PEER REVIEW PROCESS
The authors implicitly agree to their paper being peer-reviewed. Papers deemed to be within scope and of a sufficient standard are sent for peer review (single-blind peer-review); papers may then be returned to authors as accepted, for reconsideration after revision, or rejection. The Editorial Board is responsible for the acceptance, rejection, and order of publication of papers.
Reviewers must treat the manuscript as confidential. It should not be retained or copied. Also, reviewers must not share the manuscript with any colleagues without the explicit permission of the editor. Reviewers and editors must not make any personal or professional use of the data, arguments, or interpretations (other than those directly involved in its peer review) prior to publication unless they have the authors’ specific permission or are writing an editorial or commentary to accompany the article.
The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the manuscript without entering the review process in the case that the topic, the contents, the format or ethical aspects are inappropriate. In order to ensure accuracy and transparency, every step of the peer review process is fully documented and recorded. Once accepted, all manuscripts are subjected to copyediting and formatting. The Editor-in-Chief and the Guest Editor will recuse themselves from participating in the review process of any manuscript in which there is a potential or actual competing interest. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the academic quality of the publication process, including acceptance decisions, approval of Guest Editors and Special Issue topics, and appointing new Editorial Board members.
SUBMITION OF THE PAPERS
Articles must be sent to the following e-mail address:segreteria@lriog.it .
ARTICLE TYPES
Special articles – these can be articles solicited by the Editor or Guest Editor or submitted independently to the journal. The feature of the invitation to produce a contribution on a topic identified and requested by the Editor-in-Chief does not a priori constitute the sole requirement for the acceptance and publication of the manuscript produced. The work will be subject to peer review in any case. The high clinical profile must clearly emerge in the setting of the text and in the conclusions, which must highlight a concrete usability of the message that the Author(s) intend to entrust to the text. These are articles in which evidence-based medicine must support the clinical indications. The text must not exceed 5,000 words (single spacing) and may contain a maximum of 8 figures, tables and/or graphs whose publication is guaranteed in the printed edition. Any further 5-6 iconographic contributions will be reserved for the online version. It must be accompanied by an abstract of a maximum of 300 words in Italian and English and must contain 5 keywords, also in Italian and English. Up to 40 bibliographical notes may be indicated. Among the bibliographical notes cited, the Author(s) must indicate 5 as essential for further study of the topic.
Editorial – can deal with articles published in the journal itself or any other topic of expertise and interest. Editorials deal with a topic of current relevance on which the author expresses his or her personal opinion. The editorial must not exceed two pages and does not require an abstract.
Original article – offers an original and innovative contribution to the subject. It must not exceed 5,000 words (single spaced) and may contain a maximum of 6 figures, tables and/or graphs. It must be preceded by an abstract in Italian and English and must contain a maximum of 5 keywords. Up to 40 bibliographical notes can be provided.
Critical review – should discuss a topic of current interest, outline current knowledge of the subject, analyze different opinions regarding the problem discussed, be up-to-date on the latest data in the literature. It must not exceed 6,500 words (single-spaced) and may contain a maximum of 8 figures, tables and/or graphs. It must be preceded by an abstract in Italian and English and must contain a maximum of 5 key words. Up to 50 bibliographical notes can be indicated.
Report – represents an in-depth analysis of an event, study or clinical case. The report must not exceed 3,500 words (single-spaced) and may contain a maximum of 8 figures, tables and/or graphs. It must be preceded by an abstract in Italian and English and must contain a maximum of 5 key words. Up to 20 bibliographical notes may be indicated.
Letter to the Editor – may refer to articles already published in the journal or to particularly interesting observations or scientific data that the authors wish to present to readers in a concise form. It should not exceed 900 words (single-spaced). Text in Italian and English. Figures, abstracts and bibliographical notes are not required.
