Authors instructions

 Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Reviewers

Instructions for Editors

 

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Author Instructions 

Revista de Investigación Clínica
 
Revista de Investigación Clínica – Clinical and Translational Investigation (RIC-C&TI), publishes original clinical and biomedical research of interest to physicians in internal medicine, surgery, and any of their specialties.

RIC-C&TI is the official journal of the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán. The journal is published both on-line and in printed version, appears bimonthly and publishes peer-reviewed original research articles as well as brief and in-depth reviews. All articles published are open access and can be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. The journal accepts clinical and molecular research articles, short reports, and reviews. No fees are applied for publishing in RIC-C&T.

To promote the transparency and quality of the research, the authors will be asked as an essential requirement to self-assess adherence to the relevant international guidelines according to the type of study. These documents will only serve as proof of adherence, they will not be published as supplementary material.

– Clinical trials: CONSORT (http://www.consort-statement.org/). In addition, all trials must be registered in one of the international databases, and the corresponding registration number must always be indicated.

– Observational studies: STROBE (www.strobe-statement.org).

– Diagnostic tests: STARD (www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/stard/).

– For other types of studies, consult the guidelines on the EQUATOR initiative (http://www.equator-network.org/).

 
Types of manuscripts:

–   Brief Communications
–   Commentaries
–   Research Letters
–   Original Articles
–   Brief Reviews
–   In-depth Reviews
–   Perspectives
–   Letters to the Editor

 

Brief Communications

Brief Communications are short research articles intended to present new and exciting findings that may have a major impact in medicine. Brief Communications are limited to 4,000 words, including the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, references, and figure legends. The total word count must be listed on the title page. In addition, Brief Communications may include no more than three figures and one table, which together may occupy no more than one full page. It is acceptable to include complementary information as supplemental material, but not to move materials and methods or essential figures into supplemental material in order to adhere to these limits.
Authors will be contacted if their manuscript does not conform to these guidelines, and will be asked to reduce the content or reclassify the paper as a Original Article.
 
 

Research Letters

This section reporting original findings, should be presented in the form of an extended structured abstract, using the abstract style of a full Original Article (Background, Methods, Results, and Discussion –instead of Conclusions). Research Letters should be no longer than 800 words or 4000 characters (not including acknowledgments, table, figure, or references), 5 references, and may include 1 table and/or figure. Online supplementary material is not allowed for this category. The text should include all authors´ information required for a full Original Article, including the e-mail address of the corresponding author. Letters must not duplicate other material published or submitted for publication and they should not include an abstract.

 

Original Articles

Original Articles are scientific reports of the results of original clinical, biomedical, and translational research. Original Articles are limited to six to eight printed pages in length including abstract, illustrations, tables and references. Non-essential information (tables, figures and other type of information) can be submitted as supplementary material, which will be only published online.

 

Brief Reviews

These reviews are four to six journal pages in length, including illustrations and references. They should cover a focused area on the advancing edge of medicine providing a balanced view of current advances that can be understood by clinicians and researchers outside of the specialty of the topic. Although these reviews are usually prepared by invitation from the Editors, authors interested in submitting an article to Brief Reviews should submit a proposal by e-mail to the Editor in chief or Deputy Editors, including an outline of the proposed review and a brief CV that includes their publications. The body of the manuscript (not including the front page, abstract, references, tables, and supplementary data) should not exceed 20 double-spaced pages, letter size. Up to 30 references and 3 figures (should be in color, if possible) are acceptable.
The abstract should not be structured, but must summarize in a concise manner the main information contained in the review.

 

In-depth Reviews

Each issue of the journal contains one or two timely in-depth reviews written by leaders in the field covering a range of topics in clinical, biomedical and/or translational medicine. In-depth Reviews should present authoritative, up-to-date information on a particular topic, placing it in the context of a field’s history, development, current knowledge, and perspectives. These reviews are eight to ten journal pages in length, including references but not illustrations.
 
