Medical Education Online (MEO) is an electronic forum for disseminating information on educating physicians and other health professionals. Scholarly work on any aspect of the process of training health professionals will be considered for peer-reviewed publication. In addition to articles, MEO provides a repository for resources such as, curricula, data sets, syllabi, software, and instructional material developers wish to make available to the medical education community.
Feature Articles - include articles discussing issues of general interest to the health education community. For example (but are not limited to) presenting perspectives as well as reviews and commentary of the literature on a specific topic. With the exception of invited articles and editorials, feature articles are peer-reviewed.
Research Articles - present high quality completed research or evaluation studies. Research articles are peer-reviewed.
Trend Articles - present new ideas as well as studies or descriptions of programs in the early stages of development. Trend articles are envisioned as a means of quickly disseminating innovative ideas, descriptions of new programs and preliminary results from research and evaluation studies. Manuscripts submitted to this section are peer-reviewed. The preliminary nature of the material submitted will be taken into account in the review process though descriptions of new programs are expected to have at least some minimal level of formative evaluation data.
PLEASE NOTE: MEO now charges a publication fee for all manuscripts accepted for publication. It is with regret we have had to implement this fee however we have found it is no longer possible to maintain a the quality of the journal without the support of additional resources. The rationale for the fee is outlined here.
Letters to the Editor
The Letters Section includes letters discussing topics related to any aspect of educating physicians and other health professionals.
The Resource Section provides a repository for resources such as curricula, data sets, syllabi, software, and instructional materials developers wish to make available to the health education community. Any type of material that can be stored in a standard computer file format will be considered for inclusion in the Resource Section. Submissions are reviewed by the editor for general relevance to education in the health professions.
Authors are responsible for all statements made in their manuscripts and for obtaining permission for the use of copyrighted materials. Manuscripts submitted to MEO should use this manuscript template. Specific directions are contained within the template. While we prefer that manuscripts are submitted in this format, you may submit a manuscript in another format as long as it can be easily read and evaluated by our reviewers. You must however revise it to be consistent with the format in the manuscript template after it has been accepted for publication. The appropriate format greatly facilitates typesetting the manuscript.
References - should follow the standard biomedical format. References are identified in the text by sequential numbers and ordered in the reference list as they are referenced in the text. Either use superscripts or enclose the reference numbers in parentheses in the text. The references should be listed in at the end of the manuscript as regular text. DO NOT PUT THE REFERENCE LIST IN AN END NOTE. Articles failing for follow this style will be returned to the authors for correction before they can be formatted for publication.
Unfortunately Web sites move or disappear frequently. To ensure readers can access references to Web based material, MEO uses WebCite.® to archive Web pages that are referenced in articles published in the Journal. Archiving references is a very simple and quick process. There is no charge for the service. Please archive the Web pages you reference in your manuscript and use the archived reference in the reference section of the manuscript. The steps necessary to archive references are given below:
We encourage you to use WebCite.® for all your published references of Web pages .
Figures and other graphic files - should be submitted as a graphics file. The preferred format is Portable Network Graphic (png) files. We can read most other standard graphics formats. We are often unable to import files created directly in Microsoft Word's using the program's drawing functions or with Microsoft Chart. We can include these graphics but only via recapturing the image after converting the file to a PDF which results in some loss of resolution.
Tables - Numeric tables should be formatted Microsoft Word Tables or the equivalent if you are using a word processor other than Word.
Authors should submit manuscripts electronically via our electronic submission form. Please read carefully and indicate your acceptance of the Author Agreement on the form. Authors must confirm that they have followed all laws and regulations concerning the protections afforded human subjects in research studies within the jurisdiction in which a research study they describe was conducted. For research conducted within the United States, the research protocol must have been approved by the appropriate institutional review board (IRB). In the case of exempt research, the IRB must have deemed the research protocol exempt. Authors must also disclose any potential conflicts of interest.
We prefer that manuscripts be submitted in Microsoft Word 97 or higher but will attempt to convert other word-processing formats. If you have questions or difficulty submitting your manuscript via the submission form, please contact us via e-mail at Editor@Med-Ed-Online.org.
