AMA Manual of Style - Stacy L. Christiansen, Cheryl Iverson 2020
Other Substantive Article Types (Nonresearch, Nonreview)
Types of Articles
Articles that present substantive content but do not include the methodologic approaches used in original research reports or the comprehensiveness of systematic reviews are common in biomedical journals. For instance, the Clinical Review and Education section of the JAMA Network journals includes a variety of diverse types of articles, ranging from longer, detailed reports that summarize available evidence on a topic to shorter reports that have an educational focus.
More detailed articles, which may be designated as Special Communications (or Special Articles or specific article types) to differentiate them from Research articles and Reviews, address important topics in clinical medicine, public health, health policy, or medical research in a scholarly, thorough, well-referenced, and evidence-based manner and summarize existing data and information. In biomedical journals, these articles may address major issues (eg, health care policy of ethical issues in a specific country or global comparisons) or may represent authoritative reports directly relevant to clinical practice (eg, clinical practice guidelines, consensus statements, or recommendation statements from governmental agencies). These articles usually have a structured Abstract (although the format may vary, depending on the nature and topic of the article), along with the following sections: Introduction, Methods (if applicable, eg, explaining the methods for guideline development), Results/Recommendations, and Discussion, along with References, Tables and Figures, Article Information, Acknowledgments, online-only Supplemental content, and perhaps Multimedia content.
Other substantive nonresearch, nonreview articles may present educational content or other information using various article formats according to the specific topic and usually consist of brief, focused articles. For instance, Clinical Guidelines Synopsis articles provide a succinct summary of recent guidelines from authoritative sources; Guide to Statistics and Methods articles present a concise explanation of a focused statistical concept, often based on that statistical approach as used in a related research report; and Clinical Challenge articles present a case-based clinical dilemma with diagnostic and treatment options in a question and answer format.
These and other articles provide useful information about relevant topics for journal readers and may serve as useful educational material for students and trainees. Because of the variability of the content of these brief articles, there is no standard format for these educational reports.