Although these reviews are usually prepared by invitation from the Editors, authors interested in submitting an article to In-depth Reviews should submit a proposal by e-mail to the Editor in chief or Deputy Editors, including an outline of the proposed review and a brief CV that includes their publications. The body of the manuscript (not including the front page, abstract, references, tables, and supplementary data) should not exceed 30 double-spaced pages, letter size. Up to 60 references and 5 figures (should be in color, if possible) are acceptable. The abstract should not be structured, but must summarize in a concise manner the main information contained in the review.

 

Perspectives

These brief articles are comments on recent advances in medicine and/or surgery and how these new findings may impact the view of physicians for future applications in diagnosis and/or therapeutics They should be up to 1200 words of text—or 1000 words- with 1 small table and/or figure (excluding title, byline, and references), no more than 7 references and up to 3 authors.

 

Letters to the Editor

The Editor in chief invites brief letters (250 words or less) of general interest, commenting on work published in the RIC-C&TI within the previous six months.

A limited number of letters will be selected for publication. The authors of the original work will be invited to respond, and both the original letter and the authors’ response will be published together.

 

Submission of manuscripts

Please write your text in good American English. It is advisable that authors who feel their English language manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible grammatical or spelling errors and to conform to correct scientific English, consult an English language expert before submitting the manuscript, to prevent delays in the reviewing/printing processes.
 
Submission to RIC-C&TI should be totally online, and you will be guided stepwise through the uploading process of your files. Please note that if you send your files in PDF format, the source files will be needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor’s decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail removing the need for a paper trail.

 

Referees

Please submit the names and institutional e-mail addresses of several potential referees as well as of undesired reviewers. Note that the editor in charge of your manuscript retains the sole right to decide whether the suggested reviewers are used.

 

New submissions

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online. You may choose to submit your manuscript as a single file to be used in the refereeing process. This can be a PDF file or a Microsoft Word document, so that can be used by referees to evaluate your manuscript. It should contain high quality figures for refereeing. Please note that individual figure files larger than 10 MB must be uploaded separately.

 

Formatting requirements

All manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to convey your manuscript in the following order: Front page, Abstract and Keywords (in the same page), Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, References, Tables and Figure legends. Do not include a section of Conclusions, except in reviews. Tables should have captions (legends). Divide the article into clearly defined sections. Use Arial font, size 12- and double-spaced text. Manuscripts containing the Front Page, Abstract and Keywords, body of manuscript (including references), Tables and Figure legends, must be upload in the system as a single document, not separately. Authors must include continuous line numbering on all the manuscript pages, except tables and figure legends, and all pages should be numbered except the front page.

 

Revised submissions

Regardless of the file format of the original submission, at revision you must provide us with an editable file of the entire article in Microsoft Word. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts. To avoid unnecessary errors, you are strongly advised to use the ‘spell-check’ and ‘grammar-check’ functions of your word processor.
 

 

ARTICLE STRUCTURE

 

Front/title page

Language: Articles should be written in English only. The English style should be strict and carefully checked by a professional expert. Submissions will not be accepted if the English style is deficient.
Please state the type of article in the front page, above the title.

Title: Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations where possible.

Author names and affiliations: Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors’ affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author’s name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name.
DO NOT INCLUDE THE INSTITUTIONAL POSITIONS OF THE AUTHORS.

Corresponding author: Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, and post-publication. Be sure to include phone numbers (with country and area code) in addition to the e- mail address and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.

Present/permanent address: If an author has moved or change institution since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a ‘Present address’ may be indicated as a footnote to that author’s name. The address at which the author did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.

 

Abstract

The abstract should be short and concise, limited to 200 words and should be presented as a Structured Abstract (Background –not Introduction–; Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusions). Do not cite references in the Abstract. Abbreviations can be used but they should be defined only once and at it first use unless it is a standard unit of measurement. Abstracts for Brief and In-depth-reviews should not be structured (see above).

 

Introduction

State clearly the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature review or a summary of the results. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text, no matter if it has been used in the Abstract.

