Authors, Reviewers & Editors

Instructions to Authors

Our journals are all open access. Each article published by Longdom Publishing S.L. follows a specific format.

Article Categories

• Original Articles: reports of data from original research.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by experts in the field who have been invited by the Editorial Board.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association or present an important adverse reaction. Authors should clearly describe the clinical relevance or implications of the case. All case report articles should indicate that informed consent to publish the information has been granted from the patients or their guardians.
• Commentaries: short, focused, opinion articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to contemporary issues, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders.
• Methodology articles: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may be new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.
• Letter to the Editor: these can take three forms: a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article; a substantial response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication; or an article that may not cover ‘standard research’ but that may be relevant to readers.

Manuscript Submission

One of the authors of the article, who takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review, should follow the instructions for submission and submit the manuscript. Please note that to facilitate rapid publication and to minimize administrative costs, Longdom Publishing S.L. only accepts online submissions, and that there is an article-processing charge on all accepted manuscripts.

During submission, you will be asked to provide a cover letter, in which you should explain why your manuscript should be published in the journal and declare any potential competing interests. Please provide the contact details (name and email addresses) of two potential peer reviewers for your manuscript. These should be experts in their field who will be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. The suggested peer reviewers should not have published with any of the authors of the manuscript within the past five years, should not be current collaborators and should not be members of the same research institution. Suggested reviewers will be considered along with potential reviewers recommended by the Editorial Board members.

Files can be submitted by batch, or one by one. A list of acceptable file formats appears below. Additional files of any type, such as movies, animations or original data files can also be submitted as part of the manuscript.

Here are the files required for submission :

• Title page
  Formats: DOC
  Must be a separate file, not embedded in the main manuscript.

• Main manuscript
  Format: DOC
  Tables less than 2 pages each (about 90 rows) should be included at the end of the manuscript.

• Figures
  Formats: PPT, DOC, PDF
  All figures must be sent together as one separate file, not embedded in the main manuscript.

• Cover letter
  Formats: DOC
  Must be a separate file, not embedded in the main manuscript.

The title page should:

• provide the title of the article
• list the full names, institutional addresses and email addresses for all authors
• indicate the corresponding author

Acknowledgments, Sources of Funding, and Disclosures

• Acknowledgments: The acknowledgments section lists each individual’s substantive contributions. Authors should obtain written, signed permission from all individuals listed in the ‘Acknowledgments’ section of the manuscript, because readers may infer their endorsement of data and conclusions. These permissions must be provided to the Editorial Office.
• Sources of Funding: Authors must list all sources of research support relevant to the manuscript. All grant funding agency abbreviations or acronyms should be completely spelled out.
• Conflict of Interest: Authors must state any disclosures in the cover letter when submitting a manuscript. If there is no conflict of interest, please state “Conflict of Interest: None to report.” Conflicts of interest pertain to relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers or other corporations whose products or services are related to the subject matter of the article. Such relationships include, but are not limited to, employment by an industrial concern, ownership of stock, membership on a standing advisory council or committee, membership of a board of directors, or a public association with the company or its products. Other areas of real or perceived conflict of interest could include receiving honoraria or consulting fees or receiving grants or funds from such corporations or individuals representing such corporations. The corresponding author should collect Conflict of Interest information from all co-authors before submitting a manuscript.

Tables and Figures

Each table should be numbered and cited in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e., Table 1, 2, 3, etc.). Titles for tables should appear above the table and be no longer than 15 words. They should be pasted at the end of the document text file, in A4 Portrait or Landscape format. These will be typeset and displayed as such in the final, published form of the article. Tables should be formatted using the ‘Table object’ in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data remain aligned when the file is sent electronically for review. Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files. Larger datasets or tables too wide for a Landscape page can be uploaded separately, as additional files. Additional files will not be displayed in the final, laid-out PDF of the article, but a link will be provided to the files as supplied by the author.

