Guidelines
MEDICINA-MODERNA
ISSN 2360-2473
About the Journal
Aims and Scope
medicina-moderna is an international journal committed to sharing the latest findings, news, and concepts pertaining to drug discovery, development, and therapy. Original scientific research presented in this journal stretches from basic to clinical studies, mirroring the scope which spans from bench-to-bedside research to modern reverse translational studies and precision medicine approaches. The journal primarily publishes research articles, reviews and commentaries to encourage knowledge transfer and discussion among the audience with an interest in experimental and clinical pharmacology, toxicology, pharmaceutical medicine, and biomedical sciences.
Article Types
Research Article
Research Articles report on primary research. They must describe significant and original observations. Consideration for publication is based on the article’s originality, novelty, and scientific soundness, and the appropriateness of its analysis.
Research Articles are reports of original work. Authors are asked to follow the EQUATOR Network for Research Articles.
Prior approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or an Ethics Review Committee is required for all investigations involving human subjects.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Research Article (DOCX, 39 KB)
The word limit is 2’500 words.
Review Article
Review Articles are considered reviews of research or summary articles. They are state-of-the-art papers covering a current topic by experts in the field. They should give evidence on and provide answers to a well-defined aspect or question in a particular area. Review Articles must include a critical discussion of the reported data and give a clear conclusion with potential impacts on the standard of care.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Review Article (DOCX, 32 KB)
The word limit is 3’500 words.
Systematic Review
Systematic Reviews are literature reviews focused on a research question that synthesizes all high-quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic Reviews should be presented in the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion format. The subject must be clearly defined. The objective of a Systematic Review should be to arrive at an evidence-based conclusion. The Methods section should give a clear indication of the literature search strategy, data extraction procedure, grading of evidence, and kind of analysis used. We strongly encourage authors to comply with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Systematic Review (DOCX, 37 KB)
Brief Report
Brief Reports are short and/or rapid announcements of research results. They must contain data derived from cutting-edge research and be of potential interest to a large proportion of the readership. They are independent, concise reports representing a significant contribution to the field. Such communications should represent complete, original studies and should be arranged in the same way as full-length manuscripts with subheadings.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Brief Report (DOCX, 36 KB)
Commentary
Commentaries draw attention to a jointly published article, discussing the context or implications of the article and highlighting points of wider relevance to the field. Commentaries are presented from the author’s perspective and do not include original data. Commentaries are invited by the Editors and relate to an article in the same issue. A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Commentary (DOCX, 33 KB)
Methods Article
Methods Articles describe methods or protocols used to perform an experiment or carry out a research plan. They should not report research results. Authors may submit a Study Protocol outlining a research and/or statistical analysis plan for proposed, or ongoing, but incomplete, research studies, including but not limited to, clinical trials, population-based studies, clinical outcome studies, and service evaluations. Only study protocols that have received ethical approval will be considered and, where expected by community convention, study protocols must be pre-registered and the trial/study registration number should be provided in the manuscript. Manuscripts reporting study protocols must adhere to the relevant reporting guidelines for their study design, such as the SPIRIT, PRISMA-P or other relevant reporting guidelines as detailed on the Equator Network website.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Method Article (DOCX, 36 KB)
Method Article for Study Protocol (DOCX, 37 KB)
Contact Information
Should you have any problems with your submission, please contact the editorial office:
Editorial Office ‘medicina-moderna’
1220 19th Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20036
T 202 408 6801
F 301 654 2845
EMAIL: editor@medicina-moderna.com
Editorial and Journal Policies
Getting Started
When preparing a manuscript, it is important to review the editorial policies. For full details, please visit the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page. medicina-moderna Publishers is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). medicina-moderna journals aim to adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines.
The presentation of manuscripts should follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). We recommend preparing the manuscript using the dedicated article template for the manuscript type.
Only papers written in English are considered. The articles should be comprehensible to a reader who is fluent in English and should be edited prior to submission to ensure that standard English grammar and usage are observed. Use of a professional language editing service prior to submission can help avoid delays with the review process.
