Information for authors
Authors' Guidelines, Status: 12/10/2010
- 1. General Information
- GMS Thoracic Surgical Science (TSS) is an open access e-journal, which publishes articles on topics of thoracic surgery (except cardiovascular surgery). All articles go through an peer review procedure before publication. The authors' guidelines principally follow the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals.
- 2. Publication Requirements
- The submitted manuscripts or substantial parts of them should not have been previously published or submitted for publication somewhere else. The abbreviated version of the contents for presentation at a meeting is not regarded as a publication.
- 2.1 Authorship and Copyright
- All authors insure that they have furnished a substantial contribution to the article and that they are in agreement with form and contents of the manuscript. The author conducting the negotiations confirms that he holds the copyrights on his works as well as on the text and illustrations attached therein in the Author's Contract. If material (e.g. illustrations or tables) is used from other sources, the author must submit a written statement from the holder of the copyrights that he is in agreement with a publication in TSS. In cases of publication, the author grants TSS the right to store the article in databases for an unlimited period of time, to distribute and to reproduce it in electronic form, as well as to provide individualized print for users of the print-on-demand service. All remaining exploitation rights of the author are not restricted, however, all further publications should display original publication note (originally published in: GMS Thoracic Surgical Science 2004;1:...).
- 2.2 Conflict of Interests
- Financial or other support by institutes or companies, as well as promotion funds, is to be stated in the acknowledgments. All financial or other connections, which the author has to a company, whose products or competition products play an important role in represented facts of the matter, should be described and enclosed on a separate form. This notification is handled confidentially and only when the manuscript is accepted for publication the editorial staff discuss with the author in which form this information will be relayed.
- 2.3 Protection of Patients' Rights to Privacy
- When using records of patients it must be guaranteed that the person is not identifiable on the basis of the portrayal. Otherwise, the author must seek explicit consent from the person concerned (or their representative) that he agrees to the publication in the present form. The existence of such a consent is to be confirmed by the author in writing.
- 3 Manuscript Preparation
- 3.1 In General
- The manuscripts may be submitted in English or German, but should include titles and abstracts in both languages. The manuscripts may include tables, diagrams and pictures, as well as sound or video sequences.
- 3.1.1 Title Page
- On the first page of the manuscript the English and German title of the article is stated, followed by the surnames and first names of all authors, their e-mail addresses and the facilities where they are active. Then give separately the name, mail and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
- 3.1.2 Abstract and Key Words
- All original contributions, case descriptions and review articles are to be preceded by an English and a German abstract. The summary is to be drawn up in such a way that it represents a condensed extract of the work. The author should indicate adequate keywords which, as far as possible, are taken from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). With original papers and case descriptions you should also indicate the trade names and names of the producer of the drugs applied and medical devices, as well as the chemical substances and their CAS number in order to make this information indexable in appropriate databases. Further structural tips are given with the individual article types.
- 3.1.3 Literature References
- The literature cited in the text is listed at the end of the article according to the Vancouver Style of References also used in Medline. References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in square brackets. Please do not use footnotes!
- Some Examples:
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- Standard journal article:
- Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347(4):284-7.
- Monograph:
- Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
- Chapter/Contribution in a monograph:
- 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.
- CD-ROM:
- Anderson SC, Poulsen KB. Anderson's electronic atlas of hematology [CD-ROM]. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2002.
- Journal article on the Internet:
- Eysenbach G. SARS and population health technology. J Med Internet Res. 2003;5(2):e14. Available from: http://www.jmir.org/2003/2/e14/
- Homepage/Web site:
- Cancer-Pain.org [homepage on the Internet]. New York: Association of Cancer Online Resources, Inc.; c2000-01 [updated 2002 May 16; cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: http://www.cancer-pain.org/
- Further detailed sample references
- under http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.
- 3.2 Article Types
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- Research articles
- deal with current problems, with adequate empirical or experimental methodology. It should be evident from the papers that they make a substantial contribution in clarifying the formulated problem. They are to be subdivided into: Abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusions.
- Case reports
- represent a case relevant for the scientific interest. They are to be subdivided into: Abstract, introduction, case description, discussion, conclusions.
- Review articles
- are to show the state of research in detail, summarize and clarify open research questions. Review articles should include abstract and introduction, furthermore, they may be subdivided sectionwise according to the requirements of the topic.
- Rapid publications/short communications and letters to the editor
- contain comments or announcements and communications with news character and are principally welcome as a central element in the discussion of research results. They go through a peer review like the other articles.
- Rapid responses
- are commentaries that cannot be cited, are limited in length and linked directly to an article to make discussions possible. The editorial staff reserves the right at any time to select, as well as to abridge and revise them. This feature will be implemented shortly.
- 3.3 Technical Requirements
- 3.3.1 Typography and Technical Terms
- Do not use block style or hyphenation when drawing up your manuscripts. Line breaks are only to be inserted at the end of paragraphs.
Literature references are to be numbered consecutively in the text and listed at the end of the document as text, under no circumstances by means of the automatic footnote function. All illustrations and tables are to be provided with legends and numbered consecutively.
The publication system of GMS does not allow for annotations in the form of footnotes or endnotes. Textual explications must be integrated in the plain text (e.g. in brackets, italic).
