About

Aims and scope

Critical Care is a high-quality, peer-reviewed, international clinical medical journal. Critical Care aims to improve the care of critically ill patients by acquiring, discussing, distributing, and promoting evidence-based information relevant to intensivists. Critical Care aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the intensive care field.

Why publish your article in Critical Care?

We are the top ranked open access journal in the field of critical care medicine.
We offer a high visibility platform for your research, with a broad readership recording more than 9 million annual downloads in 2021 from 230 countries, and an average of 750,000 monthly article accesses and 2200 social mentions.
With a prestigious international Editorial Board including some of the world's leading voices in our field, we provide expert early guidance for researchers, helping transform ideas into discoveries.
Open access publication ensures that your article can be easily discovered, accessed, used, and shared, maximising your impact and acting as a springboard for further discovery.

Open access

All articles published by Critical Care are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Critical Care you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article according to the licence terms.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Critical Care are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £2790.00/$3890.00/€3290.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

2025 APCs

For information about the APC applicable for articles accepted for publication next year, please see our journal lists.

Indexing services

All articles published in Critical Care are included in:

CABI
Citebase
Current contents
Embase
EmCare
DOAJ
Global Health
MEDLINE
Medscape
OAIster
PubMed
PubMed Central
Science Citation Index
Science Citation Index Expanded
SCImago
Scopus
SOCOLAR
Zetoc

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Critical Care operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Expedited peer review

We recognise that scientifically sound, high quality manuscripts are often turned away from broad-scope "high-impact" journals based on the issue of "general interest." Critical Care will consider rapid publication of such manuscripts if they are submitted together with the original peer reviewer reports, letter of rejection, and a rebuttal. Please also mention this in your cover letter. Additional peer review may be necessary and the final decision will be made by the Editor.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Critical Care should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Critical Care

Articles in Critical Care should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Crit Care [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Crit Care 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies .

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Critical Care's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Critical Care offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Critical Care gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Critical Care are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Critical Care’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Critical Care may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Critical Care. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Critical Care you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work. For further information, see our guide to licensing, copyright and author rights.

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.