Instructions to Authors

Thank you for contributing to The MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences. Please read the instructions carefully and observe all the directions given. Failure to do so may result in unnecessary delays in publishing your article.

MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences is the official scientific journal of MetaScience Press Publisher in partnership with UNESP - São Paulo State University, Institute of Biosciences, Humanities and Exact Sciences (Ibilce), São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, Brazil, and aims to publish articles that contribute to the improvement and development of the practice, research, and training in medical education, and related specialties.

The journal publishes human and animal studies. Public health and epidemiologic studies relevant to humans and animals, and investigations that employ epigenetic, genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic approaches are encouraged.

The MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences is published Ahead of Print and publishes quarterly, in February, May, August, and November, and publishes Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Letters to the Editor, and Consensus on nutrition and nutrology. Manuscripts must be prepared following the «Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals» developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors available at http://icmje.org/. All submissions follow a double-blind peer-review process. Manuscripts can be submitted free of charge through the MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Science online submission website: https://mednext.zotarellifilhoscientificworks.com/index.php/mednext.

The MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences also publishes supplements. The symposium organizer needs to provide the topic and content of the symposium to the Editorial Office, including title, location, and date of the meeting; the names and affiliations of potential guest editors; the sponsor(s) of the meeting; the sponsor(s) of the publication; and the pro- gram from the meeting along with the names of the speakers. After that, the individual articles will be submitted to anonymous peer review of each article. To be considered for publication, supplement articles must be received within 3 months of each symposium or workshop.

The MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences encourages publication of preprint articles on public platforms, such as medRxiv (the preprint server for Health Sciences), Preprints, SciELO Preprints, EmeRI, and Authorea, so that, if applicable, they are discussed openly, before to be published."

Peer Reviewing Process

The journal follows a double-blind peer-review process where the author does not get to know the identity of the reviewer but the reviewer knows about the author.

At least two random reviewers based on their technical and clinical expertise are assigned by the Editor in Chief on each manuscript and the decision is taken based on the comparative reviews that the manuscript receives during the review process.

 

Manuscripts And Abstracts Format

The manuscripts must be written in English in an editable format and must have Abstracts and Keywords in English.

Original article: The text should have up to 6.500 words, not including references and tables. It should have up to 5 tables and/or figures. The number of references should not exceed 40. Their structure should contain the following:

Short article: The text should have up to 2.000 words document, not including references and tables. A brief document presenting the preliminary (or partial) results of original scientific or technological research that usually requires quick diffusion. Their structure should contain the following:

Experimental Research: Full-length reports of completed basic or cadaveric research reported following the Reporting Guidelines stated above. The manuscript must be no more than 4,000 words (excluding references) and contain the following a structured Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Theory/Calculation, Discussion, Conclusion, Appendices, and References. Authors are encouraged to publish additional material (for instance, large tables, figures with forest plots, data from subgroup analyses, etc.) as Supplemental Digital Content. Also, it's necessary to declare acknowledgments; funding; ethical approval; and declaration of conflict of interest.

Case report or Case series: A document that presents the description of a specific case. Includes a review of the topic on similar cases. The text should have up to 1.500 words document, not including references and tables. Their structure should contain the following:

Letters to the editor: The text should have up to 1.000 words document, not including references and tables. Critical, analytical, or interpretive positions on documents published in the journal, interesting topics, or articles published in other journals, which in the opinion of the Editor constitute an important contribution to the community. Their structure should contain the following:

Editorial: These discuss issues of importance to medical science that are not directly related to published material. Editorials are usually invited. Editorials should not exceed 4,000 words. Please include a title page giving all authors' names, addresses, email addresses, phone and fax numbers, as well as an Acknowledgement statement.

Correspondence: A letter to the Editor that raises issues of importance to medical sciences and is concerning an article recently published in the journal. If accepted, the letter is sent to the authors of the article who have an opportunity to respond. Letters should not exceed 750 words. The title should reflect the content of the letter and not be titled the same as the targeted article. Please include a title page giving the author's name, address, email address, and phone number, as well as an Acknowledgement statement. Correspondence should have only one table or figure, three authors, and five references.