 

Material and Methods

Clearly describe selection and identify all important characteristics of the observational or experimental subjects or laboratory animals. Specify carefully what the descriptors mean and explain how the data were collected. Identify the methods, apparatus with the manufacturer’s name and address in parentheses (city and country), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced by others. Provide references to established methods and statistical methods used. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference and not described extendedly, and only relevant modifications should be described. Precisely identify all drugs and chemicals used. Use only generic names of drugs. All measurements should be expressed in SI units. Approval by the local ethical committee of the institution(s) where the work was done should be mentioned. Never use patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Papers dealing with experiments on animals should indicate that the institution’s research council’s guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
 
At the end of the Material and Methods section include –as a Statistical Analysis subsection- all statistical tests employed with sufficient clarity to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. Whenever possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty. Specify any general-use computer programs used. Formulae and equations should be included as Supplementary Information only (see below). Keep in mind that your article may also be reviewed by the Biostatistics Adviser of the RIC-C&TI if requested by any of the referees or editors.

 

Results

Results should be clear and concise, and presented in logical sequence in text, figures, and tables. Do not repeat what has been described in the preceding sections. Figures should be numbered in Arabic numbers and Tables in Roman numbers. Write in parenthesis the number of the figure or table (e.g. Fig. 1; Table I). Do not repeat in the text data described in Tables. Emphasize or summarize only important findings.

 

Discussion

This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate, particularly in the case of short papers. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature. Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them (but not include a subsection of Conclusions–except in Reviews). Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction or the Results section. Include in the Discussion section the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research, but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by the data presented in the paper. Relate the observations from your study to other relevant studies. State new hypotheses when warranted but clearly label them as such. NO DATA SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN THIS SECTION.

 

Acknowledgments

Include in acknowledgments the names of all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged in this section.

 

References

References are numbered sequentially in the text in the order in which they are first mentioned. The Reference list at the end of the paper should be numbered in the order as mentioned in the text. Accuracy of references is the responsibility of the authors. Confirm that all references included in the text match the Reference list at the end of the paper (and vice versa). References in the text that are repeated in figure legends or tables should match in the number assigned. References may contain only published works; papers in press, studies in progress, manuscripts submitted (but not yet accepted), unpublished observations, and personal communications may only be acknowledged within the text (in parentheses, including year). Identify references in the text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in parenthesis (not in superscript), and they should appear before the ending punctuation if at the end of a sentence. References style should follow the NLM standards summarized in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals: Sample References, available at the webpage http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html. 
List the first six authors followed by et al. and neither DOI or database's unique identifier (e.g. PubMed PMID), date of publication, month or issue number should be included in the reference.

 

Supplementary information

Supplementary information is allowed in the RIC-C&TI in order to avoid an excesive number of tables and figures in the main text. Tables, figures and other supplementary information (eg. formulae and equations) should be number as Table S1, S2, etc., or Figure S1, S2, etc., or Formulae/Equation (S1) , (S2), etc. Supplementary information is only published in the online version at the end of the article, following the Reference list.

 

Illustrations
Figures include graphs, photographs and diagrams. The purpose of a figure is to present complex or graphic experimental results and analyses as an image. The accompanying figure caption (at the end of the manuscript) should contain enough information so that the reader can understand the figure without referring to the description in the text of the paper. In other words, the figure and its caption could be understood without reading any other part of the paper. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text. If photographs of patients are used, the subjects must not be identifiable.
The preferred formats are JPEG and TIFF; the minimum resolution should be 300 dpi/160mm, and any text inside the images or graphics should approximately be size 8 to 10 (Word). FIGURES SHOULD BE SUBMITTED IN COLOR WHENEVER POSSIBLE, THERE ARE NO CHARGES FOR COLOR FIGURES.
Do not send figures as Power Point or PDF files. The minimum resolution should be 300 dpi.

 

Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the RIC-C&TI.

