JVATiTD - Guide for Authors

JVATiTD has no restrictions on the length of articles; however, the text is expected to be concise and complete. Moreover, there are no restrictions on the number of figures, tables, or amount of supporting information. Manuscripts submitted to the journal should be in English and neither been published before nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Authors should publish all experimental controls and make full datasets available where possible. 

JVATiTD uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from each other throughout the review process. Because of this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity. Therefore, it is necessary to remove names and affiliations of authors from the main manuscript file. Such information as well as all authors’ declarations must be included in the title page.

Articles must be submitted through our online submission system. It guides the authors stepwise through the process of entering manuscript details and uploading files. The system converts the article files to a single PDF file used in the peer-review process. Editable files (such as Word) are required to typeset the article for final publication.

The article-processing charge (APC) is payable when the manuscript is editorially accepted and before publication.

JVATiTD publishes the following article types:

• Letter to the editor: a letter to the editor may contain a re-analysis of a previously published article; a study that may not cover ‘standard research’ but that is of general interest to the journal; or a brief report of research findings adequate for the journal’s scope.

• Review: review articles provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in specific research areas within the scope of JVATiTD.

• Research: articles containing the results of original research (work reporting scientifically sound experiments and providing a substantial amount of new information).

• Short report: studies on important preliminary research findings, ongoing research projects or results of limited significance.

• Case report: a detailed report of the diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of an individual patient.

Manuscripts should be submitted through our online submission system. The submitting author is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. He/she must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the submitted manuscript.

In order to submit a manuscript, the following files are required:

• The main manuscript file that must not include the names of authors or co-authors (an anonymous file, since the journal uses double-blind peer review). References and smaller tables should be included in this file.
• A title page that must contain the names of all authors and co-authors, their affiliations, their e-mails as well as all authors’ declarations (see item  3.3 below).
• A cover letter.
• Figure files.
• Any additional files as supplemental material to the manuscript.

Title page

Since JVATiTD operates double-blind peer review, please include in the title page the following information:

• Personal information of all authors and their institutions such as names, affiliations and e-mails.
• The journal encourages that the ORCID number of all authors is provided.
• A list of statements must be included in the manuscript (item 3.2, authors’ declarations). These declarations should be provided in the title page. The topics are: ‘Acknowledgments’ (if applicable), ‘Availability of data and materials’, ‘Funding’, ‘Competing interests’, ‘Authors’ contributions’, ‘Ethics approval/Ethics approval and consent to participate’, ‘Consent for publication’.

Cover letter

The following information is expected to be included in the cover letter:

• An explanation of why your manuscript is suitable for publishing in JVATiTD.
• Confirmation that the content of the manuscript is original and has not been published nor is being considered for publication elsewhere.
• If you are submitting a manuscript to a particular special issue please refer to its specific name in the cover letter.
• If your article reports the results of a health care intervention on human participants, JVATiTD strongly recommends the registration in an appropriate registry. The registration number and date of registration should be in stated in this letter.

1. File formats

The file formats acceptable for the main manuscript document are ‘.doc’ and ‘.docx’ (Microsoft Word). Editable files are required for processing in production. Figures must be submitted as separate image files, not as part of the submitted manuscript file, in the following file formats: ‘.jpeg’, ‘.jpg’, ‘.tif’ or ‘.png’.

2. Main manuscript text

The main text of the article should: use double line spacing; include line and page numbering; use SI units; avoid page breaks; and embed special characters the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF.

Since JVATiTD adopts double-blind peer review, information that allows identification of authors or institution should NOT be included in the manuscript main document.

3. Manuscript sections

Manuscripts are divided into sections depending on their types:

• Letter to the editor: should include ‘Abstract’, ‘Keywords’, main text that may be broken into subsections with headings, ‘Abbreviations’ and authors’ declarations.

• Review: should include ‘Abstract’, ‘Keywords’, ‘Background’, main text broken into subsections with headings, ‘Conclusion’, ‘Abbreviations’ and authors’ declarations.

• Research: should include ‘Abstract’, ‘Keywords’, ‘Background’, ‘Methods’, ‘Results’, ‘Discussion’, ‘Conclusion’, ‘Abbreviations’ and authors’ declarations.

• Short report: should include ‘Abstract’, ‘Keywords’, ‘Background’, ‘Methods’, ‘Results’, ‘Discussion’, ‘Conclusion’, ‘Abbreviations’ and authors’ declarations.

• Case report: should include ‘Abstract’, ‘Keywords’, ‘Background’, ‘Case Presentation’, ‘Discussion’, ‘Conclusion’, ‘Abbreviations’ and authors’ declarations.

       3.1. Abstract and keywords

The abstract should not exceed 300 words. Abbreviations and references must be avoided in the abstract. According to the type of paper, the abstract can be structured or unstructured. In the case of research and short reports, it should be divided into the following sections: ‘Background’, ‘Methods’, ‘Results’ and ‘Conclusion’. The abstract of a case report should be structured into: ‘Background’, ‘Case Presentation’ and ‘Conclusion’. Reviews and letters to the editor have unstructured abstracts.

All types of articles must include four to ten keywords representing the main content of the study. The journal encourages the use of MeSH terms as keywords for articles.

       3.2. Main text sections

• ‘Background’ explains the context of the study, its aims, a summary of the existing literature and why this work was necessary.

• ‘Methods’ describes how the study was performed and statistical tests used.

• ‘Results’ includes the main findings of the study.

• ‘Discussion’ analyzes the implications of the findings in the context of existing research and highlights limitations of the study.

• ‘Conclusion’ states the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study to the field.

