Information For Authors

Manuscript Submission Overview

Article Types

Complete experimental details are required to ensure the reproducibility of the results. SJHRP mandates that authors publish all experimental controls and, where feasible, make full datasets available.

Manuscripts submitted to SJHRP must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication in any other journal. The main article types are listed below:

  • Original Articles: These manuscripts present novel research outcomes. The studies reported should be methodologically robust and offer a considerable contribution of new knowledge. It is crucial to include up-to-date and relevant literature references. The organization of the manuscript should feature an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and, if applicable, Conclusions, aiming for a word count up to 3000 words, not counting tables, figure descriptions, and reference lists.
  • Review Articles: Reviews provide an exhaustive overview of the current body of literature in a specific academic field, pinpointing existing deficiencies or issues. Such articles ought to be analytical yet supportive, offering guidance for forthcoming studies. They must not introduce any novel, unpublished data. The format may encompass an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Pertinent Sections, Discussion, Conclusions, and Prospects for Future Research, with a suggested length of 4000 words (not including tables, captions for figures, and bibliographic references).
  • Case Series Case Series should include 5-10 case presentations and must contain a structured abstract with the following typical headings: Objectives (background), Methods (settings, design) including where and when the study took place, Results, and Conclusion. The Case Series should be no longer than 2000 words and may include a maximum of 5 tables and/or figures, as well as up to 20 references. Informed Consent and Ethical Approval are required. Studies older than five years will not be accepted.
  • Case Reports: Case Reports should cover unusual topics that provide new insights to the literature. The abstracts should be unstructured and no longer than 150 words. References should be limited to 10, with a maximum of 4 authors per report. Case Reports must include at least one figure and a timeline picture or table. Radiological and histopathological images should be reviewed by a radiologist and histopathologist for clarity and accuracy.
  • Other article types: We also consider Clinical Notes, Clinical Images, Editorials, and

Correspondence. These sections should be 5 typed pages and include the 5 most recent

references.

Authors are highly encouraged to consult the relevant checklists for their manuscript type and adhere to the specified guidelines.

 

  • It is advised to conform to the relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines, e.g.:

o Randomized controlled trials: CONSORT Checklist

o Observational studies in epidemiology:  STROBE Checklist

o Diagnostic accuracy studies:   STARD Checklist

o Systematic reviews and meta-analysis: PRISMA  Checklist

o Case Report:  CARE Case Report Guidelines

o Clinical Practice Guidelines:  AGREE II Instrument

o Meta-analysis of observational studies:  MOOSE Checklist Clinical guidelines

For a full comprehensive list, please consult the EQUATOR NETWORK WEBSITE (https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines)

 

Accepted File Formats

Authors are encouraged to prepare their manuscripts using the Microsoft Word template, as this will significantly reduce the time required for copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. The text should be typed in Times New Roman, 12-point size, and double-spaced with unjustified right margins. Supplementary files can be in any format, but it is recommended to use common, non-proprietary formats whenever possible. Upon reaching the revision stage, you will be asked to format your manuscript according to the journal guidelines..

 

Cover Letter

A cover letter is required with each manuscript submission. It should be brief and explain the significance of the paper, contextualizing the findings within existing research. Additionally, it should justify why the manuscript is suitable for the journal's scope. All cover letters must include the statement: We confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal.

 

Author Affiliation

All authors should include their current affiliation and the affiliation where the majority of the research was conducted for the manuscript. It is recommended to list as primary the affiliation where most of the research was carried out or supported, but please verify any contractual agreement requirements with your institution. Ensuring accurate author names and affiliations is crucial, as incorrect information can cause issues with attribution and citation. Post-publication updates or corrections to an author’s address or affiliation will need review and approval by the Journal editor and may incur costs related to reproduction or administrative processes.

 

Manuscript Preparation

General Considerations

Research manuscripts should comprise:

✔ Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.

✔ Manuscript sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion,Conclusions

(optional).

✔ Back matter: Supplementary Materials, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions,Conflicts of

Interest, References.

 

Review manuscripts:

Review manuscripts should include the following components: front matter, literature review sections (including introduction, methodology, body, discussion/conclusion), and back matter.

 

Case reports should contain a concise introduction about the general medical condition or relevant symptoms to be discussed; a detailed case presentation with all relevant de-identified demographic and descriptive information about the patient(s), along with descriptions of symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome; a discussion providing context and explanations of specific treatment decisions; and a conclusion summarizing the take-home message and lessons learned.

