Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submitted manuscripts are screened using specialized anti-plagiarism software, are checked to ensure that they comply with the instructions for authors, and that all references, figures and tables meet the journal’s requirements. Only manuscripts complying with the above requirements will be further processed. More information about the reviewing process can be found here.

Submission guidelines

General policies

All manuscripts submitted to JCCM must be original, high quality, and conform to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

Authors should not submit the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal, in the same or different language.

The journal does not have article processing charges nor article submission charges, but there is a publication fee following acceptance. The publication fee for an accepted article is 500 EUR.

All manuscripts should be submitted through the journal’s editorial manager. The corresponding author is responsible for formatting and uploading all documents.

JCCM complies with CC BY 4.0 license, subscribes to the principles of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and to the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) recommendations, to review best practice and ethical standards in the conduct and reporting of research and other published materials.

We encourage authors to use the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network research reporting guidelines, to improve the reliability and value of the publication: https://www.goodreports.org/ .

Authorship

All individuals listed as authors should qualify for authorship and should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. All individuals listed as authors should qualify for authorship and should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authors included in the manuscript should meet all of the following conditions as stated in the ICMJE guidelines:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception and design of the work, acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically, for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version to be published.
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Any other contributors, who do not qualify for authorship, should be acknowledged in an acknowledgment section. For further information about authorship, please refer to the ICMJE guidelines.

Authors’ contributions – CRediT taxonomy

JCCM uses the CRediT Taxonomy to define author contributions. Each author on a paper may have one or more CRediT contribution roles. Author contributions will be included at the end of the manuscript. Having a role described by the taxonomy does not automatically qualify someone as an author.

^{Brand A, Allen L, Altman M, Hlava M, Scott J. Beyond authorship: attribution, contribution, collaboration, and credit. Learned Publishing. 2015;28(2):151-155.}

Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools in Manuscript Preparation

JCCM recognizes the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in academic writing. While these technologies may assist in language refinement or idea generation, the integrity, originality, and accountability of scholarly work must be preserved.

This policy is consistent with guidance from:

• The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
• The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
• The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)

AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Only individuals who meet authorship criteria, as defined by the ICMJE guidelines, can be credited as authors. Human authors remain fully responsible for the content, accuracy, and integrity of any work submitted to the journal, and must ensure that AI is used in a limited and ethically sound manner.

If AI tools have been used in the preparation of a manuscript, their use must be transparently declared in the Acknowledgments or Methods, stating:

• The name and version of the tool
• The purpose of its use (e.g., grammar correction, idea structuring)
• A statement confirming that all AI-generated content has been verified by the authors.

Manuscript organization

The submission should include the following attachments:

A. Cover letter

All manuscripts should be submitted together with a cover letter attached as a separate file, stating that:

• the manuscript is original
• no portion of the manuscript is under consideration for publication in any other journal or has been previously published, except as an abstract of fewer than 400 words.
• all authors have read and approved the manuscript and accept responsibility for the full content.
• Authors must state all possible conflicts of interest relating to the manuscript, or, if there are none, this should be stated as “none declared”.

The cover letter may include a list of potential reviewers or persons which the author(s) do not wish as reviewers. A brief statement of reasons of suitability/non-suitability should be given.

B. License to publish

A license to publish statement should be signed by the corresponding author on behalf of all the authors. The standard format of this document is available to be downloaded here.

C. Manuscript

The manuscripts, including all tables and references, must be prepared in Word format. The text should be typed double-spaced with no indent, using “Calibri” font size 11.

Please arrange the contents of your manuscript in the following order:

i. Title – Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

No personal information of the authors is allowed within the manuscript, because of the double-peer review process

ii. Abstract – an abstract of no more than 300 words should accompany manuscripts relating to original research, case presentations and review articles. This should be structured using the following headings: Introduction, Aim of the study, Material and Methods, Results, Conclusions. Detailed instructions on abstract preparation according to each manuscript type are given below.

iii. Key words – up to 10 keywords should be supplied by the author(s).

iv. Full text – should be formatted in Microsoft Word, double-spaced, single columned. Use headings and subheadings in all the sections. Original research articles should not exceed 5.000 words including references, tables, table legends and figure legends, and should be divided into structured sections.

When preparing your manuscript, consider the following rules:

• • Define abbreviations that are not standard the first time they appear in the text, followed by the abbreviation in brackets. Such abbreviations that are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article
  • Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to seek appropriate grammatical assistance when preparing the manuscript. Poorly written manuscripts will be returned for improvement before commencing the editorial process.

