07/24/2026
An Urgent Call for Chiropractic Peer Reviewers
Dear Colleagues,
During the past year, Dr. Mark Studin, working in collaboration with Dr. Carl Cleveland and the Research Department at Cleveland University–Kansas City, Chiropractic and Health Sciences (CUKC), has worked with BMJ Case Reports, a publication of the British Medical Journal.
Founded in 1840, the BMJ is one of the world’s most respected and influential medical publications. In an unprecedented advancement for our profession, CUKC has been accepted as a sponsoring institution for the submission of chiropractic case reports. To our knowledge, CUKC is the first chiropractic institution to achieve this status.
We have broken an important glass ceiling—but that breakthrough has created a new and significant challenge.
Although chiropractic authors may now submit case reports through CUKC, those manuscripts remain subject to independent peer review. Presently, many of the reviewers are medical doctors who may have limited familiarity with chiropractic clinical reasoning, treatment protocols, terminology, and the evidence supporting chiropractic care.
This is not necessarily the result of prejudice. Rather, it reflects an understandable lack of familiarity with how chiropractors evaluate patients, establish diagnoses, determine clinical necessity, and deliver care. Consequently, valuable chiropractic case reports are being rejected because appropriately qualified chiropractic peer reviewers are unavailable.
BMJ policy prohibits peer reviewers from being affiliated with the same institution sponsoring the submissions. Therefore, reviewers for CUKC-sponsored manuscripts must have an academic affiliation with another institution.
We have contacted five chiropractic colleges seeking assistance in establishing a group of highly qualified doctors of chiropractic who have volunteered to serve as independent peer reviewers. These doctors require a formal academic affiliation solely for this purpose. Unfortunately, our requests have either been declined or left unanswered.
This represents a familiar and deeply troubling pattern within our profession: circling the wagons and shooting inward.
Unless we act, chiropractic research will remain dependent upon reviewers who may not fully understand our clinical methods or the scientific foundation for our care. We currently have dozens of case reports being prepared for publication—papers capable of expanding the scientific literature, strengthening chiropractic’s credibility, and advancing our standing throughout healthcare.
Chiropractic Needs You
We are seeking doctors of chiropractic who:
Hold a current academic affiliation with a college or university;
The academic affiliation can be chiropractic or any other
Have an active .edu email address;
Possess the clinical or research qualifications necessary to serve as peer reviewers; and
Are willing to participate in BMJ’s confidential, independent, blind, peer-review process.
This initiative is being conducted in a nonprofit environment solely for the advancement and betterment of the chiropractic profession. There is no commercial agenda. The goal is to ensure that chiropractic scholarship receives knowledgeable, fair, and academically appropriate review.
This is an opportunity to help chiropractic authors publish meaningful clinical findings in one of the world’s most respected medical publishing environments. More importantly, it is an opportunity for our profession to support its own advancement.
If you meet the requirements or can connect us with a qualified academic chiropractor, please contact:
Dr. Mark Studin
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 631-786-4253
