Guide for Authors

 

  1. Aim and Scope

1.1. Canon Journal of Medicine (CJM) welcomes high-quality clinical and basic science contributions that focus on general and internal medicine, pathogenesis, epidemiology, diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment protocols. CJM accepts the original articles, review articles, case reports/series, brief reports, letters to the editor, and editorial formats.

 

  1. Submission

2.1. CJM follows ICMJE's Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as well as the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) for manuscripts submitted to the journal.

Authors should kindly note that submission implies that:

  1. The paper represents an original work.
  2. The paper neither was published already nor is under review elsewhere. However, preprints (i.e. medRxiv, Rxiv, Research Square, ...) can be considered for publication in CJM,when authors clearly state the status and reason for using preprint services.
  3. Upon acceptance, the paper may not be published elsewhere without the permission of the Canon Journal of Medicine(CJM)

2.2. CJM is an open-access journal distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Users are free to copy and redistribute articles published in CJM in any medium or format under the creative commons license terms and conditions.

2.3. CJM accepts manuscripts only through the online submission system, easy to use and easy to track. By conducting all procedures electronically, submissions will be made much faster. Once an article is submitted, it will be forwarded to an editor and, afterward, to at least two peer reviewers. Immediately after submission, the author will be notified of the submission process using both email and a follow-up ID code issued to each article separately. It is recommended that the ID code be saved for all future correspondence regarding the submitted article.

2.4. There is no article processing charge (APC) or publication fee for articles submitted before 31st January 2025.

2.5. By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details will be collected. The publication might require collected information for regular operations of the publication when necessary. The publication is aware of data protection's importance and has taken steps to ensure personal the security and privacy of personal data. 

 

  1. Article Types and Requirements

3.1. Required Files

For each contribution, the following files should be uploaded via the online submission system. For your kind attention, here you can find the required file and samples in a zip folder. 

  1. Cover Letter: In the cover letter please provide the novelty and main findingof the manuscript. Please provide an originality statement (declare that the work is not been published before, and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere), conflict of interests statement, received funding/grantfor this research project, and authors' contributions. You are free to send us your own cover letter or use our template cover letter. Template_Cover_Letter 
  2. Title Page:This should contain the titlerunning titletype of articleauthors’ names, and affiliations. Due to the blind peer-review process, please do not include any information of authors in the Manuscript file. The title page should be uploaded as a separate file.
  • Running Title: A shorter version of the title (maximum 60 characters including spaces) is required. 
  • Type of Article: Based on the acceptable types of articles presented as following.
  • Authors’ Names: Full names (first, middle, and last) for all authors of an article should be given and specified with superscript number(s) for the affiliation(s) [e.g., Mark Junior Smiths1]. The name of the corresponding author(s) should be specified with an asterisk after the name (e.g., Mark Junior Smiths*). Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate clearly.
  • Corresponding Author: One of the authors submitting the manuscript must be indicated as the corresponding author. In addition to the mentioned academic affiliation, the corresponding author’s address, telephone, fax number, email address, and ORCID should be written.
  1. Manuscript: Provide the manuscript file structured as:
  2. Title
  3. Abstract 
  4. Keywords
  5. Three to five pointed highlights for the reader regarding novelty, main finding, or recommendation for further research.
  6. The main body of the manuscript (for original articles asintroduction, materials/patients and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references, legends for display items; for case report/series as an introduction, case presentation, discussion and conclusion, references, legends; for review article as an introduction, authors’ comments and evidence, conclusion, recommendations for future, references, legends; for systematic review as an introduction, materials, results, discussion, conclusion, references, legends 
  7. Maximum of 5 tables or figures in total. Provide the informative description for each table and figure. Please make sure figures met the standard quality for publication and avoid using low-quality figures. Feel free to put your tables and figure either in the main body of the article, where best facilitate understanding of the manuscript, or at the end of the manuscript after the references.
  8. Figures: Please also provide the Figures as separate files with the standard quality.
  9. Signed Permissions and Ethical Statement Form: The purpose of this form is to ensure Ethical Considerations are achieved in your work. We also want you to transfer the submitted paper rights and privileges to the Canon Journal of Medicine upon acceptance. Please download, fill, and sign the form as a representative of all authors (all authors are responsible for the answers and data provided by the corresponding author). (Permission_and_Ethical_Consideration_Forim)
  10. Supplementary File (optional): includes relevant materialthat does not form part of the main body of the manuscript, which may include additional data such as computer code, large tables, additional figures, or appendices. You can send a maximum of 3 supplementary materials as video/image/text file

