Authors

eGastroenterology adheres to the highest standards concerning its editorial policies on publication ethics and scientific misconduct. The journal follows guidance produced by bodies that include the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Council of Science Editors and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To view all BMJ Journal policies please refer to the BMJ Author Hub policies page. Authors are required to submit a statement that their study obtained ethics approval (or a statement that it was not required and why) and that participants gave informed consent. Our Editors will consider whether the work is morally acceptable as determined by the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki. In addition to this, in line with General Medical Council guidelines, an article that contains personal medical information about an identifiable living individual requires patients explicit consent (in the format of a signed BMJ patient consent form) before we will publish it. Please find further details on BMJ research ethics policies (human participants and animals) and consent for publication; including a link to the downloadable consent form.

To make the best decision on how to deal with a manuscript eGastroenterology needs to know about any competing interests authors may have; this includes any commercial, financial or non financial associations that may be relevant to the submitted article. Authors must download and complete a copy of the ICMJE Conflict of Interest disclosure form. In addition to this eGastroenterology ensures that all advertising and sponsorship associated with the journal does not influence editorial decisions, is immediately distinguishable from editorial content and meets all other BMJ guidelines. Please find more information about competing interests and a link to the form. We take seriously all possible misconduct. If an Editor, author or reader has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behaviour they should forward their concerns to the journal. The publisher will deal with allegations appropriately following ICMJE and COPE guidelines. Corrections and retractions are considered where an article has already been published; corrections, expressions of concern or a retraction notices will be published as soon as possible in line with the BMJ correction and retraction policy.

As an open access journal, eGastroenterology adheres to the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access. Articles are published under an exclusive licence or non-exclusive licence for UK Crown employees or where BMJ has agreed CC BY applies. For US Federal Government officers or employees acting as part of their official duties, the terms are as stated in accordance with our licence terms. Authors or their employers retain copyright. Such open access articles can be reused under the terms of the relevant Creative Commons licence to facilitate reuse of the content. please refer to the eGastroenterology Author Licence. More information on copyright and authors’ rights.

When publishing in eGastroenterology, authors choose between two licence types – CC-BY-NC and CC-BY (Creative Commons open access licences require payment of an article processing charge). As an author you may wish to post your article in an institutional or subject repository, or on a scientific social sharing network. You may also link your published article to your preprint (if applicable). What you can do with your article, without seeking permission, depends on the licence you have chosen and the version of your article. Please refer to the BMJ author self archiving and permissions policies page for more information.

Preprints foster openness, accessibility and collaboration by allowing authors to make their findings immediately available to the research community and receive feedback on an article before it is submitted to a journal for formal publication.

BMJ fully supports and encourages the archiving of preprints in any recognised, not-for-profit server such as medRxiv. BMJ does not consider the posting of an article in a dedicated preprint repository to be prior publication. Preprints are reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed; Preprints should therefore not be used to guide clinical practice, health-related behaviour or health policy. For more information, please refer to our Preprint policy page.

Articles submitted to eGastroenterology are subject to peer review. The journal operates open peer review. Upon publication, all previous versions of the manuscript are made available, as are the reviewers’ comments and authors’ replies to those comments. Exceptions are made only when an article is accepted based on reviews received at another BMJ journal and the reviewers have not granted permission for their reviews to be posted online. BMJ requests that all reviewers adhere to a set of basic principles and standards during the peer-review process in research publication; these are based on the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Please refer to our peer review terms and conditions policy page. Peer review is managed by the editorial team rather than BMJ or The First Hospital of Jilin University to ensure absolute editorial freedom of the journal. When a paper has been submitted from the Editor, Deputy or Associate Editors’ departments, they have no role in the reviewing or decision-making process. This also applies to any Associate Editors who are authors, in which instance the reviewing process is handled by the Editor in Chief. For more information on what to expect during the peer review process please refer to BMJ Author Hub – the peer review process.

BMJ is committed to transparency. Every article we publish includes a description of its provenance (commissioned or not commissioned) and whether it was internally or externally peer-reviewed. eGastroenterology is committed to open peer review. As part of this commitment we make the peer review history of every article we publish publicly available. When an article is published we post the peer reviewers’ comments and the authors’ responses online. We also post the versions of the paper that were used during peer review. These are the versions that the peer review comments apply to. The versions of the paper that follow are the versions that were submitted during the peer review process. They are not the versions of record or the final published versions.In rare instances we determine after careful consideration that we should not make certain portions of the prepublication record publicly available. Plagiarism is the appropriation of the language, ideas or thoughts of another without crediting their true source and representation of them as one’s own original work. BMJ is a member of CrossCheck by CrossRef and iThenticate. iThenticate is a plagiarism screening service that verifies the originality of content submitted before publication. BMJ runs manuscripts through iThenticate during the peer review process. Authors, researchers and freelancers can also use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting ithenticate.com. Reader responses, questions and comments to published content are welcomed by eGastroenterology; these should be submitted electronically via the journal's website. Please find further details on how to publish a response and the terms and requirements.

