NO CHARGE TO SUBMIT OR PUBLISH AND FREE TO READ.
The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine is funded by theAmerican Board of Family Medicine.
To submit a manuscript, please clickhere.
JABFM publishes original material from authors with new knowledge to contribute to the understanding and advancement of family medicine research and clinical practice. JABFM also serves as an important forum for the specialty of family medicine, and as a source of news from the ABFM.
Print and online publication is simultaneous, with six bimonthly issues per year.Online guest accesses average: 434,065 hits per month in 2023. Impact factor for 2023: .
FEATURES
AUTHORSHIP / CONTRIBUTORSHIP
JABFM does not allow machine learning tools such as ChatGPT to be listed as authors. Further, if any such tool is used to generate drafts of the submitted manuscript, this must be explicitly stated as a disclosure. These tools use previously written text and do a poor job of adding appropriate citations. Using someone else’s text without attribution is plagiarism, whether intentional or not. All human authors of manuscripts that are written with the assistance of a machine learning tool are responsible for ensuring that any ideas or text taken from previously published work are appropriately and accurately cited.
CONFLICTING & COMPETING INTERESTS
JABFM adheres to policies that increase disclosure and transparency related to competing interests or conflicts of interest, including:
JABFM expects authors to disclose any commercial associations that pose, or have the appearance of posing, a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article, including but not limited to: employment, consultancies, stock ownership or other equity interests, patent-licensing arrangements, honoraria, paid expert testimony, personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion
Any potential conflicts of interest or competing interests must be disclosed upon submission. This applies to all types of manuscripts, including letters to the editor. Failure to include this information will delay the manuscript at check-in.
DUPLICATE PUBLICATION
Manuscripts are considered only if they have not been previously published in print or electronic format, and with the understanding that they are not under consideration elsewhere. If there is any doubt about what might constitute duplicate publication, authors should include with their submission copies of possibly duplicative materials that have been previously published, or that are under consideration elsewhere. Authors should avoid self-plagiarism. This restriction does not apply to abstracts or press reports published in connection with scientific meetings. Authors are responsible to ensure that preprints of the papers are amended to refer readers to the location of, and appropriate reference for, the final peer-reviewed published article. An electronic link to the JABFM on-line version is preferred. Exceptions for unusual circumstances will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
INFORMED PATIENT CONSENT
Patients and research participants must give full, informed consent to participate in research studies, case studies, and other projects leading to publication. All case reports submitted must have a signed Patient Consent Form for each patient mentioned in order for the JABFM to review the manuscript.
A copy of the patient consent form can be accessed here.
PEER REVIEWER CONFIDENTIALITY
Peer reviewers agree to treat all information in manuscripts as confidential and must disclose any real or perceived competing interests or conflicts of interest before accepting a request.
PERMISSIONS
Materials taken from other sources must be accompanied by a written statement from both author and publisher giving JABFM permission for reproduction. For papers still in press, written permission must be submitted from at least one author. It is the submitting authors' responsibility for any fees associated with copyright permissions.
RESPONSIBLE CONDUCT OF RESEARCH
Authors must indicate that Institutional Review Board approval was obtained for the research protocol. JABFM adheres to the ICMJE Recommendations on the Protection of Research Participants, available at www.icmje.org.
DIVERSITY STATEMENT
Journal of American Board of Family Medicine Statement Affirming Inclusiveness and Anti-Racism
CASE SERIES
Case series are preferred over the report of a single patient. For guidance in preparing a case series, refer to: McCarthy et al. How to write a case report. Fam Med, 2000; 32 (3): 190-195; available here. All descriptions of patients require written consent. Please refer to the Informed Patient Consent section.
COPYRIGHT TRANSFER
Upon acceptance, transfer of copyright to the JABFM is required of all authors of the manuscript. This form is available here. Accepted manuscripts will not enter the production stage until all authors have submitted a signed Copyright Transfer Form.
DOUBLE BLINDING
JABFM prefers to blind peer reviewers to the names of authors, while recognizing that this is not always completely possible. You will be asked to submit your title page(s) as a separate file. Authors should consider, where feasible, removing other obvious references to authors' names in the body of the manuscript.
ICMJE GUIDELINES
Authors should adhere to guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals, available at www.icmje.org.
FUNDING STATEMENT
The title page should include a funding statement. Funding statements should include all sources of funding or financial support, direct or indirect and regardless of size, for all authors. If there were no sources of funding, please so state. Failure to include this information will delay the manuscript at check-in. Authors will also be required to supply this information when submitting the manuscript.
