Critical Care Submission Guide

Critical Care's stated audience is intensivists and the intensive-care field. Begin with the specific question your study answers for that audience. Clinical relevance does not require every paper to establish an immediate change in treatment. A descriptive, methodological, or mechanistic contribution needs a clear purpose and appropriately bounded interpretation. Read the journal's scope.

Write one sentence naming the population or material, the comparison, the outcome, and the uncertainty the study reduces. Then check whether the title, abstract, methods, and conclusion tell that same story. If an observational association becomes a claim that an intervention improves survival, the issue is inference, not persuasive wording.

Choose the article type from the current guidelines. Research, Review, Brief Report, and other formats have distinct instructions. Do not reuse a generic word-count range or infer that one format's package applies to all the others.

The Research instructions currently specify a structured abstract of no more than 350 words and three to ten keywords. Use the headings prescribed there. The same page recommends the reporting guideline appropriate to the design, including CONSORT, STROBE, and PRISMA.

Treat the reporting checklist as a traceability tool. For each applicable item, find the manuscript or supplement passage that answers it. A checklist attached without that reconciliation does not establish complete reporting. Explain an inapplicable item when the instructions call for it; do not invent a method merely to fill a field.

For intervention reports on human participants, the Research instructions specify registration details and a retrospective-registration label where applicable. That is not a blanket rule that every observational ICU registry analysis is a registered trial. Check the actual design and policy. Ethics approval, consent to participate, consent for publication, and registration answer different questions.

Use a Critical Care methodological readiness check to inspect whether the manuscript explains those distinctions.

In our fictional example, a team studies a hospital registry and finds an association between a care exposure and mortality. Its draft conclusion says that adopting the exposure would reduce deaths. The abstract describes an observational design, while the cover letter calls the study practice-changing intervention evidence.

The named failure pattern is a causal claim without a causal design. The team should first state what was observed, which biases remain plausible, and what inference the analysis can support. Replacing “associated with” with “improves” does not create a stronger clinical contribution.

A second failure pattern is one identifier standing in for different approvals. The methods name an ethics committee decision, but the declarations do not explain the consent basis or whether the intervention-registration policy applies. The repair is a design-specific governance check, with an accurate statement for each applicable requirement.

A third failure pattern is a data promise without an access route. The draft offers unrestricted data on request, although the institution limits sharing. The team must reconcile the statement with actual permissions, access conditions, and responsibilities before offering it to readers.

We created this case to connect the submission documents to the scientific claim. It is not a real manuscript, a report of Critical Care editorial behavior, or a claim about Manusights customer outcomes. The map can reveal contradictions; it cannot establish scientific validity or predict acceptance.

For the first problem, check ICU actionability and claim boundaries. For the governance and reporting handoff, check the supporting package.

Use the full declarations list in the Research instructions. It covers ethics and consent, publication consent, data availability, interests, funding, contributions, and acknowledgements, with author information optional. The page explains how to handle a heading that does not apply.

Assign one author to compare those statements with the methods, author list, acknowledgements, and cover letter. A funding source named only in one document, or a contribution described differently in two files, needs a decision by the authors. A copyedit cannot decide who qualifies for authorship or whether disclosure is sufficient.

For data access, distinguish the material supporting the conclusions from material that cannot lawfully or ethically be shared. Name a real route and any restrictions. Avoid claiming that depositing one derived table makes every underlying dataset available. If code is central to the work, explain its availability and limitations in the appropriate place.

Check whether your venue framing is specific enough after the declarations and scientific account agree.

The general submission guidelines describe the cover-letter content, author approvals, interests, and publication-status confirmations. Suggested reviewers are optional; when proposed, provide information that lets the editor verify identity. The guidelines also state that an author must submit the manuscript.

Explain fit without asserting privileged knowledge of the editor's preferences. A useful note tells the reader what the study adds and why the intensive-care audience needs it. It does not need an invented quota of recent Critical Care citations or a claim that a particular phrase reliably passes editorial screening.

Open the live submission link from the guidelines. Check the selected article type against the file package before uploading. Prepare editable source files, figures, tables, and supplementary material under the current instructions, and inspect the generated submission PDF. Confirm that figures, labels, references, symbols, and declarations survived conversion.

The general guidelines limit individual figure files to 10 MB. Keep figure titles and legends in the manuscript, and check the current accepted file types before export. File compliance is a separate check from whether the figure supports the stated conclusion. Figure preparation instructions.

Run a Critical Care pre-submission readiness check on the assembled manuscript if you want another pass before an author submits it.

The publisher currently lists an APC of £3,090 GBP / $4,390 USD / €3,590 EUR, with applicable taxes. The fee is determined at acceptance. Check institutional coverage and discretionary waiver timing before submitting; the publisher says discretionary requests should be made at submission. These values and conditions were checked September 12, 2026. Current publishing and funding information.

Critical Care publishes open access under CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND options described by the publisher. Confirm the option compatible with your funder's requirements and your material's permissions. An agreement may cover eligible fees; do not assume coverage from institutional affiliation alone.

A first-decision statistic is not a promised review deadline. Do not plan on a fixed sequence of two-day intake, fourteen-day desk review, and predetermined external review. The Critical Care under-review status guide owns the post-submission waiting task. The European Respiratory Journal under-review guide remains available when comparing a respiratory-journal route.

Use this author action map to prepare for the next request. It is not a promised timeline or a claim about private Critical Care workflow; stages can overlap, and an editorial decision can end the process before external review. The journal's peer-review policy explains the reviewer and editor roles.

• Submission receipt: Save the manuscript identifier and the submitted PDF. Check that the system recorded the intended files and article type.
• Package clarification: If the office requests a correction or missing declaration, reconcile it across the affected files before returning them.
• Editorial assessment: Wait for the editor's actual decision. A status label alone does not establish that the paper has entered external review.
• External review, if requested: Reviewers assess robustness, originality, and clarity. Prepare to address their reasoning; an invitation to revise is not acceptance.
• Decision and revision: Separate required changes from questions needing clarification, keep a response record, and obtain author agreement before submitting a revision.