Figures should be provided in a separate single .DOC, .PDF or .PPT file, with a resolution of at least 300 dpi and not be embedded in the main manuscript file. If a figure consists of separate parts, please submit a single, composite illustration page that includes all parts of the figure. There is no charge for the use of color figures. The figure legends should be included in the main manuscript text file at the end of the document, rather than as part of the figure file. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure numbers in sequence, using Arabic numerals, a title of 15 words maximum and a detailed legend of up to 300 words. Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.

References

All references, including links, must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, and should be formatted in the National Library of Medicine style. Each reference must have an individual reference number. Please avoid excessive referencing. Only articles, datasets and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited. The author is responsible for obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from cited colleagues. Journal abbreviations should follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
Citations in the reference list should include all named authors, up to the first 6, before adding ‘et al.’. Any in press articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers’ assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Style and Language

Longdom Publishing S.L. only accepts manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be either U.S. English or British English, but not a mixture.
Longdom Publishing S.L. will not edit submitted manuscripts for style or language; thus, reviewers may advise rejection of a manuscript due to grammatical errors. Authors are advised to write clearly and simply, and to have their article checked by colleagues before submission. In-house copyediting will be minimal. Non-native speakers of English may choose to make use of our copyediting services. Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible and should be defined when first used.

In addition,

• Please use double-line spacing.
• Use justified margins, without hyphenating words at line breaks.
• Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines.
• Capitalize only the first word and proper nouns in the title.
• Number all pages.
• Use the correct reference format.
• Format the text in a single column.
• Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular character, please type out the name of the symbol in full. Please ensure that all special characters are embedded in the text; otherwise, they will be lost during PDF conversion.
• SI units should be used throughout (‘liter’ and ‘molar’ are permitted).

Word count

For Original Articles, Methodology Articles and Reviews, there is no explicit limit on the length of papers submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise. Commentaries and Case Reports should be between 800 and 1,500 words. Letters to the Editor should be between 1,000 and 3,000 words. There is also no restriction on the number of figures, tables, additional files or references that can be included. Figures and tables should be numbered in the order in which they are referenced in the text. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article.

The abstract of Original and Methodology Articles should not exceed 250 words and must be structured into Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions. For Reviews, please provide an unstructured, single paragraph summary of no more than 350 words, of the major points raised. For Commentaries and Case Reports, please provide a short, unstructured, single paragraph summary of no more than 150 words. For Letters to the Editor, please provide a short, unstructured, single paragraph summary of no more than 250 words.

Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. Please list your trial registration number after the abstract, if applicable.

Add a list of 3 to 10 keywords below the abstract.

The Accession Numbers of nucleic acid, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided in square brackets and include the corresponding database name.

Initial Review Process

Submitted manuscripts will be evaluated initially by the editor-in-chief and an associate editor. A rapid, initial decision regarding whether to have a manuscript formally reviewed by two or more reviewers with appropriate expertise, or rejected without a formal review will be determined based on the quality, scientific rigor and data presentation/analysis of the manuscript. It is anticipated that approximately 70% of the submitted manuscripts will undergo formal review and 30% will be rejected without evaluation by external reviewers.

Instructions for Revised Submissions

• Please provide a copy of the revised text with changes marked in the text using either tracking changes or highlighting.
• In your written response to the reviewers’ comments, give the page number(s), paragraph(s), and/or line number(s) where each revision was made.
• Respond to each referee’s comments, indicating precisely the changes made in response to the critiques. Also, give reasons for suggested changes that were not implemented, and identify any additional changes that were made.
• Revisions not received within 2 months will be administratively withdrawn. For further consideration, the manuscript must be resubmitted de novo. At the editors’ discretion, and in cases where substantial new data are required, extensions may be granted for revisions. In such cases, every effort will be made to retain the original reviewers.

Guide for reviewers

Submitted manuscripts are usually reviewed by 2 (or more) experts. Peer reviewers will be asked to recommend whether a manuscript should be accepted, revised or rejected. They should also alert the editors of any issues relating to author misconduct, such as plagiarism and unethical behavior.

