gms | German Medical Science

GMS Medizin — Bibliothek — Information.

Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Medizinisches Bibliothekswesen (AGMB)

ISSN 1865-066X

Information for authors

  1. General guidelines
  2. Requirements for publication
  3. Fees
  4. Submission
  5. Article types
  6. Manuscript preparation
  7. Authorship and copyright
  8. Conflict of interest, funding
  9. Submission checklist
  10. Research data/primary data (supplementary material)

1 General guidelines

GMS Medizin – Bibliothek – Information (GMS MBI) is an open access journal. The journal serves the publication of articles from the library and information sector and is published twice a year. The journal is focussing on topics concerning medical libraries at universities, hospital and pharmaceutical libraries. The editorial board decides on the acceptance of contributions.

Authors may propose or submit articles on a topic of their choice. Prior to the first planned issue of each year, there is a call for papers. It is published via the relevant mailing lists such as InetBib. The thematic foci mentioned in the call of papers serve as a content orientation. Contributions on other topics are also welcome as long as they have a relevance for medical libraries. The second issue of each year is thematically related to the AGMB conference and contains invited contributions related to the event. Beyond the focus on the AGMB conference, other contributions may also be considered.

Contributions are subject to peer review by two reviewers who remain anonymous to the author. The peer review serves as quality control as well as quality improvement of the submitted texts. The contributions are examined with regard to both content and readability.

Manuscripts can be submitted in German, English or bilingual. Title, abstract and keywords must always be submitted in German as well as English.

Papers may include tables, graphs, and images, as well as appendices, e. g., audio or video sequences.

The manuscript should be structured clearly and not be divided into too many sections. The headings of the main sections, which also serve to navigate the online document, should be as short as possible.

GMS MBI welcomes the use of gender-sensitive language. The form is up to the authors, but should be consistent throughout the text.

2 Requirements for publication

The submitted manuscript must be first published in GMS MBI. Previously published manuscripts or substantial parts of them cannot be considered. Presentation as an abstract at a congress does not count as pre-publication.

In addition, acceptance of the GMS author contract (www.egms.de/en/terms.htm#sci, see also section “Authorship and copyright”) is a requirement for publication.

3 Fees

GMS Medizin – Bibliothek – Information does not charge either publication fees (APCs) or submission fees to its authors.

This does not apply to publications of product reviews. These will be charged with 1,000 Euro (plus VAT). See also section “Article types”.

4 Submission

Submission of articles to the editorial board is possible at any time. Publication is usually scheduled for the next issue.

We recommend that authors send an abstract of about 150 words to the editorial board before writing the full text, in order to be able to communicate any comments at an early stage. Of course, we also accept finished manuscripts as long as they meet our specifications.

Please send your manuscripts as Word files for the time being via e-mail to redaktion@gms-mbi.de. The possibility to submit your manuscript via the GMS manuscript management system is in preparation.

Please refer to the submission checklist.

5 Article types

In addition to original articles, which make a substantial contribution to a topic in library and information science, the following article types can be published: editorial, interview, conference report, keynote address, appreciation, bibliography, communication, case report, poster, and satire.

In addition, companies can present current products under the article type product review. The publication will be charged with 1,000 euros (plus VAT). Author name, company e-mail address and company address are mandatory for this article type. Furthermore, the instructions for authors also apply to product reviews. The editorial board decides on the acceptance of a product review. A maximum of one product review will be published per issue of GMS Medizin – Bibliothek – Information. The author of a product review indicates his or her relationship to the product (e.g. company representative, customer, external reviewer).

Length

An original article should be at least 10,000 characters. There is no character limit. Experience shows that shorter contributions (up to 15,000 characters) are noticed more. If the relevance of the content requires longer contributions, we ask even more for a recognizable structure with an appropriate outline. In case of doubt, the editorial board or the reviewers will suggest cuts. These will always be made with the consent of the authors.
 

