Cortlandt Forum welcomes contributions from physicians and pays an honorarium.
There are three types of articles you can submit:
A Most Unusual Case
These are first-person reminiscences of unforgettable patients. Your manuscript should not exceed 700 words, and you must be willing to have your photograph accompany the story. The photograph will be taken by us in a nonclinical setting.
Diagnostic Challenge
These first-person case reports read like a detective story, with you, the hero, solving the puzzle. Informally written, they run 800 to 1200 words. Preference is given to articles accompanied by clinical photographs, ECG strips, x-rays, or other illustrations. If these aren't available, you should provide one or more tables or charts containing information such as the patient's lab results or epidemiological data about the condition you diagnosed.
Clinical Features
These reviews bring readers up to date on a condition or disease commonly seen in primary care. The focus can be prevention, diagnosis, or treatment, or any combination of these. Follow these guidelines:
Choose a format — either questions and answers or a traditional narrative. Q&As, which are easier to write, require an introduction before the first question appears.
In the introduction of a Q&A or in the opening paragraph(s) of a traditional narrative article, explain why you are reviewing the condition or disease you have selected. Convince the physician-reader that you plan to present information he or she may be unaware of and needs to know.
Throughout the article, emphasize what is recent or new. Readers use textbooks for background; they use Cortlandt Forum to keep abreast of important developments, so report on clinical trials, drug approvals, guideline changes, and other relevant events that have occurred during the past two to three years.
Stress the practical and the basic. Busy readers won't bother with anything that doesn't help them sharpen their skills. Put yourself in the shoes of a harried FP or general internist and focus exclusively on what that doctor would want to learn.
Cite cases or anecdotes from your own practice to illustrate your points and make your article more interesting.
Don't weigh down the article with statistics; use these in charts or tables instead. Every article must have at least one table, chart, or graph. Just as with a Diagnostic Challenge, clinical photos, x-rays, ECG strips, or any other pertinent illustrations enhance readership and are strongly encouraged. Diagrams and algorithms are also recommended.
When citing the literature, provide full footnoted references. Hold the number of references to no more than a dozen.
If you have few or no references, recommend relevant articles, books, and Web sites in a list of suggested readings.
Articles should run 1200 to 2000 words. Longer pieces should be broken into parts — a main section with sidebars containing related material, such as the epidemiology of the condition or promising experimental drugs under development.
Provide a summary box of key take-home points. Provide a mini-biography of yourself no more than a few sentences long. It should include your specialty, current academic appointments, and current hospital affiliations.
If you want, you can build your article around a real-life case. Just as in a shorter Diagnostic Challenge (see above), you begin with details of the patient presentation, delaying the revelation of the diagnosis until later in the story. But unlike a Diagnostic Challenge, your discussion of the disease should be extensive. This case-study approach also gives you the option of writing the article in the first person.
More Information:
To discuss your editorial ideas, contact us by phone at 646-638-6083, or e-mail marina.galanakis@haymarketmedia.com.
Submissions can be sent to the same e-mail address, faxed to 646-638-6117, or mailed to:
Cortlandt Forum
114 W. 26th St.,
3rd Floor
New York,
NY 10001
All submissions are subject to editing for length and style.
We've Got Answers
Don't forget our interactive Letters section, now called We've Got Answers. Here you can get a clinical question answered by one of our consultants, or you can comment on something that appeared in a previous We've Got Answers section. We also welcome clinical pearls—brief insights gained from your own experience.