 

3.2. Manuscript Types

  • Original Articles:

These articles must be of primary research, methodologically accurate, and relevant to at least one aspect of clinical medicine or basic science. They should contain no more than 5000 words excluding structured abstract (maximum 250 words), tables, and references. The main text should contain an introduction, materials/patients and methods (including study setting, patients or participants, inclusion and exclusion criteria, sampling size, sampling method, data source, data tools, data measurements, data analyses, and interpretations), results, discussion, conclusion, references, legends for display items (figures and tables).

Note: Each clinical trial manuscript should have a specific trial registration code (IRCTClinicalTrials.gov, and ...) presented in the main body; otherwise, it will not be considered for further assessment in CJM.

  • Brief Report: 

Short reports should not exceed 3000 words and should contain a structured abstract (maximum 250 words).  The structure of a short report is similar to that of an original article but with some limitations: a concise introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and up to 2 tables or figures.

  • Narrative Review Articles:

Only solicited review articles will be accepted. They should be upmost 5000 words and contain unstructured abstract (maximum 250 words), introduction, authors’ comments and evidence, conclusion, recommendations for future, references (more than 50), and legends for display items (figures and tables).

  • Systematic Review or Meta-Analysis:

Such articles should be between 4000-5000 words and contain structured abstract (maximum 250 words), introduction, materials (search strategy and selection criteria, data extraction, quality assessment, and data analysis), results, discussion, conclusion, references, legends for display items (figures and tables).

Authors should report systematic reviews and meta-analyses following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement.

  • Case Report:

Only interesting and unique case reports with the following properties will be accepted:
word count up to 1500, structured abstract (maximum 250 words), introduction, (most importantly, the novelty of the case(s) report), then case presentation, followed by discussion and conclusion, references, and up to 2 figures or tables.

  • Letters to the Editor:

Letters to the Editor can be about a recent journal article or alternatively, a commentary article. There are some special limitations; the letters should be up to 1000 words, with maximum one figure or table, and use up to 10 references. No abstract is required for these articles. 

  • Editorial:

Editorials are the message of the CJM and are written in-house by the journal's Editorial Board members. Editorials are preferably no more than 2000 words and state-of-the-art discussions on the CJM main scopes. An unstructured abstract is required for these types of articles. 

Author Agreement Form: This form should be completed and sent after acceptance. CJM could ask for a data set (as an Excel or SPSS file) of the study related to the submitted article.

 

3.3. Manuscript Style

Keywords

3-6 keywords must be provided in the keywords section at the end of the abstract. It is recommended that authors use the MeSH terms at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html.

 

Reference Style

Canon Journal of Medicine uses adheres to the uniform style recommended by ICMJE. Please use referencing style of the National Library of Medicine (same as Vancouver). Please use referencing managing systems for citation and referencing. Here you can download the CJM referencing format in EndNote and Mendeley.

Below is the description of the National Library of Medicine description and examples for referencing at (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html#top).

 

Articles in Journals:

  1. Standard journal article

Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002 Jul 25;347(4):284-7.

List the first six authors, followed by et al. If there are more than six authors.

Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002;935(1-2):40-6.

  1. Organization as author

Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. Hypertension, insulin, and proinsulin in participants with impaired glucose tolerance. Hypertension. 2002;40(5):679-86.

  1. Both personal authors and organization as author 

Vallancien G, Emberton M, Harving N, van Moorselaar RJ; Alf-One Study Group. Sexual dysfunction in 1,274 European men suffering from lower urinary tract symptoms. J Urol. 2003;169(6):2257-61.

