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Author Guidelines

1. General principles

JMSR's guidelines for authorship are based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Uniform Requirements for Submission of Manuscripts to Biomedical Journals.

Our section policies provide additional background information about the types of articles we publish, word count information etc.

As electronic publishing creates opportunities for adding detail, layering information, cross-linking or extracting portions of articles and adding background material (e.g., research surveys, databases) authors are asked to work closely with our editors to use these features toadvantage.

Publication charges

JMSR does not currently charge authors or research sponsors article processing fees for articles submitted or pages published.

2. Criteria for authorship

An author is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a study. Authorship credit is based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.

When a large, multi-center group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship. All authors will need to complete Competing Interest statements regarding potential conflict of interests related to author commitments and project support. When submitting a group author manuscript, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name. We will list other members of the group in the acknowledgments. The National Library of Medicine indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript.

Other points to consider:

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship.

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.

Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

A "guarantor" should also be identified to take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article, and publish that information.

The order of authorship on the by-line is a joint decision of the co-authors. Authors should be prepared to explain the order in which authors are listed.

3. Other contributors

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples are those who provide purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged.

Groups of persons who have contributed materially to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be listed under a heading such as "clinical investigators" or "participating investigators", and their function or contribution should be described, for example, "served as scientific advisors", or "critically reviewed the study proposal".

Because readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions, all persons must give written permission to be acknowledged.

4. Reporting guidelines for specific study designs

To ensure all important information is included, authors are required to submit papers according to guidelines for their specific research design (see below).

4.1 Clinical trials

Reports of randomized trials must conform to the revised CONSORT guidelines and should be submitted with their protocols. Protocol summaries will be published with publication of the trial paper.

Cluster-randomized trials and trials reporting harms should be reported according to the CONSORT statement extension to cluster randomized controlled trials.

4.2 Diagnostic accuracy studies

Studies of diagnostic accuracy should be reported according to STARD guidelines.

4.3 Systematic or narrative reviews

Systematic reviews should be written according to the Quorum statement and should be approximately 3000 words with 80 references or fewer.

Authors should confirm their eligibility to write reviews prior to submission. (See Competing Interest policy)

Reviews that are under consideration for publication with the Cochrane Collaboration or that have already been published by Cochrane are not eligible for publication in JMSR.

4.4 Observation studies

Observational studies should be reported according to the STROBE guidelines or MOOSE guidelines if the paper is a meta-analysis of observational studies.

5. Manuscript preparation

When submitting your paper on-line, you will be required to submit the following information:

5.1 Title of the article

Short titles are easier to read than long ones. Titles that are too short may, however, lack important information, such as study design (particularly important in identifying randomized controlled trials). Authors should include all information that will make electronic retrieval of their article accurate.

5.2 Author names and institutional affiliations.

This includes all author names and corresponding department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed. The name, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript (this author may or may not be the "guarantor" for the integrity of the study as a whole) will also be required and should indicate clearly whether their e-mail address is to be published. (See also 2. Authorship)

5.3 Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these. These should also be included in the body of the text in the Methods.

5.4 Word count

A word count for the text only (excluding abstract, acknowledgments, figure legends, and references) allows editors and reviewers to assess whether the information contained in the paper warrants the amount of space devoted to it, and whether the submitted manuscript fits within the journal's word limits. A separate word count for the Abstract is also required.

5.5 Figures and tables

The number of figures and tables is required to ensure editorial staff and reviewers can check that all figures and tables accompanying a manuscript were actually included.

6. Competing Interests

Authors should read the detailed Competing Interest policy prior to submitting their manuscripts and provide all relevant information at the time of submission.

7. Abstract

The abstract should have the Background section (context or background for the study) and the study's purpose(s), Methods, Results (including the main findings and giving specific effect sizes and their statistical significance, if possible), and Conclusions. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations. The abstract should not exceed 300 words; if space is short, report only the primary outcomes. Abstracts should reflect the content and findings of the article accurately. Papers for randomized controlled trials should ensure that basic criteria of the CONSORT statement are included in the abstract (see 4.1 Clinical trials).

8. Introduction

The introduction provides a context or background for the study (i.e., the nature of the problem and its significance). It should also state the specific purpose or research objective of, or hypothesis tested by, the study or observation; the research objective is often more sharply focused when stated as a question. Both the main and secondary objectives should be made clear, and any pre-specified subgroup analyses should be described. Give only strictly pertinent references and do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported.

9. Methods

The Methods section should include only information that was available at the time the plan or protocol for the study was written; all information obtained during the conduct of the study belongs in the Results section. Authors should avoid jargon. Authors are encouraged to submit surveys, questionnaires or protocols used in their study for publication as part of their methods. We also encourage authors to publish original data/databases to encourage secondary analysis and ongoing debate. The Journal will provide assistance to authors who wish to make their original data available to others.

9.1 Selection and description of participants

Describe your selection of the observational or experimental participants (patients or laboratory animals, including controls) clearly, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population. Because the relevance of such variables as age and sex to the object of research is not always clear, authors should explain their use when they are included in a study report; for example, authors should explain why only subjects of certain ages were included or why women were excluded. The guiding principle should be clarity about how and why a study was done in a particular way. When authors use variables such as race or ethnicity, they should define how they measured the variables and justify their relevance. Papers reporting patient data are required to provide signed informed consent from the patient. This should also be indicated in the published article (see Editorial Policies 4. Privacy and Confidentiality).

9.2 Technical information

Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer's name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods (see 9.3 Statistics); provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known; describe new or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.

Authors submitting review manuscripts should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.

