General Guidance

keloid research requires

Originality:

Keloid Research accepts only manuscripts that describe original work, no part of which has been currently submitted for publication elsewhere except as brief abstracts. Authors should exercise care to exclude overlap and duplication of text or figures between manuscripts dealing with related materials. Copies of existing manuscripts with overlapping or duplicated material should be submitted together with the manuscript as supplemental data files so that the Editors can judge the originality of the material and its suitability for publication. Submission of duplicate (redundant) content, already published elsewhere, will be considered a breach of ethical conduct and will trigger severe consequences. See also section III. D. “Overlapping Publications” of the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and section 3.2.2 “Definition of Research Misconduct” in CSE’s White Paper on Publication Ethics.

A manuscript containing material that was previously presented as a digital poster presented in a conference or meeting with an online poster repository or videotaped will be considered for publication in Keloid Research as long as significant new information is included.

Preparation of Manuscripts:

This section contains information that applies to all authors.  Before submitting your manuscript, please read and carefully follow the following guidelines.  Please note that Keloid Research adheres to the criteria set by the International Committee of Medical Journal editors, which has established Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

1- Article Title and Title page:

The title should succinctly in less than 150 characters – and effectively convey the content of the article.  Titles should be constructed in active rather than passive voice, without the use of punctuation or abbreviations.  If the article reports on results of research conducted in non-human model systems, the name of the species must be indicated in the title. The following must be included in the title page:

  • article title
  • short title for the running head (not to exceed 50 characters)
  • full and accurate names of all authors (as you want them to appear in online searches and citations)
  • affiliations of institutions where the research was done, reflecting the order of authorship
  • corresponding author’s full name, address, e-mail address, and phone and fax numbers
  • word counts.

2- Abstract Section of your manuscript must be concise and address the core message you are tying to convey.  There is no need to cite any references in this section.  Keloid Research requires research papers, specifically Regular Articles, to include 1 to 2 key points. The purpose of these short statements is to identify the most relevant messages that author is trying to convey.

The abstract should in a logical progression state the rationale/hypothesis, objectives, findings/results, and conclusions of the study. Abstracts should be written as a continuous narrative.

3- Visual Abstract is a single, concise, illustrative summary of the main findings of the article. It should be a figure that captures the content of the article at a single glance. Upon request, Keloid Research can provide professional illustrator services.  Authors will be assessed a charge for this service.

4-Authors assisted by a pharmaceutical company should disclose their affiliation and nature of the assistance they have received, both in the body of their manuscript, as well as in a  letter to the Editor in Chief of Keloid Research.  Authors may find the following toolkit published by the Medical Publishing Insights and Practices initiative (MPIP) useful:  http://informahealthcare.com/doi/full/10.1185/03007995.2010.499344.

5- References: Include references in numerical order at the end of the article according to the order of citation in the manuscript text. Text citations of reference should consist of superscript numbers.  If you use citation software, check it carefully to ensure that it formats your references according to the current Keloid Research style.

6- Footnotes and abbreviations: Do not use footnotes; instead, sparingly use parenthetical statements within text. Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and thereafter applied consistently throughout the article. Do not use nonstandard abbreviations or abbreviate terms appearing fewer than three times. Give the chemical name of a compound after the first use of the common name. The common name may be used throughout the article. Abbreviate units of measure only when used with numbers.

7- Figures: When submitting a manuscript for review, image file formats accepted for uploading include: JPEG (.jpg), PDF, TIFF, and EPS. PowerPoint (.ppt) files are acceptable but are strongly discouraged due to conversion issues and poor resolution in the published article.

High-resolution image files are not preferred for initial submission as the file sizes may be too large. The total file size of the PDF for peer review should not exceed 10 MB. However, high-resolution figures are required for accepted articles entering into pre-production.

 8- Figures legends: All legends must begin with a short, descriptive sentence that summarizes the intent and content of the figure. This sentence should be in boldfaced font. A more detailed explanation of the data contained in the figure and/or its parts should follow in standard (non-boldfaced) font.