 

Graphical Abstract:

A graphical abstract (GA) is an image displayed alongside the text abstract in the Table of Contents. It should summarize the content and represent the article's topic in an engaging way. It must be distinct from the figures in the paper and not a mere combination of subfigures. The GA must be original and unpublished artwork, free of postage stamps, currency, or trademarked items.

The GA should be a high-quality illustration or diagram in PNG, JPEG, or TIFF format. Any text in the GA should be clear and easy to read, using fonts such as Times, Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Ubuntu, or Calibri. The minimum size requirement for the GA is 560 × 1100 pixels (height × width), ensuring high-quality reproduction.

 

Acronyms/Abbreviations/Initialisms should be defined the first time they appear in each of

three sections: the abstract, the main text, and the first figure or table. When defined for the

first time, the acronym/abbreviation/initialism should be added in parentheses after the

written-out form.

 

SI Units (International System of Units) should be utilized. Whenever feasible, Imperial, US customary, and other units should be converted to SI units.

 

Accession numbers of RNA, DNA, and protein sequences referenced in the manuscript must be included in the Materials and Methods section. Refer to the section on Deposition of Sequences and Expression Data for further details.

Accession number

 

Equations: If you are using Word, please utilize either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Equations must be editable by the editorial office and should not be in a picture format.

 

Research Data and Supplementary Materials: Please note that publishing your manuscript requires you to make all associated materials, data, and protocols available to readers. Any restrictions on the availability of these materials or information must be disclosed at the submission stage.

 

Preregistration:

For studies or analysis plans that have been pre-registered, authors must provide links to the preregistration in the manuscript. It is highly recommended that authors pre-register clinical trials with an international clinical trials registry and include a reference to the registration in the Methods section. Suitable databases include clinicaltrials.gov, the EU Clinical Trials Register, and those listed by the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. The trial registry name, URL, and registration number should be included at the end of the abstract.

 

Front Matter

These sections should appear in all manuscript types

Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific, and relevant. It should indicate if the study involves human or animal trial data, or if it is a systematic review, meta-analysis, or replication study. When including gene or protein names, use the abbreviated form rather than the full name. Avoid including abbreviated or short forms of the title, such as a running title or head, as these will be removed by our Editorial Office.

 

Author List and Affiliations: Affiliations should follow the PubMed/MEDLINE standard format. Authors should be listed by their full names, beginning with the given name followed by the last name. Middle names or initials may be included if the author prefers. It is optional but recommended to include each author's highest academic degree(s) after their name (e.g., John A. Smith, MD, PhD).

The corresponding author should be clearly identified with an asterisk (*) or another notation, and a footnote or separate section should provide their complete contact information, including an email address for correspondence.

Authors who have contributed equally should be marked with a superscript symbol (+). This symbol should be placed below the affiliations, accompanied by the statement: “These authors contributed equally to this work.” The equal contributions should also be clearly disclosed in the author contributions statement. Please refer to the criteria for authorship qualification.

Each author’s detailed affiliation must be provided, including at a minimum the department, institution, city, and country, and if applicable, the institution’s division or school. For authors with multiple affiliations, use superscript numbers or letters next to each author's name to link them to the appropriate affiliations listed. Affiliations should be listed in a logical order, such as grouping authors from the same institution together. If an author has more than one affiliation, all should be listed and properly linked to the author.

 

Example:

Alex M. Johnson, PhD 1*; Jamie L. Taylor, MD 2; Morgan R. Lee, PhD 1,2; Casey D. Smith, MD, PhD 3

1 Department of Biomedical Sciences, X University, City, Country

2 Heart Health Institute, X Hospital, City, Country

3 Centre for Genetic Research, X University, City, Country

*Corresponding Author

The email addresses of all authors will be displayed on published papers and hidden by Captcha on the website as standard. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that

consent for the display of email addresses is obtained from all authors. If an author (other

than the corresponding author) does not wish to have their email addresses displayed in

this way, the corresponding author must indicate as such during proofreading. After

acceptance, updates to author names or affiliations will require the Journal editor's review and approval.

 

Abstract: The abstract should not exceed 200 words and should be a single paragraph. It should follow the style of structured abstracts without headings, including: 1) Background: Provide a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Briefly describe the main methods or treatments used, including any relevant preregistration numbers and the species and strains of any animals used; 3) Results: Summarize the main findings of the article; and 4) Conclusion: State the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should objectively represent the article, not include results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text, and should avoid exaggerating the main conclusions.

 

Keywords: After the abstract, include three to ten relevant keywords. It is recommended that these keywords are specific to the article but also commonly used within the subject discipline.

 

Research Manuscript Sections

Introduction: The introduction should briefly situate the study within a broad context and emphasize its importance. It should clearly define the purpose of the work and its significance, including the specific hypotheses being tested. Carefully review the current state of research in the field and cite key publications, highlighting any controversial or differing hypotheses as needed. Conclude with a brief mention of the main aim of the work and the primary conclusions. Ensure the introduction is understandable to scientists who are not specialists in the topic of the paper.

 

Materials and Methods: Methods should be described in enough detail to allow others to replicate and build upon the published results. New methods and protocols should be detailed thoroughly, while well-established methods can be briefly described and properly cited. Provide the name and version of any software used, and indicate if the computer code is available. Include any preregistration codes.

 

Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, and the conclusions that can be drawn from the experiments.

 

Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and interpret them in the context of previous studies and the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be considered as broadly as possible, and the limitations of the work should be highlighted. Future research directions may also be suggested. This section can be combined with the Results.

 

Conclusions: The main finding(s) of the study, along with their implications and relevance, should be summarized in a brief conclusions section. This can be presented as a stand-alone section or as a subsection of the Discussion or Results and Discussion section.

 

Patents: This section is optional and can be included if the work reported in the manuscript has resulted in any patents.

 

Back Matter

Supplementary Materials: Describe any supplementary material published online along with the manuscript (e.g., figures, tables, videos, spreadsheets). Please list each element with its name and title as follows: Figure S1: Title, Table S1: Title, etc.

 

Author Contributions: Each author is expected to have made significant contributions to the conception or design of the work; the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or to have drafted or substantially revised the work. Additionally, each author must approve the submitted version (and any version substantially edited by journal staff that involves their contribution to the study) and agree to be personally accountable for their own contributions. Authors are also responsible for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even those in which they were not directly involved, are properly investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature.

 

Funding: All sources of funding for the study should be disclosed. Clearly indicate any grants received to support your research and if funds were received to cover publication costs. Note that some funders will not reimburse article processing charges (APC) if the funder and grant number are not accurately identified in the paper. Authors can enter funding information separately in the submission system during manuscript submission. Please include statements such as: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx],” and “The APC was funded by [XXX]” in this section.

 

Informed Consent Statement: Any research article describing a study involving humans

should contain this statement. Please add “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects

involved in the study.” OR “Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a

detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans. You might

also choose to exclude this statement if the study did not involve humans.

Written informed consent for publication must be obtained from participating patients who

can be identified (including by the patients themselves). Please state, “Written informed

consent has been obtained from the patient(s) to publish this paper,” if applicable.

 

Data Availability Statement: In this section, please include information on the locations of the data that support the reported results, along with links to publicly archived datasets that were analyzed or generated during the study

 

Acknowledgments: In this section, you can acknowledge any support that is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical assistance or in-kind donations, such as materials used for experiments.

 

Conflicts of Interest: Authors are required to disclose any personal circumstances or interests that could be seen as influencing how the research results are presented or interpreted. If there are no conflicts of interest, please state, "The authors declare no conflict of interest." Additionally, any involvement of funding sponsors in selecting the research project, designing the study, collecting, analyzing, or interpreting data, writing the manuscript, or deciding to publish the results must be specified in this section.

 

References:

The SJHRS adheres to the Vancouver referencing style:

  • Authors are welcome to use online referencing tools in preparation of their manuscript. Some useful resources include EndNote, RefMe, Zotero, and Mendeley.
  • Authors should ensure that references are accurate and that all links are accessible.
  • The reference list should only include articles that are published or accepted.
  • Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communications should only be cited within the text (e.g. Smith A, 2000, unpublished data).
  • Preprints can be cited provided that a DOI or archive URL is available and the citation mentions that the contribution is a preprint. 
  • In-text citations in the Vancouver reference style should be numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text and identified by Arabic numerals in square brackets, e.g., [1].
  • Separate multiple citations with a comma and use a hyphen where more than two consecutively numbered sources are cited. Citation numbers are entered without spaces, e.g. [2-4,8,10]
  • References should be numbered and listed chronologically, according to the order they appear in the text.
  • Cite the names of all authors when there are six or fewer; when seven or more, list the first three followed by et al. Do not use ibid. or op cit.
  • The titles of journals must be abbreviated according to the style used in the National Library of Medicine's - NLM Catalog: Journals referenced in the NCBI databases.
  • Reference examples for the SJHRP using the Vancouver referencing system can be found below. For more examples of citing other documents and general questions regarding the Vancouver reference style, please refer to Citing Medicine.

