Instructions to Authors

The word count for all article types includes the main body of text, notes, references, and the headers of tables and figures. It does not include the title page, Abstract, or Supporting Information. A manuscript that exceeds the word limit will be returned without review.

Manuscripts submitted to JMNI should fall into one of the following categories:

• Original Articles:

  These report new and important experimental or clinical information. Manuscripts are limited to 6000 words.

• Case Reports:

  Presents brief description of a single case or small case series of interesting diagnostic or therapeutic problems, unusual complications or unexplained observations. Manuscripts are limited to 2500 words.

• Review articles:

  They must present a review of existing literature, consolidate old ideas and may suggest new ones. Manuscripts are limited to 6000 words.

Perspective articles:

Perspective articles highlight new ideas. They re-examine the available evidence in light of concepts that deviate markedly from conventional wisdom in a field. Perspective manuscripts are limited to 4000 words. If more than 4000 words are necessary to explain your idea, you have probably written a review.

• Proceedings:

  These are the written records of presentations made at a conference. They are usually invited by the conference organizer or a JMNI Editor. Manuscripts should not exceed 2000 words. If you wish to publish the proceedings of your conference, please contact us at jmni@hpub.eu

• Editorials:

  Editorials on special topics should be limited to 1000 words.

• Letters to the Editor:

  Letters commenting on published articles will be published at the discretion of the Editorial Board. They should be brief (up to 500 words) and directly related to a recently published article.

• Clinical Quizzes:

  This section presents a single interesting case with a brief comment regarding the final diagnosis and/or therapeutic approach, as well as a self-monitoring set of queries. They include a brief description of the Case (up to 350 words), a Commentary, a set of up to four Questions with multiple choices (up to 4 answers), and a Critique explaining the single correct answer (up to 80 words for each answer). Manuscripts are limited to a total of 1300 words, references should not exceed five, and no Abstract is required. They could also include up to two Tables or Figures or one of each (inclusion of Figures is encouraged).
  Please note that the word count limitation for clinical quizzes refers to: • Main text (description of the case and commentary sections), • figure and table legends.
  The word count does not include: • Title page, • tables, • references, • questions and • critique.

JMNI has adopted the requirements for authorship and acknowledgment of contributors recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Manuscripts must adhere to the following requirements:

• All individuals who meet all four criteria must be listed as authors.

• The respective roles of each author must be summarized in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

• One or more of the authors must accept responsibility for the integrity of the data analysis and that author/those authors must be identified as such in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

• All persons who have made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as data collection, analysis, writing, or editing assistance), but who do not fulfill the 4 requirements for authorship, must be named, with their specific contributions, in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

• The authors must obtain the permission of all those who are identified in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

• One author will serve as the primary correspondent (corresponding author) for the manuscript; the corresponding author is responsible for transmitting the editors’ comments to his or her co-authors.

JMNI follows ICMJE guidelines for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. Every article published in JMNI includes a “Disclosures” section. All authors are required to fill out the electronic ICMJE disclosure form. Disclosure forms must be submitted together with the manuscript when it is initially submitted to JMNI.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript has not been previously reported or published and that the manuscript has not been, and will not be, submitted to another journal while under review at JMNI.

Research carried out with human subjects must comply with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki — Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body that gave approval. When reporting clinical trials, the information required by the CONSORT checklist, as well as a flow diagram in CONSORT format must be provided (http://www.consort-statement.org/).

Approval for research in animals by the appropriate institutional animal care and oversight committee must be indicated in the Methods, along with full husbandry and experimental details (e.g. strain, sex, replicate number) as indicated by the Animal Research Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) checklist (https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines).

Authors submitting manuscripts to JMNI agreed that, if accepted, all articles will be published under the terms of Creative Common License CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) This means that the articles will be immediately free for everyone to read, and users are free to: copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform, and build upon the material, under the following terms:

• Attribution: Users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Users may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses them or their use.

• NonCommercial: Users may not use the material for commercial purposes.

• ShareAlike: If users remix, transform, or build upon the material, they must distribute their contributions under the same license as the original.

