MEJFM
complies with the Recommendations
for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing,
and Publication of Scholarly Work
in Medical Journals, issued by the
International Committee of Medical
Journal Editors (ICMJE Recommendations),
and to the Committee on Publication
Ethics (COPE) code of conduct for
editors guidelines:
Recommendations for the Conduct,
Reporting, Editing, and Publication
of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals
www.icmje.org
COPE
Code of Conduct
http://publicationethics.org/files/u2/New_Code.pdf
Details
for authors
1. Statements, permissions, and
signatures
o Designated authors should meet
all four criteria for authorship
in the ICMJE Recommendations
o We ask all authors, and all contributors
(including medical writers and editors),
to specify their individual contributions
at the end of the text
o MEJFM will not publish any articles
unless we have the signatures of
all authors
o We suggest you use the author
statement form (below) and upload
or fax the signed copy with your
submission
o In addition, please include written
consent of any cited individual(s)
noted in acknowledgments or personal
communications
2.
Conflicts of interest
A conflict of interest exists when
professional judgement concerning
a primary interest (such as patients'
welfare or validity of research)
may be influenced by a secondary
interest (such as financial gain).
Financial
relationships are easily identifiable,
but conflicts can also occur because
of personal relationships or rivalries,
academic competition, or intellectual
beliefs. A conflict can be actual
or potential, and full disclosure
to the Editor is the safest course.
Failure to disclose conflicts might
lead to publication of a statement
in our Department of Error or even
to retraction. All submissions must
include disclosure of all relationships
that could be viewed as presenting
a potential or actual conflict of
interest.
The
Editor may use such information
as a basis for editorial decisions,
and will publish such disclosures
if they are believed to be important
to readers in judging the manuscript.
Agreements between authors and study
sponsors that interfere with authors'
access to all of a study's data,
or that interfere with their ability
to analyse and interpret the data
and to prepare and publish manuscripts
independently, may represent conflicts
of interest, and should be avoided.
o
At the end of the text, under a
subheading "Conflicts of interest",
all authors must disclose any financial
and personal relationships with
other people or organisations that
could inappropriately influence
(bias) their work. Examples of financial
conflicts include employment, consultancies,
stock ownership, honoraria, paid
expert testimony, patents or patent
applications, and travel grants,
all within 3 years of beginning
the work submitted. If there are
no conflicts of interest, authors
should state that
o
All authors are required to provide
a signed statement of their conflicts
of interest as part of the author
statement form.
o For Comment, Seminars, Reviews,
and Series, the MEJFM will not publish
if an author, within the past 3
years, and with a relevant company
or competitor, has any stocks or
shares, equity, a contract of employment,
or a named position on a company
board; or has been asked by any
organisation other than the MEJFM
to write, be named on, or to submit
the paper.
3.
Role of the funding source
o All sources of funding should
be declared as an acknowledgment
at the end of the text
o At the end of the Methods section,
under a subheading "Role of
the funding source", authors
must describe the role of the study
sponsor(s), if any, in study design;
in the collection, analysis, and
interpretation of data; in the writing
of the report; and in the decision
to submit the paper for publication
o If there is no Methods section,
the role of the funding source should
be stated as an acknowledgment.
If the funding source had no such
involvement, the authors should
so state
o The corresponding author should
confirm that he or she had full
access to all the data in the study
and had final responsibility for
the decision to submit for publication.
4.
Role of medical writer or editor
o If a medical writer or editor
was involved in the creation of
your manuscript, we need a signed
statement from the corresponding
author to include their name and
information about funding of this
person
o This information should be added
to the Acknowledgments and/or Contributors
section
o We require signed statements from
any medical writers or editors declaring
that they have given permission
to be named as an author, as a contributor,
or in the Acknowledgments section.
5.