By submitting an article for publication, the authors agree to the transfer of the copyright to the publisher upon acceptance. Accepted papers become the permanent property of the Journal and may not be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.
medicina-moderna recommends the use of original images and materials whenever possible. If a submitted manuscript contains third-party copyright material(s), it is the authors’ sole responsibility to obtain permission from the relevant copyright holder for reusing the material(s), including any associated licensing fee. The copyright and usage information needs to be checked carefully to avoid copyright infringement. The author(s) is and will remain personally liable for any copyright infringements.
Most publishers offer a quick and easy way to clear permissions for their content via the built-in website application RightsLink. Another widely used licensing tool is PLSClear. Please check the publishers’ websites for the available options and user instructions.
The authors agree that their name, affiliation with their institution and contact details will be available to third parties after the article has been published. Those third parties may be placed within or outside of the European Economic Area.
Research and Publication Ethics
All submitted manuscripts must contain a statements section after the main body of the text, but before the reference list. For full details, please visit the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page.
Peer Review
Peer Review Policy
medicina-moderna journals employ a rigorous peer-review process to confirm the validity and ensure scientific accuracy of published articles. Independent researchers with relevant expertise assess submitted manuscripts to help journal editors determine whether a manuscript should be published in their journal. All articles, except for Editorials and some Correspondence articles, are externally peer reviewed, typically by at least two individuals with expertise in the manuscript content area and/or research methods, before a final decision is made about acceptance for publication.
Peer Review Type and Process
medicina-moderna uses a single-blind peer review system where reviewers know the names of the authors, but the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript. For full details, including information about peer review policies and appeals process, please visit the Peer review – medicina-moderna Publishers page.
Article Preparation
Formatting
The preferred word processing program for manuscripts is Microsoft Word. Page and line numbering should be activated, and the level of subheadings should be indicated clearly.
Footnotes should be avoided. When essential, they should be numbered consecutively and appear at the foot of the appropriate page.
Abbreviations (with the exception of those clearly well established in the field) should be explained when they are first used both in the abstract and in the main text.
Units of measurement should be expressed in SI units wherever possible.
Generic names of drugs (first letter: lowercase) should be used whenever possible. Registered trade names (first letter: uppercase) should be marked with the superscript registration symbol ® or ™ when they are first mentioned.
The manuscript text, tables and figures must be submitted in separate files. Figure and table legends should be included at the end of manuscript text, not in the figure or table file.
Further Formatting Instructions
Plain Language Summary
A plain language summary may be submitted for Research Articles and Review Articles. The summary should not exceed 250 words and be written in plain English avoiding the use of technical language. If a technical term must be used, then authors must explain it the first time that it is used. The summary must be distinct from the abstract and provide readers with an easy-to-understand description of the manuscript. Authors should avoid the use of personal opinions and/or speculation on the results of the manuscript. No page charges will be incurred by the inclusion of the plain language summary. Use neither bibliographic references nor references to figures or tables in the summary.
Documents
Plain Language Summary Template (DOCX, 20.59 KB)
Manuscript Arrangement
Title Page
The first page should contain a short and concise title plus a running head of no more than 80 characters. Abbreviations should be avoided.
Below the title, list all the authors’ names as outlined in the article sample, which can be downloaded under Article Types. Each listed author must have an affiliation, which comprises the department, university, or organization and its location, city, state/province (if applicable), and country.
Place the full postal address of the corresponding author at the bottom of the first page, including at least one telephone number and e-mail address.
Keywords relevant to the article should be listed below the corresponding author information.
Body
Please refer to the Article Types section of the Guidelines for Authors for information on the relevant article structure, including maximum word counts and downloadable samples.
References
In-Text Citation
References in the text should be identified sequentially using Arabic numerals [in square brackets].
Reference List
The reference list should include only those publications which are cited in the text, arranged numerically in the order in which they are cited. Please number the reference list as shown below (i.e., without using full stops, brackets, etc.). The authors’ surnames should be followed by their initials with no punctuation other than a comma to separate individual authors. A maximum of 6 authors should be listed (followed by “et al.” if there are more than 6 authors). Material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be referred to as “unpublished data” and should not be included in the reference list. Other pre-published or related materials with a DOI, e.g. preprint manuscripts, datasets, and code, may be included. More information on good referencing practice, as well as further examples, can be found in National Library of Medicine Style Guide for Authors.