6 Manuscript preparation

Title page

On the first page of the manuscript the title of the article is listed in German and English, followed by the surnames and first names of all authors and the institutions in which they work. Then list the name, postal and e-mail address of the corresponding author separately. Optionally, e-mail addresses can also be listed for the other authors. If the authors have an ORCID ID, they can also provide this for author identification. Information about the advantage of an ORCID ID can be found at info.orcid.org/researchers/#why. ORCID Auto Update can be used to automatically update the publications in the ORCID profiles of the authors. For more information, please visit support.datacite.org/docs/how-to-activate-orcid-auto-update.

Abstract and keywords

All contributions must be preceded by a German and an English abstract. The abstract should be written in such a way that it represents a condensed extract of the paper. Furthermore, the authors should include at least three appropriate keywords in German and English.

Typography and technical terms

  • The manuscript should be written as structured continuous text in Arial (font size 10 pt).
  • Tables are also to be in Arial (font size 9 pt).
  • Do not use hyphenation.
  • Line breaks are to be inserted only for paragraphs.
  • Highlighting of text parts by colored background or frames is not possible.
  • Notes on the text must be integrated into the body of the text and cannot be appended as footnotes.
  • References must be numbered consecutively in the text and the bibliography must be included as text at the end of the document.
  • Hyperlinks, e.g. to institutional or product websites, may be included in the body text. If they are cited as references, a full citation should be provided.
  • Figures and tables should be provided with captions and numbered consecutively. A clear reference to the respective table or figure must be included in the text. Placing the table/figure itself in the text is not sufficient as a reference.
  • Abbreviations must be resolved when used for the first time. If necessary, a list of abbreviations can be added.

Bibliography

In the bibliography, the literature cited in the text should be listed according to the Vancouver Style of References, which is also used in Medline. If available, persistent identifiers should be given for electronic publications. In the case of dynamic content, the date of the last update and/or the last access to the page should be indicated.
Examples:

  • Journal article
    • Bramer WM, de Jonge GB, Rethlefsen ML, Mast F, Kleijnen J. A systematic approach to searching: an efficient and complete method to develop literature searches. J Med Libr Assoc. 2018 Oct;106(4):531-41. DOI: 10.5195/jmla.2018.283
    • Ball R. Die Transformation des Publikationssystems zu Open Access und die Konsequenzen für Bibliotheken und Wissenschaft: Ausgewählte Aspekte. b.i.t. online. 2018;21(1):9-17.
  • Book / book chapter / conference publication
    • Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: The basics of evidence-based medicine and healthcare. 6th ed. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell; 2019.
    • Bauer B. Qualitätsmanagement und Zertifizierung: Aufwand und Nutzen am Beispiel der Universitätsbibliothek der Medizinischen Universität Wien. In: Hauke PO, Kaufmann A, Petras V, Hrsg. Bibliothek – Forschung für die Praxis: Festschrift für Konrad Umlauf zum 65. Geburtstag. Berlin: De Gruyter Saur; 2017. S. 305-18.
    • Reed JG, Baxter PM. Using Reference Databases. In: Cooper H, Hedges LV, Valentine JC, editors. The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis. 2nd ed. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; 2009. p. 73-102.
    • Wawrzinek J, Balke WT. Semantic Facettation in Pharmaceutical Collections Using Deep Learning for Active Substance Contextualization. In: International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries ICADL 2017: Digital Libraries: Data, Information, and Knowledge for Digital Lives; 2017 Nov 13-15; Bangkok, Thailand. p. 41-53. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 10647). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-70232-2_4
  • Gray literature and web publications
    • Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Datentracking in der Wissenschaft: Aggregation und Verwendung bzw. Verkauf von Nutzungsdaten durch Wissenschaftsverlagen. Bonn; 2021 Oct 28. Available from: https://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/foerderung/programme/lis/datentracking_papier_de.pdf
    • Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. Open Access in Deutschland. Die Strategie des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung. 2016. URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2017121311336
    • Rothfritz L. Data Stewardship als Boundary-Work [Master Thesis]. Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; 2019. (Berliner Handreichungen zur Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaf; 443). DOI: 10.18452/20636
    • Clasen N. User Experience für Bibliotheken: die besten Werkzeuge und Methoden für Einsteiger. In: ZBW MediaTalk. 2020 Aug [cited 2021 Apr 30]. Available from: https://www.zbw-mediatalk.eu/de/2020/08/user-experience-fuer-bibliotheken-die-besten-werkzeuge-und-methoden-fuer-einsteiger/
    • Software. In: Tutorials in Bibliotheken [Wiki]. [letzter Zugriff: 29.10.2021]. Verfügbar unter: https://bibtutorials.miraheze.org/wiki/Software

