A Guide to Authors
Current Issue
ISSN 2186-3326
(Online ISSN)
ISSN 0027-7622
(Print ISSN--v.72no.3/4)
Impact Factor(2017)
1.016
(revised on June, 2018)
I. Journal Policy
The Journal publishes original papers in the areas of medical science and its related fields. Reviews, symposium reports, short communications, notes, case reports, hypothesis papers, medical image at a glance and announcements are also accepted.
Manuscripts should be in English. It is recommended that an English check of the manuscript by a competent and knowledgeable native speaker be completed before submission. And if a manuscript is judged by the Editorial Board to be of inadequate quality, author(s) should pass through English check by a native speaker.
By submitting your paper, you certify that your paper is not being simultaneously considered by other journals and that any portion of your current paper has not been previously published in any journal in any language by you or your collaborators except for meeting abstracts or short proceedings. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact the editorial office prior to submission. Final decision on an article will be made by the Editorial Board after consideration of reviewer’s evaluation.
Upon acceptance of an article, including invited review article, for publication, the copyright of the article shall be exclusively assigned to the Journal. To reproduce the article in part or in any form, the author(s) must obtain permission from the Editorial Board.
II. Manuscript Submission
Please email the electronic files of your paper and simultaneously mail three printed copies of it to the NJMS Editorial Office. The email and mailing addresses of the editorial office are as follows:
C/O Nagoya University Medical Library
65 Tsurumai-Cho, Showa-Ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan
E-mail address:
You must submit both electronic files and printed copies of your paper; otherwise your submission is deemed incomplete and will not be processed for review.
In cases of suspected scientific misconduct (fabrication, falsification of data, double publication, duplicate submission, or plagiarism), the journal will conduct a preliminary investigation. If scientific misconduct is confirmed, the journal will contact the corresponding author’s institution and the funding agencies. The NJMS will not consider publication of any papers by the offending authors for a period of 1 year or longer, depending on the circumstances of each case.
Manuscripts submitted for publication must contain a statement to the effect that all human studies have been approved by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Animal experiments should be approved by the appropriate animal experimental committee, which has to be described on the paper.
III. Manuscript Preparation
1) What to include in your submission package
Please submit a suite of documents listed below to the NJMS editorial office:
B. Title page
C. Abstract
D. Text (including a plain title page, the body of the paper,
a conflict of interest statement, references, and figure legends)
E. Tables (if any)
F. Figures (if any)
Each of the items A, E and F must be prepared as a separate file and printed as a separate document.
2) How to format items in your submission package
Format items in your submission package as specified below. Formatting requirements denoted “Global” apply to all items.
Global
Format all items in your submission package for A4 paper. Leave 2.5 cm of margin on all sides.
A－C. Cover Letter, Title Page, and Abstract
Double-space these items. Use 12-point Times New Roman font. Do not add page or line numbers.
D. Text
Double-space this item, and there should be 26 lines per page. Use 12-point Times New Roman font. Add page and line numbers.
F. Figures
Ensure that the letters and numbers inside the figures are large enough to be comfortably readable. The NJMS accepts color figures, including graphs.
3) How to prepare individual items in your submission package
Please prepare each item in your submission package as described below. Your paper will not be reviewed until it is prepared as specified below.
A. Cover Letter
Address your cover letter to Prof. Shinya Toyokuni, Editor-in-Chief. Briefly describe the significance of your research and why it is appropriate for the NJMS readership. The NJMS publishes papers in the following categories: 1) Invited Review Articles, 2) Review Articles, 3) Original Papers, 4) Short Communications, 5) Case Reports, 6) Symposium Reports, 7) Notes, 8) Hypothesis Papers, 9) Medical image at a glance, 10) Announcements. Please indicate for which category you are submitting your paper. Include the corresponding author’s email address. If the paper’s lead author or corresponding author, or both, have a Japanese name or are affiliated with Japanese institutions, or both, please provide that information in Japanese (using Kanji). Name your cover letter file “Cover Letter” (without quotation marks).
B. Title Page
In this title page, provide the following information:
2. Running title (i.e., short title) of your paper
3. Names and affiliations of all authors
4. Name, degree (e.g., MD., PhD), affiliation, and contact information (e.g., phone number, mailing address, and email address) of the corresponding author
5. Last name (i.e., family name) of the lead author
Title should be concise but informative and should include the main conclusion of your paper with key words. The running title must not exceed 40 characters, including spaces.
C. Abstract
This item consists of the following parts, and they must appear in the order listed below.
2. Keywords
3. Abbreviations
Prepare an unstructured abstract (that is, a paragraph that does not rely on headings such as Methods, Results, and Discussion). The abstract must not exceed 250 words. Please supply up to 5 keywords below the abstract. List abbreviations used in the text below the keywords. But do not use abbreviations in the abstract itself. Abbreviate only those phrases that are long and cumbersome and used at least five times in the text; limit the use of abbreviations in order to improve the readability of the text. When you introduce an abbreviation for the first time in the text, spell out all the words it stands for and put the abbreviation in parentheses.
D. Text
This item consists of the following parts, and they must appear in the order listed below.
