It’s Published!

Abstract

Authors of published case reports may be invited to participate in peer review, write editorials, and interact with news media. Participation in peer review stimulates academic growth, sharpens clinical insight, and helps to uphold the validity of the editorial process. Editorial writing gives authors a forum to discuss such topics as pathophysiology, mechanisms of disease, alternate hypotheses, and broader implications of the case findings. Most authors prefer to publish in PubMed-indexed journals, in the belief that their articles will receive more citations and the prestige of PubMed indexing will help with academic promotion. Initial citation rates for case reports are lower than that for other article types, such as meta-analyses and randomized trials, but case report citations tend to accrue steadily over time; long-term citation rates might be more appropriate for comparison. The social media response to case reports can be tracked both on journal websites and through publication analytics services such as Altmetric and ResearchGate.