Guidelines for authors
Any manuscript submitted to Open Journal of Medicine must be original. The manuscript, or substantial parts of it, must not be under consideration by any other journal/publisher. In general, the manuscriptshould not have already been formally published. However, we allow preprint publication and postacceptance peer-review. In any case where there is the potential for overlap or duplication we require that authors are transparent. Any potentially overlapping publications should be declared on submission and, where possible, uploaded as additional files with the manuscript. Any overlapping publications should be cited. The Editors of Open Journal of Medicine reserve the right to judge potentially overlapping or redundant publications on a case-by-case basis.
Articles published in OJM should be organized into the following sections: title, authors, affiliations, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references, acknowledgments, and figure legends. Uniformity in format is mandatory for self-publishing, so we strongly encourage authors to prepare their manuscripts using this template. We recognize, however, that this format is not ideal for all types of studies. If you have a manuscript that would benefit from a different format, please contact the editors to discuss this further. Although we have no firm length restrictions for the entire manuscript or individual sections, we urge authors to present and discuss their findings concisely.
Articles published in Open Journal of Medicine can be written in English or Spanish.
The title should be specific to the study yet concise, and should allow sensitive and specific electronic retrieval of the article. It should be comprehensible to readers outside your field. Avoid specialist abbreviations if possible. Titles should be presented in title case, meaning that all words except for prepositions, articles, and conjunctions should be capitalized. If the paper is a randomized controlled trial or a meta-analysis, this description should be in the title.
Provide the first names or initials (if used), middle names or initials (if used), surnames, and affiliations—department, university or organization, city, state/province (if applicable), and country—for all authors. One of the authors should be designated as the corresponding author. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that the author list, and the summary of the author contributions to the study are accurate and complete. If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all consortium members and affiliations should be listed after the Acknowledgments.
The abstract is divided into the following four sections with these headings: Title, Background, Methods and Findings, and Conclusions. It should contain the all following elements, except for items in square brackets, which are only needed for some study types. Please use the same format for abstracts submitted as presubmission inquiries.
This section should describe clearly the rationale for the study being done. It should end with a statement of the specific study hypotheses and/or study objectives.
Describe the participants or what was studied (eg cell lines, patient group; be as specific as possible, including numbers studied). Describe the study design/intervention/main methods used/What was primarily being assessed eg primary outcome measure and, if appropriate, over what period.
[If appropriate, include how many participants were assessed out of those enrolled eg what was the response rate for a survey.]
[If critical to the understanding of the paper, describe how results were analysed, ie which specific statistical tests were used.]
For the main outcomes provide a numerical result if appropriate (it nearly always is) and a measure of its precision (e.g. 95% confidence interval). Describe any adverse events or side effects.
Describe the main limitations of the study.
Provide a general interpretation of the results with any important recomendations for future research.
[For a clinical trial provide any trial identification numbers and names (e.g. trial registration number, protocol number or acronym).]
The introduction should discuss the purpose of the study in the broader context. As you compose the introduction, think of readers who are not experts in this field. Include a brief review of the key literature. If there are relevant controversies or disagreements in the field, they should be mentioned so that a non-expert reader can delve into these issues further. The introduction should conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the experiments and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.
This section should provide enough detail for reproduction of the findings. Protocols for new methods should be included, but well-established protocols may simply be referenced. Detailed methodology or supporting information relevant to the methodology can be published on our Web site.
This section should also include a section with descriptions of any statistical methods employed. These should conform to the criteria outlined by the Uniform Requirements, as follows: "Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Avoid relying solely on statistical hypothesis testing, such as the use of P values, which fails to convey important quantitative information. Discuss the eligibility of research participants. Give details about randomization. Describe the methods for and success of any blinding of observations. Report complications of treatment. Give numbers of observations. Report losses to observation (such as dropouts from a clinical trial). References for the design of the study and statistical methods should be to standard works when possible (with pages stated) rather than to papers in which the designs or methods were originally reported. Specify any general-use computer programs used."
The results section should include all relevant positive and negative findings. The section may be divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading. Large datasets, including raw data, should be submitted as supporting files; these are published online alongside the accepted article. The results section should be written in past tense.
As outlined in the Uniform requirements, authors that present statistical data in the Results section, should "...specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Avoid nontechnical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as "random" (which implies a randomizing device), "normal," "significant," "correlations," and "sample." Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols."
The discussion should be concise and tightly argued. It should start with a brief summary of the main findings. It should include paragraphs on the generalisability, clinical relevance, strengths, and, most importantly, the limitations of your study. You may wish to discuss the following points also. How do the conclusions affect the existing knowledge in the field? How can future research build on these observations? What are the key experiments that must be done?
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors offers guidance to authors in its Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals publication. The recommended style for references is based on the National Information Standards Organization NISO Z39.29-2005 (R2010) Bibliographic References as adapted by the National Library of Medicine for its databases. Details are in Citing Medicine. (Note Appendix F which covers how citations in MEDLINE/PubMed differ from the advice in Citing Medicine.) Sample references typically used by authors of journal articles are provided below.
People who contributed to the work, but do not fit the criteria for authors should be listed in the Acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must also ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being so named.
Details of the funding sources that have supported the work should be confined to the funding statement. Do not include them in the Acknowledgments.
This section should describe sources of funding that have supported the work. Please also describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the paper; and decision to submit it for publication.
It is important to consider this carefully. If you don’t declare a conflict of interest and you are subsequently found to have one your paper will lose credibility. Conversely, full disclosure of conflict of interest does not prevent a paper being published but does allow you to be open with your readers. This section should list specific competing interests associated with any of the authors. If authors declare that no competing interests exist, we will print a statement to this effect. For guidelines on what is and what is not conflict of interest have a look at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/coi/
The use of standardized nomenclature in all fields of science and medicine is an essential step toward the integration and linking of scientific information reported in published literature.
Author are asked to supply high-resolution, print-ready versions of the figures. Please ensure that the files conform to our Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation when preparing your figures for production. Figures may be published under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows them to be freely used, distributed, and built upon as long as proper attribution is given. Please do not submit any figures that have been previously copyrighted unless you have express written permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CCAL license.
The aim of the figure legend should be to describe the key messages of the figure, but the figure should also be discussed in the text. An enlarged version of the figure and its full legend will often be viewed in a separate window online, and it should be possible for a reader to understand the figure without switching back and forth between this window and the relevant parts of the text. Each legend should have a concise title of no more than 15 words. The legend itself should be succinct, while still explaining all symbols and abbreviations. Avoid lengthy descriptions of methods.
All tables should have a concise title. Footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations. Citations should be indicated using the same style as outlined above. Tables occupying more than one printed page should be avoided, if possible. Larger tables can be published as online supporting information. Tables must be cell-based; do not use picture elements, text boxes, tabs, or returns in tables. Please ensure that the files conform to our Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation when preparing your tables for production.
Tables and figures must be embed within the manuscript. Never use supplemental files
Any other feature not stated in this guidelines should follow the Uniform Requirement for Manuscripts of the ICMJE.