Patient and other consents
o Appropriate written consents,
permissions, and releases must be
obtained where you wish to include
any case details, personal information,
and/or images of patients or other
individuals in
the MEJFM in order to comply with
all applicable laws and regulations
concerning privacy and/or security
of personal information. Studies
on patients or volunteers need approval
from an ethics committee and informed
consent from participants. These
should be documented in your paper.
o Since the consent form needs to
comply with the relevant legal requirements
of your particular jurisdiction,
we do not provide sample forms;
this is your responsibility. Your
affiliated institution should be
able to provide an appropriate form.
o For the purposes of publishing
in the MEJFM, a consent, permission,
or release should include, without
limitation, publication in all formats
(including print, electronic, and
websites), in sublicensed and reprinted
versions (including translations),
and in other works and products.
o To respect your patient's and
any other individual's privacy,
please do not send signed forms
to the MEJFM. Please instead complete
the patient consent section of the
Author statements while retaining
copies of the signed forms in the
event they should be needed.
o If consent, permission, or release
is made subject to any conditions,
the MEJFM must be made aware in
writing of all such conditions before
publication.
o For more information please visit
www.mejfm.com/author_info.htm
6. Author statements
All manuscripts must be accompanied
by necessary statements.
Each author must read and sign all
statements:
1. Authorship statement on criteria
and responsibility.
2. Financial disclosure statement.
3. Copyright transfer statement
(or the statement of federal employment,
if applicable).
4. Human and animal subject protections.
In addition, the corresponding author
must sign:
5. Acknowledgment statement. If
necessary, photocopy this document
to distribute to co-authors for
their signatures. Please send all
copies to the Editorial Office at
the time you submit your manuscript.
For more information please visit
www.mejfm.com/author_info.htm
7. Signatures
At the external peer review stage
you will need to send signed copies
of the following statements:
o Authors' contributions
o Conflicts of interest statements
o Statements of role, if any, of
medical writer or editor
o Acknowledgments-written consent
of cited individual
o Personal communications - written
consent of cited individual
o Use of copyright-protected material-signed
permission statements from author
and publisher
These statements can be scanned
and submitted electronically. To
minimise delays, we strongly
advise that you prepare signed copies
of these statements before you submit
your manuscript.
8.
Types of article and manuscript
requirements
Please ensure that anything you
submit to the MEJFM follows the
guidelines provided for each article
type. For instruction on how to
format the text of your paper, including
tables, figures, panels, and references,
please see Author
Info section.
Articles
o The MEJFM prioritises reports
of original research that are likely
to change clinical practice or thinking
about a disease.
o We invite submission of all clinical
trials, whether phase 1, 2, 3, or
4. For phase 1 trials, we especially
encourage those of a novel substance
for a novel indication, if there
is a strong or unexpected beneficial
or adverse response, or a novel
mechanism of action
o We encourage researchers to enrol
women and ethnic groups into clinical
trials of all phases, and to plan
to analyse data by gender and by
race
o Systematic reviews of randomised
trials about diseases that have
a major effect on human health also
might warrant rapid peer review
and publication
o Global public-health and health-policy
research are other areas of interest
to the MEJFM
o We require the registration of
all interventional trials, whether
early or late phase, in a primary
register that participates in WHO's
International Clinical Trial Registry
Platform (www.who.int/ictrp/network/trds/en/index.html)
We also encourage full public disclosure
of the minimum 20-item trial registration
dataset at the time of registration
and before recruitment of the first
participant. The registry must be
independent of for-profit interest
o Reports of randomised trials must
conform to CONSORT 2010 guidelines
(www.consort-statement.org/consort-statement/overview0/),
and should be submitted with their
protocols
o All reports of randomised trials
should include a section entitled
Randomisation and masking, within
the Methods section o Cluster-randomised
trials must be reported according
to CONSORT extended guidelines (www.consort-statement.org/extensions/extensions/).
o Randomised trials that report
harms must be described according
to extended CONSORT guidelines
o Studies of diagnostic accuracy
must be reported according to STARD
(www.stard-statement.org/)
guidelines
o Observational studies (cohort,
case-control, or cross-sectional
designs) must be reported according
to the STROBE statement, and should
be submitted with their protocols
o We encourage the registration
of all observational studies on
a WHO-compliant registry o Genetic
association studies must be reported
according to STREGA guidelines (www.medicine.uottawa.ca/public-health-genomics/web/eng/strega.html)
o Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
must be reported according to PRISMA
guidelines (www.prisma-statement.org/).