D. Figures

Figures should be prepared separately and sent as additional files, in TIF or PNG format. The figures should be prepared at the standard resolution of 300 dpi. All abbreviations used in a figure should be explained in the figure legend. Figure legends should be concise but explicit, enabling a clear understanding of the illustration. Figures and figure legends should be numbered in Arabic numerals in the order of appearance in the text. Color figures are preferred. Where a figure(s) is reproduced or adapted from another source, the author must first seek permission from both the author and publisher of the original material. Written evidence of permission for reproduction in both print and electronic formats for worldwide distribution must be forwarded with the manuscript and state “Reproduced with permission from…” or “Adapted with permission from…”.

E. Tables

These must be self-explanatory and should not duplicate the text. Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals in the order of mention in the text. Large tables should be typed on a separate page at the end of the manuscript, and the insertion point marked in the manuscript text. All the abbreviations used in the table should be typed as footnotes immediately below the table.  Tables should be created with the Insert Table function in order to be editable. Do not submit tables as image files.

F. Appendices

If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1), and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

G. Authors’ contribution

Contributor Roles have to be attributed to each Author of a submission.  The roles listed are from the CRedit Taxonomy, a classification standard used to ensure that Authors are credited for their contributions toward published scholarly works.

H. Acknowledgments

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

I. Conflict of interest

The manuscript should contain a statement fully disclosing any conflict of interest related to the manuscript. If there are no conflicts of interest, this should be stated as “none declared”. Material and financial support should also be acknowledged.

J. Funding

Please indicate any source of funding including grants, contracts, or any other form of financial support relating to the study. If not the case, please mention “No external funding was received”.

K. References

JCCM uses Vancouver citation style with brackets. List all authors if six or less; otherwise list first three and add “et al”. Please abbreviate titles of periodicals according to Index Medicus, or spelled out in full if not listed in Index Medicus. Use the following formats, paying close attention to the use of punctuation i.e. spaces, colon (:), semi-colon (;), comma (,) and full-stops (.). The reference template to be used in specialized software (Zotero, Mendeley) can be downloaded from here.

For journal articles:

• Kim J, Fitzgerald JG, Sanders AK, Hofman HG. Long term survival following implantation of drug-eluting stents. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2002;42:652-8.

For articles-in-press:

• Hendricks-Ferguson VL, Sawin KJ, et al. Novice Nurses’ Experiences with Palliative and End-of-Life Communication. J Pediatr Oncol Nurs. 2015. DOI: 1043454214555196. [Epub ahead of print]

For a chapter in a book:

• La Rovere MT, Schwartz PJ: Baroreflex sensitivity. In Opie, L: Drugs for the Heart, Sixth Edition. Philadelphia: WB Saunders. 2006, pp.67-93.

For a Book:

• Eisen HN. Immunology: an introduction to molecular and cellular principles of the immune response. 5thed. New York: Harper&Row; 1974. P.406.

Publication ethics

Informed consent

All research studies involving human subjects must have received approval of the appropriate institutional ethics committee and informed consent must be obtained from all the patients participating in the studies, prior to manuscript submission. The manuscript must contain a statement on the informed consent within the “Material and Methods” section.

In cases where the institutional ethics review committee ruled that approval from them was not required or that the need for informed consent was unnecessary, a statement from the committee to this end should be forwarded to the Editor with the manuscript.

Human and animal rights

Studies involving experimental research on animals or humans must conform to the guiding principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. In case of research involving human subjects, the manuscript must contain a statement within the “Material and Methods” section indicating that the study protocol has been approved by the author(s) institutional ethical committee and that all study participants have given informed consent to participate, or that the ethical committee has waived the need for informed consent. In order to respect patient confidentiality and the right to privacy, identifying information such as patient’s names, images, hospital or hospital record details, should not be included in any published material unless the information is essential for the scientific content. If so, written permission must be obtained from the patient, and this permission should be submitted to the editorial office prior to publication. In the case of animal experiments, both national and the institutional guidelines pertaining to the experimental use of laboratory animals should be rigidly followed.

Clinical trials

In case of manuscripts presenting clinical trials, the clinical trial should be registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment, as a condition for consideration for publication. Trials should be preferably registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, but any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) is acceptable, in accordance with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.