9.3 Statistics

Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Avoid relying solely on statistical hypothesis testing, such as the use of p values, which fails to convey important information about effect size. References for the design of the study and statistical methods should be to standard works when possible (with pages stated). Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. Specify the computer software used.

9.4 Sponsor role

Authors should describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the report for publication. If the supporting source had no such involvement, the authors should state this. Authors should also state if the persons directly responsible for their work were able to access and independently analyze their data, and prepare and publish their manuscript without sponsor interference.

Authors of studies funded by an agency with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome should include and sign the following statement: "I had full access to all of the data in this study and I take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis" (see Competing Interest policy).

10. Results

Present your results in logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations, giving the main or most important findings first. Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or illustrations; emphasize or summarize only important observations. Extra or supplementary materials and technical detail can be placed in a linked appendix where it will be accessible but will not interrupt the flow of the text.

When data are summarized in the Results section, give numeric results not only as derivatives (for example, percentages) but also as the absolute numbers from which the derivatives were calculated, and specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Avoid non-technical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as "random" (which implies a randomizing device), "normal", "significant", "correlations", and "sample". Where scientifically appropriate, analyses of the data by variables such as age and sex should be included.

11. Discussion

Highlight the key findings and then emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them (one paragraph). Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction or the Results section. In the next paragraph, explore the possible mechanisms or explanations for these findings, compare and contrast the results with other relevant studies, thereby putting the results into a broader context (one to two paragraphs). Next, state the limitations of the study (one paragraph), and in the concluding paragraph explore the implications of the findings for future research and for clinical practice.

Link the conclusions with the goals of the study but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not adequately supported by the data. In particular, authors should avoid making statements on economic benefits and costs unless their manuscript includes the appropriate economic data and analyses. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. State new hypotheses when warranted, but clearly label them as such.

12. References

12.1 General considerations related to references

Although references to review articles can be an efficient way of guiding readers to a body of literature, review articles do not always reflect original work accurately. Readers should therefore be provided with direct references to original research sources whenever possible. Small numbers of references to key original papers will often serve as well as more exhaustive lists.

Avoid using abstracts as references. References to papers accepted but not yet published should be designated as "in press" or "forthcoming"; authors should obtain written permission to cite such papers as well as verification that they have been accepted for publication. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source.

Avoid citing a "personal communication" unless it provides essential information not available from a public source, in which case the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text. For scientific articles, authors should obtain written permission and confirmation of accuracy from the source of a personal communication.

Authors should verify references against the original documents and are responsible for checking that none of the references cite retracted articles except in the context of referring to the retraction. For articles published in journals indexed in MEDLINE, the ICMJE considers PubMed the authoritative source for information about retractions. Authors can identify retracted articles in MEDLINE by using the following search term, where pt in square brackets stands for publication type: Retracted publication [pt] in pubmed.

12.2 Reference Style and Format

References should be consistent with the format outlined by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) which includes details for all journal articles, group authorship, electronic only publications, books, retracted articles etc. List all authors when there are 3 or fewer. When there are 4 or more authors, list only the first 3 and add "et al". Do not use "ibid." or "op. cit.".

References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in parentheses. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus available through the National Library of Medicine.

Appendix material should not have separate reference sections. References that appear in both the text and the appendix should be numbered as they appear in the text. Any references that appear only in the appendix should be added consecutively to the end of the text reference list. Electronic references should appear as consecutive numbered references following the text.

13. Tables

Tables capture information concisely, and display it efficiently; they also provide information at any desired level of detail and precision. Including data in tables rather than text frequently makes it possible to reduce the length of the text.

Number tables consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each. Do not use internal horizontal or vertical lines. Give each column a short or abbreviated heading. Authors should place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations. For footnotes use the following symbols, in sequence:

*,†,‡,§,||,¶,**,††,‡‡

Identify statistical measures of variations, such as standard deviation and standard error of the mean.

Be sure that each table is cited in the text. If you use data from another published or unpublished source, obtain permission and acknowledge them fully.

Additional tables containing extensive backup data can be added as an electronic link in the text. Submit these tables for consideration with the paper so that they will be available to the peer reviewers.

14. Illustrations, figures, multimedia files

Submission policies for electronic figures and illustrations can be requested from the Editorial Team.

14.1 Figures

Letters, numbers, and symbols on Figures should be clear and consistent throughout, and of sufficient size that they remain legible. Figures should be made as self-explanatory as possible, since many will be used directly in electronic presentations. Titles and detailed explanations belong in the legends, not on the illustrations themselves. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text. If a figure has been published, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material. Permission is required irrespective of authorship or publisher except for documents in the public domain.

Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background. Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs. If photographs of people are used, either the subjects must not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use and publish the photograph.

We require colour negatives, positive transparencies, or colour prints for illustrations in colour. Accompanying drawings marked to indicate the region to be reproduced might be useful to the editor.

When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend.

15. Units of measurement

Measurements of length, height, weight, and volume should be reported in metric units (metre, kilogram, or litre) or their decimal multiples. Temperatures should be in degrees Celsius. Blood pressures should be in millimetres of mercury.

The Journal uses the SI system of units and the recommended international non-proprietary name (rINN) for drug names. Drug concentrations may be reported in either SI or mass units, but the alternative should be provided in parentheses where appropriate.

16. Abbreviations and symbols

Use only standard abbreviations; the use of non-standard abbreviations can be extremely confusing to readers. Avoid abbreviations in the title. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. Have all co-authors and their affiliations been included on the title page of the submission, along with their e-mail addresses?
3. The submission file is in Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
4. The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review) have been followed.

Copyright Notice

JMSR applies the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License to works we publish, because we believe that there should be no financial barriers to access to information that can benefit medical practice.

Privacy Statement

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