Special Numbers: organized after authorization by the Editor-in-chief.

Graphical abstract

Although a graphical abstract is optional, its use is encouraged as it draws more attention to the online article. The graphical abstract should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Preferred file types: TIFF, JPEG, EPS, or MS Office files.

Registration of Research

The World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki 2013 states in article 35: 'Every research study involving human subjects must be registered in a publicly accessible database before recruitment of the first subject'. All types of research studies involving human participants should be registered prospectively (but failing that retrospectively). Once registered, you will need to submit your assigned Unique Identifying Number (UIN) from the registry as a mandatory part of your submission.

All authors are required to register clinical trials with the Data Providers of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), available at: https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform, or ReBEC (Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry), available at: https://ensaiosclinicos.gov.br/, or other similar data providers when approved by the national ethics committee and before selecting patients for research.

Also, all authors are required to register systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses in the PROSPERO database, available at: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, preferably before starting the eligibility criteria application procedures, presenting the registration number in the database at the end of the summary. article and in the area of materials and methods.

Reporting Guidelines

Compliance with the relevant reporting guidelines is mandatory for submission of the following guidelines. You need to: 1. Submit a completed checklist, indicating the page numbers where compliance was achieved 2. Mention in your methods section that the research is being reported in line with the relevant guidelines which should be named and cited.

Randomised Controlled Trials

All randomized controlled trials submitted for publication in MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart and ensure that all elements in the CONSORT checklist are covered. A copy of the CONSORT checklist must be uploaded as supplemental material. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information.

Systematic Reviews

Systematic reviews should be reported following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Guidelines (The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews) and must include the flow diagram as a figure and the checklist as supplemental material (https://prisma-statement.org/PRISMAStatement/Checklist.aspx). Please also upload a completed AMSTAR 2 checklist to aid the methodological quality of your article: https://amstar.ca/Amstar_Checklist.php or https://amstar.ca/docs/AMSTAR-2.pdf.

Cohort, Case-control, and Cross-sectional studies

Cohort, Case-control, and Cross-sectional studies should all be compliant with the STROCCS statement (Strengthening the reporting of cohort studies in surgery). Please see www.strocssguideline.com and STROCSS 2019 Guideline: Strengthening the reporting of cohort studies in surgery. Each study type has its checklist and should be uploaded as a supplemental file.

Diagnostic, Quality Improvement, and Qualitative studies

Diagnostic Studies should be reported following the STARD statement criteria (Standards for the Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies) and must include the flow diagram and checklist. Please see (https://www.equator-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/STARD-2015-flow-diagram.pdf and https://www.equator-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/STARD-2015-checklist.pdf.

Quality Improvement studies should comply with the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) criteria: http://squire-statement.org.

Qualitative studies require the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) checklist, please see: http://intqhc.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/6/349.long

Health Economic Evaluation

Health Economic Evaluation studies should conform to the CHEERS statement: http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1049.pdf%2Bhtml

Tumour Marker Prognostic Study

Tumour Marker Prognostic studies should be reported following the REMARK criteria: https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/reporting-recommendations-for-tumour-marker-prognostic-studies-remark/

Before and After Studies

Before and After studies measure particular characteristics of a population or group of individuals at the end of an event or intervention, compare them with those characteristics before the event or intervention: and then gauge the effects of the event or intervention. These studies should conform to the STROCCS statement www.strocssguideline.com.

Experimental Animal Studies

Animal studies must be reported by the ARRIVE guidelines (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) and must include the checklist as supplemental material. An example of a completed checklist can be found at http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/page.asp?id=1357. (The example checklist is based on an original publication by Kilkenny C, Browne WJ, Cuthill IC, Emerson M, Altman DG (2010) Improving Bioscience Research Reporting: The ARRIVE Guidelines for Reporting Animal Research. PLoS Biol 8(6): e1000412. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000412). The institutional protocol number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article.

