BMJ Open currently publishes articles reporting research results or study protocols. We have now expanded our scope to include cohort profiles, articles that describe major, ongoing research cohorts.
What’s the difference between a protocol, a cohort profile and a research paper?
Detailed information about cohort profiles is in our instructions for authors. In brief, cohort profiles will describe large, collaborative prospective studies that identify a group of participants and follow them for long periods. They will usually be population based, with sufficient funding to ensure their intended lifespan, and the original investigators must welcome wide use of the datasets beyond their own research group.
We will publish cohort profiles to provide information on a cohort’s establishment that goes beyond what can reasonably be described in the methods section of a research paper and to advise other researchers of existing datasets and opportunities for collaboration.
If a study has yet to begin recruiting participants, is still recruiting or is still collecting baseline data, please submit the study protocol. If you have completed baseline recruitment and have at least baseline data to publish, we would consider this a cohort profile as long as the cohort meets our other requirements.
We publish protocols to alert researchers to forthcoming research and to explain how specific research questions will be answered. Research papers are traditional results papers and should address a specific research question. Many cohort studies are conducted at a single institution by a single research group with no plans to answer further questions. Here “cohort study” is a research method. We welcome protocol and results papers for these studies but would not consider cohort profiles.
Why publish cohort profiles?
When presented with cohort studies to review, editors, peer reviewers and readers often think “exactly how were patients recruited? how representative were they of the wider population? were the questionnaires used to gather information on diet reliable?” and so on; things that too often are not well enough reported in research papers.
There is a clear advantage to publishing detailed profiles of ongoing cohort studies in an open access journal like BMJ Open, so anyone interested can easily access them when planning or appraising studies that arise from them. We hope to generate an ongoing database for answering many different research questions.
Will cohort profiles be peer-reviewed?
Cohort profiles will be externally peer-reviewed as normal, regardless of the cohort’s age or funding status and article publishing charges will apply as for research papers.