Author Guidelines

Author Guidelines 

Submissions

JoGM welcomes fundamental and clinical manuscripts in the generality of medicine. It is a multidisciplinary journal. Clinical manuscripts can cover a wide variety of topics and the subject area of clinical manuscripts can range from etiology to diagnostics, prognosis, prevention, and treatment.

The editors will evaluate submitted manuscripts on soundness of methods, originality, insights into mechanisms and foreseeable impact on patient care.

Contributions can have the following formats: Original Article, Brief Report, Commentary, Review, Case Report, Audits and Letters to the Editor. JoGM also accepts essays, opinion pieces, viewpoints, perspective and historical articles.

Original Articles should present an in-depth study of a particular subject that is likely to change clinical practice or thinking. Studies can also be published in a brief format, but the bar is high with respect to originality and impact. Case reports are welcome, but the articles should give new and deep insight. Letters to the Editor are solely for discussion of recently published JoGM articles.

Commentaries draw attention to or present criticism on a previoulsy published article, book or rerport, often using the findings as a call to action or to highlight points of wider relevance. Commentaries do not include original data and are heavily dependent on the authors' perspective. Perspective articles present a new and unique viewpoint on existing problems, concepts on subjects, propose and support new hypothesis, or discuss the implications of a newly implemented innovation. Perspective articles may focus on current advances and future directions on a topic, and may include original data as well as personal opinion. Opinion articles present the author's viewpoint. They are based on constructive, evidence based criticism, but they do not contain unpublished or original data.

Review Articles can be in-depth overview of a subject, a systematic review or meta-analysis. Both systematic review and meta-analysis most be reported according to PRISMA guidelines. Global public health and health policy research are of interest to JoGM

Submitted manuscripts in the categories of Original Article, Brief Report and Case Report must describe original, unpublished research that is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Any re-use of previously published material in submissions to JoGM must be clearly disclosed in the manuscript and cover letter, and if necessary, the appropriate copyright permissions must be obtained. Draft versions of articles on preprint servers such as bioRxiv are allowed and will not count as prior publication. However, this must be fully disclosed in the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief.

In addition, submissions must include a statement that the manuscript has been read and approved for submission to JoGM by all authors, and each manuscript must also include a statement of actual or potential conflict of interest capable of influencing judgment on the part of the authors. This conflict-of-interest disclaimer will be included as a required section in all published articles. All relevant financial relations with any commercial biomedical company over the last two years (income, honorarium, research grants, consulting fees, license fees, stock ownership, travel support) should be declared for all authors. If any authors have no conflicts of interest to declare, this should also be stated explicitly.

Upon submitting, you will be prompted to select the type of submission (e.g., Original Article, Review) and the section heading to which the manuscript should be assigned. The sections are: Review Articles; Original Articles and Brief Reports. Letters to the Editor; Case Reports; and Recommendations and Guidelines.

Manuscripts should have numbered pages beginning with the title page. The title of the paper, name and affiliation of each author, and the name of the institution where the work has been carried out should appear on the title page, as should the name and full postal address (with phone numbers and e-mail address) of the corresponding author only. The corresponding author is responsible for reading the proofs and communicating with the other authors, and for informing the JoGM Editorial Office of any change in details until the paper is published. Please note that JoGM should be contacted only by the corresponding author.

Authors must adhere to acceptable use of British English and syntax; and the authority used in this journal for spelling is the Oxford Dictionary. Only abbreviations and symbols that are generally accepted should be used and the title should be devoid of abbreviations. Unfamiliar abbreviations should be used as little as necessary and must be defined when first used. The Editors reserve the right to make corrections, both literary and technical, to the papers. Please note that unless specifically requested, JoGM will dispose of all electronic material submitted 2 months after publication.

Checklists
If your manuscript reports a randomized clinical trial you must complete a CONSORT checklist and the trial must be registered. If your manuscript reports an epidemiological or observational study (i.e., one that analyzes samples obtained from a population of human patients and/or volunteers), you must complete a STROBE checklist that describes the population and how the data were analyzed. Meta-analyses should be reported according to the PRISMA guidelines. If your manuscript contains a prediction model, please complete a TRIPOD checklist.

Types of Articles

Review Articles. Review Articles can be in-depth overview of a subject, a systematic review or meta-analysis. Both systematic review and meta-analysis most be reported according to PRISMA guidelines.  Review articles should be fewer than 5000 words (for the body of the text) with an unstructured abstract of up to 250 words. No more eight tables and/or figures are permitted. All review articles undergo double-blind peer review.

