The Demise of the Case Report

Abstract

WEB This is a Web exclusive article. n November 2005, a key editorial decision was made by the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR) that case reports would no longer be accepted for submission to the journal [1]. This change in policy was made following the guidance of the Executive Council of the American Roentgen Ray Society and was prompted by a report of the Publications Committee. One of the reasons for the decision to no longer accept case reports is that there was a huge increase in the number of manuscripts submitted to AJR after the opening of the portal for Web-based online manuscript submission. To counteract the potential buildup of a backlog of case reports, stricter criteria for publication were adopted. In addition, case reports were generally deemed not to have as much merit as original research and were therefore preferentially sacrificed to allow more space to publish full articles. This policy is not unique to the AJR; in fact, no longer publishing case reports has become an adopted stance by many American, Asian, and European journals both within and without the field of radiology. Although this decision carries significant merit, there are some disadvantages to this policy. It provided a timely and useful exercise to discuss the case for and the case against the rejection of case reports.