2. Text (i.e., body of your paper)
3. Acknowledgements
3. Conflict of interest statement
4. References
5. Figure legends
Begin your paper with a plain title page that shows the title of your paper only. Do not confuse this title page with Item B (i.e., detailed title page). The body of your paper starts on the next page. In principle, the text of your paper, excluding references, should not exceed 4,000 words. Do not insert tables or figures into the text of your paper. Instead, indicate where tables and figures are supposed to appear by writing (Table 1], (Fig. 1], and so forth after the paragraph that mentions them for the first time. All authors should declare any financial support or relationship that may pose conflict of interest as “Disclosure Statement” between Acknowledgements and References sections. After that statement, the References section appears on the next page. Please note the journal’s reference and citation style discussed separately below. Legends for figures are the last portion.
You may use up to three levels of headings. Place primary headings at the center of the page in bold type and in capital letters (e.g. INRODUCTION, MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS, and so forth). Secondary headings are flush left, in regular type, and capitalized headline style. Tertiary headings are run in at the beginning of a paragraph, in bold type, capitalized sentence style, and followed by a period.
Do not underline the words that are meant to be italicized. Instead, italicize them. Do not italicize common Latin words such as etc., ibid., ca., and et al. But italicize the word sic.
Use the metric system for all measurements.
Consult the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.) and AMA Manual of Style (10th ed.) for proper usage of standard written English.
E. Tables
All tables must be assembled into a single electronic file. Each table must be placed on a separate page. If your table is too wide to comfortably fit the width of A4 paper in portrait orientation, reformat your table. Provide an informative title for each table. The table title appears above the table. If abbreviations are used in the table, list them below it. Annotations to the table appear as footnotes below abbreviations. Place a superscript lowercase letter before each footnote. Name tables sequentially so that there will be Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, and so forth in a single file.
F. Figures
All figures must be assembled into a single electronic file. Each figure must be placed on a separate page. If your figure is too wide to comfortably fit the width of A4 paper in portrait orientation, reformat your figure. Provide an informative title for each figure and, if necessary, a concise explanation. Such textural parts of figures, called figure legends, appear below each figure at the publication, but have to be submitted within the text file as described above. If abbreviations are used in the figure, list them below figure legends. Annotations to the figure may appear as footnotes below abbreviations. Place a superscript lowercase letter before each footnote. But if the information conveyed by footnotes can be incorporated into figure legends, do so, instead of using footnotes. Name figures sequentially so that there will be Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3, and so forth in a single file (Notice the word Figure is abbreviated).
IV. Citations and References
The NJMS follows the citation and reference style of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Format citations and references according to JAMA’s current style. Consult AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors, 10th Edition (2007), and papers from the latest issue of JAMA.
JAMA’s instructions for authors can be found at:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/pages/instructions-for-authors#SecReferences
Online edition of AMA Manual of Style (subscription required) can be found at:
http://www.amamanualofstyle.com/
Concise summaries of JAMA’s citation and reference style can be found at:
http://guides.lib.uw.edu/c.php?g=99161&p=642281
V. Medical Image at a Glance
This new category recruits a short commentary, including a typical but difficult to obtain medical images of any kind for medical educational purposes.
・Title
・No abstract
・Text up to 800 words, including medical background and significance of the image(s)
・References up to 20
・Decision depends on the impact of the image(s), rareness and sound educational quality
・Permission for publication should be obtained from the patient(s) in advance, if applicable
VI. Editorial Review
When a manuscript is received, it is examined to determine whether its style meets the journal requirements. If it does, the manuscript is sent to two independent reviewers selected from the faculty of Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. On the basis of their evaluation, the manuscript is either accepted as submitted, returned for revision, or rejected and returned to the author from the Editorial Office. A manuscript in need of revision will be returned to the author with specific suggestions. The author should respond to each of these suggestions with a cover letter and by indicating the places where the revisions have been made in red, and/or by stating reasons for disregarding the suggestions if they are thought to be unacceptable.
VII. Copy Editing
It is the authors’ responsibility to have their manuscript professionally copy edited for spelling, grammar, and, above all, style by those who are familiar with the substance of their research, whose first language is English, and whose expertise in copy editing is verifiable. After the paper is accepted for publication, authors must provide proof that they procured such a copy-editing service by submitting a certificate or receipt of payment from a professional copy-editing provider, and they will be asked to submit the professionally copy-edited version of their paper. If the editorial office finds that the final version’s writing is still inadequate, your paper will be copy edited again by the copy-editing service provider the editorial office selects, and you will be charged for that service. Failure to comply with this process will result in the rejection of your paper. The Journal provides the authors with galley proofs for proof reading. The first and the second proofs will be sent to the authors. The authors should go over the proof carefully, but no new insertions should be made in the text at the time of proofreading. Corrections other than the printer’s errors should be avoided. Additional alternation causes delay for which the authors may be charged. One proof with the author’s corrections should be returned as quickly as possible to the Editorial Board.
VIII. Publication Fees
Authors must pay 5,000 Japanese yen for the first 10 printed pages as a fee for publication, except Invited Review Article. If the manuscript is more than 11 printed pages, there is an increasing charge 2,000 Japanese yen par 1 printed page. The cost of English check will be on author(s)’ account.
IV. Offprints
Authors will be given an opportunity to order offprints of their papers before their publication. Purchase orders, once placed, cannot be cancelled.