Original Research Articles. The word count for Original Articles should not exceed 5000 words for the main body of the text, and no more than eight tables or figures. A structured abstract of up to 250 words is also required. Supplementary materials may be added for online publication (see below). There is generally no restriction on numbers of authors, and co-first and senior authorship status is allowable. All original research articles undergo double-blind peer review.

Articles in this section include interventional clinical trials, observational studies, metaanalysis. Both clinical and experimental work are welcome. JoGM is interested in good quality qualitative studies, global public health and health policy research.

Letters to the Editor. This is a correspondence category only and is limited to comments about papers published in the Journal of Global Medicine Letters should not exceed 500 words for the main body of the text with no more than 10 references, and no more than one table or figure.

Case Reports. Case reports of exceptional interest providing new pathophysiological or clinical management insights should be kept to 1500 words with no more than 20 references and up to five tables and/or figures. An unstructured abstract of up to 150 words should also be included.

Brief Reports. These follow a similar format as an Original Article in that they should be structured and have an abstract of up to 250 words, but the Results and Discussion sections in the main body of the text should be combined. The word count for Brief Reports should be kept to 2500 words for the main body of the text, with up to 30 references and no more than four tables or figures. Typically, no supporting information is permitted for Brief Reports. All brief reports undergo double-blind peer-review.

Commentaries draw attention to or present criticism on a previoulsy published article, book or rerport, often using the findings as a call to action or to highlight points of wider relevance. Commentaries do not include original data and are heavily dependent on the authors' perspective. They should be limited to 1200 words, no more than 25 references.

Perspective articles present a new and unique viewpoint on existing problems, concepts on subjects, propose and support new hypothesis, or discuss the implications of a newly implemented innovation. Perspective articles may focus on current advances and future directions on a topic, and may include original data as well as personal opinion. They should be limited to 2,500 words, no more than 25 references. Perspective articles undergo double-blind peer-review.

Opinion articles present the author's viewpoint. They are based on constructive, evidence based criticism, but they do not contain unpublished or original data. These are similar to review articles but focus on exploring a controversy or alternative viewpoint. Papers in this category are generally limited to 1500 words and no more than 25 references. 

Essays. These are generally limited to 1200 words. Essays are to explore topics related to health and health care. These can be from patients' point of views, from medical practitioners and others. It is about using a lived experience to illustrate points in a compelling and accessible way. It is about striving to understand and  represent real lived experience. Essays can be about things relevant to medicine in general.

Book Reviews Book reviews are welcome. The emphasis are on books that emphasise aspects of healthcare and diseases in the developing world. Guidelines on book review can be found here

Memorials should be about people who have made significant contributions to clinical, educational or research activities in the developing world.

Manuscript Format

Initial Submission.

For the first submission of a paper, we encourage authors to submit their manuscript containing all the text and figures (although submitting the figures separately is allowable). As long as all the relevant parts of the submission are included, it will not be necessary to format the paper, references, etc. precisely for this journal. If the submission is sent out for peer review and the editors decide to request revisions, the authors will be asked to format their paper for this journal at that point. Thus, the detailed formatting instructions below will apply once a revision is requested.

Title Page.

All submissions should include a title page at the beginning of their main manuscript file. This should contain your manuscript title, a list of all authors, the corresponding author’s contact information, and all authors’ affiliations. Author names should be listed as first names followed by surnames (e.g. Pieter H. Reitsma).

In addition to the full title, authors should provide a short version (running head), not more than 50 characters long, including spaces. Please do not use abbreviations.

Authorship Details. The Editors require that an Addendum be included in all papers except review articles and invited letters to the editor where the role of each author in the study is specified. The Addendum should be placed at the end of the Discussion section, before the Acknowledgements, and names should be given as first initial followed by surnames (e.g. P. H. Reitsma). Authorship implies a substantial contribution to concept and design, analysis and/or interpretation of data; critical writing or revising the intellectual content; and final approval of the version to be published. The order of the authors must be agreed upon before submission of the manuscript and any changes in the order can only be made after explicit consent of each of the authors. 

JoGM does allow the use of dual authorship (co-first and senior authorship status). There is no restriction on number of authors for original articles. Give author first names followed by surnames, which should be clearly linked to the respective addresses, if more than one, by use of the following symbols: *, †, ‡, §, ¶) which, for more than six addresses, may be doubled as follows: **, ††, ‡‡, §§, ¶¶, etc.

Any involvement of medical writers/researchers, particularly those employed or supported by the pharmaceutical industry, in the writing of an article must be clearly defined and fully disclosed in the Addendum and/or the Acknowledgements section(s) as appropriate. This type of involvement must also be disclosed to the Editors in Chief in the Cover Letter.

