Submissions

Author Guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS (GUIDELINES)

Dear authors, in order to submit an article, you must register as an author on the journal´s website beforehand. The only way to submit manuscripts for review is through the site. After registering, follow the instructions in the section "Submit Article" section. Authors are responsible for the information they enter in the platform, we recommend to read carefully the requested data and enter correctly the metadata of the manuscript. An error in this step may cause delays in the editorial process. The journal is not responsible for the information submitted.

After submission, you can check the status of your article from the platform.

This journal is open access and does not charge any fees at any stage of the editorial process: submission, processing or publication of articles.

The Journal´s Privacy Statement ensures that your names and email addresses will not be used for other purposes.

FOR AUTHORS:

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Are you interested in publishing in our Journal? We recommend that you consult the "About" and Policies" sections, as well as the section policies and guidelines or instructions for authors.

The Journal accepts manuscripts previously deposited in ad hoc preprint servers (SciELO Preprints, arXiv.org, bioRxiv.org, ChemRxiv.org, medRxiv.org). Authors can also use academic social networks to place their article (Research Gate), making sure that the article has not been published in another journal.

For keyword selection, use the Health Sciences Descriptors, available at: https://decs.bvsalud.org/es/

The Journal Publisher will avoid publishing any type of article by the same author or co-author in the same issue and will allow the same author/co-author to appear on no more than two occasions in the same year or volume, as lead author.

A letter of originality signed by all authors of the articles must be sent. You can use the Journal”s platform through "complementary files" which declares:

- That the work has not been submitted to another journal before,

- The conformity of all authors with the contents expressed in the article, and

- The place occupied by each of them (absence of conflicts of interest).

The journal is part of the Open Journal System, so by submitting an article, authors accept that their research data (database, methodology used, variables applied) will be available in the “Supplementary files”.

The Journal favors the open nature of peer review.

ARTICLE TYPES

DESCRIPTION AND SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR SECTIONS OF EACH ARTICLE TYPE

* Maximum value

Editorials: They express positions and/or criteria directly related to a topic to be dealt with in the corresponding issue of the journal or to a circumstantial, current or controversial scientific situation, related to any of the specialities covered by the journal. They will be commissioned by the editorial committee to certain personalities or requested by the author, which must be approved by the Editorial Committee. Their length will not exceed 1,500 words, with a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 15 references. It is preferable that only one or two authors are included. Abstracts, tables, charts or figures should not be included.

Original articles: these are written reports that communicate the results of scientific research. They should contain sufficient and available information to allow readers to evaluate the results and reproduce the experiments. They shall consist of: Structured abstract with: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions, which are included at the end of the Discussion. The length should not exceed 4500 words (including title, abstract, tables, annexes, figures with captions and bibliographical references). Up to five figures/tables or diagrams, up to 20 references and up to five authors are allowed.

Review articles: this refers to works carried out on specific topics, in which information already published is brought together, analysed and discussed. They will consist of: Abstract, Introduction, Development (with subtitles, if the author considers them convenient), with the analysis and/or discussion of the subject; and Final considerations. The length of the text should not exceed 5000 words (not including bibliographical references). A total of five figures/tables or annexes are allowed. They will contain between 25 and 50 references and, exceptionally, more and up to four authors. Systematic reviews of the literature will be favoured and the use of PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis) methodology.

Clinical cases: these are articles whose aim is to describe and analyse clinical manifestations, symptoms, signs, clinical and therapeutic behaviour, unique findings and which are considered to be of interest for the development of science. They will include an Abstract, Introduction, Report or Presentation of the case, Discussion and Conclusions. Their length shall not exceed 3500 words, not including bibliographical references. A total of five figures/tables or annexes are allowed. The number of authors will not exceed three and will contain up to 10 references.

OTHER TYPES OF ARTICLES

The Journal also publishes the following articles:

Special contribution: contains topics of interest to professionals in the speciality and to health professionals in general. It will include: Introduction (with the explicit general objective), development (with the subtitles that the authors consider necessary) and, finally, the development and conclusions. It includes an unstructured abstract. Reports on consensus, protocols of action, among others, are accepted. The total length should not exceed 5,000 words (not including bibliographical references). Up to five figures/tables/annexes, up to 10 references and up to four authors are accepted.

