Awarded by the National Science Council, Taiwan



The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences invites original contributions relating to all fields of medicine and related disciplines that are of interest to the medical profession.

Manuscript Submission

Three hard copies of your manuscript (that matches the e-file exactly) and any figures, and a cover letter (that includes your name, address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address), should be mailed to:

Editorial Office
Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences
Kaohsiung Medical University
100 Shih-Chuan 1st Road, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Important Information

• Articles submitted by e-mail or on disk should be in Microsoft Word document format (*.doc) and prepared in the simplest form possible. We will add in the correct font, font size, margins and so on according to our house style.
• You may use automatic page numbering, but please avoid other kinds of automatic formatting such as footnotes, endnotes, headers and footers.
• Please put text, references, tables, figures, and legends in one file, with each table and figure on a new page.
• Figures will be published as received from authors. (Please note that the cost of color illustrations will be charged to the author.)

Basic Criteria

Articles should be written in English (American English spelling) and meet the following basic criteria: the material is original, the information is important, the writing is clear (clinical or laboratory jargon is to be avoided), the study methods are appropriate, the data are valid, and the conclusions are reasonable and supported by the data. Previous Publication or Duplicate Submission Submitted manuscripts are considered with the understanding that they have not been published previously in print or electronic format (except in abstract or poster form) and are not under consideration by another publication or electronic medium.

Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest

All authors are required to sign and submit the following financial disclosure statement at the time of manuscript submission:

I certify that all my affiliations with or financial involvement in, within the past 5 years and foreseeable future, any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript are completely disclosed (e.g. employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, royalties).

Authors who have no relevant financial interests should provide a statement indicating that they have no financial interests related to the material in the manuscript.

Categories of Articles

The categories of articles that are published are described below.

Review Articles

These should aim to provide the reader with a balanced overview of an important and topical subject in medicine, and should be systematic, critical assessments of literature and data sources, emphasizing factors such as cause, diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, or prevention. All articles and data sources reviewed should include information about the specific type of study or analysis, population, intervention, exposure, and tests or outcomes. All articles or data sources should be selected systematically for inclusion in the review and critically evaluated.

The following are given as examples of possible section headings: Introduction (to include a definition of the disease to be discussed, its incidence and relationship to age, sex and geography), Etiology, Pathology (macroscopic and microscopic), Diagnosis, Clinical Features/Complications, Prevention, Treatment, Prognosis, Conclusion or Summary. Figures, tables, algorithms and other forms of illustration should be included as appropriate.

Reviews are usually written by invited authors who are recognized experts on that particular topic. Typical length: 2000-3000 words.

Original Articles

These may be randomized trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic tests, cohort studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, case-control studies, and surveys with high response rates, that represent new and significant contributions to medical science.

Each manuscript should state the objective/hypothesis, design and methods (including the study setting and dates, patients/ participants with inclusion and exclusion criteria, or data sources and how these were selected for the study), the essential features of any interventions, the main outcome measures, the main results, discussion placing the results in context with the published literature, and conclusions. Typical length: 2000-3000 words.

Case Reports

These are short discussions of a case or case series with unique features not previously described. Typical length: 800-1200 words.

Manuscript Preparation

Text should be typed double-spaced on one side of A4 (297x210 mm) paper, with outer margins of 3 cm. Each section of the manuscript should begin on a new page.

Title Page

Two different title pages are required. The first title page should contain the following information:
• category of paper
• manuscript title
• short running title not exceeding 45 characters
• the names (spelled out in full) of all the authors and their affiliations in English and Chinese
• corresponding author's details (e-mail address, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers) in English and Chinese

The second title page should contain the same information as above except for the authors' names and their institutions, and the corresponding author's details.

Abstracts

The first page following the title page should contain a concise English abstract of no more than 500 words and up to 5 relevant key words/index terms. AChinese version of the abstract should follow the English abstract (with Chinese key words that match the English key words).

Ethical Approval of Studies and Informed Consent

For human or animal experimental investigations, appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee approval is required, and such approval should be stated in the methods section of the manuscript. For those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed (World Medical Association. Declaration of Helsinki: ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. Available at: http://www.wma.net/e/policy/pdf/17c.pdf ).

For investigations of human subjects, state explicitly in the methods section of the manuscript that informed consent was obtained from all participating adult subjects and from parents or legal guardians for minors or incapacitated adults, together with the manner in which informed consent was obtained (i.e. oral or written).

Identification of Patients in Descriptions, Photographs, and Pedigrees

A signed statement of informed consent to publish (in print and online) patient descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees should be obtained from all persons (parents or legal guardians for minors) who can be identified (including by the patients themselves) in such written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees, and should be submitted with the manuscript. Such persons should be shown the manuscript before its submission. Omitting data or making data less specific to deidentify patients is acceptable, but changing any such data is not acceptable.

Funding/Support and Conflicts of Interest

All financial and material support for the research and the work should be clearly and completely identified in an Acknowledgments in the manuscript. Ensure that any conflicts of interest are explicitly declared.

Units

Please use Systeme International (SI) units, with the exception of blood pressure values which are to be reported in mmHg. Please use the metric system for the expression of length, area, mass, and volume. Temperatures are to be given in degrees Celsius.

Drug Names

Use the Recommended International Non-proprietary Name for medicinal substances, unless the specific trade name of a drug is directly relevant to the discussion.

Gene Nomenclature

Current standard international nomenclature for genes should be adhered to. For human genes, use genetic notation and symbols approved by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee ( http://www.genenames.org/ ) or refer to PubMed ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez ). The Human Genome Variation Society also has a useful site that provides guidance in naming mutations at http://www.hgvs.org/mutnomen/index.html . In your manuscript, genes should be typed in italic font and include the accession number.

Abbreviations

Where a term/definition will be continually referred to, it must be written in full, followed by the subsequent abbreviation in brackets, when it first appears in the text. Thereafter, the abbreviation may be used.

Tables

Tables should be labeled in Arabic numerals and titled concisely. Number all tables in the order of their citation in the text. Tables should be typed double-spaced in as simple a form as possible. Abbreviations used in the table and not defined in the text should be defined in footnotes using these symbols (in order of appearance):*,†, ‡, §, ||, ¶.

Figures

The number of figures should be restricted to the minimum necessary to support the textual material. Please post three sets of the original figures to the Editorial Office. They will not be returned. The figures should be in the form of unmounted, unretouched glossy prints, and marked on the back with the figure number, top of the figure, and the principal author's name, using a soft lead pencil or stick-on labels. Patient identification should be obscured. Do not mark directly on the prints. Indicators/arrows and labels may be marked on a photocopy of the original print to indicate subtle but salient points. Include internal scale markers in photomicrographs and electron micrographs.

Illustrations, graphs, charts, etc. should be drawn with black ink on white paper and should preferably be done by a professional illustrator. Arrows and other symbols must be of professional quality and of a size permitting some reduction in the final copy.

All figures must be accompanied by legends and indicate the anatomic area and/or pathologic condition shown. For photomicrographs, include the type of specimen, original magnification, and stain. All symbols and abbreviations not defined in the text should be defined in the legend.

Personal Communications and Unpublished Data

A signed statement of permission should be included from each individual identified as a source of information in a personal communication or as a source for unpublished data; the date of communication and whether the communication was written or oral should be specified.

References
• Each reference citation should be a number enclosed in square brackets on the same line as the text, not a superscript.
• References must be numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text, and listed in number order in the reference list: do not alphabetize.
• References cited in tables or legends should be included in sequence at the point where the table or figure is first mentioned in the text.
• Abstracts should not be cited unless the abstract is the only available reference to an important concept.
• Do not cite uncompleted work or work that has not yet been accepted for publication as references.
• Abbreviations for journals should conform to those used in Index Medicus.
• References should include the complete title of the article and the last names and initials of all the authors up to 3. If there are more than 3 authors, include the last names and initials of the first 3 authors followed by "et al".
• Always give the last page number as well. If there is only one page, state if the article is an abstract or letter.
• If you must cite information from a website, please provide the author information, article title, the website address and the date you accessed the information.
• Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references and for correct text citation.

Examples are given below.

Journal articles:
1. Lin CK, Lieu AS, Howng SL. Hemorrhagic cerebellar metastasis from papillary thyroid carcinoma. Kaohsiung J Med Sci 1999;15: 234-8.
2. Bacci G, Mercuri M, Longhi A, et al. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy for Ewing's tumour of bone: recent experience at the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute. Eur J Cancer 2002;38:2243-51.
3. Hofele C, Schwager-Schmitt M, Volkmann M. Prognostic value of antibodies against p53 in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma.five years survival rate. Laryngorhinootologie 2002; 81:342-5. [In German]

Books:
1. Stevens J. Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences, 3rd edition. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.
2. Weinert C, Burman ME. Rural health and health-seeking behaviors. In: Fitzpatrick JJ, Stevenson JS, eds. Annual Review of Nursing Research, 1st edition. New York: Springer, 1994:65.94. 3. Department of Health, Executive Yuan, R.O.C. Incidence of Head Lice (Pediculus capitis) Among School Children in Taiwan Province, 1990.

Editorial and Peer Review

Submitted manuscripts are reviewed initially by the Editorial Board, whose members will determine which articles will be published based on their scientific merit, readability and interest. Manuscripts with insufficient priority for publication are rejected promptly. Rejected manuscripts will not be returned to authors unless requested. All other manuscripts are sent to two or more expert consultants for peer review.

Preparation for Publication

Accepted manuscripts are copyedited according to our house style and the galley proofs are returned to the corresponding author for final approval. Authors are responsible for all statements made in their work, including changes made by the copy editor and authorized by the corresponding author.

All authors must sign a statement of authorship responsibility and copyright transfer prior to publication of their paper. This form will be provided by the Publisher, together with the galley proofs.

Reprints

Authors receive 50 copies of their articles free of charge. Additional reprints may be ordered at terms based on the cost of production. Areprint order form is provided by the Publisher, together with the galley proofs.



• Declaration of Publication