INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

About the Journal

Medical Journal of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (Med J Chin PLA, ISSN 0577-7402, CN 11-1056/R, http://www. plamj.org) is an Open Access monthly journal in Chinese and English, published by the People’s Military Medical Press, under the auspice of Department of Health, General Logistics Department of PLA, and it is issued domestically and abroad. Med J Chin PLA aims to publish the most exciting basic and clinical research especially those addressing the importance of military medicine, to promote the implementation of national and military health policies with close attention to new theories, new technologies, and new developments in military, clinical, preventative medicine and basic medical sciences.

Med J Chin PLA was established in March, 1964 and indexed in Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM), Chemical Abstracts (CA) of the United States, Abstract Journal (AJ) of Russia, Japanese Science and Technology Agency Chinese Literature Database (JST), Index Copernicus (IC) of Poland, Chinese Academic Journal Comprehensive Evaluation Database (CAJCED), Chinese Journal Full-text Database (CJFD), Chinese Medical Current Contents (CMCC) database, Chinese Biomedical Citation Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI) etc. The journal has long been in the forefront of military medicine and is an important promoter of academic medical science, technology and innovation, and it is also an official journal for exchange among member countries of International Committee of Military Medicine(ICMM). Its permanent sections include Expert Forum, Military Medical Sciences, Research on Special Topics, Medical Treatises, Basic Research, Clinical Research, Clinical Experiences, Technique Progress, Case Reports, Reviews, News in Medicine etc. Contribution of reviews is usually invited by the editors, but recommendations for topics and authors are welcomed. Manuscripts sent by both domestic and overseas writers are welcome.

Peer-review policy and review process

Only manuscripts of high relevance and suitability will enter into the peer review process, which will be conducted by at least two internationally known experts in the field, and will aim to ensure that all published manuscripts provide new scientific knowledge.

Manuscripts are assigned sequentially to Associate Editors. An Associate Editor solicits reviewers (typically, two external reviews are sought). The reviewers’ evaluations and Associate Editor’s comments are compiled by the Editor-in-Chief for disposition and transmittal to the authors. A decision is made usually within five weeks of the receipt of the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief will advise authors whether a manuscript is accepted, should be revised or is rejected. Minor revisions are expected to be returned within four weeks of decision; major revisions within three months. Manuscripts not revised within these time periods are subject to withdrawal from consideration for publication unless the authors can provide extenuating circumstances.

A number of manuscripts will have to be rejected on the grounds of priority and available space. A manuscript may be returned to the authors without outside review if the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor find it inappropriate for publication in the Journal. Similarly, the Editors may expedite the review process for manuscripts felt to be of high priority in order to reach a rapid decision. Such‘fast-track decisions’ will normally occur within one week of receipt of the manuscript. Authors may provide the Editor-in-Chief with the names, addresses and email addresses of up to three suitably qualified individuals of international standing who would be competent to referee the work, although the Editor-in-Chief will not be bound by any such nomination. Likewise, authors may advise of any individual who for any reason, such as potential conflict of interest, might be inappropriate to act as a referee, again without binding the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief’s decision is final. If, however, authors dispute a decision and can document good reasons why a manuscript should be reconsidered, a rebuttal process exists. In the first place, authors should write to the Editor-in-Chief. All manuscripts should be written so that they are intelligible to the professional reader who is not a specialist in the particular field. They should be written in a clear, concise, direct style. Where contributions are judged as acceptable for publication, the Editor and the Publisher reserve the right to modify manuscripts to eliminate ambiguity and repetition and improve communication between author and reader. If extensive alterations are required, the manuscript will be returned to the author for revision.

Ethical Considerations

Authors must state that the protocol for the research project has been approved by a suitably constituted Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken and that it conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in Edinburgh 2000), available at: http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm. The journal retains the right to reject any manuscript on the basis of unethical conduct of either human or animal studies. All investigations on human subjects must include a statement that the subject gave informed consent. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to pre-vent human subjects being recognized (or an eye bar should be used). Any experiments involving animals must be demonstrated to be ethically acceptable and where relevant conform to national guidelines for animal usage in research.

Conflict of Interest

All authors and reviewers must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

Randomized controlled trials

As one of the sponsors of Chinese Clinical Trial Registration and Publication Collaboration (ChiCTRPC), Med J Chin PLA will give the priority of publication in the journal to those research reports registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Register (ChiCTR). Med J Chin PLA recommends that authors adopt the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which require, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrollment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at external link www.icmje.org.

Submission to the journal

Full-length original research articles, review articles and editorials on clinical and basic aspects of topics in medical field are welcome. Manuscripts in a WORD format should be submitted online at http://www.plamj.org/.

