Guidelines for authors

Articles accepted

Editors accept for publication original and review papers, case reports, letters to the editor, editorial papers and special articles and also book reviews, which have not been published before, in full or in part, both in the hard and soft copy, and not submitted for publication to other journals. Editors allow for publication of abstracts and reports of scientific meetings and conferences published before in other sources if information where such material was published earlier is provided.

Editors advise against submitting more than one paper about similar aspects of the same study or problem.

Each manuscript submitted should contain the following statements:
• that the manuscript has not been published before or submitted for publication to any other journal,
• a copyrights form signed by the corresponding author,
• a statement about a potential conflict of interests.


Article types

Papers accepted are published in the following categories:
• Original papers (not more than 12 pages),
• Review papers (not more than 10 pages),
• Case reports (not more than 8 pages),
• Letters to the Editor (not more than 1 page),
• Editorial papers (not more than 3 pages),
• Special articles (ordered only),
• Book reviews (not more than 3 pages).

Basic information – definitions

Ethics
Contents presented in the manuscript should comply with the Helsinki Declaration (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html); EU directives (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm) and Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org).

Conflict of interest
All authors are responsible for disclosing an actual or potential conflict of interest involving financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work. Conflicts of interest may occur due to for example employment by the publication sponsor, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, patents, and paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, grants or other financial projects.

Declaration upon work submission

Submission of the manuscript means that:
a) the manuscript has not been published before (exceptions include abstracts or parts of lectures or doctoral dissertations),
b) the manuscript is not currently under consideration for publication in other journals,
c) the publication is accepted by all authors or relevant authorities of the institution in which the research was conducted, and if the manuscript is approved for publication, it will not be published in another journal also in an electronic form, in English or other languages, without the written consent of the holder of copyrights to the title.

Author changes
Prior to the publication of an approved article. Any requests for changing, deleting or adding an author must be submitted to the Editors by the corresponding author and must contain: (a) reason for deleting, adding or changing the sequence of authors, (b) authors' confirmation of consent to a change in writing (by email, fax, letter). If an author is added or deleted, also confirmation by that author.
Requests made by authors other than the corresponding author will be sent to the corresponding author, in line with the above procedure.
Following the publication. Any requests for adding, deleting or changing the sequence of authors are subject to the same procedure and rules as above, but result in publishing an errata.

Results of clinical trials
According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the journal will not consider trial result registration to be previous publication if the results are posted in the form of a brief (less than 500 words) abstract or table.
However disclosure of results in other circumstances (e.g. investor meetings) is not recommended and may undermine the credibility of the manuscript. Authors should disclose all results of the same or related work as contained in the registries.

Reporting results of clinical trials
All randomised (blind) trials presented in the article should contain a completed checklist for Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT). For more information, visit http://www.consort-statement.org.
The journal has accepted the standpoint of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which requires registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registration number should be published at the end of the abstract. The clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention related to health protection to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (in which medical interventions are not dictated by the researcher) are not required to be registered. For more information visit http://www.icmje.org.

Copyrights
All authors must give their written consent to the paper publication. The corresponding author's statement to the effect that all co-authors have read the paper and consented to its publication is also acceptable. When the paper is accepted for publication, all rights to use it are transferred to the journal owner and its copyrights. The paper may not be published by any other publisher. Upon publication, the paper is the property of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology and it may be used in full, regardless of the media and language, only upon written consent of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. All published papers are accessible in the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
If parts from other copyrighted works are included in the article, the author(s) must obtain written consent from the title owner and acknowledge the sources in the article.

Rights to the article retained by the Author
The author (or employer or institution) retains the right to the article in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Role of the supporting source
The author is asked to list institutions/people supporting the study carried out and/or the article writing and to describe briefly the role of the sponsor(s) in study design; acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; the decision to submit the report for publication. If the author used no support, such information should also be given in the article.

Language and related services
Only articles in English are accepted.

Patient details
All personal data and information concerning the patient contained in the article and other additional material (including figures and video material) must be deleted unless the patient (or guardian) gives written consent for such use of such data.

Submission
Articles are accepted only in the electronic form via the Editorial System https://www.editorialsystem.com/ppn/. The author will be guided through the system and instructed how to add the article and attach files electronically. The system automatically converts source files to the PDF format to be used in the peer-review process. Source files are kept in the system as they are necessary for further editorial processes and journal production. All correspondence, including information from the editor about the decision and a request to correct the article is provided automatically in the system as e-mails.

Reviewers
During the manuscript submission, the author is asked to provide data (full name and e-mail address) of two suggested reviewers. Editors reserve the right to decide whether to use the author's suggestions.