Examples
Articles published in journals: 1 Sawant KV, Xu R, Cox R, Hawkins H, Sbrana E, Kolli D, et al. Chemokine CXCL1-mediated neutrophil trafficking in the lung: role of CXCR2 activation. J Innate Immun. 2015;6(7):647–58. (Journal names should be abbreviated according to the Index Medicus.)
Articles published only with DOI number: 2 Chen C, Hu Z. ApoE polymorphisms and the risk of different subtypes of stroke in the Chinese population: a comprehensive meta-analysis. Cerebrovasc Dis. DOI: 10.1159/000442678.
Monographs: 3 Matthews DE, Farewell VT. Using and understanding medical statistics. 5th ed, revised. Basel: Karger; 2015.
Edited Books: 4 Cohen SR, Gardner TW. Diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema. In: Nguyen QD, Rodrigues EB, Farah ME, Mieler WF, Do DV, editors. Retinal pharmacotherapeutics. Dev Ophthalmol. Basel: Karger; 2016. Vol. 55; p. 137–46.
Websites: 5 Karger Publishers [Internet]. Basel: Transforming Vesalius: The 16th-Century Scientific Revolution Brought to Life for the 21st Century [cited 2013 Feb 4]. Available Figures and Tables
The figure legend should be placed at the end of the article, after the reference list. The figure legend should not be part of the figure file. Tables require a heading above or below the table in the table file. For more details please download the relevant article template from the section “Article Types”.
Online Supplementary Material
Online Supplementary Material may be used to enhance a publication and increase its visibility on the Web. Supplementary files (directly relevant but not essential to the conclusions of the paper) will undergo editorial review and should be submitted in a separate file with the original manuscript and with all subsequent submissions. The Editor(s) reserve(s) the right to limit the scope and length of supplementary material. Supplementary material must meet production quality standards for publication without the need for any modification or editing. For ease of reader access, we strongly recommend that files be less than 10 MB. Authors wishing to associate larger amounts of supplementary material with their article should deposit their data in an appropriate public data repository. Figures must have legends and tables require headings. All files must be named clearly. Acceptable files and formats are Word or PDF files, Excel spreadsheets (if the data cannot be converted properly into a PDF file), and multimedia files (MPEG, AVI, or QuickTime formats). All supplementary material should be referred to in the main text. A DOI number will be assigned to supplementary material.
Author Services
medicina-modernaPublishers offer a range of services to assist authors with the preparation of their manuscript, including discounts for language editing services offered by third parties.
More information is available on the Author Resources section of the medicina-modernahomepage.
When submitting a manuscript, authors can add their ORCID number to their medicina-modernaaccount to ensure that their paper is accredited to them correctly.
Cost of Publication
Page Charges/Article Processing Charges
medicina-moderna has established Transformative Agreements with many consortia and institutions that include full or partial coverage of the Article Processing Charges (APCs) and/or the Author’s Choice Open Access publication fees. Authors affiliated with those institutions can publish Open Access in medicina-modernajournals and comply with Open Access mandates without incurring any additional costs or with reduced APCs. Find out if your open access charges are covered by an agreement under Publish & Access – Transformative Agreements
Please note that adherence to word limits indicated in previous paragraphs does not guarantee exemption from page charges. Pages charges are calculated based on the final character counts (with spaces) in the main manuscript and all associated tables. Figures and illustrations are counted at a fixed rate of 2000 characters per item. Online supplementary material are not charged. Manuscripts with up to 20,000 character count equivalent do not incur a charge. Each increment of 5000 character count equivalent above that limit will be charged at CHF 365 / USD 410 / EUR 410.
Please note that an automatic calculation system for page charges was introduced in mid-2023. Please do get in touch with the editorial office of the journal if you have any questions.
Online Supplementary Material
We strongly encourage authors to make all the datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript are based available. Online supplementary material is hosted for free with a published article. For ease of reader access, we strongly recommend that files be less than 10 MB. Authors wishing to associate larger amounts of supplementary material with their article should deposit their data in an appropriate public data repository.
Illustration Charges
Figures and illustrations are counted at a fixed rate of 2000 characters per item. There is no additional charge for figures and illustrations appearing in grayscale or color in print or online.
