Preparation of Research Articles

Title Page

The title page should include the full title, all author(s) name(s), institution(s) and/or department(s), correspondence author’s contact information (telephone number and email address), and financial support.

Title (< 26 Chinese characters, < 20 English words): The title should be to the point and present the difference from other papers. It should be diversified, active in presentation mood. The interrogative, rhetoric, rhetorical sentences, and title accompanied by subtitle are encouraged, not limited to the indicative mood.

Authorship: Authorship credit should be in accordance with the standard proposed by international Committee of Medical Journal Editors, based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3. There should be less than 6 authors from one institutional affiliation. Both the first author and corresponding author are required to provide name, year of birth, highest academic degree earned, professional titles, research direction, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address. Authors from China should spell their names using Bopomofo. List the author(s) name(s) as follows: initials and/or first name, middle name or initial(s) and full family name. Separate different authors with commas and no full stops after initials, e.g. Wang Li-sha, Liu Kun, Benjamin Shaw. List author(s) job titles and postcodes.

Corresponding author: The name, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript. (The “corresponding author;” this author may or may not be the “guarantor” for the integrity of the study). The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Institution/Affiliation: Include authors’ department, institution, city with postal code, and state/country. Provinces and cities in China are spelled using Bopomofo. “陕西省”and “内蒙古自治区” should be translated into Shaanxi Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Abstract

An abstract of 300-400 Chinese characters (≤ 250 English words) are commended using the following headings: BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVE, METHODS, RESULTS AND CONCLUSION (www.cjter.com ).

Key Words

Please list 8-10 key words which reflect the content of the study.

Subject Headings

MeSH terms (3-5).

Funding

Format for financial support: the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30221803

Abbreviations

A phrase has > 5 Chinese characters, which appears more than 5 times in full text. Spell out the term on first use and add full English name and the abbreviation in parentheses.

Introduction

Provide a context or background for the study (that is, the nature of the problem and its significance). Review briefly the pertinent literature. To lay stress on innovative contents based on previous work. State the specific purpose or research objective of, or hypothesis tested by, the study or observation. Both the main and secondary objectives should be clear, and any prespecified subgroup analyses should be described. Provide only directly pertinent references, and do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported.

Materials/Subjects and Methods

The material and methods section should be brief but sufficient to allow other investigator to repeat the research. It should provide the following information to readers, which includes:

• Design: Scientific research design type.

• Time and setting: Time and precise place for experimentation.

• Animals/Subjects: General data of experimental animals or subjects involved. Selection and Description of Participants: Describe your selection of the observational or experimental participants (patients or laboratory animals, including controls) clearly, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population. Because the relevance of such variables as age and sex to the object of research is not always clear, authors should explain their use when they are included in a study report—for example, authors should explain why only participants of certain ages were included or why women were excluded. The guiding principle should be clarity about how and why a study was done in a particular way. When authors use such variables as race or ethnicity, they should define how they measured these variables and justify their relevance.

• Methods: Present main experimental procedures, describe repeatable experimental methods, and cite appropriately. Specify the manufacture’s name and address (city and state/country) of materials/equipment used. The Methods section should include only information that was available at the time the plan or protocol for the study was being written; all information obtained during the study belongs in the Results section. Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer’s name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow others to reproduce the results. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods (see below); provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well-known; describe new or substantially modified methods, give the reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration. Authors submitting review manuscripts should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.

• Main outcome measures: Indicate the primary study outcome measurement(s), as described in the experimental protocol.

• Statistical analysis: Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Avoid relying solely on statistical hypothesis testing, such as P values, which fail to convey important information about effect size. References for the design of the study and statistical methods should be to standard works when possible (with pages stated). Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. Specify the computer software used.

Results

Present your results in logical sequence in the text, tables, and figures. Describe from major to minor findings in the sequence of histological, pathological, immunohistochemical, imaging, ethological examination results.

Use illustrations (e.g. graphs, drawing or photographs) where appropriate. Graphs and drawing should be self-explanatory. Do not repeat all the data in the tables or figures in the text; emphasize or summarize only the most important observations. Extra or supplementary materials and technical detail can be placed in an appendix where they will be accessible online but will not interrupt the flow of the text. Insert some photographs respective to histomorphological or pathological changes.

Discussion

Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them in the context of the totality of the best available evidence. Do not repeat in detail data or other information given in the “Introduction” or the “Results” section.

For experimental studies, it is useful to begin the discussion by briefly summarizing the main findings, then explore possible mechanisms or explanations for these findings, compare and contrast the results with other relevant studies, state the limitations of the study, and explore the implications of the findings for future research and for clinical practice.

Link the conclusions with the goals of the study but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not adequately supported by the data. Avoid claiming priority or alluding to work that has not been completed.

State new hypotheses when warranted, but label them clearly as such.

References

References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned. List all authors/editors but if there are more than three, list the first three plus et al. Submitted articles should have a minimum of 30 references (≥ 30 for original articles and Meta-analysis, ≥ 40 for review papers), 50% of which should be published within recent 3 years.

To minimize citation errors, authors are responsible for verifying all references using either an electronic bibliographic source, such as PubMed or print copies from original sources. If you use a Chinese journal or book which is not indexed in Medline, then use Bopomofo to spell the name.

Journal article: Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347(4):284-287.

Entire Book: Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, et al. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby, 2002.

Book Chapter: Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, eds. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2002:93-113.

Supplementary

• Acknowledgments: Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these.

• Author contributions: Identify each author’s contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study.

• Conflicts of interest: To prevent potential conflicts of interest from being overlooked or misplaced, this information needs to be part of the manuscript. Print of conflict of interest will be appeared in Supplementary Section of the article published. If there is no conflict of interest, the authors are also required to state that “There are no conflicts of interest to declare.”

