Annals of Clinical Biochemistry >
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These instructions comply with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (for further details, see the ICMJE site)
1. Aims and scope
The Annals of Clinical Biochemistry accepts papers that contribute to knowledge in all fields of clinical biochemistry, especially those appertaining to the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of disease in humans. It publishes papers on clinical audit, metabolic medicine, immunology, genetics, biotechnology, haematology, computing and management where they have both biochemical and clinical relevance.
Papers describing evaluation or implementation of commercial reagent kits or the performance of new analysers require substantial original information.
Research undertaken in non-human animals will not be considered for publication in the Annals.
2. Editorial policy
Covering letter
The covering letter is important. To help the Editor in his preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the paper suitable for publication. If your paper should be considered for fast-track publication, please explain why.
Peer review
All papers submitted for publication undergo peer review.
Ethical approval
All research submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee and the ethical approval number included in the declarations (see below).
Patient consent
Any article containing identifiable patient information must be accompanied by a statement of consent to publication.
If there is any doubt about whether or not information is identifiable, the Editors are happy to discuss this before an article is submitted.
Reviewers will also be asked to take careful account of issues relating to patient confidentiality when reviewing articles.
Case studies are not the only kinds of article to which this rule will be applied, but they will be subject to additional scrutiny.
Not only should submissions be accompanied by a statement of consent, but the Editors also expect to be informed about the measures that have been taken to anonymise the details that could have led to parties being identified.
They also reserve the right to work with the authors to make additional anonymising changes as they or the reviewers see fit.
The Editors may also ask authors to remove personal information that, whilst interesting and colourful, does not add to the substance of an article, but does increase the likelihood of parties being identified.
The exception to this will be where the patient has indicated in writing that she/he wants to be identified, has read the material, has discussed the consequences of being identified, and has agreed to the disclosure of all the personal information contained in the article.
In order to ensure that valuable and novel issues are aired, the Editors will sometimes consider publishing cases studies that contain potentially identifiable information where it has been impossible or clearly undesirable to seek consent from relevant parties.
However, given the strong preference for consent having been sought and obtained the reasons for not seeking consent must be compelling, and the public interest arguments for publishing the case must be powerful.
In cases where consent has not been obtained, the authors must provide a statement from a Medical Director or equivalent that the hospital or medical centre is happy for the case to be published.
Competing interests and other declarations
All authors are required to declare any conflicts of interest when submitting papers for publication.
Declarations of funding sources, a guarantor and a statement of contributorship are also required. The guarantor is the person willing to take full responsibility for the article, including for the accuracy and appropriateness of the reference list. This will often be the most senior member of the research group and is commonly also the author for correspondence. For example;
DECLARATIONS
Competing interests: EF is an employee of Globescape
Funding: This research was funded by the University of York
Ethical approval: The ethics committee of the University of York approved this study (GH23335H)
Guarantor: AB
Contributorship: AB and CD researched literature and conceived the study. EF was involved in protocol develeopment, gaining ethical approval, patient recruitment and data analysis. AB wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript
Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Sarah Powells for her assistance and guidance in this research
Permissions
All previously published material must be accompanied by the written consent to reproduction of the copyright holder.
An acknowledgement of permission should be included at the relevant point in the paper, and a full reference to the original place of publication should be included in the reference list.
Copyright
Authors of accepted manuscripts will be required to allocate copyright to the Association for Clinical Biochemistry prior to publication.
3. Types of articles
Editorials
Articles referring to research published elsewhere in that issue of the journal, or to important events in clinical biochemistry. Editorials are generally invited.
Personal Views
Articles pertinent to clinical and scientific developments or to the practice of clinical biochemistry. Personal Views are generally invited.
Review Articles
Articles of a substantial and topical nature. Review Articles are generally invited.
Original Articles
Articles describing substantial original research that falls within the scope of the journal. These should be up to 5000 words, including an Abstract, and have no more than six figures and tables. Structured headings are required.
Short Reports
Brief technical notes and preliminary communications. These should be less than 1000 words, including an Abstract, and have only one small figure or table and no more than six references. Structured headings, including a conclusion, are desirable.
Case Reports
Articles describing clinical cases that have significant original observations, are instructive, include adequate methodological details and provide conclusions. These should be up to 2000 words, including an Abstract, and have no more than two figures and tables. Structured headings are desirable.
Letters to the Editor
Letters arise normally but not exclusively from papers published in this and other scientific journals. These are usually less than 500 words.
Book Reviews
Commissioned by the Book Review Editor, Dr William Marshall, c/o ACB Office, 130–132 Tooley Street, London SE1 2TU, UK.
Journal Watch
Short reviews of recently published articles of interest to clinical biochemists. These are usually less than 500 words.
Piscator
An entertaining end piece to the journal, written by the Piscatrix.
4. How to submit a manuscript
Only manuscripts submitted via the online manuscript submission and peer review site, which can be found at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/acb will be considered for publication.
All submissions must be in English.
Tables and figures may be submitted as separate files, in which case the files should be uploaded in the following order: (1) main text, including title page, abstract and references; (2) tables; (3) figures; (4) supplementary files; and (5) author proforma.
File formats
Text files must be saved in .doc or .rtf format. Other suitable formats include .tif for photographic images, .xls for graphs produced in Excel, and .eps for other line drawings.
5. How to prepare a manuscript
Formatting
Manuscripts must be submitted using double line-spaced, unjustified text throughout, with headings and subheadings in bold case. Press ‘Enter’ only at the end of a paragraph, list entry or heading.
Title page
The first page should contain the full title of the manuscript, a short title, the author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s), and the name, postal and email addresses of the author for correspondence, as well as a full list of declarations.
The title should be concise and informative, accurately indicating the content of the article. The short title should be no more than six words long.
The correct order for declarations is: competing interests, funding, ethical approval (including reference number), guarantor, contributorship, acknowledgements.
Abstract
A structured abstract of no more than 250 words must accompany all Review Articles, Original Articles and Short Reports.
The abstract should normally use four headings: Background (context and rationale); Methods (type of study, patients, materials, techniques); Results (main numerical data and statistical information); and Conclusions (main objective and verifiable conclusions).
Personal Views and Case Reports should be accompanied by an unstructured abstract of up to 250 words.
Letters to the Editor do not require an abstract.
Tables
Tables must be prepared using the Table feature of the word processor. Tables should not duplicate information given in the text, should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text, and should be given a brief title.
Figures
All figures should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text. All figures must be accompanied by a figure legend. If figures are supplied in separate files, the figure legends must all be listed at the end of the main text file.
Line drawings should be produced electronically and clearly labelled using a sans serif font such as Arial. Graphs may be supplied as Excel spreadsheets (one per sheet). Other line drawings should be supplied in a suitable vector graphic file format (e.g. .eps)
All photographic images should be submitted in camera-ready form (i.e. with all extraneous areas removed), and where necessary, magnification should be shown using a scale marker. Photographic images must be supplied at high resolution, preferably 600 dpi. Images supplied at less than 300 dpi are unsuitable for print and will delay publication. The preferred file format is .tif.
References
Only essential references should be included. Authors are responsible for verifying them against the original source material. RSM Press uses the Vancouver referencing system: references should be identified in the text by superscript Arabic numerals after any punctuation, and numbered and listed at the end of the paper in the order in which they are first cited in the text. Automatic numbering should be avoided. References should include the names and initials of up to six authors. If there are more than six authors, only the first three should be named, followed by et al. Publications for which no author is apparent may be attributed to the organization from which they originate. Simply omit the name of the author for anonymous journal articles – avoid using ’Anonymous’. Punctuation in references should be kept to a minimum, as shown in the following examples:
Units
All measurements should be expressed in SI units.
Statistics
If preparing statistical data for publication, please read the statistical guidelines.
6. Proofs and eprints
Proofs will be sent by email to the designated corresponding author as a PDF file attachment and should be corrected and returned promptly; corrections should be kept to a minimum.
A PDF eprint of each published article will be supplied free of charge to the author for correspondence; hardcopy offprints may be ordered from the publisher when the proofs are returned.
