A peer-reviewed publication describing in detail one or a small number of individual cases — typically clinical, sometimes legal or social — for educational, hypothesis-generating, or rare-presentation-documenting purposes, structured according to discipline-specific reporting standards (e.g., CARE guidelines for clinical cases).

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A BMJ Case Reports publication describing a single patient with an unusual presentation of a known disease

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A cohort study of 200 patients is not a case report (it is a cohort study)

Editorial commentary

Case reports are the most clinically-focused publication type, providing detailed narrative of presentation, investigation, intervention, and outcome. CARE Guidelines (Gagnier et al. 2014) standardise reporting. Distinct from a case series (small N > 1 with aggregate description). Ethical considerations include patient consent for publication.

References

CARE Guidelines (Gagnier et al. 2014 J Clin Epidemiol)
ICMJE Recommendations on patient consent for case reports

Also known as

Clinical case report · Case study (clinical)

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Case report"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/case-report" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/case-report",
  "name": "Case report",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/case-report",
  "description": "A peer-reviewed publication describing in detail one or a small number of individual cases — typically clinical, sometimes legal or social — for educational, hypothesis-generating, or rare-presentation-documenting purposes, structured according to discipline-specific reporting standards (e.g., CARE guidelines for clinical cases).",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/case-report",
  "sameAs": [
    "Clinical case report",
    "Case study (clinical)"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:05:38",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

View CASRAI adoption →