LENGTH
META-ANALYSES
Meta-analyses should follow the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Statement: www.prisma-statement.org
NIH-FUNDED RESEARCH
The JABFM recognizes that as of April 7, 2008, all peer-reviewed publications reporting findings from studies funded by the NIH must be submitted to PubMed Central, the NIH's free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature in the United States. Per the NIH Public Access Policy, such NIH-funded publications must be made available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.
The JABFM grants the author the right to provide a copy of the accepted, peer-reviewed version of the manuscript (ie, the final version that the author submitted through the Rapid Review System) to PubMed Central through the NIH Manuscript Submission system. This does not include the copyedited and formatted version used in the print and online publication, which may be a slightly updated version of the submitted manuscript because of corrections that may occur during the copyediting process. Authors are reminded that all manuscripts published by the JABFM are protected by copyright through the American Board of Family Medicine. The JABFM requests that the manuscript submitted to PubMed Central be hyperlinked to the final online version published on the JABFM's website. The corresponding author may make the manuscript available immediately in PubMed Central after publication in theJABFM.
As a courtesy to our authors, the JABFM will submit a copy of the accepted, peer-reviewed version of the manuscript to PubMed Central. To do so, we will need your full grant number and the name of the Principle Investigator (PI) associated with the grant. Please note that if we do submit the manuscript on your behalf, the PI will still need to log-in to the NIH Manuscript Submission system and approve the submission.
The JABFM cannot place any guarantee on scholarly information submitted to PubMed Central.
RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALS
Randomized controlled trials should be organized according to CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) guidelines, available here [Moher D, Schulz KF, Altman, DG. The CONSORT Statement: Revised Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Reports of Parallel-Group Randomized Trials. Ann Int Med, 2001; 134 (8): 657-662.]
Please also see Piaggio et al. Reporting of Noninferiority and Equivalence Randomized Trials: An Extension of the CONSORT Statement. JAMA, 2006;295:1152-1160; available here.
RESEARCH REPORTS
Research reports should be organized using the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) format. Refer to the ICMJE Recommendations at www.icmje.org for details.
The CRISP guidelines for reporting primary care research are also available for use by authors.
REVIEW ARTICLES
Review articles should use SORT (Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy) to grade diagnostic and treatment recommendations, available here.
TITLE PAGE
In order to facilitate double-blinding during the peer review process, we ask that the title page be submitted in a separate file; this is required when submitting through the manuscript submission system, Editorial Manager. Editorial Manager will automatically blind the title page for peer reviewers. The title page is the only file that should have identifying information.
Title page file(s) must contain:
ABSTRACT
BODY OF MANUSCRIPT, FIRST PAGE
REFERENCES
TABLES
JABFM follows AMA style for tables. The AMA style guide may be consulted for detail beyond these notes:
FIGURES / ILLUSTRATIONS
FORMATTING / STYLE
ACCESS
The Editorial Manager online system may be accessed on the home page at www.jabfm.org by clicking on the author or reviewer portal in the center of the page. For assistance with the submission process, please email the Managing Editor at:plupo@theabfm.org
LOG ON / CREATE ACCOUNT
COMPLETE THE ONLINE MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION FORM
You will be asked to submit your files in the following order (MS Word is the only accepted file type for the title page, abstract, and manuscript/references):
Title page (Required)
Abstract (Required for most submissions)
Manuscript and References (Required - Please use page numbers and line numbers)
Tables (Optional)
Figures (Optional - Each figure must be uploaded separately; acceptable files include: JPEG, TIFF, EPS, PDF)
Appendices (Optional)
Please DO NOT upload a cover letter (for blinding purposes). There is a section in the online submission form to type (or copy and paste) your correspondence to the editor.
The following information is required when submitting through theEditorial Manager Author Portal and should be handy:
Abstract
Funding statement
Conflict of interest statement
Classifications / Keywords
Recommendation of 2 peer reviewers:
Peer reviewers do not have to be agreeable at the point of submission. The editorial office will handle the recruiting and invitationprocess if an additional reviewer is needed for your manuscript.
These recommendations can be those who are experts in the field of your manuscript and should be without conflicts of interest to any of the authors.
Most authors find these suggested reviewers in the literature, i.e. the manuscript’s references and/orPubMed, where most corresponding author information can be found, including email addresses.
Response to reviewers (for revised manuscripts; please use page and line numbers for each comment)
PEER REVIEW
The peer review process takes approximately 60-90 days, depending upon peer reviewer availability and the subject matter of the submission. We strive to keep your manuscript the least amount of time possible, while still providing a thorough and thoughtful review.
PATIENT CONSENT FORM (FOR CASE REPORTS)
Available here.
Revised April 2024