Peer-review process
Articles are assessed for their content and whether they present new information about studies, new way of thinking and contribution to their development, change of clinical practice or disease perception. When submitting the paper, all authors approve its publication. The signature of the corresponding author means that this requirement has been met.
Articles submitted are first assessed by the journal editors. Articles with an insufficient value are rejected. Incomplete documents or articles prepared not in line with standards will be returned to authors prior to the review process with information about deficiencies. Registered articles are sent for assessment to independent reviewers. The review process usually takes 2 to 6 weeks. Papers submitted are accepted for publication by editors following a favourable opinion by independent reviewers. If the paper submitted must be corrected, the corrected version should be submitted as a second version of the article with responses to all reviewers' comments and an enumeration and specification of all corrections made.

Permissions
Authors that used data from another source must attach written permission to reproduce the data from the author and publisher. This also applies to the paper that is being prepared for publication, unpublished article or communication.

Legal liability
The Editor-in-Chief and the Scientific Board of the journal endeavour not to have misleading or non-compliant information, opinions or statements published in the journal. However the Editors are not liable for presented data and opinions, statements and advertisements that represent a sign of personal knowledge and views of their authors, sponsors and advertisers. Therefore, the Editor-in-Chief, the Scientific Board and the Publisher are not held liable for information, opinions or statements presented. Editors make best efforts to have doses of drugs or other units of measurement presented correctly. Despite that it is recommended to use doses verified based on information provided by responsible entities in registration documents applicable in the country.


Preparation of material
Use of word processors.
Importantly the text must be saved in the programme the author used when writing the article. The text should have a one-column format. The layout should be as simple as possible. In the course of editing, the text formatting will be generally deleted or replaced. In particular, authors are asked not to align the text or use non-breaking (hard) spaces. Bolds, italics, superscripts and subscripts etc. are permitted. In tables, one border type should be used for each table. In tables with no borders, tabs rather than spaces must be used to separate columns. Authors are asked to check whether source files with figures, tables, graphics are attached along with the article. For more information about illustrative material, read the section on electronic illustrative material.
Please use the spelling and grammar checker in word processors to avoid unnecessary errors.


Article structure

Editors definitely expect authors to make sure their texts have an appropriate form and structure.
• Review papers should have a high cognitive or practical value and present up-to-date views (except for historical studies). Concise and still communicative papers are expected. A short abstract comprising the following sections: Purpose, Views, Conclusions, is necessary.
• Original papers Purpose – in this section research hypotheses, questions and intentions should be formulated.
Methods – rules of selection should be given, the study group should be described and the method applied should be discussed.
Results – should be presented as a brief summary without detailed description of the contents of tables or figures, which however must be self-explanatory (without the help of the text).
Discussion – here results obtained should be critically assessed, results of other authors should be addressed, practical or theoretical significance of the results and limitations on interpretation should be noted.
Conclusions – represent a clear and brief summary of outcomes, preferably presented as bullet points.

An abstract constituting the paper in miniature divided to the following sections: Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusions should be attached.
• Case reports should comprise the following sections:
Purpose – justification of the usefulness of the case and problem;
Case description – detailed presentation of the case;
Comment – discussion of conclusions and clinical implications of the case presented.

A short abstract divided to the following sections: Purpose, Case description, Comment is necessary.

Abstract
A brief and matter-of-fact abstract in Polish and English (max 250 words) is required. The abstract should present in short the aim of the study, key results and principal conclusions. The abstract should be structured so as to be used independently. Authors should avoid references if however this is necessary, authors and year should be given. Non-standard or rare abbreviations may be used but they should be defined when they are first mentioned.

Abstracts should be divided to sections according to the article type. Accordingly:
for review papers – Purpose, Views, Conclusions;
for original papers – Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusions;
for case reports – Purpose, Case description, Comment.

Key words
For each article, minimum 3 key words, in Polish and English, should be given. Terms according to Index Medicus (Medical Subject Headings - https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search) are recommended. Key words may not repeat the paper title.

Abbreviations
Each abbreviation, both English and Polish, should be defined when first mentioned, no matter whether used in the main text or in the abstract. Uniform abbreviations should be used in the entire article. If more terms are used, a separate "Glossary" can be given.

Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements should be given in a separate section at the end of the article, before References. Please do not put acknowledgements at the beginning of the text on the title page. Acknowledgements should have a form of a list of people that helped in the study or writing the article (e.g. help in provision of data, corrections, language editing).

Electronic illustrative material

Major rules
. Attach drawings, graphs, images as JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF files.
. Do not send low-resolution files.
. Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol fonts are accepted only.
. Number graphic material according to the place they appear in the text – figures by Roman numerals and tables by Arabic numerals.
. Each figure and table must be referred to in the text.
. A list of illustrations should be given in a separate file.
. Each figure must be attached as a separate file.

