Medicina (B Aires) [MEDICINA] is published bimonthly in printed and electronic formats. It can be consulted online at www.medicinabuenosaires.com. All articles published in MEDICINA are open access and available in full text online.
Submission of a manuscript to MEDICINA is regarded as a tacit declaration that the same material has not been submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere. In the guidelines for the preparation of manuscripts, MEDICINA follows the requirements of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in the most recent version available in http://www.icmje.org. Complete information for authors of research reports is also available in: http://www.equatornetwork.org. Submission of manuscripts: The manuscript should be submitted online (the complete file containing text, tables and figures) by e-mail to revmedbuenosaires@gmail.com. The first page must contain: (a) the title (informative but short); (b) the complete name of the authors, and the denomination of their institutions; (c) a running title for page heading, and (d) the complete postal address of the corresponding author, including e- mail address. A scanned copy of a covering letter must be included, signed by all authors, stating that the contents of the article have not been published elsewhere, and indicating the journal section in which the article should appear. Only those who participated directly in the research or the drafting of the article, and are therefore in a position to assume public responsibility for its contents, should be listed as authors and a maximum of 6 authors is recommendable. The standards for authorship are extensively explained in http://www.icmje.org.
The journal sections include: Original Articles (full articles and Short Communications), Special Articles, Case Reports, Clinicopathological Conferences, Images in Medicine, Editorials, Letters to the Editor, Book Reviews and Clinical Therapeutics. The latter deals with drug therapy, new formulations, methods or applications of recent clinical development. Conflicts of interest should be specially detailed (please consult for a more complete disclosure, in http://www.icmje.org). English and Spanish are equally suitable for Original Articles, Special Articles and Short Communications. Manuscripts should be prepared using Microsoft Word (Excel, Power Point, or other graphic software for the illustrations) on white paper (letter or A4), with margins of at least 25 mm, on only one side of the paper, double spacing, in letter font type Times New Roman 12, Arial 12, or other of a similar size. Pages must be consecutively numbered starting with the title page. Units of measurement: metric units should be used, with decimal points. Abbreviations and Symbols: only standard abbreviations will be used avoiding them in the title and abstract. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.
Full articles should contain the following sections: Introduction (without any heading), Materials and methods, Results and Discussion. An Abstract written both in English and Spanish will be included preceded by the corresponding title. The Abstract will follow the title page, will not exceed 250 words each, and will avoid the mention of tables and figures. Three to six key words in English and in Spanish should be added after the corresponding abstract, preferably selected from Index Medicus (Medical Subject Headings, MeSH). Original articles will have a maximum extension of 4000 words. In the Introduction, the purposes of the article are stated, and the rationale for the study is summarized. Do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported. Materials and methods include a description of (a) selection of the studied subjects, and their characteristics; (b) methods and procedures. In clinical trials, complete information on all major elements of the protocol (study population, intervention or exposures, outcomes, rationale for statistical analysis) will be included; (e) ethical standards and guidelines followed will be indicated; (d) Statistical methods will be described. Results should be presented in logical sequence. Data presented in tables or figures should not be repeated in the text. In Discussion, new and important aspects of the study are discussed and the conclusions arrived at. Do not repeat in detail data or other material already given in previous sections. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed.
When appropriate, acknowledgements will be added, before the references section, in which technical help, financial support, and contributions that do not justify authorship may be listed. Conflicts of interest should be declared. References should be limited to those papers directly related to the article, and numbered consecutively. All authors will be included if they are six or less; if more than six, the third one will be followed by, “et al” (et alia: and others). The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus (also available in http://www.nlm.nih.gov). Use superscript numerals for references in the text. List the References for journals, books and book chapters, and Internet sites, according to the following examples.
- Van Klaveren RJ, Oudkrek M, Prokop M, et al. Management of lung nodules detected by volume CT scanning. N Engl J Med 2009; 361: 2221-9.
- World Health Organization. Global tuberculosis control: surveillance, planning, financing. W HO report 2005. W HO/ htm/tb/2005.349. Geneva: W orld Health Organization, 2005.
- Philips DJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, eds. Hypertension: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management, 2nd ed. New York: Raven Press, 1995, p 465-78.
- HelmanA. Air pressure and Mount McKinley. In: http://www.cohp.org/ak/notes/pressure_altitude_simplified_ II.html; accessed October 19, 2009.
Personal communications are cited in the text. Tables should not repeat information already mentioned in the text, and should be typed on separate pages, with a brief but explicit title, and consecutively numbered (Arabic numbers). They should be indispensable and comprehensible by themselves. Do not use internal horizontal and vertical rules. Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Figures must allow for adequate reproduction and must be numbered and identified on a separate page in the text, followed by an explanatory legend. The explanatory legends shall be written on a separate page. The symbols, arrows or letters eventually used must contrast properly against the background. In cases where the authors submit Figures in color, these could be edited in black and white in the Journal, and in color in www.medicinabuenosaires.com.
Special Articles refer to those topics that need to be updated; they must be based on an important bibliographic revision, and should not exceed 7000 words. Short Communications refer to results which justify publication because of their special interest, however preliminary. The manuscript should not exceed 2500 words, without sections, nonetheless containing the customary sequence, with no more than 15 references and 2 tables or figures. A Short Communication will be published within 3 months of acceptance. Case Reports (up to two cases) and Case Series (three to nine) will be accepted on the bases of their clinical interest. They should have the following sections: Introduction, Case/s Report, and Discussion. The manuscript should not exceed 1500 words (Case Reports) or 2000 (Case Series) including up to 2 tables or figures and no more than 15 references. Table/s should contain relevant information about the observations. An Abstract in English and in Spanish will be always included. Images in Medicine may be radiograph, electrocardiogram (EKG records), echography, angiograph, tomography, Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI), optic or electron microscopy, etc. Such images, not necessarily exceptional but illustrative, should not exceed one page in length, including an explanatory legend not exceeding 200 words. Letters to the Editor should refer to editorial comments, preferably of articles published in MEDICINA. They should not exceed 1000 words including up to 6 references and one Table or Figure. The opportunity and the eventual characteristics of the Editorials will be left to the decision of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts are examined by the Editorial Board members and by one or two external reviewers. Once accepted, articles will undergo an editorial process that may involve deletions and additions.
Ethical disclosures. In studies carried out on human beings, it is essential to indicate whether the procedures followed comply with the ethical standards of the human experimentation committee responsible (institutional or regional), and in accordance with the World Medical Association and the Declaration of Helsinki (http://www.wma.net/s/ethicsunit/helsinki.htm). When animal experiments are described, it is essential to indicate whether these have been carried out in accordance with the standards of an international research institution or council, or with a national law regulating the care and use of laboratory animals. The authors must mention in the section Materials and that the procedures used in patients and controls have been carried out after obtaining informed consent.
Detection of plagiarism: Each manuscript is controlled to evaluate plagiarism. The online services of CrossRefMed (www.crossrefme.com), Article Checker (www.articlechecker.com) and Plagiarism (www.plagiarisma.net) CrossRefMed are used, and the COPE flowchart algorithm is applied (http: // publicationethics .org / resources / flow diagrams) to decide on manuscripts suspected of plagiarism.
Final version: upon acceptance, the authors are required to provide the complete final version via on line, attached to e-mail, to revmedbuenosaires@gmail.com. Once the article is accepted, authors will be charged US$ 100 per each page (published on-line and printed).