A Guide to Authors
(revised on July 7th, 2022)
I. Journal Policy
The Journal publishes original research papers in the areas of medical science and its related fields. Invited articles, reviews, symposium reports, short communications, notes, case reports, hypothesis papers, medical image at a glance, video 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
1) All manuscripts must be submitted both electronic files and hard copies which are printed on A4 (21cm × 29.7cm) paper size. Please email the electronic files of your manuscript to the NJMS Editorial Office. As for the electronic files, set a password on them and send the password by email later. Simultaneously, mail the Office a suit of the hard copies (photographs should be printed on high-quality semi-glossy papers) using registered mail services if possible. Authors, in another way, can also bring it to the Office. Costs and fees to submit the hard copies will be paid by authors. 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: library2[a]med.nagoya-u.ac.jp
All authors must submit both electronic files and printed paper copies of your manuscript; otherwise your submission is deemed incomplete and will not be processed for review.
2) 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.
3) 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
Authors are requested to set A4 size (21cm × 29.7cm) with 2.5cm page margins in electronic files and to print documents on A4 papers. Please submit a suite of documents listed below to the NJMS editorial office:
B. Title page
C. Abstract
D. Text(including main body, acknowledgements, 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 prepare individual items in your submission package
Please prepare each item in your submission package as described below. At the time of submission, authors are requested to set A4 size (21cm × 29.7cm) in electronic files and to print documents on A4 papers. Your manuscript 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) Reviews, 3) Original Research Papers, 4) Symposium Reports, 5) Short Communications, 6) Note, 7) Case Reports, 8) Hypothesis Papers, 9) Medical image at a glance, 10) Video, 11) 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).
B. Title Page
Use 12-point Times New Roman font and double-space text. In 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 (eg, MD, PhD), affiliation, and contact information (eg, postal code, mailing address, phone number, and email address) of the corresponding author
5. Last name (ie, family name) of the all authors
Title should be concise as well as informative and should include the main conclusion of your paper with key words. Do not use abbreviations. Running title must not exceed 40 characters, including spaces.
Corresponding author(s) should hold MD (or comparable level of professional certification) and/or PhD, and institutional email addresses for them are recommended to show as contact information.
C. Abstract
Use 12-point Times New Roman font and double-space text. Put both page and line numbers. This item consists of the following parts, and they must appear in the order listed below.
2. Keywords (up to five)
3. Abbreviations (presented at least 5 times in the main body)
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. List abbreviations used in the text below the keywords. Do not use abbreviations in the abstract itself. Abbreviate only those phrases that are long and cumbersome and generally used at least five times in the text; limit the use of abbreviations in order to improve the readability of the text.
D. Text
Use 12-point Times New Roman font and double-space text. Put both page and line numbers. This item consists of the following parts, and they must appear in the order listed below.
2. Text (ie, body of your paper)
3. Acknowledgements (author contributions, financial disclosure, previous presentations, miscellaneous acknowledgements, additional contributions)
4. References
5. Figure legends
The text of your paper, excluding references, should not exceed 4,000 words. Expand all abbreviations at first mention in the text, and put the abbreviation in parentheses. 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 in Acknowledgement section. After that statement, the References section appears on the next page. Please note the NJMS's reference and citation style discussed separately below. Legends for figures are the last portion. (See F. Figures section.)
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 (eg INRODUCTION, MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS, and so forth). Secondary headings are flush left, in italic 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, just italicize them. Do not italicize common Latin words such as etc, ibid, ca., et al, vs as well, and may not put periods. 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. Use 10-point Times New Roman font and single-space text. Do not add vertical lines as well as shading cells for legibility. 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 a brief and informative title that identifies specific of the figure or what the data show. Figure legends which are concise explanations appear below each figure at the publication, but have to be submitted within the text file as described above (see III 2) D). 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.
For composite figures with 2 or more panels, provide a concise and informative title that identifies entire of the figure. Each component of the figure is then described. A separate sentence begins with the designation for the component, followed by a comma (eg. Fig. 1A: Xxx xx xx.) Use capital letters (A, B, C, etc) to label the parts of the figure. Abbreviations may be expanded collectively at the end of the legend.
IV. Citations and References
- 1)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#SecReferencesOnline 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 - 2) Examples
- A. Articles
- ・Wildin RS, Ramsdell F, Peake J, et al. X-linked neonatal diabetes mellitus, enteropathy and endocrinopathy syndrome is the human equivalent of mouse scurfy. Nat Genet. 2001;27(1):18-20. doi:10.1038/83707.
- ・Morrison G, Van Langenberg DR, Gibson SJ, Gibson PR. Chronic pain in inflammatory bowel disease: characteristics and associations of a hospital-based cohort. Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2013;19(6):1210-1217. doi:10.1097/MIB.0b013e318280e729.
- B. Books
- ・Bickley LS. Bates' Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott WIlliams & Wilkins; 2013.
- ・Lunney JR, Foley KM, Smith TJ, Gelband H, eds. Describing Death in America: What We Need to Know. Washington, DC: National Cancer Policy Board, Institute of Medicine; 2003. https://www.nap.edu/read/10619/chapter/1. Accessed March 5, 2019.
- ・Cohen M. Chronic and Acute. In: Sapphire P, ed. The Disenfranchised. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing; 2013: Chapter 12.
- C. Web Sites
- ・World Health Organization. Philippines: Assistance and response after Typhoon Haiyan. World Health Organization.
http://www.who.int/features/2013/philippines-typhoon-haiyan/en/index.html.
Published November 2013. Accessed March 1, 2019.
All manuscripts with a digital object identifier (DOI) must be cited with their DOI.
List all authors up to 6; if 7 or more, list the first 3 followed by "et al."
An accessed date is required if you are citing a web page.
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
1)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 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, and authors will be charged for that service except invited articles. Failure to comply with this process will result in the rejection of your paper.
2)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. The proof with the author's corrections should be returned as quickly as possible to the Editorial Board.
VIII. Publication Fees
Authors will be charged with the article processing charge (APC) of 100,000 Japanese yen after acceptance. It is for all categories of papers, excluding invited articles, and not to charge per page. The publication fees do not include costs of sending hard copies as well as English editing services.
IV. Offprints
Authors will be given an opportunity to order offprints of their papers at the time of proofreading. Purchase orders once placed, cannot be cancelled.