The Student Forum
The PLoS Medicine Student Forum is a section devoted to opinion, analysis, and debate of critical health issues seen through the eyes of medical students worldwide.
The inaugural essay, written by medical students from three continents, explains the vision for the Student Forum:
- "We hope this space emerges as a vibrant source of student energy and passion, grounded in evidence, accountable to the patients who will entrust their care to us, and reflecting the hope we have for the future of medicine."
A related editorial, written by the PLoS Medicine editors, explains why the journal wants to engage medical students worldwide:
- "The Student Forum recognizes the vital role that medical students have in guiding the future of the medical profession"
A collection of previously published Student Forum essays shows the range of topics covered by a diverse international authorship.
About the Forum
Essays in the Student Forum are published 3-4 times per year. Essays are about 1000 words long, and address any important topic related to health or medicine (including medical education). They cannot have been published elsewhere.
We are interested in hearing the views of medical students on issues that are relevant to all medical students worldwide, as well as issues that are controversial or provocative.
The unique feature of these essays is that they specifically give a medical student perspective on the topic. They always therefore have at least one medical student as an author (though we are happy for essays to include a medically qualified co-author).
This is not a section in which authors give a scientific analysis of a health issue—other sections of PLoS Medicine are devoted to such analyses. Instead, we want to hear the personal voices of students: backing up any factual assertions with evidence.
Guidelines for Writing a Student Forum Essay
First you should pitch the idea to the Student Forum editors. Send your pitch to studentforum [at ] plos.org. Explain in 100 words:
- What the essay will be about—please state clearly the main message of the piece
- Why you think this essay is important
- Why you think our readers (medical students and health professionals worldwide) will be interested
Your pitch will be considered by the PLoS Medicine Student Forum Section Editor, other PLoS Medicine editors, and our international team of medical student advisers (from the American Medical Students Association [AMSA], the Indian Medical Students Organization [IMSO], and the European Medical Students Association [EMSA]). PLoS Medicine has formal partnerships with AMSA and with FELSOCEM, the Latin American Federation of Scientific Societies of Latin American Medical Students (see below).
If we think your essay sounds suitable, we will ask you to go ahead and write it and submit the final piece to studentforum [at] plos.org. However, even if we liked your pitch, there is no guarantee that we will publish the final piece—we need to see the essay itself and discuss it among ourselves before we can make a decision about publication.
The maximum word length is 1200 words, with up to 12 references.
The essay should have a clear structure—please use sub-headings to guide readers through the piece. In general, essays tend to follow a 3-part narrative structure along the lines of: What is the problem? What is the solution? What needs to happen next? There is no need to stick too closely to this structure, but it does give you a general idea of what we're looking for.
The best essays are those that are passionate, persuasive, engaging, clearly written, and well structured.
If you state a fact, you need to back it up with a reference (e.g. if you're writing an essay about HIV in Botswana, and you begin by stating "Botswana has one of the highest prevalence rates of HIV in the world," you must cite where this fact comes from).
In general, we do not send these essays to an outside expert (know as external peer review), because the essays are personal perspectives on a topic by medical students. We are not publishing scientific analyses or formal reviews in the Student Forum.
All articles in PLoS Medicine are published under our open access license, so you will need to agree to this license—it allows anyone worldwide to reproduce, distribute, or translate your work (or parts of your work), provided they give you and the source proper credit.
If we publish your essay, we'd like you to send us a high resolution photo, illustration, or figure (at a minimum of 600 dots per inch, sent as a PDF, TIFF, or EPS file). Please read our figure guidelines for more information. This will also be published under our open access license (and so the person who created the image must agree to this).
If you are writing about an actual patient, you must obtain the patient's written consent (it is not enough to just anonymize the case). Please use the consent form (116kb PDF) and fax it to the U.S. office (+1-415-546-4090), stating "CONFIDENTIAL: For the attention of Gavin Yamey."
PLoS Medicine's Partnership with AMSA
AMSA has formally endorsed the concept of open access publishing, and has formally partnered with PLoS Medicine. Details of the partnership are at http://www.amsa.org/openaccess.
PLoS Medicine’s Partnership with FELSOCEM
The Latin American Federation of Scientific Societies of Latin American Medical Students (FELSOCEM) has also endorsed open-access publishing and has also formally partnered with PLoS Medicine.