SECTIONS OF THE MANUSCRIPT
Title
The title must:
depending on the specific case, indicate the type of study conducted, for example:
“A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial”, “X is a risk factor for Y: a case-control study”, “What is the impact of factor X on subject Y: a systematic review” for non-clinical or non-research studies, a description of the content of the article.
– Title in Italian.
– Title in English.
Informations about the author / authors
– The list of full names and institutional addresses must be indicated below the title.
– If a workgroup is to be listed as an author, list the group name as the author.
– Indicate the corresponding author and his e-mail.
Abstract
The abstract should not exceed 300 words. Please keep the use of abbreviations to a minimum and do not cite sources in the abstract.
The abstract must be submitted in italian and english.
The abstract should include the following distinct sections:
– Background – the context and purpose of the study.
– Methods – how the study was conducted and the statistical tests used.
– Results – the main findings.
– Conclusions – brief summary and potential implications
– Registration of clinical trials – if the article reports the results of a study conducted with human participants, it must be properly notified, registered and authorised.
The registration number and date of registration should be indicated in this section. If the study was not registered prospectively (before the first participant was enrolled), retrospective registration should be indicated.
Keywords
3 to 6 keywords, representing the main content of the article.
List of abbreviations
If included in the text, provide a list of abbreviations and their meaning after the abstract and keywords and before the body of the text.
Background
This section should explain the objectives, provide a summary of the existing literature on the subject, the reasons for the study and the contribution the study can potentially make.
Methods
This section should include:
– The aim, concept and design of the study.
– The know-how of the participants or a description of the tools used.
– A clear description of all processes, interventions and comparisons. The use of generic drug names is preferred. Where proprietary trademarks are used in the course of the research, indicate the name of the trademarks in brackets.
– The type of statistical analysis used.
Results
This section should indicate the results of the study, including the results of statistical analysis in the body of the text or alternatively as tables and figures.
Discussion
Section dedicated to the analysis of the implications of the results in the reference context, highlighting the limitations of the study.
Conclusions
State the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study.
STATEMENTS
All manuscripts submitted for evaluation must submit this section, which consists of the sub-sections indicated:
Ethical approval and consent to participate
Manuscripts relating to studies involving human beings must:
– Include a statement clearly stating that the study was approved by the research ethics committee prior to the start of the experiment and that it was conducted in accordance with the principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/ what-we-do / medical-ethics / declaration-of-helsinki /).
– Include the identification details of the ethics committee.
– The name of the chairman of the ethics committee.
– The protocol number that has been assigned by the ethics committee and the date of approval by the ethics committee.
– Include a statement on patient approval and informed consent.
– Precautions to protect patient privacy.
– Permission from patients for posting photographs or other material that could identify them.
Manuscripts relating to animal experiments must:
– Include a statement indicating that the study was approved by the institutional research ethics committee and specifying the animal care guidelines that were followed.
– Include an informed consent statement from the owner for experimental studies involving owned animals.
If the manuscript does not cover the following topics, please insert the words “Not Applicable” for this section.
Authorization to publication
– If the manuscript contains the data of a person in any form, the consent of the person concerned is required for publication.
– In the case of minors, the consent of the parents or legal tutors is required. All case report submissions must receive consent for publication. It is not necessary to send any consents to proceed with the publication, but we may request a copy at any time (even after publication).
If the manuscript does not contain any personal or case report data, please include “Not Applicable” for this section.
Data and material sharing policy
Authors are encouraged to share or make open data that support the results or analyses presented in their article, where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid privacy or security concerns. All manuscripts should include information about the availability of data to support the results presented in the article. Data are defined as the minimum set of data needed to interpret and replicate the results reported in the article and to develop new assessments.
We recognise that it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for example when individual privacy may be compromised, but the availability of data should be indicated in the manuscript along with any possible conditions for access.
Indications of data availability may for instance take one of the following forms (or a combination thereof for multiple datasets):
– The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study can be found in the archive [name], followed by [persistent web link].
– The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the referring author upon reasonable request.
– All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the following previously published article: [indicate article].
– Data sets generated and/or analysed during the study are not publicly available due to [indicate reason], but are available from the referring author upon reasonable request.
– Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the study.
– Data supporting the results of this study are available from [name of third party] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which have been used under licence and are therefore not publicly available. However, the data are available from the authors upon reasonable request with the consent of [name of third party].
If the manuscript does not contain relevant data, please enter “Not applicable” for this section.
Author Disclosure Statements
Competing Interests
A competing interest exists when an individual (or the individual’s institution) has financial or personal relationships that may inappropriately influence his actions. These competing interests may be potential or actual, financial or other.
– All competing interests must be declared in this section.
If the Authors have no competing interests they must still declare “the authors have no competing interests to declare”.
Personal Financial Interests
Stocks or shares in a company that may gain or lose financially from publication of the article; consulting fees or other remuneration from an organization that may gain or lose financially from publication of the article; patents or patent applications that are owned by or licensed to companies/institutions that may gain or lose value from publication of the article.
– All personal financial interests must be declared in this section.
If the Authors have no personal financial interests they must still declare “the authors have no personal financial interests to declare”.
Funding
Research support by organizations that may gain or lose financially from publication of the article. This support includes salary, equipment, supplies, honoraria, reimbursement or prepayment for attending symposia, and other expenses.
– Indicate all funding in support of research by organizations that may gain or lose financially from the publication of the article.
If the Authors have not received funding, they must still declare “the authors have not received funding”.
Employment
Recent (within the past 5 years), current, or anticipated employment by an organization that may gain or lose financially from publication of the article.
– Indicate any recent employment with an organization that may benefit or lose financially from the publication of the article.
If this section is not relevant, please insert “Not Applicable” for this section.
Other Competing Interests
Any personal relationship which may inappropriately affect the integrity of the research reported (by an author) or the objectivity of the review of the manuscript (by a reviewer or Editor), for example, competition between investigators, previous disagreements between investigators, or bias in professional judgment.
– Indicate any other competing interests.
In the absence of other competing interests, please insert the words “No other competing interests”.
Authors’ contributions
This section should specify the individual contributions of the authors of the manuscript. Please use initials to indicate each author’s contribution in this section, e.g.: “Paolo Rossi analysed and interpreted the patient’s data on haematological disease and transplantation. Claudio Guidi performed the histological examination of the kidney and was instrumental in drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
– Indicate author’s contribution.
Acknowledgements
It is possible to indicate in this section those who contributed to the manuscript only after permission has been granted by the authors.
If no one has contributed, please enter “Not applicable” for this section.
GENERAL FORMATTING RULES
Preparation of the main text of the manuscript
– Use double spacing.
– Indicate the numbering of the lines and pages.
– Use units of the S.I. and make sure that the special characters used are embedded in the text to avoid loss after converting the file to PDF format.
– Do not insert page breaks in the manuscript.
File formats
Only manuscripts sent in the following digital formats are accepted:
– Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX).
Illustrations / figures
– The figures must be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text and presented in this order.
– Multi-panel figures (with multiple parts: a, b, c, d etc.) must be presented as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure.
– The figures must be loaded with the correct orientation.
– The titles of the figures (maximum 15 words) and the legends (maximum 300 words) must be indicated in the main manuscript, not in the graphic files.
– Each figure must be cut out in order to minimize any white space that surrounds it.
– Individual files must not exceed 10MB. This file size is more than enough to guarantee a very high quality format.
– Please note that it is the authors’ responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) owned by others and / or which have previously been published elsewhere.
The original source / author must be indicated at the end of the legend of the figure.
– An example of how to indicate a figure with title and legend:
Fig.3. Liver section from a 6-week-old embryo (CR length 12 mm). A considerable group of macrophages is visible among the primitive erythroblasts (see also Fig. 4). A granuloblast is present in the upper right (Scott 1974).
We accept files of the following formats
– PDF (suitable for diagrams and / or images).
– Microsoft Word (suitable for diagrams and / or images, figures must be on a single page).
– JPEG (suitable for photographic images, less suitable for graphic images).
– PNG (suitable for images).
– Resolution of about 300 dpi.
Figures must be designed in such a way that all information, including text, is legible at these dimensions.
Regarding the compression of graphic files
– vector figures should, if possible, be sent as PDF files.
– JPEG files must be saved in the highest quality.
– We do not recommend converting images into multiple formats (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) to avoid a reduction in quality.
Tables
– Tables must be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (e.g. Table 1, Table 2 etc.).
– Tables shorter than an A4 page can be placed in the appropriate position within the manuscript.
– You can place tables larger than an A4 page at the end of the document text file. Please quote and indicate the relevant position of the table in the text file so that the table can be inserted in the correct position during pagination.
– Table titles (maximum 15 words) should be included above the table and legends (maximum 300 words) should be inserted below the table.
– The tables must be sent within a pdf file.
– Colors and shading cannot be used. Parts of the table can be highlighted using numbers, characters, symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend.
References
– Original articles, reviews and reports must cite the reference literature.
Excessive and inappropriate self-citation, as well as the coordinated efforts of various authors aimed at self-citation, are strongly discouraged.
When indicating the sources, it is good to refer to the following points:
– any statement in the manuscript that is based on external sources must be accompanied by a bibliographic note.
– The sources must be indicated at the end of the text with a sequential numbering and in the same order in which they are cited in the text.
– The sources cited in the body of the text must be indicated with a number in brackets.
– It is possible to cite all the authors of a source if there are six or less, if more than seven, indicate only the first three followed by the words ‘et al’.
– Authors are invited to cite original and non-reviewed works or articles which in turn refer to original works.
– Authors must ensure the accuracy of the bibliography in support of their claims.
– Authors are advised not to cite unread and unverified sources.
– We invite you not to mention works from a single country.
– Authors should not use an excessive number of sources to support a single thesis.
– Ideally authors should cite peer-reviewed sources wherever possible.
– Authors must not refer to advertisements or advertising material.
Only articles, studies and abstracts already published or about to be published, available on public archives / servers, can be cited.
Any unpublished unpublished data cannot be indicated as a bibliographic note, but can be indicated as “unpublished data” at the foot of the page, indicating the names of the researchers involved. It is the responsibility of the author to receive authorization for the publication of unpublished data from the authors.
If requested, any articles cited in the bibliographic references necessary for the evaluation of the manuscript by the scientific committee must be made available.
Examples for inserting the bibliography:
Original article
Smith J.J. The world of science. Am.J.Sci. 1999. 36. p.234-235
Article in a magazine (without page numbers)
Rohrman S., Overvad K., Bueno-de-Mesquita H.B., Jakobsen M.U., Egeberg R., Tjønneland A. Meat consumption and mortality – results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. B.M.C. Medicines. 2013. 11 (63)
Article in a magazine with DOI
Malenka D.J., Baron J.A., Johansen S., Wahrenberger J.W., Ross J.M. The framing effect of relative and absolute risk. J. Gen. Intern. Med. 1993. 8. p. 543-548
Article within a supplement
Frumin A.M., Nussbaum J., Esposito M. Functional asplenia: demonstration of splenic activity by bone marrow scan. Blood. 1979. 59. Suppl 1. p.26-32
Chapter of a book or article within a book
Wyllie A.H., Kerr J.F.R., Currie A.R. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne G.H., Danielli J.F., Jeon K.W., editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic. 1980. p. 251-306
Book with author
Blenkinsopp A., Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science. 1998
Online document
Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed Jan 15, 1999
Online database
Healthwise Knowledgebase. US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. 1998. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sep 1998
University site
Doe, J: Title of preprint. http: //www.uni-heidel- berg.de/mydata.html (1999). Accessed Dec 25, 1999
Site of an organization
ISSN International Center: The ISSN register. http: // www.issn.org (2006). Accessed Feb 20, 2007