Short communication: including: abstract, introduction, subtitle(s) that give body to the development of the work and conclusions. They will not exceed 2500 words (including: title, tables and figures with captions). They will contain up to 20 bibliographical references. Up to two figures and tables are allowed.

Letters to the editor:

A letter to the editor is a type of scientific publication that is classified as a “short communication” and allows readers to interact with the authors either through opinions, criticisms, contributions, ideas, hypotheses and new data.

They are used to correct and clarify facts in an article, editorial or other scientific work. The purpose of a letter in response to a published study should be to support or criticise the methods, analysis or result of the study.

A letter should be no longer than 1 500 words and is addressed to the editor. If you wish to initiate a discussion on a particular topic, or respond to an article, you should mention which article you are responding to and the date it was published, so that readers and the editor know what you are writing about.

Conferences: the submission of conferences or papers from scientific events or meetings is accepted. The first page should include: name of the event or meeting at which it was presented, the organisation responsible and the date and venue. They contain an Abstract, Introduction, Development (theme of the conference), and Conclusions. Their maximum length will be up to 3 000 words (including title, abstract, tables, figures with captions and bibliographical references). Up to three figures or tables are accepted.

Obituaries (in memoriam), Acknowledgements, Reports, Calls for Papers and Announcements will have a maximum length of 1200 words. They do not include an abstract or bibliographical references. One figure is accepted.

Other articles such as: Commentaries, Reflection and Debate, Surgical Techniques, Biomedical Communication, Medical Education will include: Abstract, Introduction, Development and Conclusions. Their length will be up to 3000 words and up to 20 bibliographical references. They may include up to four authors.

SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES

Submitted papers may be preprint articles (i.e. a version of the manuscript prior to evaluation), which may be deposited by the author on an ad hoc server. Once approved, they may not be submitted for consideration by another journal without prior notification to the Editorial Committee or without due authorisation from the editorial area of the Provincial Information Centre.

Articles should be submitted in electronic Word text format, in Arial 12 font and 1.5 spacing. Abbreviations and acronyms will be identified the first time they are mentioned in the text and will not be included in the title or abstract. Internationally used abbreviations should be used.

Articles will not contain fragments of text from previously published or forthcoming work in journals or other media, without proper citation.

Clinical laboratory results should be reported in International System units or those permitted by the International System. If it is desired to indicate traditional units, these should be written in brackets. Example: blood glucose: 5.55 mmol/L (100 mg/%).

In the original articles, the patient database (in Word or Excel document) and, in another document, the research methodology, i.e. how the information was processed, the variables that were taken into account and their operationalisation, which will be evaluated by the reviewers of the article and will guarantee the principle of reproducibility of the research in other groups of patients, will be placed in "Supplementary files”.

The journal uses the CRediT Taxonomy to define the roles of the contributors (the different authors), so each main author will declare his/her participation in the article, making it correspond to all or some of the 14 categories proposed, according to the tasks carried out in the research.

To declare this Taxonomy, as an advanced tool that many international scientific and/or academic publishers have adopted for the management of the academic-scientific publication, the terminology presented below will be used, which provides transparency of the collaboration or contribution of the authors and makes it possible to clarify the contribution of each author in the publication.

This identification is necessary when two or more authors appear, specifically in research articles (original, review).

The authorship roles will be identified in the following order, including each author [role: author(s)] in the one that corresponds to him/her and omitting those that do not apply in each case: (CRediT Taxonomy):

Conceptualisation: Ideas, formulation or evolution of the general objectives and goals of the research.

Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), clean data and maintain the research data (including programming code, if necessary, for interpretation of the data itself) for both initial use and subsequent re-use.

Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesise the data from a study.

Fund Acquisition: Acquisition of financial support for the development of the project leading to this publication.

Research: Execution of an investigation and research process, specifically conducting experiments or collecting data and/or evidence.  

Methodology: Methodology development or design; modelling.