Further examples can be found at www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.

It is recommended that the index be sorted by the order in which the citations are mentioned in the text; alphabetical sorting by the last name of the first author is also possible. In any case, the index should be numbered consecutively.

Figures

The following graphic formats can be used

  • TIFF and BMP (lossless bitmap formats)
  • GIF and PNG (compressed bitmap formats) for diagrams
  • JPG (compressible bitmap format) for photos

Even if the graphics are included in the text, they should also be supplied as separate files with a resolution of 300-600 dpi. The files should have unique file names.
Charts can also be submitted as Excel or PowerPoint files.
Tables should not be submitted as image files.

7 Authorship and copyright

All authors confirm that they have made a substantial contribution to the article and agree with the form and content of the manuscript. The corresponding author confirms in the author contract of German Medical Science that he/she holds the copyright to his/her work and the supplied text and images.
All contributions published in GMS MBI are to be made permanently available for free use on the internet in accordance with the principle of open access. By submitting their contribution, authors agree that it will be placed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) upon publication.
It is the author's responsibility to clarify the publication rights of illustrations. If material (e.g. figures or tables) from other sources is used, the authors must provide a written statement from the copyright holders stating that they agree to publication in GMS MBI under the CC BY 4.0 license.
If an article is republished, a reference to the previous publication in GMS MBI must be included (originally published in: GMS Med Bibl Inf 2021;21...).

8 Conflict of interest, funding

Financial or other support from institutions or companies, as well as through public funding, should be listed in the Acknowledgements and/or Conflicts of Interest section. Any financial or other connections that the author has with a company whose products or competing products play an important role in the subject matter presented should be presented on an attached form. This communication will be treated confidentially and will be published together with the article only after acceptance of the manuscript in consultation with the authors.
An important aspect of scientific publications is the disclosure of funding. The full, correct name of the sponsor and the relevant funding codes must be given. The information on funding can be formulated as follows: This work was supported under grant number [xxx] by [name of funder].

9 Submission checklist

For the submissions, authors are asked to check the compliance of their contribution point by point with the specified requirements using the submission checklist (PDF file).

10 Research data/primary data (supplementary material)

We expect our authors to also submit the relevant data underlying the submitted manuscripts for review and publication. Research funding institutions such as the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the European Research Council recommend this as a matter of “good scientific practice”. Benefits of publishing research data include:

  • Citeability: recognition as an independent scientific achievement
  • Re-use: enables further interpretation of data, use for follow-up research projects, crosslinking between data sets, data/text mining
  • Transparency: through traceability and reproducibility (if applicable) of research results
  • Efficiency: through limitation of work and financial expenses

ZB MED – Information Center Life Sciences – one of the institutions involved in German Medical Science – offers publication of research data in the Repository for Life Sciences:

  • Cross-referencing between articles and underlying data via persistent identifiers (DOI).
  • Long-term archiving – provided that file formats are chosen for which this is possible
  • Legal security: In the Repository for Life Sciences, a choice can be made between different open licenses.

For more information, please visit www.publisso.de/forschungsdatenmanagement/fd-publizieren/. Data submission is made with the article manuscript. Please provide metadata for the underlying data as well. Parallel publication with cross-referencing will be organized by the GMS editorial office. Please contact gms@zbmed.de if you have further questions about this.