BMJ is committed to ensuring that all good quality research is published. Our article transfer service helps authors find the best journal for their research while providing an easy and smooth publication process. If authors agree to transfer their manuscript, all versions, supplementary files and peer reviewer comments are automatically transferred; there is no need to resubmit or reformat. Authors who submit to Gut, BMJ Open Gastroenterology, and Frontline Gastroenterology will be offered the option of transferring to eGastroenterology. Authors who submit to eGastroenterology and are rejected will be offered the option of transferring to BMJ Open.

Please note that the article transfer service does not guarantee acceptance but you should receive a quicker initial decision on your manuscript. Contact the Transfer Editor at transfers@bmj.com

eGastroenterology is an open-access journal that does not levy an Article Processing Charge (APC). There are no submission, colour or page charges.

eGastroenterology mandates ORCID iDs for the submitting author at the time of article submission; co-authors and reviewers are strongly encouraged to also connect their ScholarOne accounts to ORCID. We strongly believe that the increased use and integration of ORCID iDs will be beneficial for the whole research community. Please find more information about ORCID and BMJ’s policy on our Author Hub.

eGastroenterology adheres to BMJ's Tier 2 data policy. We strongly encourage that data generated by your research that supports your article be made available as soon as possible, wherever legally and ethically possible. We also require data from clinical trials to be made available upon reasonable request. To adhere to ICMJE guidelines, we require that a data sharing plan must be included with trial registration for clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after 1st January 2019. Changes to the plan must be noted in the Data Availability Statement and updated in the registry record. All research articles must contain a Data Availability Statement. For more information and FAQs, please see BMJ's full Data Sharing Policy page.

A rapid response is a moderated but not peer reviewed online response to a published article in eGastroenterology; it will not receive a DOI and will not be indexed. Find out more about responses and how to submit a response.

Please review the below article type specifications including the required article lengths, illustrations, table limits and reference counts. The word count excludes the title page, abstract, tables, acknowledgements, contributions and references. Manuscripts should be as succinct as possible. For further support when making your submission please refer to the resources available on the BMJ Author Hub. Here you will find information on writing and formatting your research through to the peer review process and promoting your paper. We encourage authors to ensure that research articles are written in accordance with the relevant research reporting guideline. You may also wish to use the language editing and translation services provided by BMJ Author Services. BMJ requires that all those designated as authors should meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship.

Original research should follow the basic structure of Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, References, and tables and figures as appropriate. Clinical trials should be submitted as original research. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), a clinical trial is any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. All clinical trials must be registered in a public registry prior to submission. The journal follows the trials registration policy of the ICMJE (www.icmje.org) and considers only trials that have been appropriately registered before submission, regardless of when the trial closed to enrolment.

Word count: up to 4,000 Structured Abstract: up to 350 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 8 References: up to 100 Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific and accurate. What is already known on this topic – summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done What this study adds – summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before How this study might affect research, practice or policy – summarise the implications of this study This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article.

Review articles cover a focused area on the advancing edge of gastroenterology and hepatology as well as provide a balanced view of current research that can be understood by researchers outside that specialty. Review articles do not require 'Methods' or 'Results' sections but can be structured using short topical headings. Research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. systematic reviews, meta analysis, scoping reviews, mixed methods reviews) are classified by the journal as Original research and must be submitted as such.

Word count: up to 5,000 words Abstract: up to 350 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 8 References: up to 100

A short report covers an important novel research result, but is less substantial than an original research article. Short reports are peer reviewed. Short reports can include:

• Headline results (clinical or laboratory) from significant research projects
• Studies answering a single research question, a small scale study, single centre studies, is of local significance, surveys or negative studies
• Significant preliminary research findings or implementation efforts - Research that extends previously published research
• Single case reports of outstanding interest/relevance

Short Report Word count: up to 2,500 words Abstract: up to 250 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 4 References: up to 40 Case Reports Word count: up to 2,500 words Structured Abstract: up to 150 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 3 References: up to 20

Guidelines related to gastroenterology and hepatology that will assist physicians to conduct appropriate health care and benefit patients eventually.

Word count: up to 4,000 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 5

These are usually commissioned and are not externally peer-reviewed. Please contact the editorial office with a proposal before submitting.

Word count: up to 2,500 words No abstract Tables/Illustrations: up to 2 References: up to 30

Word count: up to 1,500 words Unstructured Abstract: up to to 250 words Tables/Illustrations: up to 2 References: up to 20