Author’s Choice
medicina-moderna Publisher’s Author’s Choice™ service broadens the reach of your article and gives all users worldwide free and full access for reading, downloading, and printing at karger.com. The option is available for a one-time fee, which is a permissible cost in grant allocation. For a fee of CHF 3,450.00 / USD 3,850.00 / EUR 3,600.00, the final, published version of the article may be posted at any time and in any repository or on other websites, in accordance with the relevant Creative Commons license as well as the current Project HOPE self-archiving policy for Open Access articles. Karger supplies all articles to PubMed Central for indexing.
After Acceptance and Sharing Policies
Copyediting and Proofs
Manuscripts accepted for publication by medicina-modernaPublishers will undergo basic proofreading to check for obvious spelling and grammar mistakes. If you would prefer a more in-depth language editing service to improve clarity and style, please consult a service provider prior to submission. Please note that the use of a language editing service before submission is not a requirement for publication in the journal and does not guarantee that the manuscript will be considered for peer review or accepted.
Project HOPE Publishers’ house style is based on internationally recognized standard manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style.
An e-mail containing a link to download the PDF proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. The authors should check the PDF document and respond to any questions that have been raised during proofreading within 48 hours.
Alterations made to proofs, other than the correction of errors introduced by the Publisher, are charged to the authors and may require editorial approval.
Please note that the revised proofs are not sent to the authors prior to typesetting and online publication unless there are exceptional circumstances. The article layout will be created according to the Karger standard.
DOI Number
A DOI number will be available as a unique identifier on the title page of each article. DOIs are useful for identifying and citing articles published online without volume or issue information (for more information, see www.doi.org).
Online First Publication
All articles are published electronically ahead of print with a DOI number and are supplemented later with the definite reference to the printed version. The articles become available immediately after the authors’ approval to print.
Licenses and Copyright
At acceptance, the authors will transfer all rights, title, and interest, including the right to claim copyright throughout the world, related to the article, to Project HOPE medicina-moderna.
Please note that metadata – essentially, data tags about article information such as authors and keywords that helps make articles discoverable by, for example, search engines – is governed by a separate policy.
Archiving and Self-Archiving
All articles are archived in Portico. Articles may also be archived in PubMed Central if the journal is indexed there. medicina-modernasupports Green Open Access and permits authors to archive their Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM, i.e., accepted manuscripts after peer review but before production; also referred to as a postprint ) on their personal home page or institution’s repository, provided that these are not used for commercial purposes, are linked to the publisher’s version, and acknowledge the publisher’s copyright. Preprints may be shared without restriction.
In addition, authors may post their accepted manuscripts in public Open Access repositories and scientific networks no earlier than 12 months following publication of the final version of their article. The posted manuscripts must:
- Be used for noncommercial purposes only
- Be linked to the final version on karger.com and include the following statement:
“This is the peer-reviewed but unedited manuscript version of the following article: [insert full citation, e.g., Cytogenet Genome Res 2014;142:227–238
It is the authors’ responsibility to fulfill these requirements.
For papers published online first with a DOI number only, full citation details must be added as soon as the paper is published in its final version. This is important to ensure that citations can be credited to the article.
To facilitate compliance with Coalition S/Plan S Open Access mandates, medicina-moderna permits authors, independently and without Project HOPE`s action, to upload a copy of their Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAM), applying a CC BY license, to a repository designated by their Plan S funders. However, when an article is published as Open Access, the Version of Record should be archived instead of the AAM. The AAM may be made freely available in the archive upon the official, final publication of the article (Version of Record or VOR, i.e. the post-production, final article version). Manuscripts to be archived in PubMed Central (PMC) due to NIH funding requirements or that have been published Open Access under Author’s Choice™ will be submitted by medicina-moderna on the authors’ behalf, as outlined under Funding Organizations.
Articles published as Open Access under Author’s Choice may be shared freely on any repository or website. Re-posted Open Access articles must follow the terms of the relevant Creative Commons license. To ensure citations are credited to the Version of Record, medicina-moderna encourages authors to link to the published article on karger.com and include the following statement: “
medicina-moderna policies on Open Access, licensing and self-archiving can also be found at Sherpa Romeo.