• ‘Case presentation’ contains a description of the patient’s demographic details, medical history, symptoms and signs, treatment, outcomes, and other significant information.

• ‘Abbreviations’ if abbreviations are used in the article they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations can be provided.

       3.3. Authors’ declarations

The following final statements must be included in the final version of the manuscript. These declarations are expected to be in the cover letter during submission since JVATiTD adopts double-blind peer review.

• ‘Acknowledgments’ – list of people who contributed towards the article (and does not meet the criteria for authorship) including contributors who provided professional writing services or materials.

• ‘Availability of data and materials’ – availability statements contain information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found, such as hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets. Example sentences are: ‘All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article’; ‘The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository’, ‘The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request’ or ‘Not applicable’ if no new data were created or analyzed in the study.

• ‘Funding’ – all sources of funding of the study should be disclosed; it is necessary to indicate grants that authors have received in support of the research work.  

• ‘Competing interests’ – all financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section. If the authors do not have any competing interests, it is necessary to state ‘The authors declare that they have no competing interests’.

• ‘Authors’ contributions’: Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the manuscript, which should be specified in this section. Please use initials to refer to each authors’ contribution. For example: ‘AB, CD and EF conceived this research and designed experiments. GH participated in the design and interpretation of the data. IJ performed experiments and analysis. KL and MN wrote the paper and participated in the revisions of it. All authors read and approved the final manuscript’.

• ‘Ethics approval/Ethics approval and consent to participate’: manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants or human data must include a statement on ethics approval and consent; and include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number. Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval. If the manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data, it is necessary to state ‘Not applicable’.

• ‘Consent for publication’: if the manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form, consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.

4. Figures

Please follow these instructions for figures: they should be provided as separate files, not embedded in the main manuscript file, at a sufficiently high resolution; figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text; multi-panel figures (those with parts A, B, C, D etc.) should be submitted as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure; figure legends should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphic file; it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures that have previously been published elsewhere. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source included in the reference list. The following file formats for figures are accepted: ‘.jpeg’, ‘.jpg’, ‘.tif’ or ‘.png’.

5. Tables

When preparing tables, please follow these formatting instructions: tables should be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, Table 2 etc.); small tables can be placed in the appropriate location within the manuscrip; larger tables can be placed at the end of the document text file;  table titles should be included above the table, and legends should be included underneath the table; and tables should NOT be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files, but should be formatted using ‘Table object’ function in your word processing program.

6. Additional files

Authors can provide datasets, tables, movies, or other information as additional files. Additional files will be published along with the accepted article. Results that would otherwise be indicated as ‘data not shown’ should be included as additional files. Each additional file should be cited in sequence within the main body of text. Additional files should be named “Additional file 1” and so on and should be referenced explicitly by file name within the body of the article, e.g. ‘An additional movie file shows this in more detail (see Additional file 1)’.

7. References

References must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, including any tables or legends. Example: “According to Lourenço [2], scorpion venoms have been studied for more than a century, and some interesting results were revealed since then [3, 4, 5]”. Unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list. JVATiTD follows the reference standards summarized in the NLM’s International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals: Sample References webpage and detailed in the NLM’s Citing Medicine, 2nd edition. Examples of reference style are shown below:

Standard journal article with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Zhang M, Holman CD, Price SD, Sanfilippo FM, Preen DB, Bulsara MK. Comorbidity and repeat admission to hospital for adverse drug reactions in older adults: retrospective cohort study. BMJ. 2009 Jan 7;338:a2752. doi: 10.1136/bmj.a2752. 
*For works without DOIs from websites, provide a URL in the reference (as long as the URL will work for readers).

Journal article with several authors (all authors must be cited) and e-location ID instead of page number
Tchaou BA, de Tové KS, N'Vènonfon CFT, Mfin PK, Aguemon AR, Chobli M, Chippaux JP. Acute kidney failure following severe viper envenomation: clinical, biological and ultrasonographic aspects. J Venom Anim Toxins Incl Trop Dis. 2020 Dec 7;26:e20200059. doi: 10.1590/1678-9199-JVATITD-2020-0059. 

Issue with supplement
Glauser TA. Integrating clinical trial data into clinical practice. Neurology. 2002;58(12 Suppl 7):S6-12. doi: 10.1212/wnl.58.12_suppl_7.s6.

Book: authors and editors
Breedlove GK, Schorfheide AM. Adolescent pregnancy. 2nd ed. Wieczorek RR, editor. White Plains (NY): March of Dimes Education Services; 2001.

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.

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.

Dissertation
Borkowski MM. Infant sleep and feeding: a telephone survey of Hispanic Americans [dissertation]. Mount Pleasant (MI): Central Michigan University; 2002.

Part of website
World Health Organization [Internet]. Venomous snakes distribution and species risk categories [cited 2019 Oct 14]. Available from: http://apps.who.int/bloodproducts/snakeantivenoms/database/.

Patent
King GF, Mukherjee AK, Wikel SK, McFarland BS, inventors. University of Connecticut, assignee. Acaricidal compostions and methods of use therof. United States patent US 7,575,758B2. 2009 Aug 18.

Part of a database on the Internet
The Reptile Database [Internet]. Ostrava (Czech Republic): Reptarium. 1995-. Calliophis bivirgatus (BOIE, 1827); [cited 2021 July 20]; [about 3 screens]. Available from: https://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Calliophis&species=bivirgatus.

Peer-review is the system used to evaluate the quality of a manuscript before its publication. Independent researchers in the research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published. JVATiTD operates using a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous. The suitability of a manuscript for publication will be assessed solely on criteria of scientific excellence. Final decisions will be made by the editor-in-chief .