1. Reporting guidelines for specific study design
Research reports frequently omit important information. As such, reporting guidelines have been developed for a number of study designs that some journals may ask authors to follow. Authors are encouraged to also consult the reporting guidelines relevant to their specific research design. A good source of reporting guidelines is the EQUATOR Network (http://www.equator-network.org/home/) and the United States National Institutes of Health/ National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/research_report_guide.html).
2. Organization of manuscripts
The original article should contain, in the following order: title page, abstract, keywords, running title, main text (introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion), supplementary data, funding, acknowledgments, conflict of interest, author contributions, ORCID, references, tables and figures.
- 1) Title page: The title page should list the article type, article title, author information including names, their affiliations, and their academic degrees (M.D., Ph.D., etc.), corresponding author information, and any conflict of interest. The page should be uploaded separately from main text. The title should be short (30 or fewer words), informative, and contain the major keywords. The use of acronyms and abbreviations should be avoided. A running title must also be provided, and should be 10 or fewer words. Contact information for correspondence must be provided, consisting of the name, address (institutional affiliation, city, zip code, and country), ORCID number (ORCID, Open Researcher and Contributor ID; http://orcid.org), and e-mail address. If screening is in process after submission, it is impossible to add any other author or delete any of the authors or change the order in which they are placed. When adding a manuscript file, make sure that it does not include any content that hints at any author or institution in the main text.
- 2) Abstract: The abstract should be between 150 and 250 English words. It should be written concisely and clearly using specific data as per the prescribed form divided into four items, i.e. objective, methods, results, and conclusion. Specify 2 to 5 medical subject headings (MeSH) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=mesh), which correspond to the contents of manuscript and are registered in the Index MEDICUS, in order of importance at the bottom of the English abstract. Abbreviations must be defined at the first mention in the abstract using parentheses.
- 3) Main text:
- ① Introduction: The introduction should present study objectives simply and clearly and include only the contents related to the objectives when describing backgrounds.
- ② Materials and Methods: Describe the plan, objects and methods of study. Specify in detail how to select and observe subjects. Describe the methods of test specifically so that other investigators can reenact the test. When reporting experiments with human or animal subjects, the authors should indicate whether they received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the study.
Ensure correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex and gender. If the study was done involving an exclusive population, for example in only one sex, authors should justify why, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.
- ③ Results: This section should be presented clearly and logically and should make a statistical treatment in the biological measurement in which there are many changes in measured values. When using tables, do not overlap table contents in the text, but describe important trends and key points.
- ④ Discussion: Take study results into consideration and interpret them in connection with other data. Emphasize new and important observations and do not overlap the contents of results. Describe the meanings and limitations of observations and connect conclusions with study objectives within the scope the results admit.
- ⑤ Conclusion: Specify the significances and conclusions of study simply.
- 4) Funding: Financial support, including foundations, institutions, pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, private companies, or intramural departmental sources, or any other support should be described.
- 5) Acknowledgments: Persons or institutes who contributed to the papers but not enough to be coauthors may be introduced.
- 6) Conflict of Interest
- 7) Author's Contributions: Authors must include a statement to specify the contributions of each co-author. The statement can be up to several sentences long, describing the specific contributions made by each author (list the authors' initials, e.g., ABC). The name of each author must appear at least once in any of the following categories; conception and design of study, acquisition of data, analysis and/or interpretation of data, drafting the manuscript, revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content.
- 8) References
- 9) Tables and Figures