Instructions for Authors

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Large Language Models) do not meet the requirements for authorship of a manuscript. The reason is that AI tools do not take responsibility for the submitted work, are unable to manage copyright and license agreements and cannot determine the presence or absence of conflicts of interest.

In the Materials and Methods section of their manuscript authors must disclose which AI tool was used and for what task/s (e.g. writing the manuscript, images, data collection or analysis). Authors are fully responsible for the entire content of their manuscript, including the parts produced by an AI tool.

Authorship should be limited only to those people who have made a significant contribution to the submitted work, specifically: research concept and design, data collection and/or organization, data analysis and interpretation, writing the manuscript, critical revision of the manuscript, final approval of the manuscript. Likewise, it is unethical for authors to omit from the author list a person/s who contributed to the above-listed tasks (that is the so-called “ghost authorship”).
Furthermore, guest authorship (also referred to as “gift authorship”) is not allowed.
The Acknowledgements section is the appropriate place to list the names of all people who do not meet the criteria of significant contribution.

During the submission process, the authors are required to list all authors and mark their contribution to the submitted manuscript. During the initial screening process, the Vice-Editor-in-Chief reviews this information. In case of doubt, the Vice-Editor-in-Chief directly contacts the corresponding author, investigates the issue and requests appropriate changes to the author list and/or contributions.

All requests to add or remove authors from the author list before or during publishing the article in the EJTCM shall be handled by the Vice-Editor-in-Chief by contacting all the remaining authors (if possible) and obtaining their permission for the addition or removal of any authors.
All equivocal cases shall be resolved in accordance with the COPE guidelines https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines.

Manuscript authored, co-authored or submitted by an Editor.
If an EJTCM Editor is an author or co-author of a manuscript submitted to the EJTCM, this manuscript follows the same editorial process as all other manuscripts (no "fast-track," no preferential treatment). In addition, an Editor may not review his/her manuscript (always 2 independent peer Reviewers) and does not oversee his/her article as the Section Editor (always an independent Section Editor).

Authors are welcome to submit their original empirical research or commentary in any field of medicine. The amount of text, figures and tables should be reduced to minimum. Please keep in mind that the shorter the article, the more likely it will be read and cited by other researchers. Below are the maximum word limits (excluding abstract, tables and the list of references) of each article type we publish:

• Commentary (<500 words)
  A response to an article previously published in EJTCM.
• Short communication (<1500 words)
  Describes preliminary results of original research.
• Review article (<3000 words)
• Research article (<3000 words)
• Meta-analysis (<3000 words)
• Study Protocol (<3000 words)
  Describes a novel study protocol or shares a dataset for other researchers to use.
• Technical report (<3000 words)
  Describes a novel procedure (laboratory or clinical) and its applications in future medical practice.

The Editor may accept longer manuscripts only in exceptional and justified circumstances.

All submitted manuscripts are verified using plagiarism detection software such as iThenticate and Crossref.

All authors can submit and publish their articles in the European Journal of Translational and Clinical Medicine free of charge. This means that there is no article processing charge for the authors.

The article text should be divided into clearly defined sections. Each section should be given a brief heading. The organization of review articles should be appropriate to the content of the review. The article must be typed double-spaced.

• Introduction
  State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background that orients the general scientific reader to the topic. Avoid a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
• Material and methods
  Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described. Include a description of statistical methods used.
• Results
  Results should be clear and concise. Results may be presented in tables or figures that should not duplicate the text.
• Discussion
  Synthesize the results into a cohesive story in the context of the published literature. Set forth the major conclusions of the authors. Do not repeat information from the Introduction or Results section. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.
• Conclusions

Please include at least 3 but no more than 5 keyword phrases and subject headings.

This is the section after the Discussion and before the References, dedicated to recognizing the names of non-authors who have been helpful in the research described in the manuscript and/or in creating the manuscript. In addition, this section must contain disclosure of all sources of financial support for the described research, any potential conflicts of interest, and clinical trial registry information.

For more details see “Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers” by Patrias & Wendling: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents.

EJTCM encourages you to cite underlying or relevant datasets in your manuscript by citing them in your text and including a data reference in your Reference List. Data references should include the following elements: author name(s), dataset title, data repository, version (where available), year, and global persistent identifier. Add [dataset] immediately before the reference so we can properly identify it as a data reference. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

Sharing of datasets increases the reproducibility and transparency of research, builds public trust in science and allows researchers to re-use data to advance their research projects. As a translational medicine journal, the EJTCM fully supports sharing of datasets among researchers.

All illustrations (images, graphs, flowcharts) other than tables are figures and should be labeled as such. Ensure that each illustration has a legend. Legends for figures should be typed double-spaced on a separate page after the References. A legend should consist of a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Articles must be submitted online at https://www.editorialsystem.com/ejtcm

The website guides authors stepwise through the submission process. Submission items include a cover letter (save as a separate file for upload), the manuscript (including title page, abstract, main text, references, and figure legends), tables, and figures. Revised manuscripts should also be accompanied by a separate file (separate from the cover letter) with responses to reviewers' comments. Original source files (not PDF files) are required for online submission.

Accepted text and table formats: DOC and DOCX (Microsoft Word), ODT (OpenOffice), RTF.

EJTCM does not charge the authors for approving the manuscript for publish.

The EJTCM article submission system requires that authors submit their ORCID identifiers. If you do not already have an ORCID identifier, do not worry because registration is very simple: https://orcid.org/register.

For instructions in Polish see: ORCID_rejestracja_instrukcja.pdf.

Authors 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. 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.

Upon the author’s request, the EJTCM Editorial Office may publish (for a fee) an article reprint for the author’s business purposes. Please send such requests to ejtcm@gumed.edu.pl

Please send questions concerning the submission or review process of your manuscript to ejtcm@gumed.edu.pl