All material published in JMNI regarding medical procedures, choice of drugs and drug dosages represents the opinions of the authors and should not be construed to reflect the opinions of the Editors or the Publisher. No responsibility is assumed by JMNI, the Editors, the Publisher or ISMNI for any injury or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in JMNI. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, independent verification of diagnosis and drug dosages should be made. Although all advertising material is expected to conform to ethical (medical) standards, their inclusion in JMNI does not constitute a guarantee or endorsement of the quality or value of such product or of the claims made for it by its manufacturer.

Manuscripts must be submitted on the JMNI submission and review web site, at www.manuscriptlink.com/journals/jmni.

Please complete and submit along with your manuscript the following documents:

• Declaration Form
• ICMJE Conflict of Interest Form. All authors are required to fill out and submit the electronic ICMJE disclosure form along with their manuscript.

Manuscripts must be submitted as a DOC or DOCX file, and formatted in 12-point, Times New Roman font, doubled-spaced with margins of either 1 inch or 2.5 cm. The manuscript file may include tables and figure legends. Figures must be submitted separately (see “Figures” section below for more instruction). All manuscript pages must be numbered consecutively in the bottom right-hand corner, including references, tables, and figure legends.

Manuscripts should be prepared in the following format:

• Title Page:
  

  It should include the article title, a short running title (no more than 80 characters), the list of authors (give first name, middle initial and last name of each author), and the complete name of the department and institution of each author (affiliations should appear in numerical order at first mention). In addition, the title page should contain the address, telephone number, fax number and E-mail address of the corresponding author.

• Abstract:
  

  An abstract is required for original articles, case reports, review articles and perspective articles. The abstract of original articles should be written in a structured format using the following headings: Objectives, Methods, Results, Conclusions. The abstracts of articles not presenting original data should not adhere to this format. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words long.

• Key Words:
  

  Five key words should be listed at the bottom of the abstract page.

• Text:
  

  The text of original articles (but not necessarily of other types of manuscripts) should be structured as follows:

• Introduction: Should clearly and concisely review the rationale for the study and identify what issues were addressed in the study. It should clearly place the report within the area being studied. Do not repeat the results and conclusions in the Introduction.

• Materials and Methods: This section should carefully describe the materials and methods used including sample size and statistical approaches. Commonly used techniques should not be described in detail but should be referred to citing appropriate references. However, unique experiments should be described in adequate detail to allow repetition by others. Please provide the manufacturer name of all products mentioned in the paper. It is not necessary to specify the geographical location of the manufacturer.

• Results: This section should succinctly state the results without any lengthy discussion or interpretation of individual data. Statistical tests should be clearly defined and statistical significance should be shown in both figures and tables by superscripts of a, b, c, etc.

• Discussion: This section should summarize but not repeat the Results. It should distinguish between logical explanations of the results reported and hypotheses drawn from the results. The Discussion should end with a succinct summary of the data and conclusions. Where possible and reasonable, some conclusion should be made about the wider implications of the study findings.

• Acknowledgements:

  Authors should acknowledge in the manuscript all support for the work, including funding, equipment and drugs. Individuals should be acknowledged before institutions. The acknowledgement should specify the nature of the contribution of each individual or organisation that is mentioned in this section.

• References:

  References should be listed consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. In the text, they should be indicated by upper case numbers. Use the Index Medicus reference style (see: "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals". N Engl J Med 1997;336:309-15). Accuracy of reference data is the responsibility of the authors. Examples:

  • Journal article: Fricke O, Schoenau E. Examining the developing skeletal muscle: Why, what and how? J Musculoskelet Neuronal Interact 2005;5(3):225-31.

  • Chapter in book: Rittweger J. Physiological targets of artificial gravity: adaptive processes in bone. In: Clement G, Bukley A, editors. Artificial Gravity. Berlin: Springer; 2007. p. 191-231.

  • Book: Martin RB, Burr DB, Sharkey NA. Skeletal tissue Mechanics. New York: Springer; 1998.

