Instructions to authors

Format of articles

Algerian journal of medical and health research publishes original scientific work, original articles, clinical facts, literature reviews…etc, in all medical disciplines from basic sciences to all medico-surgical specialties. It is a scientific journal quarterly with free online access, without submission or publication costs.

In most cases, we do not impose strict limits on the number of words or the number of pages. However, we strongly recommend writing concisely and adhering to the following guidelines:

  • Articles should ideally not exceed 10 composed pages.
  • The main text should not exceed 4,500 words (not including abstract, methods, references and figure legends).
  • The title should not exceed 20 words.
  • The abstract should not exceed 250 words.

Terms of publication

Submission of an article implies that it has never been previously submitted to the journal and is not in a concurrent submission process elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all of its authors and that, if it is accepted, it will not be published elsewhere, including electronically, without the consent of the copyright holder. To verify its originality, your article may be checked using a plagiarism detection tool.

Submitted papers should follow the guidelines below, which conform to the standards for submission of manuscripts proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, known as the Vancouver Group (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors – ICMJE) (www.icmje.org).

Each manuscript is entrusted to two independent reviewers who may request corrections. The final decision of acceptance will be made on the revised version of the article.

Respect for ethics

Submitted works must comply with the ethical recommendations of the Declaration of Helsinki. They must have been submitted, if required, either to an ethics committee (equivalent to ethical research committees)https://atrss.dz/membres.php?id=23. When a work has been submitted to one of these institutions, it must be mentioned in the text.

The summary

Please do not include references in your abstract. Make sure it serves both as a general introduction to the topic and contains a short, non-detailed summary of the main findings and their implications.

Keywords :

A maximum of 10, placed under the abstract, must be well chosen to allow optimal identification of the article after its publication.

Manuscript

Your manuscript text file should begin with a title page showing the author’s affiliations and contact information, the corresponding author identifier which is denoted by an asterisk. We recommend that each section include an introduction to the referenced text that expands the context of the work. Some repetitions with the abstract are acceptable.

For the main body of the text, there are no specific requirements. You can organize it in the way that best suits your search.

Scientific articles are very varied and each type must have a particular form and respond to a specific objective. This is why authors are invited to respect the appropriate editorial form for each type of article:

  1. Original article:

The original research article is the essence of the scientific medical article. However, the following structure will work in many cases for such articles:

INTRODUCTION :it is a question of presenting the object of the study, its context and its objectives. A small synthesis of what is already known on the subject is appreciable and often necessary. We will not forget that there is no “evidence” in science and that each assertion, if it is not the result of the work in hand, must be justified by a reference.

METHODS :it is a question of specifying the supports studied and the protocols carried out during the study.

RESULTS :it is a question of delivering the original results provided by the study and of explaining the contributions in terms of understanding of the studied phenomenon.

DISCUSSION (or CONLUSION):it is a question of showing that the work has met the objectives assigned in the introduction, of drawing an assessment but also of opening up prospects. A comparison and openness to other existing works (obviously cited as references) is valuable and often necessary.

  • Literature review :

It allows a critical evaluation of the works published in the literature allowing to achieve an overview and to advance the scientific reflection on a specific subject. The authors will therefore examine the questions, methodologies and results of research teams that have worked on this subject around the world.

The text must not exceed 4500 words, include a maximum of 6 illustrations and 50 references.

  • Focus:

An update deals with progress on a current topic. It conforms to the same instructions as those of the literature review but is distinguished by its less exhaustive and less detailed nature.

The text must not exceed 4500 words and include a maximum of 6 illustrations and 50 references.

  • Meta-analysis:

Meta-analysis is a method of summarizing the results of studies in medical research. It requires a huge work of compilation and synthesis of data from different studies on a given subject.

The text must not exceed 4500 words and include a maximum of 6 illustrations and 50 references.

  • Clinical case :

It is a presentation of original observations whose analysis brings new clinical, physiopathological or fundamental knowledge. It includes an introduction, the observation reduced to the most relevant facts, a discussion and a conclusion.

The text does not exceed 3000 words, and includes a maximum of 4 illustrations and 20 references.

You should then follow the main body of the text with:

  • References (limited to 50 references)
  • Acknowledgments (optional)
  • Author contributions
  • Declaration of data availability (mandatory)
  • Additional information (including a conflict of interest statement)
  • Figure captions (these are limited to 350 words per figure)
  • Tables (maximum one page size)

Please note that footnotes should not be used.

You may include a limited number of unlabeled molecular structure charts and numbered math equations if needed. Display elements are generally limited to 6 ( figures and or tables). However, to allow composition of articles, we advise you to ensure that the number of display elements is proportional to the total length of your words. Thus, for articles of 2,000 words or less, we suggest including no more than 4 figures/tables. Please note that diagrams should not be used and should instead be presented as numbers.

Your submission must also include:

  • A cover letter
  • Individual figure files and optional additional information files

For early submissions (i.e. unreviewed manuscripts), you may incorporate the text and figures from the manuscript into a single file up to 2MB in size. The file must be in Microsoft Word format. Figures can be inserted into the text at the appropriate places or grouped together at the end.

Additional information should be combined and provided in one separate file.

Cover letter

In your cover letter, you must include:

  • The affiliation and contact details of the corresponding author
  • A brief explanation of why the work is appropriate for publication
  • The names and contact details of any reviewers you consider appropriate

Finally, you should indicate whether you have ever had any discussions with a member of the scientific report editorial board about the work described in your manuscript.