Project management: Responsibility for management and coordination in the planning and execution of the research activity.

Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computer resources or other analytical tools.

Software: Programming, software development, design of computer programs, implementation of computer codes and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.

Supervision: Supervisory and leadership responsibility for the planning and execution of the research activity, including participation as an external tutor to the research team.

Validation: Validation, either as part of the activity or independently, of the overall replication/reproducibility of the results/experiments and other research outputs.

Visualization: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically the visualization/presentation of the data.

Writing the original draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically the writing of the initial draft (including correct translation).

Writing, reviewing and editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by members of the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision, including pre- and post-publication stages.

In addition to these authorship roles, the Declaration of Conflicts of Interest must be included. Both requirements must appear at the end of the article, after the bibliographical references.

The clinical trials will have a control number, obtained from the Clinical Trials Register in which it has been registered. This number must be verifiable, so the source will appear. In addition, it will conform to the evaluation parameters expressed in the international CONSORT guidelines.

Papers written in English or Portuguese by foreign authors who speak these languages as their mother tongue are accepted, and, in the case of national and Spanish speaking international authors, with the corresponding version in Spanish, for review and collation.

TITLE:

This is one of the most important parts of the work, in Spanish and English, and will be around 15 words, without exceeding 20. It will be brief, clear and explicit, attractive but precise. It will not contain abbreviations or acronyms. Titles with question marks and words such as Study on..., Observations on..., Research on..., Behaviour of... etc. should be avoided whenever possible. There should be no breaks for colons or full stops. In cases where it is essential, the use of a comma is recommended. It is not necessary for the word ‘Title’ to appear at the beginning of the article. The title should also be submitted in English.

AUTHORS:

• It is not necessary to write the word ‘Authors’ in the presentation of the article. The first name(s) and two surnames of all authors and the e-mail address of the author to whom correspondence will be sent should be notified. Institutional e-mail addresses are not accepted; a personal e-mail address must be used. The ORCID number, which will be checked by the editorial committee, should also be included for each of the authors. If you do not have it, please enter the page to register and include it in the article.
• The names of the authors will appear separated by lines with the ORCID number of each one and the superscript, referring to the institutional affiliation of each one, the centre of origin, the province and the country.

ABSTRACT

This is the part of the article most read by the majority of those interested and is a miniature version of the work that will include a summary of up to 250 words, in Spanish and English. In original and review articles, the abstract will include a brief description of each of the main sections of the paper expressing the most novel and interesting aspects of the work. The journal guarantees the review of the English translation of the abstract and its quality.

The abstract of a research article must be structured and will be divided into: Introduction, Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusions. It shall be written in impersonal form and in the past tense, except for the conclusions.

It will include objective(s), type of research, place and time period in which it was carried out, universe and sample size selected, sampling selection technique used, how the primary data was obtained, variables analysed, statistical techniques employed, what were the main findings and the most important conclusions.

KEY WORDS:

The author will reflect the content of the document by means of the selected terms (between three and 10), at the end of the body of the document, separated by a semicolon and in order of importance. One or more key words should appear in the title. It is recommended to use the thesaurus DeCs (Descriptors in Health Sciences), in its new portal.

For the English language it is suggested to consult the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings).

INTRODUCTION

It should be written clearly, congruently, originally and in the present tense; it should be relatively brief, approximately one and a half pages. It should state the scientific problem. It will present the background to the study. In general, it answers the questions: why the topic was chosen and why it is important. The objectives are stated at the end of the introduction. It should be written in the present tense and correctly bounded.

METHOD

It will provide information for a reader to repeat the study. It should clearly and concisely state where, when and how the work was done. It describes the research design, including assumptions and limitations, subject selection and exclusion criteria, ethical considerations, definition of universe and sample, units of measurement and other terms. The statistical methods used and the software or hardware used for data processing shall be specified. It shall be written in the past tense.

RESULTS

Results should be clearly expressed, with references to tables and figures, but without repeating them verbatim. The use of tables and figures should be limited to situations where illustration is essential. The results constitute the data provided by the research and should be written in the past tense.

