Thorax Submission Guide
A source-checked Thorax fit and submission guide for respiratory research authors.
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 Thorax submission connects a respiratory question to evidence that can change clinical understanding or practice. The study setting, phenotype, exposure or intervention, comparator, result, uncertainty, and boundary should be visible before the paper asks editors to infer significance.
Evidence basis: We reviewed the official Thorax author page, journal home, and BMJ Author Hub on August 26, 2026. Current requirements remain publisher facts; the readiness map is Manusights judgment.
This guide exists to connect those publisher requirements to the respiratory claim, evidence, 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.
First decision | Pass signal | Stop signal |
|---|---|---|
Respiratory ownership | Removing the respiratory context changes the scientific conclusion | The same manuscript could target any general clinical journal unchanged |
Practice consequence | The result changes diagnosis, treatment, prevention, monitoring, or service design | “Clinical relevance” is only a discussion sentence |
Evidence fitness | Design and analysis support the stated claim type | Association is presented as causation or mechanism |
Check the respiratory claim before submission.
From our manuscript review practice
Respiratory topic proximity is not enough; the paper needs a clinical or mechanistic consequence.
Decide what kind of respiratory contribution owns the paper
Clinical studies should define the represented population, disease state, comparator, endpoint, follow-up, missingness, and uncertainty. Mechanistic studies should show how the model clarifies respiratory biology and where translation remains untested. Epidemiology and prevention work should make exposure definition, confounding, policy context, equity, and transfer conditions explicit. Critical-care work should separate physiologic signal from patient-important consequence.
The paper becomes easier to evaluate when the central claim uses the strongest design-appropriate verb. Use “associated with,” “predicted,” “reduced,” or “mediated” only when the analysis actually earns it.
Build a respiratory evidence ledger
Create a one-page ledger before formatting:
- The exact respiratory decision or mechanism.
- The figure or table that carries the result.
- The primary source of uncertainty.
- The most credible alternative explanation.
- The patient, model, setting, or time boundary.
Then test every major manuscript surface against the ledger. The abstract should not omit a boundary that controls interpretation, and the cover letter should not widen a careful manuscript claim.
Prepare the submission checklist in dependency order
- Choose the live article type and review its current limits.
- Complete registration, protocol, ethics, consent, funding, conflicts, author contributions, and data availability records.
- Apply the correct EQUATOR reporting guideline.
- Reconcile labels, denominators, units, time points, missing observations, and uncertainty across text and figures.
- Use the submit action on the official Thorax author page; do not rely on a legacy portal bookmark.
Official instructions define admissibility. They do not tell an author whether the manuscript's central inference is stable enough for editorial assessment; that is the gap this guide addresses.
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.
Four editorial questions
Stage | Question | Repair before upload |
|---|---|---|
Package review | Can the office verify authorship, ethics, registration, reporting, and data claims? | Resolve every cross-file mismatch |
Editor review | Is the respiratory advance important to Thorax readers? | Put consequence and evidence early |
External review | Are methods, controls, analyses, and interpretation trustworthy? | Add missing sensitivity, validation, or boundary work |
Revision | Does the response change all affected records? | Propagate each answer beyond the rebuttal |
The sequence is a decision map, not a promise about elapsed time. Reviewer recruitment and editorial work are private.
Where submissions become fragile
A broad respiratory label hides a narrow dataset. Define phenotype, severity, setting, recruitment, and the population the result does not represent.
A surrogate endpoint carries a patient claim. Explain the validated relationship or keep the conclusion at the surrogate level.
Mechanism is inferred from correlation. Name the experiment or analysis that distinguishes the proposed pathway from alternatives.
Implementation ignores context. Expose resources, workflow, access, adherence, and equity conditions that another setting would need.
A worked claim audit
Suppose a cohort shows that a biomarker predicts an exacerbation. The manuscript should state when the marker was measured, which patients were represented, how outcome timing was defined, what comparator model was used, whether calibration was tested, and what clinical action remains unproven. That is stronger than calling the marker “promising” because it tells readers what the evidence can and cannot support.
In Manusights editorial review, we use the same audit for interventions, imaging, physiology, and mechanistic work: claim, evidence, alternative, consequence, boundary. The components change; the discipline does not.
