Journal of Medical Ethics Submission Guide

Current JME materials describe multiple article forms. An original research article should make methods, participants, analysis, ethics, and the normative implication clear. An extended essay needs a sustained, original argument. A current controversy should make the live disagreement and practical stakes legible. A response should advance the debate rather than restate disagreement. Confirm the current definitions and limits before submission.

• Remove unnecessary identifying detail and follow consent and ethics requirements.
• Explain whether a case is typical, limiting, illustrative, or counterexample evidence.
• Distinguish observed patient preferences from assumptions about what patients value.
• Do not turn an institutional constraint into a moral conclusion without defending the bridge.
• Make jurisdiction, resource setting, culture, disability, and power visible when they affect the argument.

Build an argument table before drafting prose

Use five columns: claim, premise type, support, strongest objection, and consequence if the premise fails. Mark each premise as normative, conceptual, empirical, legal, or contextual. This prevents a citation from appearing to settle a value judgment and prevents a moral intuition from masquerading as a fact. The table can remain an authoring tool even when it does not appear in the article.

If qualitative or survey evidence informs the argument, report sampling, recruitment, questions, analysis, reflexivity, and representation with the same care expected in an empirical paper. Patient or clinician views can reveal experiences and priorities; they do not by themselves establish what policy ought to require. Explain how the empirical finding enters the normative inference.

Make accessibility part of rigor

Define specialist terms when they first do work. Use clinical examples to test an argument, not decorate it. When a philosophical distinction changes practice, show the decision before and after the distinction. When a clinical fact constrains the argument, explain it accurately enough for a non-specialist philosopher.

Reconcile approval, consent, privacy, funding, conflicts, contributions, prior publication, related work, data, and AI-use disclosures. Why this guide exists: official instructions set requirements, but they cannot show where a normative inference breaks. At Manusights, the premise audit and reversal test make that risk inspectable.

1. Intake: article type, files, anonymity, ethics, declarations, and policy compliance.
2. Editorial assessment: originality, argumentative clarity, medical relevance, accessibility, and significance.
3. Review: premises, empirical accuracy, objections, counterexamples, scope, and practical implications.
4. Revision: responses are reconciled with the thesis, cases, citations, limitations, and conclusion.

A case is treated as an argument. Explain why the case changes a principle or exposes a boundary.

The empirical premise is assumed. Source it, qualify it, and show what happens if it is weaker than expected.

The conclusion becomes universal. State which jurisdiction, population, clinical setting, and resource assumptions limit it.

We use a premise audit because many ethics manuscripts hide their decisive move. Write the main conclusion, then list every normative and empirical premise required for it. For each premise, ask whether the manuscript defends it, cites it, or merely assumes it. This usually reveals whether the contribution is an ethical argument, an empirical claim, or a policy preference wearing ethical language.

The next test is reversal: identify the strongest case in which a reasonable reader would reject the conclusion. A useful objection challenges the actual premise or scope rather than offering a weaker alternative. The reply can narrow the claim, distinguish cases, defend a principle, or accept a tradeoff. A narrower conclusion that survives a real objection is stronger than a universal conclusion protected by caricatures.

Example: allocation under scarcity

Do not move directly from limited resources to a single allocation rule. Define the objective, affected population, relevant outcomes, institutional authority, procedural fairness, disability or equity implications, and uncertainty. Explain why the proposed principle should outrank plausible alternatives and what safeguard handles predictable hard cases.

Example: consent and capacity

Separate legal requirements, clinical practice, empirical evidence about understanding or preference, and the normative account of autonomy. A case can expose a problem, but it does not establish how all similar cases should be handled. Specify which features are morally relevant and which are incidental.