DISCUSSION

In the body of the paper, the Results and Discussion sections will appear separately. The Discussion will analyse the results of the work and confront them with the coincidences and contradictions reported in the literature, without turning it into an exaggerated succession of opinions. It will not repeat information contained in the previous sections. It will be written in the present tense because the findings of the work are already considered scientific evidence. Conclusions and Recommendations (if any) should be expressed at the end of the Discussion and not under separate headings. They will not constitute a list of results. The aim is for the author to give the reader, in a few words, in a clear way, his/her version, the scientific analysis, of what the research has contributed and will respond to the objectives set out in the Introduction.

As an optional section, at the end of the article, thanks may be given to persons or institutions that helped the author in his work, but do not meet the criteria for authorship.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

The recommendations contained in the Uniform Requirements for the Preparation of Articles for Submission to Biomedical Journals, prepared by the International Committee of Biomedical Journal Editors (known as Vancouver Style), will be followed. Citing and Referencing: Vancouver Style, Imperial College London.

We provide links to documents and guidelines for the use of these standards.

They will be numbered according to the order of appearance in the text and identified by means of Arabic numerals in exponential form and in brackets. Citations from relevant and up-to-date published documents from the national and international literature will be included. At least 70% of the citations will be from the last 5 years prior to the publication of the paper. Similarly, in review articles, 70 % of the bibliographical references must be from the last five years. Mention of personal communications and unpublished papers will be avoided; they will only be mentioned in the text in brackets, if necessary. References of articles approved for publication will be included with the title of the journal and the clarification of forthcoming publication in brackets. All authors of the cited text should be listed; if there are 7 or more, the first 6 should be mentioned and, after the sixth, et al. Journal titles should be abbreviated by Index Medicus (List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus). No items should be highlighted using capital letters or underlining. The following should be observed: the ordering of bibliographic elements and the use of punctuation marks prescribed by the Vancouver style (replace the appropriate reference with the title).

All references to articles published after 2015 must include the link (url or doi) where they can be consulted.

Tables, models and annexes:

They will be inserted in the text of the document, in correspondence with the description of the results. They will only be used to show very significant results within the manuscript. Tables should be presented with grids without any formatting and inserted in the text of the paper, not as an annex at the end. Tables must be editable and of the necessary technical quality. If there are any difficulties, these will be pointed out during the proofreading process so that they can be adjusted. They must be presented in tabular form (each piece of data in a cell).

Figures:

They should be of optimum quality for electronic publication. Graphs, drawings, diagrams, maps, computer output, other graphical representations and non-linear formulae will be referred to as figures, and will be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Figures, graphs and tables shall be original and shall be annotated and numbered with their title, according to their order of presentation. In the case of using images from another publication, the author must request the corresponding permissions from the publishing house that owns the images and state the source. Graphs should be used as an alternative to tables and information should never be duplicated in tables and graphs. Images of figures must be submitted in JPG and GIF formats. Figures must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Graphs and diagrams must be submitted in an editable format. All should be of adequate quality, and should not exceed 580 pixels in width. If any of the photographs identify the patient, they must have informed parental consent.

In the case of photographs of non-identifiable persons, otherwise the patient's informed consent must be attached; if over 17 years of age [18 years or older], the patient's informed consent must be provided. In the case of a minor, the consent must be approved by the parents and must also be sent via ‘Supplementary files’.

In the case of X-rays, scans, ultrasound and other diagnostic images, clear photographs in shades of grey must be sent.

EVALUATION SYSTEM

All articles are subject to a peer review process. Authors can find out who is reviewing their work and vice versa, i.e. the principles of open science will be applied.

All papers that have been accepted by the Editorial Board are reviewed. Each article is submitted for consideration by two specialists with extensive experience in the content of the articles. When the two specialists differ in their criteria, the opinion of a third party is sought in order to reach a final verdict of acceptance or rejection of the paper. However, the final decision on the publication of the article rests with the Editorial Committee, independently of the decision of the referees, and is final.