• Ethical approval:

• Informed consent:

• Doctor qualifications:

• Qualifications for stem cell therapy:

• Animal ethics: Disposal of experimental animals was in accordance with relevant animal ethical guidelines.

• Plagiarism check: This paper was screened three times using CNKI to verify originality before publication.

• Peer review: This paper was double-blinded and stringently reviewed by expert reviewers in China.

• Author statements:

• Copyrights: All the authors signed a copyright agreement before publication.

• Informed consent: Written informed consent will be obtained from patient’s guardians or clients prior to enrollment in the clinical trial. The study protocol will be approved by the Hospital Ethics Committee prior to the trial.

Figures

Figures and images should be labeled sequentially, numbered and cited in the text. Figure legends should be on a separate sheet titled “Figure legends”. Figures should be referred to specifically in the text of the paper but should not be embedded within the text. If a table or figure has been published before, the authors must obtain written permission to reproduce the material in both print and electronic formats from the copyright owner and submit it with the manuscript.

Use a, b, and c, etc., by alphabetic order of work, if necessary to distinguish between several images appeared in one Figure. Photomicrographs should show magnification and details of any staining techniques used. The area(s) of interest must be clearly indicated with arrows or other symbols.

TIFF and JPEG figure files are acceptable. Figure widths should be no more than 8 cm (single column) and 16 cm (double column). The minimum acceptable resolution is 300 dpi. Line art/charts/graphs should be set in Word or Excel format with compatibility mode.

Figures should be submitted separately as separate files.

Figure legends: Legends must be submitted for all figures. They should be brief and specific, and they should appear on a separate manuscript page after the references. Use scale markers in the image for electron micrographs and indicate. Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.

Tables

Tables are numbered in sequence in Arabic numerals (Table 1, 2, etc.), provided with a heading, and referred to in the text as Table 1, Table 2, etc. They should be self-explanatory and should supplement, rather than duplicate, the material in the text. The material in the tables must be ensured consistent with that cited in the relevant places in the text. Including data in tables rather than text frequently makes it possible to reduce the length of the text.

Tables should be included in the manuscript file after figure legends. A legend for each table must be included, which should provide sufficient detail to be intelligible without reference to the text. Legends must define all symbols and include essential information, such as scale bar dimensions. Rather than stating “See text”, legends should be more specific; for example, “See Results”.

More about house style

Abbreviations: Do not use abbreviations in the title and limit them in the text. Spell out all abbreviations (in parentheses) at first mention in the text, unless it is a standard unit of measure. Certain commonly used abbreviations, such as CT, MRI, DNA, RNA, IgG, ATP, PBS, EDTA, TUNEL, SABC, ABC, MTT, PCR, can be used directly without further mention.

Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible. They are acceptable when they recur > 5 times in a paper (introduction, results and discussion) and Chinese name is > 5 Chinese characters can be used to keep titles short. All the abbreviations in a paper should be spelt out following the key words.

Units: Laboratory values are expressed using conventional units of measure, with relevant Système International (SI) conversion factors expressed secondarily (in parentheses) only at first mention (e.g., conversion from kPa to mm Hg). Blood cells are counted as ×10¹²/L, white cells as ×10⁹/L.

Drug name: Use generic names for drugs and nonproprietary descriptions of products and equipment.

Italics: Genotypes: c-fos, c-myc, etc. Protein produces are set in normal typeface; Biology: Helicobacter pylori, H pylori, E. coli, etc; Latin: in vitro, in situ, et al, etc; Restriction enzymes with the first three letters: EcoRI, Hindl, etc.

Punctuation: Spaces, not commas, should be used to separate thousands and used before and after each unit with the exception of %.

Tense: Use past tense in METHODS and RESULTS (mostly) and present tense in BACKGROUND and CONCLUSION (mostly).

Reporting Guidance

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with ICMJE Recommendation for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals. The following guidelines should be followed when writing an article:

• CONSORT statement (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials): The CONSORT statement is recommended for reporting randomized controlled trials, and allows different types of medical studies to be reported using different article types. The authors are encouraged to complete 25-item checklist in their cover letter. In addition, the registration identification number and registry position of the randomized controlled trial is listed in the last line in the Abstract.

  See http://www.consort-statement.org/ for more information.

• STARD statement (STAndards for the Reporting of Diagnostic accuracy studies): This checklist is recommended for reporting diagnostic accuracy studies.

  See http://www.stard-statement.org/ for more information.

• STREGA statement (STrengthening the REporting of Genetic Associations): These guidelines are recommended for the reporting of genetic association studies.

  See http://www.strega-statement.org/ for more information.

• STROBE statement (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology): These guidelines are recommended for the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology).

  See http://www.strobe-statement.org/ for more information.

• TREND statement (Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Nonrandomized Designs): These guidelines are recommended for the reporting of non-randomized evaluations of behavioral and public health interventions.

  See http://www.cdc.gov/trendstatement/ for more information.

• MOOSE checklist (a Reporting Checklist for Authors, Editors, and Reviewers of Meta-analyses of Observational Studies): This checklist is recommended for meta-analyses of observational studies.

  See https://www.editorial-manager.com/jognn/account/MOOSE.pdf for more information.

• PRISMA statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses): The PRISMA Statement is recommended for the reporting of systematic evaluation and meta-analysis articles.

  See http://www.prisma-statement.org/ for more information.

• Equator Network (standards for Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research): This organization works to improve the reliability and value of reports on medical research studies by promoting transparent and accurate reporting of research studies.

  See http://www.equator-network.org/ for more information.