for peer review as follows: cover page (including title, all authors and affiliations, contact details, keywords), structured abstract (objectives, methods, results, and conclusions), introduction, methods, results, discussion/conclusion, acknowledgements, funding acknowledgements, declaration of conflict of interest, references, figure and table legends. Figures and tables should be submitted as separate files.
Topical Reviews
Topical Reviews should focus on specific subjects of current interest where there have been recent and significant advances.
Case Reports
Sage Open Medicine does not publish case reports; however, please consider for submissions.
The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. Sage Open Medicine utilizes a single-blind peer review process in which the reviewer’s name and information is withheld from the author. Reviewers may at their own discretion opt to reveal their names to the author in their review but our standard policy practice is for their identities to remain concealed. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision. Sage Open Medicine is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for [Journal] can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of ALL of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.
4.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
4.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance”).
It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Sage Open Medicine requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of Sage Open Medicine to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.
For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.
4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.
For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.
For human research and in vitro studies: Before submitting your manuscript to Sage Open Medicine, please download an Author Declaration Form, provide an appropriate statement in sections (1) to (3) and upload the completed form with your manuscript files. For all sections, please delete all text that does NOT apply to your manuscript and provide specific information where applicable and indicated by asterisks (*).
Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants
All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The Journal has adopted the ARRIVE guidelines.
For animal research studies: Before submitting your manuscript to Sage Open Medicine, please download anauthorship_declaration_form.pdfAuthor Declaration Form, provide an appropriate statement in sections (1) and (2), and upload the completed form with your manuscript files. For both sections, please delete all text that does NOT apply to your manuscript and provide specific information where applicable and indicated by asterisks (*).
For review and other articles: Before submitting your manuscript to Sage Open Medicine, please download an Author Declaration Form, complete it, and upload it with your manuscript files.
Sage Open Medicine endorses the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment. However, consistent with the AllTrials campaign, retrospectively registered trials will be considered if the justification for late registration is acceptable. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. Reporting checklists are used by the Editorial team and reviewers during the peer-review process and can be published alongside the final article at the authors’ request. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline.
Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.
Sage acknowledges the importance of research data availability as an integral part of the research and verification process for academic journal articles.
Sage Open Medicine requests all authors submitting any primary data used in their research articles to be published in the online version of the journal, or provide detailed information in their articles on how the data can be obtained. This information should include links to third-party data repositories or detailed contact information for third-party data sources. Data available only on an author-maintained website will need to be loaded onto either the journal’s platform or a third-party platform to ensure continuing accessibility. Examples of data types include, but are not limited to, statistical data files, replication code, text files, audio files, images, videos, appendices, and additional charts and graphs necessary to understand the original research. The editor(s) [can/will] also grant exceptions for data that cannot legally or ethically be released. All data submitted should comply with Institutional or Ethical Review Board requirements and applicable government regulations. For further information, please contact the editorial office at SOM@sagepub.co.uk
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
5.1.1 Plagiarism
Sage Open Medicine and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
5.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage Open Medicine publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page.
Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information, please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.
Sage Open Medicine adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. Please review the guidelines on Sage Vancouver to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver output file here.
6.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Sage Open Medicine is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopenmedicine to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online, please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
7.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage, please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
7.3 Corresponding author contact details
Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
8. On acceptance and publication
If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been check for Sage Production, the corresponding author will be asked to pay the article processing charge (APC) via a payment link. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 20 days. Please note that no production work will occur on your paper until the APC has been received.
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit, or by email to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time, it will be completely free to view and download for all.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Sage Open Medicine editorial office as follows: