Submissions

Author Guidelines

 JOURNAL OF HEALTH RESEARCH AND INFORMATION

(Revista de Investigación e Información en Salud – RIIS)

Guidelines for papers’ publication

Introduction

Welcome and thank you for considering our Journal of Healt Research and Information (Revista de Investigación e Información en Salud - RIIS) as an option for the dissemination of your work. Since the creation of the journal in 2005, our mission has been to provide a space for professionals with an interest in Health Sciences to disseminate all types of research work, with the certainty of doing so in a media with international quality standards.

We are interested in publishing original research that allow us to raise the scientific community, works that report and teach the state of research conducted in Spanish-speaking countries. We wish to place special emphasis on publications related to the situation in Latin America since, as many countries in this continent are developing countries, it is necessary to offer a space where publications with information of a regional nature can be made visible.

In addition to original research, RIIS publishes reviews, cases, commentaries, and other content that is of interest to medical professionals and academics.

 Publishing in the RIIS

The RISS uses highly rigorous editorial, peer, and statistical review processes to evaluate manuscripts for scientific accuracy, novelty, and relevance.

Step 1: Familiarize with the RIIS editorial policies, article types and the main style elements.

Step 2: Prepare your submission materials, including the main text, tables, figures, supplementary appendix, clinical trial protocol, and statistical analysis plan (if applicable).

Step 3: Submit your manuscript to the RIIS online submission system by addressing to: revistariis@univalle.edu; or registering at: https://revistas.univalle.edu/index.php/salud

The purpose of this journal is to contribute to the dissemination of intellectual production and to provide a space for researchers to publish their work. Therefore, the papers to be published will deal with specific problems and disciplines of the national or international scientific field and must be unpublished.

1. RIIS Editorial Policies

1.1 Peer review

The RIIS employs a peer review process to evaluate manuscripts for scientific accuracy, novelty and significance. The peer review process often works to improve research and, at the same time, prevents exaggerations of results from reaching clinicians and the public. The careful editing process of the Journal often requires extensive revisions and involves detailed checking for accuracy.

1.2. Authorship

It is the responsibility of each person listed as an author of an article published to have made a significant and identifiable contribution to the design, performance, analysis, and reporting of the work and to agree to be responsible for all aspects of the work. We recommend that authorship credit be given for:

- Substantial contributions to the conception and design; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data.

- Paper drafting or critical review of important intellectual content

- Final approval of the version to be published

The manuscript should be submitted only by the corresponding author who will be solely responsible for all correspondence with the Journal and will receive all e-mails related to forms, authorship issues, manuscript files, etc. However, after acceptance for publication, authors may designate more than one person to be contacted by readers.

The order of authors is determined in advance by the authors. Traditionally, the first author is the one who has contributed the most to the work and therefore receives most of the credit, while the order of the following authors is decided by the amount of contribution each has made and in increasing order of experience.

1.3 Conflicts of interest and financial disclosures

The RIIS only publishes reliable and authoritative research that is free of commercial influence. To this aim, authors are requested to list the sources of funding that sponsored the work. None of the editors of the RIIS has a commercial relationship with any biomedical company.

1.4 Manipulation of Figures

For all manuscripts, authors must clearly describe and indicate all modifications, selective digital adjustments and electronic enhancements made to any digital image. Authors must also ensure that all submitted figures meet the following criteria:

- No specific features have been enhanced, darkened, moved, removed or introduced into an image.

- Any brightness, color or contrast adjustments have been made to a complete image and do not misrepresent any feature of the original image.

- No image has been duplicated in the manuscript or published elsewhere.

- Metadata for the original image is available and can be provided to RIIS editors on request.

1.5 Patient’s identification

All material, including images, that can identify a patient should be removed. Where this is impossible, the material must be accompanied by written authorization from the patient.

1.6 No prior publication

In making decisions about publishing a manuscript, the editors consider the accuracy, novelty and significance of the submission and endeavor to ensure that independent peer review of scientific findings is carried out prior to public dissemination. Therefore, RIIS will not consider any manuscript that has been published elsewhere or any manuscript whose primary results have been published, except as noted below.

The following activities do not violate non-publication policies:

- Presenting research at scientific meetings.

- Posting a manuscript on a not-for-profit preprint server to receive feedback from the scientific community.

- Disclose results to government agencies to meet legal requirements or urgent public health needs.

1.7 Public access

Articles published by the RIIS are publicly accessible and free of charge on the journal website. The RIIS does not offer any financial recognition to authors and there is no payment for submitting or publishing in the journal.

1.8 Copyright / permissions

Material published in the RIIS is protected by copyright. All rights are reserved under international and Bolivian copyright.

Authors agree to execute copyright transfer forms. The RIIS has rights to use, reproduce, transmit, derive works from, publish, and distribute the contribution. Authors may not use or authorize the use of the contribution without the written consent of the RIIS, except as permitted by Bolivian fair use law. However, after initial publication, the RIIS allows re-publication of the published article in the journal as follows:

- Sharing with colleagues for educational use.

- Include portions, such as figures and tables, in book chapters or other educational articles written by the author.

- Including a copy, in whole or in part, in the author's thesis or dissertation.

- Include in collections of the author's educational writings

- Providing copies to students in classes taught by the author that are not commercially linked (i.e., those sponsored by academic institutions or learned societies)

- Deposit for display in the online repository of the author's academic institution six months after publication

Re-publication of the RIIS articles should reference the initial publication and, if shared in digital formats, link to original articles on the journal site to provide readers with access to any corrections, related correspondence and digital features.

1.9 Plagiarism

It is considered plagiarism to present the work or ideas of others as one's own, which is a serious ethical breach for the Journal. It should therefore be always avoided. Plagiarism is considered as existing when the exact copy of an original text from books, articles, web pages or others is found without correctly citing the author; inappropriate paraphrasing; lack of bibliographical citations where appropriate and/or duplication or repetition of information already presented in other documents by the same author.

2. Types of papers

When submitting new manuscripts to the RIIS, authors should identify their submissions as one of the article types described below:

1. Original Research.
2. Clinical and observational cases.
3. Review articles.
4. Commentaries (e.g., letters to the editor, perspectives).

2.1 Authorship

All people who meet the authorship criteria for the proposed manuscript should be named as authors of articles. There is no limit to the number of authors that can be submitted with manuscripts except for Letters to the Editor (maximum of three).

2.2. Word limits

The word limits for the manuscript below (Table 1) include all information from the introduction to the conclusion. They exclude abstracts, figure legends and table notes. Manuscripts that greatly exceed the word count limits will be returned unread.

Table 1. Description, maximum word count and elements to be contained in each type of article published in RIIS

 Main RIIS style elements

3.1 Units of measurement

Authors must express all measurements according to the International System of Units (SI).

3.2 Abbreviations

Except for measurement units, the use of abbreviations is strongly discouraged; however, the first time an abbreviation appears, it should be preceded by the words that represent it.

3.3 Names of patented drugs and equipment

Where possible, use generic names. Where patented brand names are used in the research and are a necessary aspect to mention for the design, the brand name and manufacturer's name should be given in parentheses after the first mention of the generic name in the Methods section.

4. Preparation of material for submission

4.1 Main text

Compile all text, references, figure legends and tables into a single double-spaced digital file (preferably an MS Word document). In general, the main text of an article is composed of:

- Introduction

- Methodology

- Results

- Discussion

- Conclusion

4.2 Title page

Create a title page that includes:

- Manuscript title in Spanish, this should not contain abbreviations.

- Translation of the title into English should not differ from the original title.

- The name, highest grade, and affiliation/institution of each author.

- The contact information of a corresponding author and ORCID number.

4.3 Abstract

Provide an abstract of between 80 and 300 words. At the end of this section, you should present 3 to 5 keywords, which facilitate indexing and searching of the document.

The abstract should contain the main sections of the article: the problem addressed in the study, the objective, methodology, main results, and conclusions, without the need to use bibliographical references. In the case of submitting an original research or a clinical case of your own, the abstract should be structured with the following subheadings: Introduction, Methodology, Results, and Conclusion.

Both the abstract and the keywords must be presented in Spanish and English as the subtitles "Abstract" and "Keywords".

4.4 References

The RIIS follows the Vancouver standard, i.e., references will be cited in the text by an Arabic numeral in brackets and numbered consecutively as they are cited. References cited for the first time in the legend of a table or figure should be numbered so that they are in sequence with the references cited in the text at the point where the table or figure is first mentioned. This numbering will refer to the corresponding number in the "References" section at the end of the paper.

For each reference in the References section, cite all the authors when there are six or fewer; when there are seven or more, list the first three, followed by et al:

1. Shapiro AMJ, Lakey JRT, Ryan EA, et al. Islet transplantation in seven patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus using a glucocorticoid-free immunosuppressive regimen. N Engl J Med 2000; 343:230-8.
2. Goadsby PJ. Pathophysiology of headache. In: Silberstein SD, Lipton RB, Dalessio DJ, eds. Wolff's headache and other head pain. 7th ed. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2001:57-72.
3. Kuczmarski RJ, Ogden CL, Grammer-Strawn LM, et al. CDC growth charts: United States. Advance data from vital and health statistics. No. 314. Hyattsville, Md.: National Center for Health Statistics, 2000. (DHHS publication no. (phs) 2000-1250 0. (PHS) 2000-1250 0-0431.)
4. Medicare: trends in fees, utilization, and expenditures for imaging services before and after implementation of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, September 2008. (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081102r.pdf. opens in new tab.)

Numbered references to personal communications, unpublished data, or manuscripts "in preparation" or "submitted for publication" are unacceptable. If necessary, these materials may be incorporated at appropriate places in the text or as additional material in the Appendix section.

Please note that all references reported in the References section should be mentioned in the main text.

4.5 Charts

All charts should be included at the end of the manuscript text file on separate sheets (one chart per sheet) in editable format (not in image format). Double-space chart (including footnotes) and provide a legend consisting of a title and a description for each chart. Legends should be concise but complete: the chart, legend and footnotes should be understandable without reference to the text. All abbreviations should be defined in footnotes. Footnotes are indicated by lower case letters in superscript in alphabetical order (a-z). Statistical terms such as mean, standard deviation (SD) or confidence intervals (CI) should be identified in the headings. The general format of the charts does not have horizontal or vertical lines, except to separate the headings from the results.

For original articles, there is normally a limit of five figures and charts (in total) per manuscript. Extended charts or supplementary materials will be published as supplementary materials with the digital version of the article.

Please note that all charts submitted should be mentioned in the text in parentheses (as Table #) or as part of a sentence and should be numbered in order as mentioned in the text.

All charts are considered as original production generated for the article; therefore, they should not be referenced.

 4.6 Figures and illustrations

Figures and illustrations should not be included in the manuscript but should be submitted in separate files. Figures and illustrations can be submitted in FF, EPS, PPT, PPTX or PDF file format in 1024 x 768 size and with a resolution of 100 to 150 dpi/dpi (dots per inch), preferably. Low resolution images can be submitted for peer review, but at a later stage the RIIS may request higher resolution figures. In the case of graphs, these should be submitted as vector images, not as raster images.

Please note that all tables presented should be mentioned in the text in brackets (as Fig. #) or as part of a sentence and numbered in order as mentioned in the text.

Since many of the figures and illustrations often come from other articles, all figures should have their corresponding reference cited at the bottom of the figure, including the reference as "own elaboration". All graphs are considered as original production generated for the article; therefore, they do not need to be referenced unless adapted from other sources.

 4.7 Appendix

The Appendix section contains supplementary data that the author deems necessary for disclosure as part of the principle of "Transfer for transparency and replicability of a research work". This section should be paginated, with a table of contents, followed by a list of researchers (if there is one), text (as methods), figures, charts, and then references. The citations of references in the Appendix and the corresponding list of references should be independent of those presented in the References section. The Appendix should be submitted in two formats: PDF and MS Word (or other editable text format). The Appendix will not be edited for stylistic reasons and will be submitted online as additional information provided by the authors.

Each figure in the Appendix section should include a title and caption, which should appear on the same page as the figure itself. Charts in the Supplementary Appendix should be labelled as Chart S1, Chart S2, etc. Each chart should be accompanied by a title and, if necessary, footnotes.

4.8 General formatting

- The font should be Times New Roman 12 point, on LETTER size sheets, with 1,5-line spacing.

- Margins should be set top and bottom at 2,5 cm, left and right margins at 2,5 cm.

- All sections and their corresponding paragraphs, charts and figures must begin at the edge of the page margin, without indentation.

- Capital letters should only be used for proper names, beginnings of titles, paragraphs, or sentences after a full stop.

- If you have any doubts about spelling, please refer to the current rules of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) available at www.rae.es

- Titles and subtitles will be hierarchized according to the decimal system of nomenclature (1., 1.1., 1.1.1, etc.).

- If scientific names of organisms are mentioned in the article, they should be written in italics, with the genus in upper case and the species in lower case, underlined and in bold, e.g., Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The scientific name of the organism shall be reported in full when it is first named. For subsequent mentions the simplified version shall be used: e.g., S. cerevisiae.

- All cited sources should be referenced in the bibliography according to the VANCOUVER format, and no changes should be made to the year, place, name, or any other.

- Further details on the Vancouver format can be found in the following references:

1. Patrias K. Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers [Internet]. 2nd ed. 2nd ed. Wendling DL, technical editor. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007 [Accessed 16 May 2018]. Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine
2. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals [Internet]. ICMJE; 2010 [Accessed 16 May 2018]. Available from: http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html
3. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Sample References [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2003 [Accessed 16 May 2018]. Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html
4. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Uniformity requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals: Writing and preparing to edit a biomedical publication [Internet]. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma; 2012 [Accessed 16 May 2018]. Available at: http://www.metodo.uab.cat/docs/Requisitos_de_Uniformidad.pdf
5. González Guitian C. Vancouver Style: Uniformity Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals [Internet]. A Coruña: Fisterra; 2013. [Accessed 16 May 2018]. Available at: http://www.fisterra.com/recursos_web/mbe/vancouver.asp
6. University of Navarra Library. Guide to citing and referencing Vancouver Style [Internet]. [Accessed 25 February 2019]. http://www2.unavarra.es/gesadj/servicioBiblioteca/tutoriales/Citar_referenciar_%28Vancouver%29.pdf.
7. Universidad de Antioquía. Guidelines for the submission of undergraduate papers. Health Libraries; Library System; 3rd updated version. Medellín, October 2016. [Internet] [Accessed February 25, 2019]. http://aplicacionesbiblioteca.udea.edu.co/webdisk/guia_trabajos_grado_areas_salud.pdf.