BMJ Case Reports

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

BMJ Case Reports is a journal that provides a collection of peer-reviewed case reports in all disciplines for health care professionals and researchers. This title is available only in electronic format from BMJ Group. Cases come from 70 countries, and the journal consists of more than 3,800 articles that cover both common and rare diseases. Content is updated frequently, often more than once each week. Tabs are available in the middle of the home page for quick navigation to case reports. Tabs are organized into the categories of recent cases, the previous month's most read articles, specialties, and top-rated cases. There is no ranking of the previous month's most read articles, but a list of nineteen was included on the date viewed. Specialty topics include both clinical and nonclinical classifications, such as endocrinology and ethics. It is unclear how top-rated cases are selected, and the tab includes titles without publication dates. Services for individual articles include email; alerts for when articles are cited, are corrected, or have e-letters published; similar articles in the journal; and addition of an article to a folder or portfolio. BMJ Case Reports has embraced popular networking functions. Users can utilize social bookmarking tools, including Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, CiteULike, and Mendeley. Users are also able to rate articles by either liking or disliking them and have the option of commenting on the reason for their choices. While several articles were rated, it did not appear that many had comments. BMJ Case Reports also has a blog, which further highlights case reports from Editor's Choice selections. Editor's Choice articles are free without registration, as are article summaries. Another “Spotlight” on BMJ Case Reports draws attention to a particular specialty and links directly to the cases in that collection. The journal allows users to browse articles that most interest users by providing links by specialty and by article type. The specialty topics are the same as those mentioned in the discussion regarding tabs. The types of cases are subdivided into Full Cases and Other. Article types are varied and include options such as “Learning from errors,” “Myth exploded,” “New disease,” and “Unexpected outcome,” among others. Content also includes videos and images. Cases featuring video reports are listed together; however, the current list of 65 results could not be sorted and the advanced search menu did not have a search feature for video reports. Instead, the display showed 10 results at a time, presumably in date order. The “Images in…” feature lists journal content that contains images. For the 836 results in this collection, users can modify the list's citation format (standard or condensed), change the number of results per page, and sort the order according to relevance, most recent, or earliest first. The advanced search menu does include images as a way to limit searches. Individual and institutional subscriptions are available, and subscribers are called “fellows.” Fellowships allow users to use all published materials, whether for teaching or personal use, without the need to ask for additional permissions. Fellows may also submit as many cases as they would like with their subscriptions. Users with access to institutional fellowships are not required to pay individual fees. Fellows may also submit unlimited cases for publication. Compared to similar resources, BMJ Case Reports is a somewhat unique product. For example, although the National Library of Medicine catalog of journals referenced in the National Center for Biotechnology Information databases lists numerous titles devoted to both open access and privately published case reports, these titles are dedicated only to specific disciplines. Two other titles, The American Journal of Case Reports (formerly, Case Reports and Clinical Practice Review) and Journal of Medicine Cases, are open access titles that have a similar scope as BMJ Case Reports; however, they do not share the features discussed that are unique to BMJ Case Reports, nor do their sites share the ease of navigation as seen in the BMJ product. Several items on the BMJ Case Reports site may be redundant. However, the resources available through BMJ Case Reports are easy to find and are presented logically.