o To find reporting guidelines see:
www.equator-network.org
All
Articles should, as relevant:
o Be up to 3000 words with 30 references
(the word count is for the manuscript
text only)
o Include an abstract (semistructured
summary), with five paragraphs (Background,
Methods, Findings, Interpretation,
and Funding), not exceeding 300
words.
o For randomised trials, the abstract
should adhere to CONSORT extensions:
abstracts
o For intervention studies, the
abstract should include the primary
outcome expressed as the difference
between groups with a confidence
interval on that difference (absolute
differences are more useful than
relative ones). Important secondary
outcomes can be included as long
as they are clearly marked as secondary
o Use the SI system of units and
the recommended international non-proprietary
name (rINN) for drug names. Ensure
that the dose, route, and frequency
of administration of any drug you
mention are correct.
o Use gene names approved by the
Human Gene Organisation (www.genenames.org/).
Novel gene sequences should be deposited
in a public database (GenBank, EMBL,
or DDBJ), and the accession number
provided.
Authors
of microarray papers should include
in their submission the information
recommended by the MIAME guidelines
(www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame_checklist.html).
Authors should also submit their
experimental details to one of the
publicly available databases: ArrayExpress
or GEO (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/)
o All accepted Articles should include
a link to the full study protocol
published on the authors' institutional
website
Putting
research into context
o The Discussion section should
contain a full description and discussion
of the context. Authors are also
invited to either report their own,
up-to-date systematic review or
cite a recent systematic review
of other trials, putting their trial
into context of the review.
Clinical Pictures
o We will consider clear and interesting
Clinical Pictures and videos submitted
with a descriptive paragraph
o Authors must obtain signed informed
consent from the patient if included
in visual material (see Patient
consent)
Research
in context
Systematic review
This section should include a description
of how authors searched for all
the evidence. Authors should also
say how they assessed the quality
of that evidence - ie, how they
selected and how they combined the
evidence.
Interpretation
Authors should state here what their
study adds to the totality of
evidence when their study is added
to previous work.
Patient
consent
o
Authors must obtain signed informed
consent from the patient (see Patient
and other consents)
Ethics
Editor
if you have any questions regarding
our code of ethics contact:
Lesley Pocock, Ethics Editor,
lesleypocock@mediworld.com.au
Following
is a summary of the Ethics requirements
for MEJFM - for full detail and
implications for your submissions
also see Author Info.
1. Publication and authorship:
- list of references, financial
support;
- no plagiarism, no fraudulent data;
- forbidden to publish same research
in more than one journal.
2. Author's responsibilities:
- authors obliged to participate
in peer review process;
- all authors have significantly
contributed to the research;
- statement that all data in article
are real and authentic;
- all authors are obliged to provide
retractions or corrections of mistakes.
3. Peer review / responsibility
for the reviewers:
- Judgments should be objective;
- reviewers should have no conflict
of interest with respect to the
research, the authors and/or the
research funders;
- reviewers should point out relevant
published work which is not yet
cited;
- reviewed articles should be treated
confidentially.
4. Editorial responsibilities:
- e.g. editors have complete responsibility
and authority to reject/accept an
article;
- editors should have no conflict
of interest with respect to articles
they reject/accept;
- only accept a paper when reasonably
certain;
- when errors are found, promote
publication of correction or retraction;
- preserve anonymity of reviewers.
5. Publishing ethics issues
- Monitoring/safeguarding publishing
ethics by editorial board;
- Guidelines for retracting articles;
- Maintain the integrity of the
academic record;
- Preclude business needs from compromising
intellectual and ethical standards;
- Always be willing to publish corrections,
clarifications, retractions and
apologies when needed.
- no plagiarism, no fraudulent data.
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