If a study group is given in the author list ('for the XX Study Group'), please provide an appendix listing the contributors, which also lists their relevant conflicts of interest because they are considered authors. If you do not wish contributors to be considered as authors, please do not include a study group in the author list but you can still list the contributors in an appendix. Technical assistance should be acknowledged in a separate paragraph. For more information on what constitutes an author, please refer to ICMJE http://icmje.acponline.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/

For revised articles, any changes in the number and order of authors can only be made after explicit consent from each of the authors. Any changes in the number or order of the authors in a revised manuscript must be clearly stated in the cover letter, along with a statement confirming that ALL authors have agreed to this change in authorship.

Essentials. JoGM publishes summary points on all original articles, brief reports and case reports in order to provide a synopsis of the research. Please provide four bullet points of no more than 98 characters each, including spaces, under the heading ‘Essentials’. The bullet points should typically be categorized as follows: one for background, one for setting and two for results/significance/conclusion (please do not include these subheadings). This section should immediately precede the abstract.

If abbreviations are used, please write the term in full with the abbreviation in brackets in the first instance, for example, ‘deep vein thrombosis (DVT)’.

Summary. Original Articles, Brief Reports, and Review Articles should include an abstract with a maximum of 250 words. In the case of Original Articles and Brief Reports, it should be structured under the following headings: Background, Objectives, Patients/Methods, Results and Conclusions. Case Reports should include an unstructured abstract of up to 150 words. Other manuscript submissions should not include an abstract.

Keywords. Provide five keywords in alphabetical order following the Summary. These keywords must be taken from the Medical Subject Headings List and should be searchable by the exact term (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/2014/mesh_browser/MBrowser.html).

Main Text. Give generic names of drugs. Full names of substances with abbreviations must be given at first mention; thereafter, use the abbreviation. Symbols should be inserted as per the instructions on the submission site. Any studies that require informed consent and approval by an Ethics Committee based on either the Declaration of Helsinki or local laws should seek consent and approval, and report on it in the article. Similarly, in case animal experiments are reported, approval by the local animal welfare committee should be mentioned.

Headings. Only three levels of headings are used in JoGM (the third being a run-on heading, where the text follows on the same line). 

References. Only papers closely related to the author’s work should be referenced; exhaustive lists should be avoided. Authors should preferably refer to original work, not to reviews. Verify all references for completeness and accuracy, and format references as a plain, unstructured list. References should appear as a numbered list at the end of the manuscript and with numbers in square brackets [1], [3–5] in the text. References are a modified version of Vancouver style, omitting issue numbers and with the first 20 authors named. References to personal communications, unpublished data, and manuscripts either ‘in preparation’ or ‘submitted for publication’ should be inserted, if essential, in the text only and not listed in the references. Publications ‘in press’ should be updated as soon as possible. For further examples, see the ‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals’ at http://www.icmje.org/index.html.

We recommend the use of a tool such as Mendeley for reference management and formatting.

Tables. Tables should be kept to a minimum and contain only essential data and should be cited in the text. Verify information for accuracy and consistency with the manuscript’s text. Each table should be given an Arabic number. The title (legend) of the table should contain only minimal text. Any other information, such as definitions of abbreviations, probability statistics, etc., should be in the table footnote; if symbols are necessary, they should be the same as given for the authors’ details above. Headings and columns should be laid out clearly; avoid use of sub-headings. Avoid wordy, over-full tables. Any blank cells should have a dash. Tables should be submitted in an editable file format, not in image format (e.g., not as a PDF, JPEG, etc.).

Supporting Information. It is possible to submit supporting information for Original Articles, Recommendations and Guidelines, Review Articles and Case Reports, but not for Letters to the Editor or Brief Reports. Supporting information will be viewable online. In most cases, Supporting Information should be limited to data sets or additional figures or tables. Under exceptional circumstances (for example, the use of a newly developed method that needs extensive description), an extended methods section can be submitted as part of the supporting information, but in these cases the main body of the paper should still contain a description of the basic methods employed in the study. Such exceptions need to be explicitly justified in the cover letter. For meta-analyses and Recommendations and Guidelines, the Supporting Information may contain text and references. There is no maximal length for Supporting information.

Supporting information must be submitted to the journal with the rest of the article. Any such material that is submitted after acceptance of the main article will be referred to the Editor for approval and this may delay publication. Supporting information will be published exactly as supplied and it is the author's responsibility to ensure that the material is logically laid out, adequately described, and is in a format that is likely to be accessible to readers. It is recommended that text (single-spaced) and graphics be supplied in PDF format, data tables in native file formats such as Excel, and animations and other moving images or sound files in common Internet standard formats such as AVI, MPG, WAV, QuickTime or animated GIF.