Longdom Publishing S.L.’s journals operate using a double-blind peer review system, in which both authors and reviewers are anonymous.

Publication of research articles by Longdom Publishing S.L. is primarily dependent on their validity and coherence, as judged by peer reviewers and editors. The reviewers may also be asked whether the writing is comprehensible. Submitted manuscripts will be sent to peer reviewers unless they are out of scope of the journal, or if the presentation or written English is of an unacceptably low standard. Authors who are not native English speakers are strongly encouraged to submit their manuscript to us for review and clarification. Note that the use of such service is at the author’s own expense and does not guarantee that the article will be accepted for publication.

Points to Consider

Reviewers are asked to provide detailed, constructive comments that will help the editors make a decision regarding publication and how the authors could improve their manuscript. A key issue is whether the work has serious methodological flaws that should preclude its publication, or whether additional experiments or data are required to support the conclusions. Where possible, reviewers should provide references to substantiate their comments.

Reviewers should address the points below and indicate whether they consider any required revisions to be ‘major revisions’ or ‘minor revisions.’ In general, revisions are likely to be ‘major revisions’ if additional data are required to support the claims or the interpretations are not supported by the data; if further analysis is required that may change the conclusions; or if the methods used are inadequate or contain statistical errors.

Is the question posed important and well defined?

The research question posed by the authors should be easily identifiable and understood. It is useful to both the editors and authors if reviewers comment on the originality and importance of the study within the context of the field. Reviewers should ask themselves after reading the manuscript if they have learned something new and wether they are able to draw a clear conclusion from the study.

Are the data sound and well controlled?

If you feel that inappropriate controls have been used, please say so, indicating the reasons for your concerns, and suggest alternative controls where appropriate. If you feel that further experimental/clinical evidence is required to substantiate the results, please provide details.

Is the interpretation (discussion and conclusion) well balanced and supported by the data?

The interpretation should discuss the relevance of all the results in an unbiased manner. Are the interpretations overly positive or negative? Conclusions drawn from the study should be valid and result directly from the data shown, with reference to other relevant work as applicable. Have the authors provided references wherever necessary?

Are the methods appropriate and well described, and are sufficient details provided to allow others to evaluate and/or replicate the work?

Please remark on the suitability of the methods for the study, which should be clearly described and reproducible by peers in the field.
If statistical analyses have been performed, specify whether they need to be assessed specifically by an additional reviewer with statistical expertise.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the methods?

Please comment on any improvements that could be made to the study design to enhance the quality of the results. If any additional experiments are required, please give details. If novel, experimental techniques were used, please pay special attention to their reliability and validity.

Can the writing, organization, tables and figures be improved?

Please comment if you consider the quality of the written English to be below the standard expected for a scientific publication.
If the manuscript is organized in such a manner that it is illogical or not easily accessible to the reader please suggest improvements.
Please provide feedback on whether the data are presented in the most appropriate manner; for example, is a table used where a graph would provide increased clarity? Are the figures of a high enough quality to be published in their present form?

Are there any ethical or competing interests issues you would like to raise?

The study should adhere to the ethical standards of biomedical research, and the authors should declare that they have received ethics approval and/or patient consent for the study, where appropriate. Though we do not expect reviewers to delve into authors’ competing interests, if you are aware of any issues that you do not think have been adequately addressed, please inform the editorial office.

When to request revisions?

Reviewers may recommend revisions for any or all of the following reasons: data need to be added to support the authors’ conclusions; better justification is needed for the arguments based on existing data; or the clarity and/or coherence of the paper needs to be improved.

Reviewers are reminded of the importance of timely reviews

Confidentiality

Any manuscript sent for peer review is a confidential document and should remain so until it is formally published.

Standards of Reporting

Reviewers are asked to adhere to the editorial standards of Longdom Publishing S.L. and alert the editors if authors have not fully observed them.
Longdom Publishing S.L. supports initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of research.