Do not:
. send BMP, PICT, WPG files due to their low resolution.
. send low-resolution files.
. attach too large graphics.
. repeat in figures information contained in tables and vice versa.

Legends to illustrations
The author should attach a legend to each illustration in a separate file in Polish and English. The legend should contain a short title and description. The text should be minimum, but all symbols and abbreviations should be explained.

Tables
The sequence of tables should comply with their sequence in the text. All footnotes concerning the table should be put below the table. Vertical separators should be avoided. The author should not attach too many tables and information contained there should not repeat results given in the article.

References
Citation in the text
References mentioned in the text should be listed in the order at the end of the article (and vice versa). Citations in the abstract must be full. Unpublished results and communications had better not be referenced though they can be noted in the article. If such citations appear in the references, they should be structured according to the journal standards and contain the publication date. The citation of an article "in press" implies that it has been approved for publication.
Website citation
The minimum requirement is to give the URL address and date of the last access. Additional information should be given if possible (DOI, authors' names, dates, references to source material etc.). References concerning websites may be attached as a separate list (e.g. following references) under other heading or incorporated into references.
References in a special number
The author should make sure that the words "this number" are added to each reference (and citation in the text) to other articles in the same special number.
Reference style
Text. Each reference should be numbered by Arabic numerals in square brackets (without superscript).

List
The references should be listed in the order they appear in the text.

Examples
Article in a journal:
1. Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art of writing a scientific article. J Sci Commun 2010; 163: 51-59.

Book:
2. Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of style. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 2000.

Chapter of a book:
3. Mettam GR, Adams LB. How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In: Jones BS, Smith RZ, editors. Introduction to the electronic age, New York: E-Publishing Inc; 2009, pp. 281-304.

In general, all authors should be mentioned. If there are more than 6 authors, follow them by "et al.".

Sources of journal abbreviations
Journal titles should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html);
Abbreviations of title words: http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts): http://www.cas.org/sent.html.

Prior to paper submission to the Editors, make sure that:
. the paper was checked for linguistic correctness,
. references are given in an appropriate required format,
. all references are cited in the text and vice versa,
. the permission for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet) has been obtained,
. colours of figures should be clearly stated for reproduction purposes.

Following the article approval for publication

Author correction
The corresponding author will receive a copy of the paper via email. The corrected article should be sent back promptly but not later than within 2 days.

Additional questions
For replies to questions about submissions (including electronic filing of applications), visit the journal's home page. Contact information regarding questions arising after the article approval, in particular relating to the correction, will be given by the publisher.

ETHICAL STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES
Termedia Publishing House is committed to upholding standards of ethical behaviour at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF AUTHORS
The Author(s) is obliged to prepare and send the article in accordance with the requirements set out in the journal Editor. Moreover the Author(s) is obliged to submit editorial complemented by a statement which will be included: a statement about the originality of the content of the article (work not yet published anywhere), the integrity of the copyrights of others, no conflict of interest or its application, as well as the superior permission to publish an article in the journal. Authors are obliged to participate in peer review process. The Author(s) are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes, they also should provide a list of references.
Author(s) are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work.
Authors may, at any time before accepting the article for publication, withdraw the article by submitting a statement in the electronic system of the Editorial System.

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA AND/OR WHO SHOULD BE LISTED AS A CONTRIBUTOR
Termedia Publishing House in the matter of authorship criteria and/or who should be listed as a contributor, respects standards recommended by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). Detailed information about those criteria you can find in COPE Report publicationethics.org/files/2003pdf12_0.pdf.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS
Articles are selected for publication in double blind selection system and published in open access system. Reviewer shall review by the electronic system on the basis of questions prepared for a specific title. It is also possible for a reviewer to send individual comments to be published in the article content.
All judgments and findings in the peer-review process should be objective. Reviewers should have no conflict of interest (they make a statement before proceeding to review.). Reviewers - if is a legitimate need - should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited, and reviewed by them articles should be treated confidentially prior to their publication.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS
Editors are responsible for deciding which articles are accepted for publication. Editors act in a balanced, objective and fair way while carrying out their expected duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin of the authors.
Publisher and Editors are always ready to publish corrections, clarifications, withdrawals and apologies if there is a legitimate need.
In the situation when there is a suspicion that an inappropriate research procedure described in the work sent by autors has taken place, the authors are obliged by the editorial office - if not yet submitted - to submit information regarding the approval of the described research procedure by a properly established ethics committee to conduct clinical trials.