Modernizing JCRS Online Case Reports: open access, signed patient consent, and better abstracts.

Abstract

We are honored to be your editors for the JCRS Online Case Reports (JCRO). JCRO began in 2013 under the leadership of Emanuel S. Rosen, MD, FRCSEd, as a place for the growing number of worthy case report submissions that simply would not fit in the print journal. Eight years later, JCRO is the home of all JCRS case reports. To better serve our readers and authors, we will be moving to an Open Access publishing model, under a Creative Commons license to publish. The first step of this transition is to require signed consent from all patients included in case reports. Minor changes in the format of the abstract are also required. Case reports play a critical role in evidence-based medicine. They identify rare adverse events, increase awareness of uncommon conditions or atypical presentations, suggest management strategies for such conditions, and guide research. As JCRS introduces wondrous technologies and techniques that revolutionize the care we can offer to patients, JCRO documents the new pathologies and complications we encounter along the way. These newly identified pathologies often have a very long tail: readers will continue to search for and reference them for years or decades after publication. The first case report published in JCRO, “Burkhulderia cepacia: Rare cause of postsurgical acute endophthalmitis,” by Taskin Khan, MBBS, MS, continues to receive many full-text views per month and was cited within the past year. Migrating to Open Access ensures that our online presence also has significant distribution. Open Access not only increases visibility for our journal, but it also facilitates access for our increasingly global readership. In 2020, the top 5 countries accessing JCRO articles included India, Egypt, and Brazil. We hope that Open Access continues this trend of spreading information to every ophthalmologist around the world and that authors worldwide think of us when they are looking to submit reports. To make these changes possible, JCRO will require authors to include a signed patient consent form to complete the online submission. Authors are also required to state in the manuscript that signed consent was obtained from the patient. Submissions received prior to June 15, 2021, will be considered without signed consent forms. We will also require abstracts to comply with the 2013 CARE Case Report Guidelines. These guidelines are available online at https://www.care-statement.org/checklist or through the JCRO Information for Authors. We appreciate your readership and case report submissions as we modernize our journal. Together, we can strengthen JCRO as a resource that is available to everyone in the world, for free, forever.