In our editorial analysis
We test respiratory manuscripts with an exposure-to-consequence chain. Name the population and setting, define the exposure or intervention, show the physiological or clinical outcome, quantify uncertainty, and state the action that follows. Every link should be visible in an inspectable result rather than supplied by discussion prose. This is especially important when a study moves between airway biology, symptoms, exacerbations, service use, and long-term outcomes; those are related but not interchangeable endpoints.
A useful submission package also distinguishes biological plausibility from demonstrated effect. An inflammatory signature can support mechanism, but it does not by itself establish that changing the pathway improves symptoms or prevents exacerbations. An association with air pollution can support risk estimation, but causal and policy claims require attention to exposure measurement, confounding, spatial structure, timing, and alternative explanations. Keeping those levels separate makes the paper more credible and helps an editor see the exact contribution quickly.
Worked example: an exacerbation claim
If a study reports fewer exacerbations after an intervention, define the exacerbation rule, observation window, baseline risk, adherence, concurrent care, missing follow-up, and whether ascertainment changed. Report absolute counts or rates alongside relative effects. If the primary endpoint was not exacerbation frequency, do not let a secondary analysis become the title claim. The abstract, first figure, registration record, and conclusion should all preserve that hierarchy.
Build a transfer-boundary table
Boundary | What to report | Why it changes use |
|---|---|---|
Disease severity | Inclusion criteria, baseline treatment, and prior events | Effect may differ outside the represented stage |
Care setting | Specialist, community, emergency, or population context | Workflow and referral thresholds change feasibility |
Exposure measurement | Device, model, sampling interval, and error | Misclassification can alter both effect and policy meaning |
Follow-up | Duration, attrition, and censoring | Short response does not prove durable benefit |
Population | Age, geography, comorbidity, and exclusions | Transfer requires more than a generic limitation sentence |
Use the table to decide what belongs in the main text rather than burying every boundary in the supplement. The boundaries that change interpretation should sit beside the result they qualify, especially when they alter clinical use, transferability, or the direction of a recommendation.
Use recent articles as boundary checks, not templates
The recent Thorax articles listed below span life-course lung function, biomarker evidence, and regulatory epigenetics. Their value during preparation is not that a new manuscript should imitate a published structure. They show three different ways a respiratory contribution can be owned: a trajectory across time, a clinically interpretable disease signal, or a biological explanation tied to lung function.
Compare your paper with the closest evidence shape and ask what a specialist reader would need to trust the same kind of inference. A life-course analysis needs age windows, repeated measurement, cohort retention, and transfer limits. A biomarker paper needs intended use, comparator performance, calibration or validation, and a statement of what clinical action remains untested. A regulatory study needs a chain from molecular measurement to respiratory phenotype, plus controls that distinguish the proposed explanation from plausible alternatives.
This is also a useful way to detect a framing error. If the paper's first figure shows only a technical result while its title promises a clinical consequence, the evidence shape and claim shape do not match. Either bring the decision-bearing evidence forward or narrow the promise. The objective is not to resemble a recent Thorax paper; it is to make the manuscript's own respiratory inference equally inspectable.
Recent Thorax article shapes checked while testing the guide's evidence map:
- Lung function across the life course: https://doi.org/10.1136/thorax-2025-223725
- Asthma and COPD biomarker evidence: https://doi.org/10.1136/thorax-2025-223646
- Vitamins, lung function, and regulatory epigenetics: https://doi.org/10.1136/thorax-2025-223756
Official sources accessed August 26, 2026.
- Thorax author information, BMJ.
- Thorax journal, BMJ.
- BMJ Author Hub, BMJ.
- EQUATOR Network.
Submit if
- The respiratory consequence owns the first screen and first figure.
- The claim verb matches the design.
- Reporting, ethics, registration, data, and declarations are consistent.
- Limitations change how a reader should use the result.
Think Twice If
- “Respiratory relevance” is asserted but not demonstrated.
- The methods and sample cannot support the population claim stated in the abstract.
- A surrogate table, association, or model figure becomes a clinical-benefit claim.
- Key methods or declarations require a reviewer to guess.
Frequently asked questions
Thorax publishes respiratory research when the result advances scientific understanding and has a credible consequence for clinical practice, prevention, critical care, or respiratory biology.
Yes. Select the design-matched EQUATOR guideline and make the manuscript, supplement, registration, and data statement consistent with it.
Use the live Thorax author page and BMJ Author Hub immediately before upload.
No. The paper needs a respiratory question, defensible inference, and consequence that matters to the journal's readers.
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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