• Tables:

  Each table must be on a separate page in double spacing, numbered consecutively and have a title. All abbreviations should be defined in the legend. The table should be understandable independently of the text. Non-editable files (e.g. PDFs, JPEG or TIFF images, or images of text boxes in PowerPoint) are not suitable formats for tables. We recommend that you create your tables with the equivalent feature of 'Insert Table' in your word processing application.

• Figures:

  Figures should be submitted close to publication size. Most figures will be set at single column width (approximately 8 cm). For the initial submission of a manuscript, Figures can be included in the Word or pdf document that also contains the other parts of the manuscript. For final submission, original figure files need to be submitted. Please adhere to the following guidelines when submitting digital art for publication:

  • Line art such as bar graphs, must be submitted in TIFF, PowerPoint or EPS format. The minimum resolution for line art is 900 dpi (dots per inch). Use clean black lines, preferably no finer than 1 point. For vector EPS images, embed fonts or convert to outlines.

  • Grayscale (black and white) or color figures must be submitted in TIFF, PowerPoint or EPS format. The minimum resolution is 300 dpi. For color art, please use the CMYK color scheme.

• Figure legends:

  A separate list of figure legends should be supplied at the end of the manuscript. Please submit figures that are close to publication size to insure that clarity and legibility will be maintained when the figure is reproduced. Figure legends should be brief and should not restate information that is already contained in the Materials and Methods section.

  The authors must obtain permission to reproduce figures, tables, text, and abstracts from previously published material. Written permission must be obtained from the original copyright holder (generally the publisher or the sponsoring society, not the author) of the journal or book concerned. An appropriate credit line should be included in the figure legend or table footnote, and full publication information in the reference list. Written permission must be obtained from the author of any unpublished material cited from other laboratories, and should accompany the manuscript.

...on the JMNI submission and review web site www.manuscriptlink.com/ journals/jmni

When submitting a manuscript, please suggest possible reviewers. When recommending reviewers, authors should avoid naming more than one scientist from any one institution or from closely related scientists/institutions. For each reviewer, please provide name of institution, and e-mail address.

JMNI is a peer reviewed journal which adopts the single blind review process. Each abstract is checked for scope by the Editor-in-Chief, who then decides whether the manuscript will be assigned to an Associate Editor or returned because it is either not within the journal scope or represents an insufficient advance in scientific knowledge. After assignment to an appropriate Associate Editor, the manuscript is managed by that Associate Editor. If the manuscript is acceptable to the Associate Editor, several reviewers are chosen by the Associate Editor and the manuscript enters the automatically controlled review process.

A copy of each reviewer's report is sent to the Associate Editor, who will then make an overall recommendation, informed by the reviews, to the Editor-in-Chief, who then contacts the authors on behalf of the journal. Possible decisions are:

• Accept: this means no changes are necessary and the manuscript will enter the production phase as is

• Minor Revision: minor text changes which only require a final check from the Associate Editor before entering the accept decision

• Major Revision: requires major re-work, sometimes including additional experiments and a full re-review of the work after submission of changes

• Reject: cannot be resubmitted to JMNI.

When resubmitting a revised manuscript, authors MUST respond to ALL the comments made by the reviewer(s) with a point by point rebuttal in a separate document. Authors should also list and comment on any other changes made to the original manuscript. In order to expedite the processing of the revised manuscript, please be as specific as possible in your response to the reviewer(s). You will be unable to make your revisions on the originally submitted version of the manuscript. Instead, revise your manuscript within the document by either using the track changes mode in MS Word, or by highlighting changes in bold and red. The onus is on the author(s) to make the changes as obvious as possible and easy for the reviewers to re-review the manuscript and assess the changes.

A publication fee of 250 euro is charged for accepted manuscripts. After a manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author will be invoiced. Manuscripts will be published only after the publication fee has been received.

Details in the text, including references and figures are checked before a final page-proof version is produced in pdf format. This pdf proof is then sent, by e-mail, to the corresponding author for final checking. Only correction of minor errors and typographical mistakes are allowed at this stage. Any corrections must be returned within 48 hours. If no response is received after 7 working days the article will be published as it stands.

JMNI manuscript submission documents

Please download and complete these documents and include them with your manuscript submission:

Please submit your manuscripts...