Please be sure that following items are present:

– A front letter addressed to the Editor in chief of the journal and signed by the corresponding author, requesting the consideration of the article for publication in the RIC-C&TI, and stating that the manuscript is not under review in another journal.

– The entire text of the manuscript (see Formatting Requirements), with lines numbered.

– Corresponding author E-mail address, full postal address, and telephone.

– All necessary files of the figures (one file per figure) have been uploaded.

Other:

– Manuscript has been checked for spelling and grammar.

– All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa.

– Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other
sources (including the Web).

–  Authors are encouraged to submit full-colored images to be reproduced, free of charge, in both the online and printed versions.

–  The authors must confirm or clarify any of the following assumptions, as appropriate, in the ethical disclosures section:

- The authors declare that they have not used any type of generative artificial intelligence for the writing of this manuscript, nor for the creation of table captions and/or figure legends.

- The authors declare that they have used generative artificial intelligence, specifically (name of the AI in question) in the writing of this manuscript and/or in the creation of table captions and/or or figure legends.

 
Further relevant information:

- WAME
- JAMA Network
- COPE Discussion document “Artificial intelligence (AI) in decision making”
 

 

Online submission
Manuscripts should be uploaded in the following Website: http://publisher.clinicalandtranslationalinvestigation.permanyer.com/

Uploaded documents should include only: the cover letter to the editor, the main text with tables and figure legends, supplementary information (tables and figures) in one single Word file, all figures in any of the formats specified above and in individual/separated files, ethical disclosures and conflicts of interest.

FAILURE TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THESE INSTRUCTIONS WILL DELAY THE VALIDATION AND SUBSEQUENT PRELIMINARY REVIEW OF THE ARTICLE BY THE EDITORS AND, IF IT IS THE CASE, ASSIGNMENT OF REVIEWERS.

 

**To avoid duplications in the system, please refrain from creating a new request when resubmitting your modified files. You should continue using the same reference until your manuscript completes the editorial process.

 

EDITORIAL PROCESS

The editorial process consists of 6 stages:

1. Reception of the manuscript (indeterminate, depending on whether the author meets the requirements): its objective is to verify that the manuscript complies with the specifications of these instructions for authors and that the submitted documentation is complete.

2. Initial editorial review (maximum 5 business days): its objective is to corroborate the relevance, timeliness, originality, and scientific contribution of the manuscript, as well as the methodological and statistical soundness of the study. At this time, it will be submitted to an electronic plagiarism detection system. Derived from this, a rejected opinion may be obtained, or it will be sent for review by peer researchers.

3. Review by peer researchers (maximum 30 business days): the opinion of at least two experts in the area in question will be obtained, who will evaluate the technical and methodological aspects of the investigation.

4. Editorial review (maximum 7 business days): its objective is to make a decision based on the opinion of peer reviewers. The opinion can be rejected, major changes, minor changes or accepted. In the case of major or minor changes, it will be submitted again for evaluation by the initial peer reviewers.

5. Final edition (6 weeks): its objective is the technical and linguistic edition (and translation), layout of galleys, DOI assignment, and correction by the author.

6. Advanced publication: All manuscripts will be published ahead of print on the journal's website as soon as they complete the editing process, until they are incorporated into a final issue of the journal.

 

PRINT PROOFS (PDF) OF ACCEPTED ARTICLES 

The corresponding author will receive proofs of the article for revision and correction of terminology errors, or any other updates related to facts/figures. As the article will already have been edited according to the journal’s internal editorial guidelines, style corrections will not be accepted. The corresponding author will receive an email with the article in PDF format, on which they can leave their comments. Authors will need to have Adobe Reader (version 9, or a later version), downloadable for free). For other system requirements, please visit the Adobe website.

Alternatively, authors may list their corrections and submit them via email. Any major changes at this stage will be subject to the approval of the Editor. Authors should make sure to include all changes in a single email, as we cannot guarantee the inclusion of subsequent corrections.

The proof review is the responsibility of the author.

Relevant links

Committee on Publication Ethics. Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Responsibilities in the Submission and Peer-Review Process