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March 7, 2025
Call for Papers for a Focus Theme "Synthetic Data" of GMS Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie

In medicine, research on medical errors, patient safety issues and evidence-based decision-making is well established and important. The digitalization of healthcare, the use of artificial intelligence in all areas of care, the increasing commercialization of healthcare services, the demand for patient and public involvement in health research, and climate protection and sustainability pose new and complex challenges. For all these areas, the targeted and critical selection of information sources, the analysis of the information and the associated considerations and conclusions for solving medical problems play an important role, especially for physicians. This has sparked interest in a better understanding of the development, promotion and testing of so-called critical thinking and reasoning in both the preclinical and clinical contexts (especially with regard to the mechanisms of patient-related decision-making). We see critical thinking and well-founded decision-making as an indispensable part of scientific competence.

Multidimensional action plans are needed to solve the complex problems in health care, which, among other things, take into account biomedical, ethical, environmental and economic perspectives. Therefore, in addition to subject-specific skills, additional abilities of integrative and transdisciplinary thinking are essential for health care and education. Critical engagement with media and information plays an important role in this and should be taught to all medical students and health professionals and incorporated into daily practice.

We welcome contributions that explore critical thinking and reasoning in diverse medical decision-making contexts. Contributions can be dedicated to teaching, promoting or testing critical thinking and reasoning for decision-making. The use of information technologies and their possibilities and limitations in supporting decision-making are of particular interest.

We ask for contributions to JME’s Thematic Issue on "Critical reasoning and argumentation for informed decisions in health care" by August 31th, 2025. We aim to publish the thematic issue in the first half of 2026.

Manuscripts can either be submitted via the MOPS (Manuscript Operating System) https://www.rheinware.org/mops/ or sent directly to the editorial office as a Word file (kontakt@gma-dach.org). When submitting, please indicate that your manuscript is a contribution to the thematic issue "Critical reasoning and argumentation for informed decisions in health care". Please follow the author guidelines (https://www.egms.de/en/journals/zma/authors.htm bzw. https://journals.publisso.de/en/journals/jme/manuscript_guidelines).

All manuscripts undergo the regular review process, i.e. they are assessed by at least two external, independent reviewers and edited by the editors of the thematic issue. The final decision on the publication of the manuscripts lies with the journal's editors in chief.

Contributions that are received/revised after the submission deadline or that, in the opinion of the editors, do not fit thematically into the context and therefore may not appear in the thematic issue may be published in one of the following issues of the GMS Journal for Medical Education using the regular publication process.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Martin R. Fischer, Jochen Kuhn, Matthias Stadler, Maruschka Weber & Jan Zottmann
(Editors of the special issue)

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