The evaluation process will not exceed 90 working days. If the article needs to be improved for a new evaluation without being rejected, the period will begin to run after the second submission, when the above-mentioned points have been resolved. The article with the corrections of the remarks made to the authors, for a new evaluation, should be sent as soon as possible through the platform and should not exceed 21 days. At the end of the process the author(s) will be informed of the editorial decision.

 CRITERIA FOR AUTHORSHIP

Authors of submitted papers must submit the Letter of Originality together with the article, which will include the full names and signatures of all authors.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The research submitted must comply with all ethical declarations for human studies (Declaration of Helsinki).

Under the heading: Methods, it shall be specified that the research protocol and the informed consent were approved by the corresponding Ethics Committee of your hospital centre.

Any ethical violation related to the document will be resolved using the protocols established by the International Committee on Ethics in Scientific Publication (COPE).

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Authors are required to declare, on a mandatory basis, the presence or absence of conflicts of interest in relation to the research presented.

COPYRIGHT

This journal provides open access to its content, based on the principle that providing the public with free access to research helps to increase the global exchange of knowledge. Article submission, processing and publication is free of charge to authors.

SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES

This will be done through the journal's Editorial Management System on the OJS platform.

Your article may be in the following stages: Unassigned, In revision In editing or Archived. In the ‘Unassigned’ stage, the preliminary evaluation of the methodological part is carried out. In this stage, the article may be rejected if non-compliance with the instructions, serious problems of writing or spelling, inconsistency in its quality, if the work is not of interest to the journal or if it does not have sufficient scientific basis.

At the ‘Under Review’ stage, your article may receive one of the following decisions:

Accepted submission (can be published as is)

Publishable with minor modifications (minor changes should be made)

Re-evaluable (profound changes should be made)

Not publishable (not accepted for publication).

Given the recent changes, issued in 2020 for Cuban medical journals, in accordance with SciELO requirements, all articles that remain on the platform (‘Under Review’), must rectify and improve the aspects that are requested, related to these updated Standards, and if they do not comply with them, they will be automatically rejected. Once they have been adjusted to these requirements, they will be resubmitted by the authors for their new scientific and methodological evaluation. The process from submission to the first response to the author should not exceed 90 days.

In any case, the decision of the Editorial Committee is final.

GENERAL ASPECTS

Always use an impersonal style, take care to use capital letters, avoid the use of participles and gerunds, avoid the incorrect use of prepositions, adverbs or conjunctions, avoid unnecessary long sentences and take care to use punctuation and spelling marks. Do not invent abbreviations, use only those recognised by the scientific community. In Spanish texts, decimals should be expressed using the comma (,) and not the full stop (.).

Symbols are always written leaving a space between the numerical value and the first letter of the symbol (Example: 80 %; 39.5 ºC). Units of measurement do not have a plural, so write 40 mg (not 40 mgs); 15.4 cm (not 15.4cms), and never have a full stop at the end, except when they end a sentence or paragraph.

Disease names are written in lower case, as are medicines that are not recognised brand names.

Anti-plagiarism policy of the journal

• -All contributions must be original and unpublished. Authors are asked to declare, by means of the letter of originality and assignment of rights, that they own the moral rights to the article and that it has not been sent for review or published, partially or totally, in any other national or foreign journal. The signatories are solely responsible for ensuring that their contribution complies with these requirements.
• -The editors will use the following tools to detect plagiarism: Strikeplagiarism before starting the editing and proofreading process of the articles and will also check the bibliographical references to detect possible plagiarism. A percentage of similarity between texts of more than 20 % represents an alert that entails a thorough revision of the manuscript to rule out the possibility of plagiarism or other ethical misconduct. In this case, you may wish to contact the authors of the paper to clarify the circumstances or consider rejecting the paper.
• -If a previous version of an article has been published previously, this should be expressly indicated in the notes. The new version must contain substantial novelties and the reasons for its recovery must be stated. The journal will reject plagiarised articles.

FINAL REMARKS

Papers that do not comply with these Instructions will be returned to the authors. Accepted papers will be processed according to the rules established for our journal. To facilitate the preparation of articles, authors are advised to consult the uniform requirements outlined above.