Clinical Social Work Journal - Clinical Social Work Journal's Policy on Publishing Clinical Material

As stated on the journal’s website describing its aim, “The Clinical Social Work Journal is an international journal devoted to the advancement of clinical theory, knowledge, and practice. It aims to serve as a resource for  practitioners, educators, researchers, and policymakers and invites the submission of manuscripts that conceptualize, discuss, and illustrate creative practice. The Journal is dedicated to exploring the complexities of clinical social work practice that considers the intersectionality of identities, cultural factors, social forces, and historical contexts in understanding clinical issues and applying modalities, methods, and skills."

It is often through the sharing of clinical experiences and encounters with clients that learning can take place. However, it is critical that clients be protected through this sharing and that their privacy and rights be protected at all times. To that end, the Clinical Social Work Journal has adopted the following policy that authors must follow in order to ensure that the material they include in any case presentation protects the client.

• The inclusion of any personal information about a client in a published manuscript, as a rule, will require the consent of the client, even if identifying information is removed prior to publication. 
• If a client has refused to be included in a publication, authors must remove such information from the manuscript.
• There may be times when a manuscript is published without the consent of a client under the following circumstances. ALL of the below criteria must be met. 
  1. It is not possible to locate the client or their next of kin to gain permission without a significant burden or it is unreasonable to do so.
  2. The case material within the manuscript contains useful information that enhances clinical learning that could not be achieved without the inclusion of the client information.
  3. If the client had been consulted, the individual would not have any cause for refusing to have the included information shared. To assess for this criteria, the authors and reviewers would be required to determine whether the amount of information that is disclosed would cause any level of distress to the client or their family members or other related parties.
  4. The risk of identification of the client is minimized as described in the NASW Code of Ethics standard 5.02[n]: "Social workers who report evaluation and research results should protect participants’ confidentiality by omitting identifying information unless proper consent has been obtained authorizing disclosure." Therefore, only those personal and clinical details essential for understanding and interpreting the clinical teachings should be included. This means that to protect a client’s right to privacy, nonessential identifying data (eg., sex, age, race/ethnicity, occupation, and location of care or treatment) should be removed from a manuscript, unless clinically relevant or important.
  5. Direct quotes should be altered to protect clients’ anonymity as much as possible without changing the general meaning of the sentiments being expressed.

If consent has been obtained prior to the submission of the manuscript, this should be explicitly stated and the Journal encourages authors to include a statement similar to ones below in the acknowledgements:

• Additional Contributions: The authors thank the study participants for participating in this study and enabling the findings of this statement to be shared within the clinical community.
• Additional Contributions: We are grateful to the patients who provided permission after reviewing the manuscript to publish this information.

If consent was not able to be obtained, the author should state that information adheres to the guidelines put forth by the Journal and that any client information or quotes have been altered to protect the identity of the client. 

Manuscripts that include data from a research study that include direct quotes or other identifying information should include detailed information about the consent process used for obtaining the data, as well as a statement regarding the human subjects review process for the study.