Implementing Guidelines
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will be rejected. In addition, compliance with guidelines for certain types of articles must be checked using the appropriate checklist (CONSORT, PRISMA, etc.)
- Accomplished author statements, signed by ALL authors, with:
- A list of authors’ names in the correct order of listing.
- A full statement that the manuscript is original material that is not being considered for publication or has not been published or accepted for publication elsewhere, in full or in part, in print or electronic media;
- A statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors, that all four criteria for authorship have been met by each author;
- A disclosure statement of financial or other relationships, intellectual passion, political or religious beliefs, and institutional affiliations that might lead to a conflict of interest;
- A copyright transfer form signed by all authors; and
- Acknowledgement by the corresponding author that IRB or ERB approval and informed consent (and assent) have been obtained, that clinical trial registry has been complied with, that copies of permission to reproduce published material, to use illustrations or report information about identifiable people, to name people for their contributions have been secured, and that all manuscript data is complete, valid and reliable.
- Manuscripts are neatly prepared in correct U.S. English using Microsoft Word, RTF or Word-Perfect software on A4 format in Times New Roman font size 12, double spaced, with a 1-inch margin on all sides. If the MS Word “Track Changes” tool has been used in manuscript preparation, all changes in the document have been accepted and the “Track Changes” feature has been turned off before submission. Citations and references are typed manually (i.e., do NOT use automatic numbering or tools such as EndNote).
- Manuscripts are correctly ordered as follows: (1) title page (2) abstract including keywords and laymanized version (3) text – introduction, methods, results, discussion (4) acknowledgements (5) references (6) tables (7) figure legends and (8) individual figures (each attached separately in .jpeg format). The pages of the manuscript are numbered consecutively, beginning with the title page as page one.
- Submission Metadata matches elements from part (1) title, authors and affiliations, and (2) abstract and keywords – in Step 2 (Entering the Submission’s Metadata) of the 5-step online submission process. Following this, Parts (1) to (7) have been fully uploaded under Step 3 (Upload Submission) portion. Each figure (8) has been uploaded separately as a supplementary file. The author statement forms have also been uploaded separately as supplementary files.
- Instructions to Authors detailed in this section have been fully complied with.