 

9- Tables: Each table should have a brief, specific, descriptive title, giving sufficient explanation to make the data intelligible without reference to the text. Number all tables and cite in numerical order in the text, using Arabic numerals.

10-Editing services for non-English speakers: For non-English-speaking authors, a professional editing service may help improve the presentation of the paper. Papers with significant English language deficiencies may be returned without review.

11: Video Formats: Videos may be uploaded in one of the following formats:

  • QuickTime (.mov)
  • Audio Video Interleave (.avi)
  • Windows Media (.wmv)
  • Moving Pictures Expert Group (.mpeg or .mpg)

Submit all videos at the desired size and length. To avoid excessive delays for users accessing them on their Web browsers or downloading them, please keep videos below 5 MB in size, normally running between 30 and 45 seconds in length. To control the file size of MOV videos, use QuickTime’s “compress” option. Cropping frames and image sizes can also significantly reduce file sizes, and videos can be looped to play more than once, provided file size does not become excessive.

12: Online copyright transfer

Keloid Research requires all authors of accepted manuscripts to provide electronic copyright transfer signatures or to document their status as an NIH or other U.S. federal employee and thus unable to transfer copyright. Upon acceptance of a manuscript, an e-mail will be sent to all coauthors with instructions for providing their electronic signatures. Articles will not be published until all signatures are received by Keloid Research.

13: Manuscript file format

A Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) file of your accepted manuscript is required to allow the manuscript to be copy-edited and composed. You will be requested to upload the final text document after acceptance. Please note that publication of your article will be put on hold until you upload a Word or RTF document. You must make sure that the document you submit is the same as the one accepted. There cannot be ANY content changes from the final accepted version; however, you should remove any highlighted or red-lined text that may have been inserted to indicate revisions to the original submission.

 14: Cover illustrations

Cover illustrations are chosen by the Editor-in-Chief. Authors who submit a manuscript are encouraged to include a color image they consider suitable for the cover of Keloid Research as a supplemental file, with reference to this suggested cover figure in the cover letter to the Editor in Chief. The author must own copyright to the image. The image must be sharp enough to allow magnification to the full size of the 6½ x 11 inch image area. Include a brief caption explaining the content of the figure.

15: Studies involving humans or animals

Authors must include approved protocol numbers from the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Committee in the Materials and Methods or Case Report section if the manuscript contains human data and an animal care approval number (e.g., IACUC) for animal studies.

16: Authorship criteria

All authors listed in a manuscript submitted to Keloid Research must have contributed substantially to the work. Upon submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author must indicate, in the online submission and in the Authorship section of the manuscript, the specific contribution of each author. Examples of appropriate designations include: designed research, performed research, contributed vital new reagents or analytical tools, collected data, analyzed and interpreted data, performed statistical analysis, and/or wrote the manuscript. An author may list more than one type of contribution and more than one author may have contributed to the same aspect of the work. The corresponding author assumes responsibility for obtaining permission from all coauthors for the submission of any/all version(s) of the manuscript and for any changes in authorship.

If authorship is attributed to a group listed as author (e.g., only the group name is in the byline or in addition to one or more individual authors), all members of the group must meet the full criteria and requirements for authorship as described above and they are acknowledged as authors in Medline. The group members who do not meet the formal authorship criteria listed above but who contributed materially as collaborators may be named in the Appendix and if the manuscript is accepted, their names will be listed in an online supplemental Appendix. The group members listed in Acknowledgments or in the Appendix are acknowledged as collaborators in Medline/PubMed.

All individuals share responsibility for any manuscript they coauthor. Some coauthors have responsibility for the entire manuscript as an accurate, verifiable report of the research. These include coauthors accountable for the conception or execution of the research reported in the paper, the integrity and analysis of the data, or the writing of the manuscript. Coauthors with specific, limited contributions to a paper are responsible for their contributions but may have only limited responsibility for other results. While not all coauthors may be familiar with all aspects of the research presented in the manuscript, all coauthors should have in place an appropriate process for reviewing the accuracy of the reported results. Each author should review and approve the manuscript before publication.  The corresponding author is responsible for the integrity of the work as a whole.

For more information on this important topic, see the Authorship section in the CSE’s White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications.