Manuscript Preparation

General Considerations

  • Research manuscripts should comprise:
  1. Title page file: Title, Author list, Affiliations, funding source, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest statement.
    1. Main manuscript file:
    • Abstract: abstract should be unstructured and maximum word limit is 250 words.
    • keywords: Minimum 3 keywords must be provided.
    • Research manuscript sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Supplementary Materials, References.
  • Review manuscripts should comprise the title page and main manuscript files. The template file can also be used to prepare the title page and main manuscript files for the review manuscript. It is not necessary to follow the remaining structure. Structured reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research articles and ensure they conform to the PRISMA guidelines.
  • Case reports should include a concise introduction about the general medical/dental condition or relevant symptoms that will be discussed in the case report; the case presentation including all of the relevant de-identified demographic and descriptive information about the patient(s), and a description of the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome; a discussion providing context and any necessary explanation of specific treatment decisions; a conclusion briefly outlining the take-home message and the lessons learned.
  • Graphical abstract: Authors are encouraged to provide a graphical abstract as a self-explanatory image to appear alongside with the text abstract in the Table of Contents. Figures should be a high quality image in any common image format. Note that images displayed online will be up to 11 by 9 cm on screen and the figure should be clear at this size.
  • Abbreviations should be defined in parentheses the first time they appear in the abstract, main text, and in figure or table captions and used consistently thereafter.
  • SI Units (International System of Units) should be used. Imperial, US customary and other units should be converted to SI units whenever possible
  • Accession numbers of RNA, DNA and protein sequences used in the manuscript should be provided in the Materials and Methods section.
  • Equations: If you are using Word, please use either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Equations should be editable by the editorial office and not appear in a picture format.
  • Research Data and supplementary materials: Note that publication of your manuscript implies that all materials, data, and protocols associated with the publication available to readers should be provided on request. Disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information.

The following sections should appear in all manuscript types

  • Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific and relevant. It should identify if the study reports (human or animal) trial data, or is a systematic review, meta-analysis or replication study. When gene or protein names are included, the abbreviated name rather than full name should be used.
  • Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. Complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, and country. At least one author should be designated as corresponding author, and his or her email address and other details should be included at the end of the affiliation section.
  • Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 250 words maximum. The abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and species and strains of any animals used. 3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
  • Keywords: Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.

Research Manuscript Sections

  • Introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the research and highlight the main conclusions. Keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists working outside the topic of the paper.
  • Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
  • Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
  • Materials and Methods: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Give the name and version of any software used and make clear whether computer code used is available. Include any pre-registration codes.
  • Conclusions: This section should be brief and substantiated by the findings of the study.
  • Patents: This section is not mandatory, but may be added if there are patents resulting from the work reported in this manuscript.
  • Supplementary Materials: Describe any supplementary material published online alongside the manuscript (figure, tables, video, spreadsheets, etc.). Please indicate the name and title of each element as follows Figure S1: title, Table S1: title, etc.
  • Acknowledgments: All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed in the title page. Clearly indicate grants that you have received in support of your research work and if you received funds to cover publication costs.
  • Author Contributions: Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND has approved the submitted version (and version substantially edited by journal staff that involves the author’s contribution to the study); AND agrees to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature.
  • Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest." Any role of the funding sponsors in the choice of research project; design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. JRCD does not publish studies funded by the tobacco industry. Any projects funded by pharmaceutical or food industries must pay special attention to the full declaration of funder involvement. If there is no role, please state “The sponsors had no role in the design, execution, interpretation, or writing of the study”.
  • References: References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including table captions and figure legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. We encourage citations to data, computer code and other citable research material. If available online, you may use reference style 9 below.
  • Citations and References in Supplementary files are permitted provided that they also appear in the main text and in the reference list.

In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105).

The reference list should include the full title, as recommended by the Vancour style guide. Style files for Endnote and Zotero are available.

References should be described as follows, depending on the type of work:

  Journal Articles:
Author(s) – Family name and initials. Title of article. Abbreviated journal title. Publication year, month, day (month & day only if available);volume(issue):pages.

Note: list all 6 authors or alternatively list the first 3 and add "et al"

 

Skalsky K, Yahav D, Bishara J, Pitlik S, Leibovici L, Paul M. Treatment of human brucellosis: systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomised controlled trials. Br Med J (Clin Res Ed). 2008 Mar 29;336(7646):701‐4

 

  Journal Article- in press:

Authors separated by commas – Family name and initials. Title of article. Abbreviated journal title. Publication year, month, day (month & day only if available);volume(issue). Forthcoming - year of expected publication.

 

Rourke E, Hussain R, Buscombe JR, Hilson AJ. Overlying urostomy bag simulating urinary leak in a postrenal transplant MAG3 study. Clin Nucl Med. Forthcoming 2006

Can include date, volume and issue number if provided

 

  Books and Book Chapters:
Author(s) – Family name and initials (no more than 2 initials with no spaces between initials). Title of book. Edition of book if later than 1st ed. Place of publication: Publisher name; Year of publication.

 

Cheers B, Darracott R, Lonne B. Social care practice in rural communities. Sydney: The Federation Press; 2007.

 

  Conference Proceedings:
Author(s) of paper – family name and initials. Title of paper. In: Editor(s) Family name and initials, editor(s). Title of conference; Date of conference; Place of conference. Place of publication: Publisher’s name; Publication year. p. Page numbers.

 

Bengtsson S, Solheim BG. Enforcement of data protection, privacy and security in medical informatics. In: Lun KC, Degoulet P, Piemme TE, Reinhoff O, editors. MEDINFO 92. Proceedings of the 7th World Congress on Medical Informatics. 1992 Sep 6‐10; Geneva, Switzerland. Amsterdam: North Holland; 1992. p. 1561‐5.

 

  Thesis:

Author - family name followed by initials. Thesis title [type of thesis]. Place of publication: Publisher; Year.

 

Note:  - insert "dissertation" for a PhD and

            - insert "master's thesis" for a master's degree



Kay JG. Intracellular cytokine trafficking and phagocytosis in macrophages [dissertation]. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland; 2007

 

  Websites:
Author/organization's name. Title of the page [Internet]. Place of publication: Publisher's name; Publication date or year [updated date - year month day; cited date - year month day]. Available from: URL
 

  • If the place, publisher or date is unknown use [place unknown], [publisher unknown] or [date unknown]
  • If neither the date of publication nor a date of copyright can be found - use the date of update/revision or date cited.

 

Diabetes Australia. Gestational diabetes [Internet]. Canberra (ACT): Diabetes Australia; 2015 [updated 2015; cited 2017 Nov 23]. Available from: https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/gestational-diabetes


Preparing Figures, Schemes and Tables

  • File for Figures and Schemes must be provided during submission in a single zip archive and at a sufficiently high resolution (minimum 1000 pixels width/height, or a resolution of 300 dpi or higher). The accepted image formats include TIFF, JPEG, EPS and PDF.
  • JRCD can publish multimedia files in articles or as supplementary materials. Please contact the editorial office for further information.
  • All Figures, Schemes and Tables should be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, Table 1, etc.).
  • All Figures, Schemes and Tables should have a short explanatory title and caption.
  • All table columns should have an explanatory heading. The allowed font size ranges from 08 to 12 pt.
  • Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel).