Former title: Respiratory Medicine Extra

Submission checklist

Respiratory Medicine CME publishes commissioned CME related article and Case Reports.
Case Reports can be submitted online at: http://ees.elsevier.com/yrmed/. All submitted Case Reports will be considered for publication only in Respiratory Medicine CME and will henceforth not be considered for Respiratory Medicine. The Guidelines below are for authors who have been commissioned to contribute to the Respiratory Medicine CME journal.

Please note that CME articles in Respiratory Medicine CME are commissioned by the Editor, Barbara Yawn.yawnx002@umn.edu

Ensure that the following items are present:

• One author designated as corresponding author:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers

• All text pages
• Keywords
• Educational Aims
• Original artwork (high-quality prints)
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright holder.

Length.
The length of your article should be 5000 words maximum, unless otherwise stated in your confirmatory email from the publisher (please check this). This limit is inclusive of references and equivalent space for illustrations and tables. As a guide for conversion, a half-page illustration or table is equivalent to 250 words of text so for every table or illustration included deduct 250 words from your total word allocation.

Presentation of manuscripts.
Manuscripts must be submitted in English and in a conventional electronic format. Commissioned manuscripts should be sent via email to Barbara Yawn, editor of RESPIRATORY MEDICINE CME.

Title Page
This should include the title of the article, the full name and address of each author, together with their email address, telephone and fax numbers. The degrees and affiliations of each author should also be provided. Proofs will be sent to the first author unless otherwise specified.

Educational Aims.
The educational aims of the review should be summarised in bullet list style and should list 4-6 aims of the CME review.

Abstract and key words
The second page should contain the abstract (which should not exceed 150 words) and the key words. The abstract should be comprehensible to readers before they have read the paper. References or illustrations should not be mentioned and abbreviations should be avoided. Ensure that the abstract focuses the reader on the key issues that will be addressed. Key words should preferably be taken from the MESH index of Index Medicus.

Headings.
Information should be carefully organized under a clear hierarchy of headings that will enable the reader to follow the text easily. Please indicate the level of headings (A, B, C or D) in a copy of your manuscript. Try to avoid using more than four levels of heading.

Illustrations and captions
All illustrations must be numbered sequentially according to their order of citation in the text. Ensure that all the illustrations are referred to in the text. Captions should be prepared on a page separate from the main text. Line illustrations. For line diagrams, please supply these in Powerpoint, Word or as EPS files. If supplied in Word do not embed them in the main text but supply them in separate files.

Reference Format
Manuscripts should use the 'Vancouver' style for references, which should be numbered consecutively (in parentheses) in the order in which they are first cited in the text and listed at the end of the paper. For journal references, all authors should be included when there are six or less (first three only when seven or more), followed by the title of article, name of journal abbreviated according to British Standard 4148: 1975 (or left in full), year, volume, and first and last pages. For example:

1) Tockman MS, Anthonisen MD, Wright EC et al. Airways obstruction and the risk of lung cancer. Ann Intern Med 1987; 106:512-518.
For book references, the author(s) should be followed by the chapter title (if appropriate), editor(s) (if applicable), book title, place of publication, publisher, year and page numbers. For example:
2) Colby VT, Carrington CB. Infiltrative lung disease. In: Thurlbeck WM, ed. Pathology of the Lung. New York: Thieme Medical Publishers, 1988.

A maximum of 50 references should be included.

Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

Authors' rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred to: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

Ethical approval
For information on Ethics in Publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see http://www.elsevier.com/authorethics and http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.

Role of the funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated. Please see http://www.elsevier.com/funding

Contributors
Each author is required to declare his or her individual contribution to the article: all authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should be described.

Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest

Patient Consent
Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in your paper.

Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request.

Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.

If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission. For further information see http://www.elsevier.com/patientphotographs.

Acknowledgements
List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proofreading the article, etc.).

Language Services
Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://www.elsevier.com/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms and Conditions http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions

CME Educational Questions
CME questions need to be structured in a consistent way in order for the article to be accredited for allocation of CME points. All CME questions should be multiple choice questions: true/false format is preferable. Please complete between 5-7 CME questions to accompany your manuscript, please also provide the answers to these questions with your submission.

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from Adobe. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: Adobe. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement. Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult permissions.