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How many times have you tried to assemble something, only to realize that, if you had read the instructions first, your job would have been so much easier? If you've ever tried to put together one of those furniture "kits" by gluing first and reading the instructions later, you know exactly what we mean. Assembling a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed scientific journal also requires a step-bystep process. And, like those furniture kits, if the instructions aren't followed, the final product might not turn out quite as expected.
All journals provide authors with guidance on expectations regarding the format and content of submissions, usually through explicit instructions to authors. Some journals provide extensive guidance; others provide instructions that are quite brief. In an ideal world of peer review, all journals would agree on the best way to present (and analyze) research, so that authors could use the same set of guidelines to submit to all journals. In reality, of course, there is no consensus on the "one best way." Each journal has to emphasize different criteria to meet its own unique mission.
Schriger and colleagues' recently conducted a study to determine the extent of variation in the author instructions of highly ranked peer-reviewed health care journals. Because these researchers were interested in assessing the quality of instructions for the best journals in health care, they reviewed the instructions of 166 journals with impact factor ratings in the top 5 for 33 different...