Guide for Authors

Language

Manuscripts must be written in English. For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. The International Journal of Medicine Frontiers Editorial Board, however, encourages submissions from investigators throughout the world.

Authorship

Authorship confers credit and has important academic, social, and financial implications. Authorship also implies responsibility and accountability for published work. The International Committee of Medicine Journal Editors Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medicine Journals (ICMJE Recommendations 2013) recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

• Final approval of the version to be published; AND

• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

When we encounter disagreements among authors we follow guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Submission

Corresponding author should submit their manuscripts on behalf of themselves and their co-authors via the International Journal of Medicine Frontiers Online Submission System. For manuscripts with two or more corresponding authors, one should be selected as the submitting author and assume responsibility for all communications with the Journal.

The International Journal of Medicine Frontiers Online Submission System will guide you stepwise through the process of entering information concerning your manuscript and uploading files. There is no page limit for manuscripts. To facilitate rapid publication and minimize administrative costs, however, only online submissions will be accepted. If you encounter any problems during the online submission process, contact ijmf@damray.com for support.

Terms of Submission

Submission of manuscript implies that the work described has not been published previously, or is under consideration for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts must be read and approved by all co-authors prior to submission. Authors must agree to allow editing of the article to improve readability. Galley proofs of accepted manuscripts will be sent to the author(s) prior to publication, unless otherwise indicated.

Units of Measurement

Units of measurement should be presented clearly and concisely using System International (SI) units.

Text Format

Manuscripts should be submitted in one of the following formats: .doc, .docx or .pdf. Microsoft Word documents should not be locked or protected. Use double line spacing. Editable files are required for processing in production. If your manuscript contains any non-editable files (such as PDFs) you will be required to re-submit an editable file if your manuscript is accepted.

Title Page

The title page should include:

- A concise and informative title,

- Full name(s) of the author(s)

- Affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s),

- E-mail address(es) of the corresponding author(s).

Abstract

The manuscript should contain an abstract. The abstract should be self-contained and citation-free, which should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results, and major conclusions.

Keywords

keywords should be a concise summary of your paper's content. We recommend three to five keywords.

Introduction

This section should be succinct, with no subheadings.

Materials and Methods

This section should contain sufficient details to allow all the procedures and experiments described in the manuscript to be independently repeated. The content can be divided into multiple subsections, as required.

Results

The results section should provide clear description of the findings of the research arranged in a logical sequence without bias or interpretation.

Discussion

This section should explain the significance of the results and should place them into the broader context of the current literature. The Discussion may contain subheadings to highlight important areas that are expanded on in the text.

Conclusion

This section should clearly and concisely describe the main conclusions of the work and their significance.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments should be included at the end of the paper, before the list of references. This section should also list all supporting grants, including the full names of funding organizations and grant numbers, where appropriate.

Disclosure of Funding Sources

All authors are required to declare what support they received to carry out their research. The Funding Statement includes the funding information declared by the authors. Please include relevant grant numbers. Please also include this sentence: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” If this statement is not correct, you must describe the role of any sponsors or funders, and amend the aforementioned sentence as needed. Inaccurate information about funding discovered after publication may require a correction.

Conflicts of Interest

In the interests of transparency and to help readers to form their own judgements of potential bias, authors must declare any competing financial and non-financial interests in relation to the work described. All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘competing interests’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). If there is no conflict of interest, authors should state that “The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.”

Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.

Ethical Guidelines

All research involving human or animal subjects must have been approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board (IRB) or by equivalent ethics committee(s), and must have been conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should be able to submit, upon request, a statement from the IRB or ethics committee indicating approval of the research. Subjects must have been properly instructed and have indicated that they consent to participate by signing the appropriate informed consent paperwork. If consent was verbal instead of written, or if consent could not be obtained, the authors must explain the reason in the manuscript, and the use of verbal consent or the lack of consent must have been approved by the IRB or ethics committee. In the case of any animal experiments, the authors must provide a full description of any anesthetic or surgical procedure used, as well as evidence that all possible steps were taken to avoid animal suffering at each stage of the experiment. We reserve the right to reject work that we believe has not been conducted to a high ethical standard, even when formal approval has been obtained.

All efforts should be made to protect patient privacy and anonymity. Identifying information, including photos, should not be included in the manuscript. More information about patient privacy, anonymity, and informed consent can be found in the International Committee of Medicine Journal Editors (ICMJE) Privacy and Confidentiality guidelines.

References

Authors are responsible for ensuring that each reference is accurate and complete. All references should be numbered consecutively and citations of references in text should be identified using numbers in square brackets (e.g., “as discussed by [2]”; “as discussed elsewhere [2, 3]”). All references must be cited within the text; otherwise, the references will be removed.

International Journal of Medicine Frontiers uses “Vancouver” style, as outlined in the ICMJE sample references (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).

Examples:

Citation of journal articles:

(Six or fewer authors)

[1] Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL.

Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002 Jul 25;347(4):284-7.

(More than six authors)

[2] Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002;935(1-2):40-6.

Preparation of Figures

All figures should be cited in the paper in a consecutive order. Figures should be supplied in either vector art formats (Illustrator, EPS, WMF, FreeHand, CorelDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) or bitmap formats (Photoshop, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). For initial manuscript submissions, figures must be of sufficient digital quality for editorial assessment and peer review. Please note, however, if the manuscript is accepted, authors will be asked to provide high-resolution figures.

Proofs

All manuscripts will undergo some editorial modification, so it is important to check proofs carefully. The corresponding author will be sent an email asking them to check their proofs. The email will either have a link for authors to access their PDF proofs online, or will have a PDF proof attached. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked and returned within 3 working days.