  1. No author has given

21st century heart solution may have a sting in the tail. BMJ. 2002;325(7357):184.

  1. Article published electronically ahead of the print version

Yu WM, Hawley TS, Hawley RG, Qu CK. Immortalization of yolk sac-derived precursor cells. Blood. 2002 Nov 15;100(10):3828-31. Epub 2002 Jul 5.

 

Books and Other Monographs

  1. Book:

Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.

  1. Chapter in a book

Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93-113.

  1. Conference proceedings

Harnden P, Joffe JK, Jones WG, editors. Germ cell tumours V. Proceedings of the 5th Germ Cell Tumour Conference; 2001 Sep 13-15; Leeds, UK. New York: Springer; 2002.

  1. Conference paper

Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza's computational effort statistic for genetic programming. In: Foster JA, Lutton E, Miller J, Ryan C, Tettamanzi AG, editors. Genetic programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3-5; Kinsdale, Ireland. Berlin: Springer; 2002. p. 182-91.

  1. Scientific or technical report

Yen GG (Oklahoma State University, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stillwater, OK). Health monitoring on vibration signatures. Final report. Arlington (VA): Air Force Office of Scientific Research (US), Air Force Research Laboratory; 2002 Feb. Report No.: AFRLSRBLTR020123. Contract No.: F496209810049.

Russell ML, Goth-Goldstein R, Apte MG, Fisk WJ. Method for measuring the size distribution of airborne Rhinovirus. Berkeley (CA): Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Environmental Energy Technologies Division; 2002 Jan. Report No.: LBNL49574. Contract No.: DEAC0376SF00098. Sponsored by the Department of Energy.

  1. Patent

Pagedas AC, inventor; Ancel Surgical R&D Inc., assignee. Flexible endoscopic grasping and cutting device and positioning tool assembly. United States patent US 20020103498. 2002 Aug 1.

 

Other Published Material

  1. Newspaper article

Tynan T. Medical improvements lower homicide rate: study sees drop in assault rate. The Washington Post. 2002 Aug 12;Sect. A:2 (col. 4).

  1. Legal Material

Veterans Hearing Loss Compensation Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-9, 115 Stat. 11 (May 24, 2001).

 

Electronic Material

  1. Journal article on the Internet

Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [Internet]. 2002 Jun [cited 2002 Aug 12];102(6):[about 1 p.]. Available from: https://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Fulltext/2002/06000/Quality_Improvement_Initiative_in_Nursing_Homes.31.aspx Subscription required.

  1. Part of a homepage/Web site

American Medical Association [Internet]. Chicago: The Association; c1995-2016 [cited 2016 Dec 27]. Office of International Medicine; [about 2 screens]. Available from: https://www.ama-assn.org/about/office-international-medicine

  1. Database on the Internet

Jablonski S. Online Multiple Congenital Anomaly/Mental Retardation (MCA/MR) Syndromes [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); c1999 [updated 2001 Nov 20; cited 2002 Aug 12]. Available from: //www.nlm.nih.gov/archive//20061212/mesh/jablonski/syndrome_title.html

  1. Blogs

Holt M. The Health Care Blog [Internet]. San Francisco: Matthew Holt. 2003 Oct -   [cited 2009 Feb 13]. Available from: http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/category/matthew-holt/.

  1. Software on the Internet

Hayes B, Tesar B, Zurow K. OTSoft: Optimality Theory Software. Version 2.3.2 [software]. 2013 Jan 14 [cited 2015 Feb 14]. Available from: https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/.

Golda TG, Hough PD, Gay G. APPSPACK (Asynchronous Parallel Pattern Search). Version 5.0.1 [software]. Sandia National Laboratories. 2007 Feb 16 [cited 2016 Apr 4; downloaded 2010 Jan 5]. Available from: https://dakota.sandia.gov/packages/hopspack

 

Tables and Figures

Tables: Tables should be created with a word processor (in simple form) and saved in either the DOC or RTF format. Tables must not be embedded in the text but provided on separate pages at the end of the manuscript and saved in DOC format.

