Archives of Disease in Childhood Submission Guide
A source-checked guide to ADC fit, paediatric evidence, ethical safeguards, and submission readiness.
Readiness scan
Find out if this manuscript is ready to submit.
Run the Free Readiness Scan before you submit. Catch the issues editors reject on first read.
Quick answer: A strong Archives of Disease in Childhood submission makes the child-health consequence inseparable from the evidence. Age, developmental stage, setting, consent or assent, safeguarding, outcome relevance, family context, and uncertainty should support the same clinical, scientific, advocacy, or service decision.
Evidence basis: We reviewed the official ADC author page, journal home, and BMJ Author Hub on August 26, 2026. Requirements are sourced; the paediatric decision map is Manusights judgment.
This guide exists to connect those publisher requirements to the child-health claim, developmental context, ethics, reporting, and package decisions an author must make before upload.
This guide cannot predict acceptance or a private editorial decision; it helps authors test the public requirements and evidence chain before submission.
- Define the children or adolescents represented.
- Name the decision the evidence can change.
- Keep developmental and ethical boundaries visible.
Check the paediatric evidence package.
From our manuscript review practice
Age and developmental context are part of the inference, not demographic decoration.
Use a child-health ownership test
Manuscript center | Distinct paediatric value | Stop signal |
|---|---|---|
Diagnosis or prognosis | Age-specific presentation, reference, calibration, or outcome | Adult thresholds are imported without validation |
Treatment | Paediatric dose, harm, adherence, development, or patient-important effect | A surrogate carries a broad benefit claim |
Population health | Policy, prevention, inequity, or service consequence for children | Age is only a covariate |
Safeguarding or advocacy | A defensible action and ethical boundary | Sensitive inference exceeds the data or consent basis |
If removing age and developmental context leaves the paper unchanged, test whether a broader clinical or methods journal is the stronger owner.
Put development inside the inference
Age bands should reflect biology, care, or measurement rather than convenient bins. Explain gestational age where relevant, developmental stage, school or family context, transition to adult care, and how consent, assent, or proxy reporting affects what is known. Avoid presenting children as small adults when dosing, outcomes, disease expression, and service pathways differ.
For family-reported outcomes, distinguish the child's experience from caregiver observation. For administrative or linked data, explain coding validity, missingness, migration between services, and whether the record captures the intended event.
Build the ethical and reporting checklist
- Select the current ADC article type before setting structure and length.
- Reconcile ethics approval, consent, assent, safeguarding, data access, privacy, and public or patient involvement.
- Use the design-matched EQUATOR reporting guideline.
- Report age distribution, denominators, missingness, harms, uncertainty, subgroup rationale, and follow-up.
- Align registration, protocol, statistical analysis, abstract, figures, supplement, and data availability.
- Enter through the current submit action on ADC's official author surface.
Readiness check
Run the scan against the requirements while they're in front of you.
See score, top issues, and journal-fit signals before you submit.
A four-question editorial path
Function | Question | Preventable defect |
|---|---|---|
Intake | Is the package ethically and administratively complete? | Consent, safeguarding, authorship, or data records disagree |
Fit assessment | Does the evidence change a child-health decision? | Paediatric relevance is ceremonial |
Peer review | Are design, measurement, analysis, harms, and interpretation trustworthy? | Age or developmental limits are hidden |
Revision | Did each answer change every affected record? | Rebuttal and manuscript diverge |
The map is not a timing promise. It simply shows which author-controlled dependencies should be resolved first.
High-cost failure patterns
Adult assumptions cross the age boundary. Validate the measure, threshold, dose, or mechanism in the represented population or narrow the conclusion.
Age groups conceal developmental differences. Justify bands and report where effects change across them.
A parent-reported measure becomes the child's voice. State the respondent and the construct actually measured.
Safeguarding implications outrun evidence. Separate observed risk, professional duty, policy recommendation, and untested inference.
The service recommendation ignores capacity. Name staffing, access, referral, school, family, and equity conditions that control implementation.
Worked example: a prediction model
A model predicting paediatric deterioration should define the intended decision, age range, setting, outcome window, predictor availability, missing data, calibration, discrimination, thresholds, external validation, and consequences of false reassurance or escalation. A high area under the curve alone does not show whether the model helps a clinical team.
In Manusights editorial review, the most useful repair is often to connect an apparently technical result to the child-health decision while making the developmental boundary more visible. That creates clarity without claiming more certainty.
In our editorial analysis
We use a child-specific applicability test: who is the child population, what developmental or family context changes the result, which outcome matters to children or caregivers, and what safeguard limits the proposed action? A manuscript should not become paediatric merely because the participants are under 18. The age range, developmental stage, dependency on caregivers, consent or assent pathway, and service context may change both interpretation and implementation.
This test is especially useful for studies spanning wide age bands. Neonates, school-age children, and adolescents may differ in physiology, exposure, measurement validity, treatment pathway, and ability to report outcomes. If those groups are pooled, explain why the effect can be interpreted across them or show age-specific results. If only one group is represented, keep the title and conclusion within that boundary.
Worked example: a digital intervention
For a digital intervention, describe who uses the tool, whether caregiver participation is required, accessibility and language constraints, safeguarding, adherence, missing data, and the care pathway triggered by a result. A short-term engagement increase does not establish a clinical benefit. If the study measures usability, keep the claim at usability unless health outcomes or validated intermediate consequences were actually evaluated.
Child-specific decision record
Decision element | Evidence to expose | Risk if omitted |
|---|---|---|
Developmental stage | Age distribution and age-valid measurement | A pooled effect hides different validity or response |
Family role | Caregiver involvement and burden | Implementation assumes unavailable support |
Safeguarding | Consent, assent, privacy, escalation | The proposed workflow is not usable in practice |
Outcome | Child- or family-relevant endpoint and timing | A process measure is presented as benefit |
Equity | Access, language, disability, geography | The intervention widens the gap it aims to reduce |
Put the most consequential boundary beside the main result. A generic limitations paragraph at the end cannot repair a title or abstract that already overgeneralizes the population.
Submit if
- The paediatric consequence owns the question and first artifact.
- Age, development, setting, and respondent are explicit.
- Ethics, safeguarding, reporting, registration, and data records agree.
- Harms, uncertainty, and implementation limits change interpretation.
Think Twice If
- Adult thresholds or mechanisms are transferred without evidence.
- Children appear only as a subgroup table rather than the scientific owner.
- A caregiver measure is presented in the abstract as a direct child outcome.
- Sensitive recommendations exceed the ethical or evidentiary record.
Run the final ADC readiness review.
Recent ADC article shapes checked while testing the guide's child-health evidence map:
- Automated oxygen flow titration in bronchiolitis: https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2026-330820
- Quality of life after infant palatal-plate treatment: https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2026-330540
- National cohort study of infant infection and vaccination: https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2025-329987
Official sources accessed August 26, 2026.
Frequently asked questions
ADC is strongest for evidence that changes understanding, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, advocacy, or services for children and adolescents.
Age, development, assent and consent, safeguarding, family context, dosing, outcomes, and transition boundaries can change interpretation.
Use ADC's current official author page and BMJ Author Hub immediately before upload.
Not automatically. Explain biological, developmental, measurement, treatment, and service differences and keep the conclusion inside the represented ages.
Before you upload
Choose the next useful decision step first.
Move from this article into the next decision-support step. The scan works best once the journal and submission plan are clearer.
Use the scan once the manuscript and target journal are concrete enough to evaluate.
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