A paper is accepted for publication on the understanding that it has been contributed solely to this journal and articles and illustrations become the property of the journal, unless the authors state, before publication, that they reserve the rights to themselves. If any illustrations, diagram or part of the text have been published elsewhere, the source must be given in full, permission having been granted by the author and by the publisher. The Editor reserves the right to make editorial and literary corrections. No major alterations or corrections will be made without the knowledge and consent of the author. Three copies of the text should be submitted with three complete sets of illustrations. Manuscripts should be accompanied by a letter signed by each named author, affirming that the paper has been submitted solely to Med J Chin PLA and is not concurrently under consideration for publication by any other journal, and that they have no controversy on their name position in the submitted paper. The address, telephone and fax numbers, mobile phone and e-mail address for the corresponding author should also be supplied.

Structure of manuscripts

Manuscripts in general should be organized in the following order: (i)title (should be clear, descriptive and not too long), (ii) name(s) of author(s), (iii)complete postal address of affiliations, (iv)full telephone, Fax No. and email address of the corresponding author present address of author(s) if applicable, (v)complete correspondence address and email address to which the proofs should be sent, (vi) abstract, a structured abstract including background and objective, methods, results and conclusion, (vii) key words (indexing terms), a list of 3-10 key words must be provided with every article, (viii)introduction, (ix) material studied, area descriptions, methods, techniques, (x) results, (xi) discussion, (xii) conclusion, (xiii) acknowledgements, conflict of interest statement, and acknowledgement of the role of the funding source for the study, (xiiii) references, (xv) tables and figures.

Tables

Each table with a brief title should be numbered and typed on a separate page. Data in tables must be accurate with unified accuracy. Statistical probability (P) should be located under the bottom line of the table in annotation, and corner code ([1], [2]) then be used corresponding to the data in the table. Each table should be numbered in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Tab 1, Tab 2, Tab 3 etc.). Tables should also have a title that summarizes the whole table. Detailed legends may then follow, but should be concise. Smaller tables considered to be integral to the manuscript can be pasted into the end of the document text file, in portrait format (note that tables on a landscape page must be reformatted onto a portrait page or submitted as additional files). These will be typeset and displayed in the final published form of the article. Such tables should be formatted using the 'Table object' in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data are kept aligned when the file is sent electronically for review; this will not always be the caseif columns are generated by simply using tabs to separate text. Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring the borders of each cell display as black lines.

Figures and figure legends

Pictures and line-drawing illustrations should be of professional quality and must be clear. Pathological pictures should be annotated with staining method and magnification. Scanned figures should be in 300dpi, more than 10cm in width. All tables and illustrations should be referred to in the text. Figures should be provided as separate files and also should be included in the main text of the submitted manuscript. Each figure should comprise only a single file in TIFF (preferred format for diagrams), PDF, PNG (preferred format for photos or images), Microsoft Word (figures must be a single page), PowerPoint (figures must be a single page), JPEG, BMP. Color images must be in RGB (red, green, blue) mode. Include the font files for any text. Figures wider than 1 column should be between 10.5cm and 18.0cm wide. Numbers, letters, and symbols should be no smaller than 6 points (2mm) and no larger than 12 points (6mm) after reduction and must be consistent. Do not save figure numbers, legends, or author names as part of the image. File sizes should not exceed 5MB. Images should not exceed 500 pixels per inch in width or height. The legends should be included in the main manuscript text file immediately following the references, rather than being a part of the figure file. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals - i.e. Fig 1, Fig 2, Fig 3 etc); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 300 words.

All references listed must be cited in the text, be numbered in the order they appear within the manuscript; in the text they should be referred to by numbers in square brackets on the superscript. The abbreviations of journal titles should conform to those adopted by List of Serial Title Word Abbreviations, CIEPS/ISDS, Paris, 1985(ISBN 2-904938-02-8). References are restricted to directly relevant published work, papers or abstracts. Only articles and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text. Notes/footnotes are not allowed. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited author(s) is the responsibility of the author. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/Medline. For each item, the listed names of authors should not exceed 3 ones, other authors beyond the 3 would be represented as “et al.”

Role of the funding source

All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a “Transfer of Copyright” agreement. The copyright transfer covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, photographic reproductions, microfilm or the right to adapt the article for use in conjunction with computer systems and programs, including reproduction and publication in machine-readable form and incorporation in retrieval systems. If excerpts (e.g. figures) from copyrighted works are included the authors are responsible for obtaining written permission from the copyright holder prior to submitting the final version of the paper.

Proofs

One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by email to the corresponding author. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures.

Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the articleviae-mail and two sample copies. Additional print copies and offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.