 

Reference guidelines:

Journal Article    

Format:

Author(s) Last name Initials. Title of article. Abbreviated Journal Title. Year; Volume(Issue): Page range. DOI

Example:

[1] Hochhaus A, Larson RA, Guilhot F, Radich JP, Branford S, Hughes TP, et al. Long-Term Outcomes of Imatinib Treatment for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. N Engl J Med. 2017;376:917–27. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1609324

 

Book

Format:

Author/Editor. Title. Edition (if not the first). Place of publication: Publisher; Year of publication. Series title and number (if part of a series).       

Example:

[2] Watkins PJ. ABC of Diabetes. 5th ed. London: Blackwell Publishing; 2003.

 

Chapter in a book

Format:

Author(s) of chapter. Title of chapter. In: Editor(s) of book, editors. Title of book. Edition (if not the first edition). Place of publication: Publisher; Year of publication. p. page numbers of chapter.

Example:     

[3] Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The Genetic Basis of Human Cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93-113.

 

Conference paper          

Author(s) of paper. Title of paper. In: Editor(s) of conference proceedings, editor(s). Title of conference proceedings; Date of conference; Place of conference. Place of publication: Publisher; Year of publication. Page numbers of paper.

[4] Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza's computational effort statistic for genetic programming. In: Foster JA, editor. Genetic Programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3–5; Kinsdale, Ireland. Berlin: Springer. (2002). p. 182–91.

 

Website

Format:

Author/organization. Title of the page/document [Internet]. Year [cited year month day]. Available from: URL

Example:     

[5] World Health Organization. E. coli [Internet]. 2018 [cited 2018 Mar 15]. Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/e-coli

 

Data

Format

Author(s). Title of the dataset. Name of the repository [Internet]. Year. Available from: URL

Example       

[6] Perdiguero P, Venturas M, Cervera MT, Gil L, Collada C. Data from: Massive sequencing of Ulmus minor's transcriptome provides new molecular tools for a genus under the constant threat of Dutch elm disease [Internet]. Dryad Digital Repository. 2015. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ps837

 

Theses and dissertations      

Format

Author's Last Name First Initial. Title of the thesis [Type of thesis]. Name of Academic Institution; Year of Publication. Available from: Database or UR

Example

[7] Horvath-Plyman M. Social media and the college student journey: An examination of how social media use impacts social capital and affects college choice, access, and transition [Doctoral dissertation]. New York University; 2018. Available from: ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global; Publication No. 10937367.

 

Preparing Figures, Schemes, and Tables

During submission, a single zip archive containing files for figures and schemes must be provided, ensuring they are of sufficiently high resolution (at least 1000 pixels in width/height or 300 dpi or higher). Accepted formats include TIFF, JPEG, EPS, and PDF, with a preference for these formats. All figures, schemes, and tables should be included in the main text near their first mention and numbered sequentially (e.g., Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, Table 1). Each figure, scheme, and table must have a brief explanatory title and caption, and all table columns must have clear headings. For ease of copy-editing larger tables, smaller fonts may be used, but not smaller than 8 pt. Authors should use Microsoft Word's Table option to create tables.

Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel), with no additional cost for publishing in full color. New sequence information must be deposited in the appropriate database before manuscript submission, and the accession numbers provided by the database should be included in the manuscript. Publication will be withheld until the accession number is provided.

New nucleic acid sequences must be deposited in an acceptable repository such as GenBank, EMBL, or DDBJ, and should only be submitted to one database. High throughput sequencing (HTS) datasets (e.g., RNA-seq, ChIP-Seq, degradome analysis) must be deposited in the GEO database or NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive. New microarray data must be deposited in either the GEO or ArrayExpress databases, adhering to the "Minimal Information About a Microarray Experiment" (MIAME) guidelines. New protein sequences obtained by protein sequencing should be submitted to UniProt using the SPIN submission tool.

All sequence names and accession numbers provided by the databases should be included in the Materials and Methods section of the article.