Figures: To ensure the highest print quality, figures must be submitted in either TIF or EPS format according to the following minimum resolutions:

  • 1200 dpi (dots per inch) for black and white line art (simple bar graphs, charts, etc.)
  • 300 dpi for halftones (black and white photographs)
  • 600 dpi for combination halftones (photographs that also contain line art such as labeling or thin lines), figures should be saved as individual files. Vector-based figures (e.g., figures created in Adobe Illustrator) should be submitted in EPS format.

Color figures must be submitted in a CMYK color.

 

  1. Ethical Considerations

CJM strictly follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE); please visit COPE for information on publishing and ethical guidelines.

Please note that any submission including data collected from human subjects requires ethical approval. In this case, a clear statement must be made in any submitted manuscript presenting such research, specifying that the free and informed consent of the subjects was obtained. If your manuscript does not include ethical approval, it will not be sent out for review. For qualitative articles, the following general principles must be considered when submitting your manuscript.

Details of formal ethical approval should be stated in the main body of the article. If authors were not required to obtain ethical approval (as is the case in some countries) or unable to obtain ethical approval (as sometimes occurs in resource-poor settings), the circumstances should be explained. Please anonymize the information as appropriate in the manuscript and give the information when asked during submission.

 

Conflict of interest

According to ICMJE guidelines, a conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has personal or financial relationships that influence (bias) inappropriately his/her action (Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflicts of interest. The potential for a conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

Authors must make sure that they have declared any actual or potential conflicts of interest (if any) in their manuscript when submitting their work. The corresponding author is responsible for confirming with the co-authors whether they have any conflicts to be declared (For further information please visit ICMJE).

 Authorship Criteria

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following criteria for authorship:

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

Each author should meet all of the above-mentioned criteria to be listed in the submitted manuscript. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. These contributors (non-author contributors) should be appreciated in the acknowledgment section, but not listed as co-authors.

The naming order of contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing of the manuscript. Once submitted, the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all contributors.

 

Plagiarism

In case any attempt at plagiarism accompanied by convincing evidence is brought to our attention, the following steps will be taken:

  1. After consulting the respective Editorial Board members, the authors guilty of plagiarism will be debarred from publishing their papers in 
  2. Heads of the Departments/Institutes of the offending authors will be informed of such incidences of plagiarism.
  3. In case of confirmation of plagiarism in an already published article, the editor will consider an article retraction based on COPE retraction guidelines.

All the accepted manuscripts will undergo plagiarism screening using iThenticate software upon preliminary acceptance.

 

Falsification and Fabrication

If the journal editor has clear evidence of fabrication (the intentional misrepresentation of research results by making up data) or falsification (manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record), he/she will consider an article retraction based on COPE retraction guidelines.

 

  1. Repository Policy of the Journal

As per the Journal’s Open Access Policy, authors are entitled of making final accepted or published version of their article available publicly in various domains and repositories according to the terms of the CC BY license. The final version of the author’s paper and the pre-review version might be solely available on pre-print repositories. 

When reusing, distributing, posting or archiving articles, the journal must be attributed clearly as the original publication authority and correct details of citation must be provided. Authors are therefore required to deposit the unique URL/DOI of their published article in addition to the Version of Record in any Repository. We encourage authors to self-archive and submit their papers in institutional repositories or on their websites without embargo. These practices ensure greater citation of published work and provide productive exchange benefits to the authors.

 

  1. Peer-Review process

CJM adheres to a double-blind peer-review process that is rapid, fair, and ensures the high quality of published articles. CMJ's reviewers are required to declare their conflicts of interest and maintain the confidentiality of the manuscripts they review. As CJM is a rapid response journal, the review process takes 3 weeks at the utmost. Reviews will be published along with the articles to ensure clarity and transparency. Here is a brief description of the peer-review process in CJM, you can find more information here.