Funding Organizations
If the authors are affiliated with an organization that has an Open Access agreement with medicina-moderna, the authors are prompted during submission to select from a list of these organizations. By choosing one of the listed organizations, eligibility can then be assessed.
NIH-Funded Research
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy mandates that AAMs must be archived in its digital database PubMed Central (PMC) within 12 months of the official publication date. As a service to authors, Health Affairs Publishers submits the accepted, unedited version of NIH-funded manuscripts to PMC upon publication, where it is made available after a 12-month embargo period. Where the authors have chosen to make their paper freely available under medicina-modernaAuthor’s Choice™ service, this embargo does not apply.
Plan S
medicina-moderna approves authors, independently and without medicina-moderna action, to make their AAMs openly available in PMC or another repository under a CC BY license upon publication of the Version of Record (VOR, i.e post-production, final article version). However, when an article is published as Open Access, the Version of Record should be archived instead of the AAM. Some Coalition S funders, such as Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and FWF, designate PMC as the repository in which to make the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) openly available. For papers made Open Access via Author’s Choice, medicina-moderna will deposit the article in PMC on the author’s behalf with a CC BY license. Authors should refer to their funders’ policies for details. Authors should check their funders’ requirements about how to declare their funding and any associated mandates within their manuscript.
Project HOPE publishes some journals under the Transformative Journals model, compliant with Plan S.
Other Funding Sources
medicina-moderna Publishers also complies with other funders’ requirements for submission to PMC. In some cases, doing so requires that authors select Author’s Choice™, which is generally reimbursed by the funder or is a permissible cost in the grant. Authors should include information on their grants in the Funding Sources section of their papers.
Submission
Cover Letter
In your cover letter, please describe the gap in knowledge that this manuscript addresses, and discuss the implications, significance and novelty of your research for the Editor. Furthermore, please emphasize the unique and important contributions that your manuscript makes to our understanding of the field. If your submission is part of a special issue of the journal, please refer to the specific name of the special issue in your cover letter and specify who invited the submission where appropriate.
Manuscript Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online via the medicina-modernasubmission and peer review system by the manuscript’s corresponding author. The corresponding (submitting) author will automatically be the contact person for the manuscript for the peer review and production process. For fee payment and license signing, the contact author will be the first listed corresponding author.
The corresponding (submitting) author is solely responsible for managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors and acts on behalf of all listed authors. This ensures that all correspondence reaches a unique contact and thereby secures swift communication in particular throughout the submission, peer review and production process. Articles can be published with more than one corresponding author (usually limited to three), but only the submitting author can be accommodated during the submission, peer review and production process.
The corresponding (submitting) author’s specific responsibilities include:
Ensuring all the listed authors have approved the manuscript submission to the journal and agreed to all of the content including the author list, including the Submission Declaration
Handling the revision(s) and re-submission(s) of the manuscript until acceptance
After acceptance, manuscript proof reading and approving the final proof
Acting as the point of contact for queries about the published article. It is their responsibility to inform all co-authors of any matters arising in relation to the published article including questions relating to publication ethics, availability of data, materials, etc.
Where there are multiple corresponding authors, the first listed corresponding author’s specific responsibilities include:
Upon acceptance, ensuring that all listed authors agree to the license agreement
Arranging for payment of Page Charges/Article Processing Charges where required. The affiliation of the corresponding author will be used to determine eligibility for discounted or waived charges including discounted or waived APCs under read and publish/offsetting/OA agreements
Please note that the author names entered into the manuscript submission and peer review system should be identical to the information presented on the title page of the manuscript, including the sequence of authorship. The author names submitted should reflect the official publication names. It is the submitting (corresponding) author’s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of all content in the proof, including the names of co-authors, addresses and affiliations.
Before submission, please read the Submission Guidelines in full for specific requirements for manuscript preparation.
Submission Declaration
The submitting author will submit, on behalf of all authors, their manuscript for potential publication after full peer-review. All co-authors will confirm that the submitting author has authority to act on their behalf via the verification link sent out to all authors upon completion of the submission. Please refer to the Submission Declaration PDF for details.
Documents
Submission Declaration (PDF, 89 KB)