Revised manuscripts

For revised manuscripts, you must provide all textual content in a single file, prepared using Microsoft Word. Please note that we do not accept PDF files for the article text of revised manuscripts. Make sure:

  • Format the handwritten file as single column text without justification.
  • Number the pages using an Arabic numeral in the footer of each page.
  • Use the default Computer Modern fonts for your text and the « Symbols » font for all Greek characters.
  • Provide all figures as individual files.
  • Combine and provide any additional information in a separate file.
  • Include the title of the manuscript and the list of authors in the first page of the supplementary information file.

If you do not wish to incorporate the manuscript text and figures into a single file, please provide all textual content in a single separate file, prepared using Microsoft Word.

Alternatively, you can ensure that the references (source code) are included in the manuscript file itself. As a final precaution, you should ensure that the complete .tex file compiles correctly on its own system with no errors or warnings, before submitting it.

Writing your manuscript

Algerian journal of medical and health research is read by a wide range of scientists. So please think carefully about communicating your findings as clearly as possible.

  • Clearly explain your data and information, justifying their sources.
  • Keep abbreviations to a minimum, especially when they are non-standard.
  • If you must use an abbreviation, be sure to spell it correctly in the text or caption the first time it appears.
  • Clearly explain the background, rationale and main conclusions of your study.
  • Write titles and abstracts in a language easily understood by any scientist.

We strongly recommend that you ask a colleague with different expertise to review your manuscript before submitting it. This will help you identify concepts and terminology that non-specialist readers may have trouble grasping.

Copy editing services

We do not provide extensive copy editing as part of the production process. So if you think your manuscript would benefit from having someone review the copy, please consider using a copy editing or language editing service. You can do this before submission or at the review stage.

Methods

We recommend limiting your Methods section to 1,500 words. Make sure it includes adequate experimental and characterization data so others can reproduce your work.

If you are reporting experiments on live vertebrates (or higher invertebrates), humans, or human samples, you must include a statement of ethics approval in the Methods section.

References

The references transmitted with the manuscript cannot be modified by us. Therefore, it is essential that you formulate them correctly, as they will be electronically linked to external databases wherever possible. Make sure they:

  • Run sequentially (and are always numeric).
  • Number them with Arabic numerals in square brackets.
  • Have only one post related to each issue.
  • Only include articles or datasets that have been published or accepted by a named publication, recognized preprint server, or data repository (if you include preprints of accepted articles in your reference list, make sure you to submit them with the manuscript).
  • Include published conference abstracts and numbered patents, if desired.
  • Do not include grant details and acknowledgements.

In your list of references, you must:

  • Include all authors unless there are six or more, in which case only the first author should be listed, followed by « et al. » « .
  • List authors by surname first, followed by a comma and initials (followed by periods) of given names.
  • Use Roman text for article and dataset titles, with only the first word of the title having an initial capital and written exactly as it appears in the work cited, ending with a period.
  • Use italics for book titles, giving all words in the title an initial capital.
  • Use italics for log and data repository names, abbreviating them according to common usage (with periods).
  • Use bold for volume numbers and the following comma.
  • Indicate the full page range (or article number), if applicable.

Examples

Articles published:

Bernard, HJ, Henri, MG, A. The rate of myosin on active cells. VJ Cell Biol. 123, 32-42 (2009).

Online only

Garden, L et al. Imaging in biofilms. Nat. Commmon . 5, 5035; 11.0321/ncomms432 (2012).

For articles with more than five authors, include only the first author’s name followed by ‘ et al. ‘.

Books:

Hank, M. How to write a book (ed. Keith, L.) 102-121 (Neil, 2011).

Online material:

Blaster, K. Reith Steve. Arabic Science Academy Blog http://blog.arabicnetwork.net/rid/2011/08/01/earthquacke (2005).

Thanks

Please keep acknowledgments brief and without expansive comments. You can recognize grant contributors. You should also acknowledge the help of writers, proofreaders, and editors.

Author’s contributions

You must provide an author contribution statement as described in the section on the editorial policies.

Be careful:

  • The author name you give as the corresponding author will be the primary contact during the review process and should not change.
  • The information you provide in the submission system will be used as the source of truth when publishing your article.

Conflicts of interest

You must provide a declaration of conflicts of interest.If there is no conflict of interest, you must include a statement.

Your statement must be explicit and unambiguous describing any potential competing interests (or lack thereof) for EACH contributing author. The information you provide in the submission system will be used as the source of truth when publishing your article.

Here are some sample statements:


The author or authors declare no competing interests.


Dr. L’s work was funded by O. He received compensation as a member of D’s ​​scientific advisory board and owns shares in the company. He also consulted for Y and received compensation. Dr P and Dr E declare no potential conflict of interest.

Ethical statements

If your research includes human or animal subjects, you should include appropriate ethical statements in the Methods section of your manuscript.

Legends of figures

Please start your figure captions with a brief title sentence for the whole figure and continue with a short description of what is shown in each panel. Use all symbols in order and minimize methodological details as much as possible. Keep each caption total to no more than 350 words. Provide text for figure legends in numerical order after the references.

The tables

Please submit all tables in your main article in an editable Word format, not as images. Tables that include statistical analysis of the data should describe their error analysis standards and ranges in a table legend.

Equations

Include all mathematical equations and expressions in the main text of the document. Identify equations referred to in the text by numbers in parentheses, such as (1), and refer to them in the manuscript as « equation (1) », etc.

For submissions in .doc or .docx format, please ensure that all equations are provided in an editable Word format. You can produce them with the equation editor included in Microsoft Word.