Qualitative Surveys

Qualitative Surveys should be reported following the following criteria:

SRQR Guidelines http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/srqr/. For synthesis of qualitative research: http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/entreq/.

Interviews and Focus Groups - COREQ - http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/coreq/

Case Report and Case Series

All case reports should follow the CARE guidelines (https://www.care-statement.org/), and all case series should follow the PROCESS guidelines (www.processguideline.com) and submit a completed guideline checklist which must be uploaded as supplemental material. Please ensure you state that the work has been reported in line with the guideline criteria.

Financial Support and Competing Interests

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. A financial disclosure questionnaire must be completed by the corresponding author on behalf of all co-authors at the initial submission. The primary purpose of the disclosure section is to determine whether the authors have received any commercial financial support that could create a conflict of interest. In addition to monetary interests, a potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that a relationship (such as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties) affects his or her scientific judgment. Please review ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals at the following link: http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest.

In addition to completing the financial disclosure questionnaire, authors must clearly state all relevant conflicts of interest in our Author Disclosure Form, which must be submitted with the manuscript files. Please list all disclosures under each of the following headings:

• Ethical approval
• Patient or volunteer consent
• Sources of funding
• Author contribution
• Conflict of interest disclosure
• Research registration unique identifying number
• Guarantor

If any of the disclosures are not relevant to your manuscript, please state so underneath the heading.

CRediT

The Journal has integrated CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) in the editorial manager workflow system. CRediT allows researchers to identify manuscript contributions roles during submission that go beyond just name identification. CRediT enables more transparency to the published work and allows authors to receive credit for individual contributions to the manuscript.

During submission when a corresponding author adds additional authors to the author list, they can select each individual author's contribution roles from a list of 14 selections. More than one contribution can be selected for each author.

Role	Definition
Conceptualization	Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Data curation	Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data, and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
Formal analysis	Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Funding acquisition	Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation	Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
Methodology	Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
Project administration	Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Resources	Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Software	Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Supervision	Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Validation	Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Visualization	Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
Writing – original draft	Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing – review & editing	Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary, or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

Ownership/Permissions

All figures submitted must be owned solely by the author(s). For Figures not meeting this requirement, authors must obtain permission for the use of the figure by MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences. Obtaining this permission is the sole responsibility of the author(s). Credit must be included in the figure legend for all figures being printed with permission.

These requirements apply to the following materials:

• Previously published materials such as figures and adapted tables or direct quotations of more than 50 words require permission from copyright holder (usually the original publisher).
• Unpublished data (i.e., from a personal conversation or a manuscript in preparation) require permission from the appropriate investigator.
• Photographs revealing unmasked faces require permission from the subject(s) of the photograph. If subject- or patient-consent cannot be reached, photographs must be unidentifiable.

Product Information

Medications, materials, and devices must be identified by full non-proprietary name as well as brand name if appropriate, and the manufacturer's name. Place this information in parentheses in the text, not in a footnote.

Retractions

MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and also refers to the ICMJE advice on Scientific Misconduct, Expressions of Concern, and Retraction as well as on Overlapping Publications.

General Guidelines

• You must submit a digital copy of your manuscript. Hard-copy submissions are not accepted.
• Keep the format of your manuscript simple and clear. We will set your manuscript according to our style - do not try to “design” the document.
• The manuscript, including the title page, abstract and keywords, text, references, figure captions, and tables should be typewritten, double-spaced in 12-point Arial font with double-spaced, with 2 cm margins justified.
• Each figure should be saved as a separate file. Do not embed figures within the manuscript file. This requires special handling by MetaScience Press’s Production Department.
• Keep abbreviations to a minimum and be sure to explain all of them the first time they are used in the text.
• The manuscripts should be written in English.
• The authors should use Système International (SI) measurements. For clarity, non-metric equivalents may be included in parentheses following the SI measurements.
• Use generic names for drugs. You may cite proprietary names in parentheses along with the name and location of the manufacturer.
• Credit suppliers and manufacturers of equipment, drugs, and other brand-name material mentioned in the manuscript within parentheses, giving the company name and primary location.
• The papers will be submitted to 2 peer reviewers appointed by the Editor-in-chief. Within the next 60 days, the authors will be informed about the acceptance of the material.
• Once accepted, articles might be subject to minor corrections following the editorial rules. Any changes in form, style, or interpretation must be authorized by the authors.
• The reviewers might suggest changes before the manuscript publication.
• In case of manuscript rejection, the corresponding author will receive a letter containing the reviewers’ comments on the manuscript.
• Authors are instructed to deposit research data in open access data repositories following standards that guarantee authorship, use and citation of data.