The basic units of the International System for Measures and Weights (SI) and the units derived from them are to be used for all units of measurement. For the indication of blood pressure values the unit "mmHg" is permissible, for the indication of temperatures the unit °C. When using other units in illustrations and tables the conversion factors are to be indicated in the legend.
The nomenclature of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) resp. the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) is to be used for the designation of chemical substances. The additional indication of the register number of the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) is recommended.
Generally, the generic name is to be used when mentioning drugs. If certain commercial products were used in the research, then these trade names and the names of the producer should be quoted in the method part. In addition, this data will be indexable via the recording in special data fields (s. 3.1.2). The spelling in the "Red List" applies. Abbreviations without solutions should be only used, if they are generally common (DNA, WHO). All remaining abbreviations are to be identified when first used. If necessary, an abbreviation list should be added. References on statistics: Graphpad software offers numerous freely available online computers for statistic calculations. - 3.3.2 Text Formats
- Each author has the possibility to load research papers into the Manuscript Operating System (MOPS) of GMS.
- 3.3.3 Graphic Formats
- The following graphic formats may be used: the formats TIFF and BMP (loss-free bitmap-formats); GIF and PNG (bitmap-formats compressed) for charts, JPG (compressable bitmap-format) for photos. The graphics should be integrated in the text, if possible, and additionally be provided as separate files with clear file names. The upload of your files takes place in the author's sector: Submitting a manuscript.
- 3.3.4 Research Data / Primary Data (Supplementary Material)
- We expect from our authors that relevant underlying data are submitted in addition to manuscripts for peer review and publication. This complies with demands of funding organizations like Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and European Research Council in terms of "Good scientific practice".
- Benefits of publishing research data / primary data include:
For authors:- Citeability: via persistent identifiers (DOI, URN)
- Long-term archiving
- Independent quality assurance through peer review
- Legal security: Like the article, data are published under a Creative commons licence, allowing non-commercial subsequent use, provided the original source is properly cited.
- Subsequent use: enables further interpretation of data, utilization for follow-up research projects, creation of interconnections between data sets, data/text mining
- Transparency: through traceability and reproducibility (if applicable) of research results
- Efficiency: through limitation of work and financial expenses
- Please submit a descriptive caption together with your data. Use of platform-independent file formats is required, such as:
- For additional documentation (e.g. detailed case reports): PDF
- For image data: GIF, TIFF, PNG, JPG
- For audio-visual material: MPG
- For text or tabular data: TXT, CSV
- In case of doubt (e.g. special file formats or very large files) please contact the GMS Editorial Office prior to submission.
Author's Contract
- § 1 Subject Matter of the Contract
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- The subject of this contract is the submitted work of the author under the title:
........................................... - The author insures that he alone is authorized to dispose over the rights of use on his work promoted by copyright and that hitherto he made no legal concessions that oppose to the provisions of this contract.
This also applies to the standard texts or master illustrations supplied by the author and whose rights of use he holds. If he offers GMS Thoracic Surgical Science (in the following: TSS) standard texts or master illustrations for which this does not apply, or where it is uncertain if this applies, then he has to inform TSS about it and about all recognizable legally relevant facts known to him. As soon as TSS assigns the author with the procurement of other standard texts or master illustrations, it requires a special agreement. - The author is obligated to point out to TSS in writing if the work includes interpretations from persons or incidents with which the risk of an infringement of personal rights is connected.
- The subject of this contract is the submitted work of the author under the title:
- § 2 Rights
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- The author transfers to TSS the basic right of duplicaton and circulation of machine readable data media and their safeguard media.
- The author transfers to TSS the right to electronic storage in databases and web pages, to make available to the public for individual requests and display on the monitor.
- The author transfers to TSS the right for the translation into the English language.
- The author transfers to TSS the right of Print-on-Demand-Production.
- If TSS is entitled to process the work or to have it processed, then impairments which are suitable to endanger the intellectual and personal rights of the author on the work are to be imitted.
- TSS grants an online-access-right to the author pertaining to his or her work that is stored in the database.
- § 3 Contractual Obligation
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- The work will first appear exclusively in electronic form, subsequent changes of the form of the first edition require the author's agreement.
- TSS is obligated to duplicate, circulate and adequately campaign for the work in the form specified in section 1.
- § 4 Fee
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- The author does not receive a fee for his work.
- § 5 Author Designation, Copyright-Note
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- TSS is obligated to appropriately identify the author as originator of the work.
- TSS is obligated to attach the copyright note with the publication of the work in the sense of the Universal Copyright Convention.
- § 6 Change of Ownership and Program Structures of TSS
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- TSS is obligated to indicate to the authors if a substantial change results in its ownership or distribution of property. A change is substantial, if
a) TSS or relevant parts of TSS;
b) in the distribution of the property of a company operated by TSS, variances of at least 25% of the capital or voting share arise as opposed to that at the time of the conclusion of the contract.
- TSS is obligated to indicate to the authors if a substantial change results in its ownership or distribution of property. A change is substantial, if
- § 7 Final Clause
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If not regulated by this contract, the general legal provisions of law of the Federal Republic of Germany apply. The invalidity or inefficacy of individual regulations of this contract does not affect the validity of the remaining regulations. The parties are then obligated to replace the deficient regulation by such a regulation whose economic and legal sense comes closest to that of the regulation to be replaced.
