Guidelines for Manuscript Submission
Please read this before the submission of full-length English manuscripts.
Journal of Southern Medical University publishes 1-3 carefully selected high-quality English articles in every issue. Thus, English manuscripts are highly welcome. Before submission, please download and read the “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” laid out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and make sure that your article complies with it.
In order to save your time, speed up manuscript processing and shorten the publishing cycle, please read the following guidelines and check whether your article meets our requirements before submission via our portal.
Types of Contributions
The journal provides a medium for publication of English articles on original medical research, including basic medicine, clinical medicine, epidemiologic study, etc., while case reports describing the diagnosis and treatment of clinically rare diseases or those of great clinical significance could also be taken into consideration. Review articles will not be considered unless they are “invited” or “solicited” by the Editors.
General Requirements of English Articles
·Original papers describing original research of high novelty, practicality, or clinically guiding significance;
·Research results (and any other components) that have never been published on other journals;
·Do not involve any potential ethical problems;
·Do not involve any potential conflicts of interest with other people or organizations;
·Research projects supported by funding on the provincial level and above, and the funding’s name and number specified in both Chinese and English
e.g. National Natural Science Foundation of China (81000989) // Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81000989)
·Written in good English with no spelling mistakes (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of them). Please note that article with considerable grammatical or spelling errors won’t be able to enter the peer-review stage. Therefore, meticulous proofreading and modification by professionals are highly recommended.
Author names and affiliations.
Bylines should include all those who have participated in the project research. All authors should be notified and agreed to the publication of the article on our journal. To facilitate indexing and retrieval and for unique identification of an author, use family names (all caps) and given names (first letter in cap). For example: ZHANG Li or SONG Jianwu.If the author affiliation entertains cooperation with any overseas research institution, a written acknowledgement by that institution indicating its agreement to the article’s publication on our journal and a statement of no conflicts of interest should be submitted.
To avoid potential disputes, the acknowledgement file should be signed by both the corresponding author and all other authors.Pleasedownload the file from our website and upload the scanned signed form in package with other compulsory files).
The corresponding English translation of the author affiliation should be that authorized by the institution, and our journal does not take responsibility for any mistranslation made by the author.
File Formats
Please consult formerly published articles on our journal and modify your article’s format, and special attention should be paid to following aspects:
·Font type and size:
The manuscript should be organized in a small 4-point Times New Roman font for the main body and 3-point Times New Roman font in bold for the title.
·Quantities and units of measurement:
Please standardize your use of quantities and units. For example, the English abbreviations of hour, minute and second are h, min and s. Leave a space between the quantity and the unit of measurement.
·Tables:
Tables should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text, and given a brief, descriptive title. Tables should be concise and exact.
Glossy prints and reduced versions of typewritten tables are unacceptable. All acronyms, abbreviations, and unusual units of measurement in the title, headings, or body of the table should be fully explained in a footnote. If a table or any data therein have been previously published, a footnote to the table must give full credit to the original source.
Use 5-point Times New Roman font for the title, headings and body of the table. Normally, there should be no more than 4 tables in one manuscript.
·Illustrations:
Use 5-point Times New Roman font for the picture title and legends and small 5-point Times New Roman font for texts in figures. For better figure clarity, it is strongly recommended that all figures are compressed while uploading in package with other files. Please indicate the magnification factor and stanning method for micrographs.
·Abstract:
A structural abstract of no more than 250 words must accompany the manuscript and consist of four paragraphs, each with its introductory label: Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusion. It should state concisely the scientific problem(s) or hypotheses addressed in the Article, the approach taken to resolve it, and the key results.
·Abbreviation:
Standard abbreviations should be used consistently throughout the manuscript. The term should be spelled out in full the first time it appears, followed immediately by the abbreviation in parentheses. The abbreviation only should be used from that point on.
·References:
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either ’Unpublished results’ or ’Personal communication’. Citation of a reference as ’in press’ implies that the item has been accepted for publication.
Please indicate the category of the reference by [J], [M], [OL], etc. immediately after its title. For example: Mcpherson JP, Lemmers B, Chahwan R, et al. Involvement of mammalian Mus81 in genome integrity and tumor suppression [J]. Science, 2004, 304(5678): 1822-6.
Please indicate references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text and use abbreviations for journals stipulated on Medline (do not add dots after abbreviations, e.g. Can Res instead of Can. Res.). Please use references published in recent years and the total number should be controlled preferably between 25 and 40.
Only English punctuation marks can be used in this section.
Other Supporting Documents
·Chinese abstract:
To facilitate article search at home, a Chinese abstract completely consistent with that in English should be submitted and will be published at the end of the full-length English article. Main contents include title, author affiliation, abstract, keywords, information of author and corresponding author.
·Chinese description:
To shorten the review period, the author needs to provide a Chinese description of the article stating the innovation and significance of his/her research, with emphasis on the relevant research progress abroad, main research methods, outcome and conclusions, practical application value and theoretical significance, etc. This section does not have a word limit (preferably no less than 800 words), and it should be noted that it will not be published.
Acknowledgement
We highly value the originality of articles we publish and have taken measures to avoid potential academic misconduct. Therefore, the author needs to fill in an acknowledgement form stating that he/she observes most strictly the rules against dual publication and has agreed to publish this article. After completion, pack this form with other files and upload the package via our submission portal. It is after the receipt of the acknowledgment file that we start processing the manuscript.