The following forms must be completed for consideration of publication.

• Patient Consent to Publish
• Contributor Agreements
• Instructions for Duke Originated Cases

*All cases that originate at Duke must submit a Duke Risk Management application.*

The patient who is the subject of the case report must provide informed consent allowing the publishing of their case. Your institution must not prohibit submission of this case to the DJCRO for consideration of online publication. Authors must obtain the patient’s consent using the DJCRO Patient Consent to Publish Form. All HIPAA-protected identifiers must be removed from manuscript prior to submission:

• Name
• Address
• All dates related to an individual
• Telephone numbers
• Fax numbers
• Email address
• Social Security number
• Medical Record number
• Health plan beneficiary number
• Count number
• Certificate or license number
• Vehicle identifiers
• Device identifiers or serial numbers
• Web URL
• Internet Protocol (IP) address
• Finger or voice print
• Photographic image (not limited to the face)
• Any other unique identifying characteristic

Conflicts Of Interest: All authors must disclose any conflicts of interest, including financial and personal relationships with people or organizations that may have influenced the work. This should be disclosed in the Acknowledgements and Disclosures section of the manuscript.

Funding Source: Authors must identify and describe any relevant funding sources for research or preparation of the submission. This should be disclosed in the Acknowledgements and Disclosures section of the manuscript. If there is none, would state.

Submission Declaration: All submitted works must be original and not previously published (unless previously submitted as an abstract). All submissions must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. If accepted, all works should not have been published elsewhere in similar form, in any language, without consent of the copyright-holder (DJCRO).

Inclusivity: Inclusive language is required for consideration of all works. Inclusive language includes, acknowledges, accepts, and celebrates differences, and welcomes and respects others.

Author Contributions: Listed authors should have participated and contributed to the work to a significant extent. The corresponding author must complete the Contributor Agreement, verifying that each listed author meets requirements for authorship. Following the Credit statement for determining roles is recommended.

Copyright: At the time of submission, each author must complete the DJCRO Contributor Agreement.

Permissions: Authors must obtain and submit written permission from the copyright owner to use direct quotations, tables, or illustrations of copyrighted works that have been published elsewhere, along with source details. Any permission fees are not the responsibility of DJCRO.

All manuscript submission files should be submitted as Microsoft Word (doc. or .docx) format. The document should be single column, double-spaced, without justified text. Bold face, italics, subscripts, and superscripts are allowed. All pages should be numbered consecutively beginning on the title page. Line numbers should be listed consecutively, beginning on the first line of the title page. Arial font of size 12 must be used consistently throughout the entirety of the article. All manuscripts must be no more than 1200 words in length and contain a maximum of 3 figures or tables and 15 references.

Article Structure:

• Title Page
• Abstract
• Key Words
• Case Report (Introduction, Report of Case, Discussion, Conclusion)
• Acknowledgements and Disclosures
• References
• Figure Legends
• Tables
• Figures (submitted as separate files)

The structure of the manuscript must adhere to the following organization and sections:

Title Page: Page 1 of the article should be the title page, which should include the following elements in order. A brief but meaningful title should be listed followed by an abbreviated title of less than 40 characters. List all authors by first name, middle initial, and last name with highest degree. Footnotes can be included for each author’s departmental and institutional affiliation. Include the name, mailing address, and email address of the Corresponding Author. If any of the cases in the submitted work were previously submitted at a meeting, the name of the organization, place, and date on which it was presented should be listed. Funding source should be listed. The presence or absence of conflicts of interest should be noted for each author.

Abstract: On page 2 of the manuscript, an unstructured abstract, of up to 150 words, summarizing the case report should be provided.

Key Words: The abstract should be followed by an alphabetical list of 5 key words on the same page. Each word should be separated by a semi-colon.

Case Report: Maximum 1200 words. Details of the case should be presented in chronological and sequential fashion with all relevant clinical information included (excluding HIPAA identifiers). The manuscript should follow this structured format: Introduction, Report of Case, Discussion, Conclusion. Visual acuity should be reported in Snellen visual acuity ratios.

Acknowledgements and Disclosures: Please include disclosure of all conflicts of interest and funding on a separate page following the article’s conclusion, but prior to the references section.

References: A maximum of 15 references can be used. References must be numbered consecutively according to their order of appearance in the text. References within text should be cited with a numerical superscript. Within the listed references, all names of authors should be given. References should adhere to AMA formatting guidelines, which is available in all reference management software (e.g., Mendeley, Zotero, Endnote). Example: O'Keefe M, Coat S. Consulting parents on childhood obesity and implications for medical student learning. J Pediatric Child Health. 2009;45(10):573-576.

Figure Legends: Legends must be submitted for each figure. Figure legends should be brief and not contain any abbreviations. They should be listed sequentially on a separate page after References but before Tables (if any).

Tables: Can submit up to 2 tables as editable text in Microsoft Word (doc. or docx.) format, not as images (i.e., no PDF, JPEG, PNG, etc). Tables should be numbered consecutively within the text with logical naming and captions. Tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript after the Figure Legends.

Figures: Up to 3 figures can be included. All patient images should be screenshots in order to eliminate metadata identifiers. Digital images may be manipulated for clarity, including adjustment for brightness, contrast, or color balance. However, no portion of an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. All figures must be uniform in sizing and lettering. Font must be embedded in the image. Figures should be numbered in accordance with the text, with logical naming and captions. Authors should provide the size and resolution of their figures. Accepted figures should be a maximum size of 1200 x 800 px and minimum resolution of 72 dpi. Only .png or .jpeg files will be accepted. All figures must be submitted as separate files with file names corresponding to how they are referred to in the text (e.g., Figure1.png). 

All documents must be submitted at the same time. All submissions are reviewed by the relevant subspecialty Assistant Section Editors and Section Editors. Final decisions are determined by the Advisory Section Editors, Editor-in-Chief, and/or Advisory Editor-in-Chief.

The editorial and review process, and communications are confidential. Anonymized reviewer comments will be provided to authors for revision prior to publication.

Corrections: Electronic page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author prior to publication. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that there are no errors prior to publication.

Offprints: The corresponding author will be notified and given a link to a PDF of the published article. This journal is completely online, and offprints will not be available.