 

Final correction

The PDF of the accepted manuscripts will be sent to the corresponding author for approval. The final version must be sent back to the editor in two weeks. If the editor does not receive the corrected proofs in 2 weeks, the manuscript will be published, even with no final approval of the authors.

 

Ethics standards

No data or image identifying a patient can be used without formal consent. Also, studies using human beings or animal trials must follow ethical standards from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors – ICMJE, as well as approval of the original institution’s Ethics Committee; conflicts of interest must have an ICMJE form filled in by all authors (available at: http://icmje.org/); commercial marks should be avoided; authors are the sole responsible for opinions and concepts in the published articles, as well as for the reference accuracy.

 

Authorization Letter

The corresponding author should send a letter authorizing the publication, signed by all co-authors, ensuring the uniqueness of the publication, ie, the article should not be posted on other news outlets, not be available online. Articles already published in other media should say when and where they were accepted for publication.

 

Standards for article structure

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments to contributors may be cited at the end of the article, before references.

Funding

Indication of research funding sources (even that the articles have not been funded) may be cited at the end of the article, before references.

Format of presentation Title Page

Title

The article title should be short, clear, and concise. When necessary, one can use a subtitle title (with a maximum of 50 characters including spaces). The title must be written in English.

Authors

The author’s full name should come just below the title with the highest degree and affiliation of each author.

Name of Institution

The name of the institution where the work was carried out must be cited as the author’s affiliation. Regarding studies presented in meetings, conferences, or congress, the name of the event should be cited.

Conflict of Interest Statement (if any):

All authors (including corresponding and coauthors associated with the manuscript) must make a formal statement at the time of submission indicating any potential conflict of interest that might constitute an embarrassment to any of the authors if it were not to be declared and were to emerge after publication. Such conflicts might include but are not limited to, shareholding in or receipt of a grant or consultancy fee from a company whose product features in the submitted manuscript or which manufactures a competing product. Should the article be accepted for publication, this information will be published with the paper.

Types of conflicts include Consulting, Royalties, Research Support, Institutional Support, Ownership, Stock/Options, Speakers Bureau, and Fellowship Support. Any commercial entity whose products are described, reviewed, evaluated, or compared in the manuscript, except for those disclosed in the Acknowledgments section, are potential conflicts.

This journal follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and an ICMJE disclosure of potential conflicts of interest (COI) form must be submitted for each author at the time of manuscript submission. Forms must be submitted even if there is no conflict of interest. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy before submission.

A conflict of interest statement must also be included in the manuscript after any "Acknowledgements" and "Funding" sections and should summarize all aspects of any conflicts of interest included on the ICMJE form. If there is no conflict of interest, authors must include 'Conflict of Interest: none declared'.

Please click https://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/ of interest to download a Conflict of Interest form. The disclosure of information is important in article processing. If the provided forms are incomplete or missing, it can cause delays in publishing the article.

 

Informed Consent

The journal adheres to the principles outlined in the Helsinki Declaration and holds that all reported research conducted with human participants should be conducted following such principles. Reports describing data obtained from research conducted on human participants must contain a statement in the Methods section indicating approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The authors should also indicate whether or not individual consent for the study was obtained, or whether it was waived.

