The Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (JBI) is an international, peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for different disciplinary perspectives on ethical, cultural, social, and legal issues in medicine, healthcare, the life sciences, and biotechnology.
The JBI Blog helps to serve this mission, and we welcome your contributions. Please use this guide (and the JBI Instructions for Bloggers) for assistance with registering as a contributor and submitting and properly formatting your blog posts.
We encourage contributors to write in an engaging style that is both academic in quality but accessible to readers from any discipline. Contributions discussing bioethical issues in different geographical and cultural settings are strongly encouraged.
Reviewing Policy
The JBI staff reserves the right to remove objectionable, inaccurate, and/or inflammatory material and, if necessary, suspend or revoke blogging privileges. This also includes propagating non-evidence-based information, conspiracy theories, etc., and blogging about behind-the-scenes housekeeping issues that are not of interest to the general public.
Factual inaccuracies must be corrected or retracted within twenty-four (24) hours of being alerted to the error.
General Requirements
- 500- to 800-word posts are best.
- A conversational, informal style is ideal, but the content should still reflect a high, academic quality.
- News-driven, topical posts perform best—if you have a strong take on a news topic, it is better to post promptly, when your post will be fresher and more original.
- Add a short title to your post using “Title Case” capitalization (e.g., The Risks of ART or Patients and Privacy, etc.).
- Add several Tags (aka Keywords) to your post.
- For spelling, please use first accepted spellings of Oxford Dictionaries: British & World English.
- Please also hyphenate compound words according to Oxford Dictionaries: British & World English.
- All punctuation, however, should follow The Chicago Manual of Style and the JBI Instructions for Bloggers.
- Please use the serial comma.
- Make sure to use “smart” quotes and apostrophes (these are the curved quotes and apostrophes that are generated in programs such as Word; copy and paste from here or from Word as needed).
- Make sure to use en-dashes (–) and em-dashes (—) where appropriate (these are the longer dashes that can be generated in programs such as Word; copy and paste from here or from Word as needed).
- Add a hard return/line of space between paragraphs. (Do not use tab stops.)
- Direct quotations must include in-text citations with page or paragraph (¶) numbers.
- Add a References section at the bottom of your post, as applicable, and format according to the JBI Instructions for Bloggers.
- Add/embed Hyperlinks for any sources you use, whenever relevant.
- Images should be the work of authors and/or royalty-free. Save images as .jpg files. Images that are sized 750 × 350 pixels work best.
- Make sure you update your “Biographical Info” in the “Profile” section of your account, as this will appear at the bottom of all of your posts. An automatic “Gravatar” image also will be added to your posts, if you have a Gravatar or WordPress.com account (see http://en.gravatar.com/ or https://signup.wordpress.com/signup/).
Authorship
All posts must be the sole work of the blogger(s). Images submitted with posts should either be the work of the blogger(s) and/or royalty-free.
Consideration
Posts submitted to the JBI Blog must be offered exclusively. Submission of a post implies that the work:
- Has not been published before;
- Is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; and
- Its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities—tacitly or explicitly—at the institute where the work has been carried out.
The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.
If a submitted post overlaps considerably with previously published articles or articles concurrently submitted elsewhere, this should be noted with the submitted post.
Corrections and Substantive Edits
If you make a substantive addition, deletion, or correction of an error to a blog post after the post has been published, you are required to note this change at the bottom of your post. This guideline applies to all matters of fact, but not to issues of spelling, grammar, style, or minor editorial corrections you make to your post. In the interest of transparency, you should note to readers that in an earlier version of the post there was an error that has since been corrected.
Disclosure of Competing Interests and Funding
Bloggers are required to indicate whether they have any financial or professional relationships that may pose a competing interest.
A competing interest exists when professional judgement concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain or personal rivalry). It may arise when bloggers have a financial professional interest that may influence, probably without their knowing, their interpretation of their work or those of others.
In an effort to be as transparent with our readers as possible, we require bloggers to disclose any conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, related to the issue they are writing about. If a blogger receives payment or income from a company, organization, group, or individual with a stake in the issue s/he is weighing in on, that information must be disclosed at the bottom of the applicable blog post.
Ethical Approval
All experimental investigations involving human subjects must include a statement regarding informed consent. The name of the ethics committee that approved the study also must be stated in this section.
When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution’s or the National Research Council’s guide for, or any national law on, the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
Studies involving Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander subjects or any Indigenous populations also must state that they have been approved by the relevant local Indigenous representatives.
Patient Consent and Anonymity
Posts must preserve patient anonymity; do not use patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in any illustrative material. Any identifying information should not be published unless it is essential for understanding the case.
Authors also must provide a signed statement from the patient(s) or their surrogate giving permission for the publication of any identifying material. Where authors do not wish to include a signed patient consent to publish in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, reasons in support of this decision must be provided in a letter accompanying the post.
Submitting a Post
All submissions to the JBI Blog are completed using this JBI website.
New Bloggers
If you are a New Contributor and have never submitted a post to the JBI Blog before, you first will need to register in the system.
- Open the JBI website in a Web browser and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
- Find the footer menu (near the copyright © statement) and click on the “Log In” link.
- After this page loads, click on the “Register” link located in the bottom, left-hand corner under the white “Log In” box.
- Enter a user name of your choosing into the “Username” text-entry box (choose wisely, as user names cannot be changed), and enter your e-mail address into the “E-mail” text-entry box. Then click the “Register” button.
- Upon successful registration, you will be sent an e-mail with instructions to verify your registration. You also will receive an assigned password.
- To change your password: Log into the system (using the “Log In” link) and select “Profile” from the left-hand menu of the screen. Scroll down to the bottom of the “Profile” page to the “New Password” section.
- You may log into the system at any time by returning to the JBI website and clicking the “Log In” link located in footer menu. Enter your user name and password, and then click the “Log In” button.
When you are ready to create a new post:
- Log into the system and select “Posts” from the left-hand menu of the screen.
- Click on “Add New.”
- You may type and format your post here (or copy and paste from a word processor) as well as select the appropriate “Categories” and add “Tags” and a “Featured Image.”
- Click the “Publish” button when your post is complete.
Registered Bloggers
Once you are registered or if you are a Returning Contributor, do not register again.
- Simply return to the JBI website and click the “Log In” link located in footer menu.
- Enter your user name and password, and then click the “Log In” button.
- When you are ready to create a new post, select “Posts” from the left-hand menu of the screen.
- Click on “Add New.”
- You may type and format your post here (or copy and paste from a word processor) as well as select the appropriate “Categories” and add “Tags” and a “Featured Image.”
- Click the “Publish” button when your post is complete.
Changing Your Profile and/or Password
- To change your user profile and/or password: Log into the system and select “Profile”’ from the left-hand menu. You may change your password, e-mail, and other account settings as well as add biographical information, etc.
- If you have forgotten your password, click the “Log In” link from the footer menu of the JBI website and then click the “Lost Your Password?” link located in the bottom, right-hand corner under the white “Log In” box. Follow the instructions.