Preparing your manuscript
Title Page
The title should be concise and informative.
Author information
- The name(s) of the author(s)
- The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
- A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author
- If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)
Abstract
Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.
Trial registration number
The Abstract should not exceed 350 words. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. Reports of randomized controlled trials should follow the CONSORT extension for abstracts. The abstract must include the following separate sections:
- Background: the context and purpose of the study
- Methods: how the study was performed and statistical tests used
- Results: the main findings
- Conclusions: brief summary and potential implications
- Trial registration: If your article reports the results of a health care intervention on human participants, it must be registered in an appropriate registry and the registration number should be in stated in this section.
Keywords
Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.
Background
The Background section should explain the background to the study, its aims, a summary of the existing literature and why this study was necessary or its contribution to the field.
Methods
The methods section should include:
- the aim, design and setting of the study
- the characteristics of participants or description of materials
- a clear description of all processes, interventions and comparisons. Generic drug names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses
- the type of statistical analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate
Results
This should include the findings of the study including, if appropriate, results of statistical analysis which must be included either in the text or as tables and figures.
Discussion
This section should discuss the implications of the findings in the context of existing research and highlight the limitations of the study.
Conclusions
This should state clearly the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study reported.
List of abbreviations
If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.
Declarations
All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':
- Ethics approval and consent to participate
- Consent for publication
- Availability of data and materials
- Competing interests
- Funding
- Acknowledgements
Ethics approval and consent to participate
Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants must:
- include a statement on ethics approval and consent
- include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate
Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval and for experimental studies involving animals, authors must also include a statement on informed consent from the client or owner.
Consent for publication
If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.
If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section.
Competing interests
All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.
If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.
Funding
All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared
References
Reference citations in the text should be Vancouver style.
Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see
ISSN.org LTWA
If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.
Tables
- All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
- Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
- Table titles (max 15 words) should be included above the table, and legends (max 300 words) should be included underneath the table.
- For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
- Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
- The maximum number of Tables is 5
Figures
- Figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text
- The following file formats for figures are JPG, JPEG, PNG, and PDF
- The maximum number of illustrations is 5