 

Conflicts arising from papers authored by Editorial Board Members

The journal evaluates any submissions from the members of the editorial board purely on the merit of the clinical content presented as it does for any other article coming from authors globally. All the articles including articles from Editorial Board members are evaluated via a double-blind peer review process, which will ensure that the information of the author (s) is not revealed to the reviewers. In doing so, the journal ensures there is no conflict of interests or preferences and the selection of articles is purely on its clinical content merit, thus ensuring the best ethical standards and practices of peer review are maintained.

 

Authorship

Authorship will be based on the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE): 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the job; AND 2. Write the work or critically review it for important intellectual content; 3. Final approval of the version to be published; 4. Agreement to be responsible for all aspects of the engagement to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or completeness of any portion of the engagement are properly investigated and resolved. In the case of collective authorship, The names of those responsible for the work will be included followed by “and the Group ...” when all the group members consider themselves co-authors of the work. If you want to include the name of the group, although not all its members are considered co-authors, the formula used will be to mention the responsible authors followed by “on behalf of the Group ...” or “by the Group ...”.

In any case, the names and institutions of the group members will be included in an annex at the end of the manuscript. The authors will be noted both on the first page of the title and in the Add/Edit/Remove/Author section. Declaration that they have read and approved the manuscript and that the requirements for authorship have been met. The Journal declines any responsibility for possible conflicts derived from the authorship of the works published in the Journal.

 

Publishing Permissions

The authors are responsible for obtaining the appropriate permissions to partially reproduce material (text, tables, or figures) from other publications.

These permissions must be requested both from the author and from the Publishing House that has published said material.

Publishing permission is required from the institution that has funded the research. Declaration that the content of the article is original and that it has not been previously published sent or submitted to any other publication, in its entirety or any of its parts. The authors should be aware that not revealing that the material submitted for publication has already been totally or partially published constitutes a serious breach of scientific ethics. Likewise, authors who reproduce previously published materials in their article (text, tables, or figures) are responsible for obtaining the appropriate permissions to reproduce said materials in the journal. The authors must have obtained written authorization from the author and the publisher that has published this material and send a copy of them together with the article to the Journal.

 

Redundant or duplicate publication

The editors and MedNEXT Journal of Medical and Health Sciences combat plagiarism, double publication, and scientific misconduct with the software CrossCheck powered by iThenticate. Your manuscript may be subject to an investigation and retraction if plagiarism is suspected.

The journal does not accept previously published material and will not consider manuscripts that are simultaneously submitted to other journals, or redundant or duplicate publications, that is, articles that substantially overlap with another already published, printed, or in the electronic media. Authors must inform in the cover letter about previous submissions or publications of the same work, in whole or in part, that may be considered redundant or duplicate publication.

These restrictions do not apply to published abstracts of communications, papers, or conferences presented at national or international scientific meetings.

 

Mailing Address

Repeat the name of the corresponding author and add your full address, phone and email.

 

References

Limit to 40 references for original articles, 25 for case reports, and 100 for review articles. References should be arranged in the text in the order they are cited and presented in numerical order of appearance in the text as superscript numbers. The references should be the most updated in the area. References of textbooks with more than 5 years should be limited to those that are fundamental. Mention all authors up to a total of 6. If the article has more than 6 authors, cite only the first 6 followed by et al (preceded by a comma). When the quote is an article already accepted for publication, include the phrase “in process of publication,” indicating the journal and year. Unpublished results or studies presented at medical conferences are not recommended for citation.

If the reference is an organization its name should be cited. Example: World Health Organization.

 

Manuscript Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted through the online submission website: https://mednext.zotarellifilhoscientificworks.com/index.php/mednext.

Use the guidelines from Instructions to Authors to prepare your submission. All correspondence should be with the Regional Editorial Offices. If a paper is accepted, the Production Office will correspond with the author via e-mail.

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission‘s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors who do not adhere to these guidelines.

• The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
• Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
• The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
• The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which are found in About the Journal.

Privacy Statement

          The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Repositories

Authors are instructed to deposit research data in open-access data repositories following standards that guarantee authorship, use, and citation of data.