A publication fee of typically $100 USD will be charged at the time the author's final version of the manuscript is accepted for publication. Publication fees only apply to peer-reviewed manuscript submissions that are accepted for publication. Payment is accepted thorough PayPal. If this is not possible, special arrangements may be able to be made for alternate methods of payment. At the time the final version of the manuscript is accepted, you will receive a link and instructions on paying the publication fee.
The vendor that copy edits and generates the XML versions of our manuscripts charges for these services by the typeset page.For this reason we reserve the right to increase the publicaton fee for unusually long articles. We will notify you at the time of submission if there will be additional charges and what these will be. Of course you will have the option of withdrawing the manuscript at that point.
Waver - The publication fee is automatically waved for authors from countries designated as eligible for free access to journals through the HINARI Program (Band 1). Authors from countries eligible for low-cost access (Band 2) will be charged a publication fee of $50 USD. For an article to be automatically eligible for having the fee waved or reduced, all named authors must meet this criteria. The Editors will also consider waving or reducing the publication fee on the basis of hardship for authors not meeting this criteria. To apply for to have the fee waved or reduced based on on your location or other evidence of hardship, send an e-mail explaining the circumstances to Editor@med-ed-online.org. Please note, we feel the publication fee is very modest and well within the means of most medical educators in developed countries. It is also a fraction of the fees charged by most other journals that charge author fees so we have very little funding for covering the actual costs of publishing manuscripts where the fee has been waved. For this reason it will only be under extenuating circumstances that the fee will be waived for authors from developed countries.
Letters
Letters should be submitted as e-mail attachments preferably in Word format. The cover letter e-mail should include the following statement:
I give Medical Education Online (the Journal) permission to reproduce, distribute, publish and transmit the attached letter, through whatever medium the Journal determines is best to accomplish Journal's purposes as set forth on the Journal's web site., whether the medium is now known or later developed; incorporate the letter into a multimedia, hypertext environment, including appropriate hyperlinks.
I warrant to the Journal that the letter is original material, except for such material from copyrighted sources as is reproduced with the written permission of the copyright holder sufficient to permit the Journal to use the letter as set forth herein, and is in no way a violation of or an infringement upon, any copyright belonging to any third party; that the materials contained in the letter are accurate; and that the letter contains no defamatory or otherwise illegal materials. I shall indemnity and hold the Journal harmless from any claims that the letter infringes a third party's copyright or contains inaccurate, libelous or unlawful material.
Letters will be reviewed by the Journal's editor(s) for appropriateness but will not be sent out for external review. The editor's decision on whether or not to publish the letter will be final and in most cases the decision will be related to the author within two weeks or less.
Contributors submitting material for inclusion in the Resource Section do so with the understanding these materials will be freely distributed by MEO upon request. Two options exist for contributors wishing to distribute material through the MEO Resource Section. If the material is currently available on another server, we will simply link the description of the material to your server address (URL). Contributors also are welcome to store material on MEO's server.
If you wish to store your material on MEO's server, an Electronic Publication Agreement should be signed by the lead developer and returned to MEO.
A cover letter should be included with submissions to the Resource Section that states all authors have approved the material being submitted and understand that the material is being freely distributed through MEO's web site. Provide a brief description of the material being submitted and how it would be useful to health educators. This will be used to provide MEO readers with a description of the material in the Resource Section. A more detailed description of the material and/or instructions for use can be enclosed in the distribution package. It is strongly suggested the material consisting of multiple files be archived, preferably in self-extracting format. If needed, we can provide assistance in creating these archives.
Send material as an attachment to the cover letter. NOTE: if a submission that is to be sent is larger than several megabytes, please send a cover letter or e-mail first indicating the size and nature of the submission. We will contact you and to workout a convenient means of transferring the material.
Please contact us if you have questions concerning the submissions to the Resource Section of MEO. We will try to be as flexible as possible and work with you to make your material available through MEO.
All material and correspondence should be sent to Editor@Med-Ed-Online.org