Appendices
The only appendices that will be published in the print journal are lists of study group participants. Please list only the city, state and country for each participant.

Illustrations
A legend should be provided for each illustration. Photomicrographs should state the original magnification. Legends should provide sufficient information to allow the reader comprehension without reference to the text, and should be grouped at the end of the manuscript. Illustrations should be referred to in the text as ‘Figs’ and be given Arabic numbers. The final width of the figures will be either 82, 114 or 173 mm. Lines should be of sufficient thickness to stand reduction (at least 4 mm wide for a 50% reduction), and letters should be a minimum of 9 pt Arial or an equivalent size.

Digital Images
Images submitted to JoGM must exactly represent the original data. Figures that are compiled into multi-figure panels should be kept individually and be available upon request. Manipulation of images should be kept to an absolute minimum, and if the quality of an image is too poor to clearly support the conclusion, the experiment should be repeated.
• Collecting images: If multiple images are compared to one another, each image has to be collected in the same manner. Any processing should be applied uniformly to all images. If differences in collection/processing are necessary, these need to be described in the legend.
• Brightness and Contrast: If the brightness or contrast of an image needs minor adjustment, adjustments must be applied to the entire image and must not obscure or eliminate any information. Always note any adjustment in the legend.
• Cloning Tools: Images should not be airbrushed to remove blemishes. Do not use cloning tools to manipulate any aspect of an image
• Gels/Blots: All gels should contain a positive and a negative control, and a set of molecular weight markers. For Western blots, control panels (e.g. β-actin, GAPDH, etc.) should come from a stripped and re-probed membrane of the experimental blot that is shown. If this is not possible, the control blots should be derived from the same samples and this should be indicated in the figure legend.
• Cropping: Conservative cropping of gels and blots is allowed to improve clarity and conciseness if the following points are observed:

- important bands must be retained
- at least several band widths should be retained above and below the cropped band
- cropping must be noted in the legend
- band(s) of interest must be clearly labeled
- molecular weight marker positions should be shown in all gels/blots

• Splicing: Occasionally, images are spliced to rearrange the order of samples for the sake of presentation, such as those in a Western blot. If splicing of data from a single experiment is necessary, draw contrasting (black or white) lines to indicate where the images were joined and state the manipulation in the legend. It would be preferable to re-run the gel so that the order is correct. Images from different experiments should not be spliced to form a new single image.

Electronic Artwork
Please read the Electronic Artwork Guidelines on the Wiley Author Services web site. Line artwork (such as graphs) should be submitted as EPS files or TIFF files with a minimum resolution of 800 dpi. Other artwork (such as photographs) should be submitted as a minimum 300 dpi TIFF file. Information on creating EPS files from Microsoft Windows, Powerpoint, Excel and Apple Mac is available from the Wiley-Blackwell website.

Note: To ensure font consistency across all papers, figures containing text will be re-keyed during typesetting. Authors should review the text within figures for accuracy during the proofing stage.

Proofs
The corresponding author will receive an e-mail alert containing a link to an online proofing website. A working e-mail address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. The PDF proof can be viewed and annotated online. The author will only be able to annotate the file using Acrobat Reader 8.0 or later. The latest version can be downloaded free of charge at the following address: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.

Further instructions will be sent with the proof. Excessive changes made by the author in the proofs, excluding typesetting errors, will be charged separately. Wiley-Blackwell reserves the right to contact another author if the corresponding author is not available to check proofs.

The Production Editor will require approval from the Editors for any significant changes to content, title etc made by the author at the proof stage, and the authors are requested to make such changes explicit.

Note: To ensure font consistency across all papers, figures containing text will be re-keyed during typesetting. Authors should review the text within figures for accuracy during the proofing stage.

Offprints
Offprints (with covers or without) can be ordered from a website that accompanies the proof alert email.

Disclaimer
Journal of Global Medicine and Editors cannot be held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Publisher, JoGM and Editors, neither does the publication of advertisements constitute any endorsement by the Publisher, JoGM and Editors of the products advertised.

Journal of Global Medicine Appeals procedure
Please do not resubmit papers which have previously been rejected. If an author feels that their paper has been handled unsatisfactorily during the editorial process, an appeals procedure is in place. The author should write to the Editor in Chief responsible for the manuscript, outlining the concerns. The Editor in Chief will review the submission, investigate the grievance, and provide a response, generally within one week. In all cases, the Editors’ decision is final. The Editorial Offices will endeavor to keep authors informed about the progress of their appeal and to provide a timely response to any correspondence.