Submissions

Author Guidelines

 Authors Guidelines[PDF]

Academic journals play a vital role in sharing scientific knowledge, offering a range of article types to accommodate various dimensions of research and scholarship. While the primary focus of the BSCM journal centers around original research articles, the journal also warmly welcomes review articles, case reports, short communications, and letters to the editors.

Original Article:

An original article represents a comprehensive research endeavor undertaken by the researchers themselves. It delves deeply into a specific research question or hypothesis, often involving data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Original articles are characterized by their systematic approach to presenting methods, results, and discussions.  They are vital for advancing the understanding of specific phenomena, expanding scientific knowledge, and potentially influencing further research and practical applications. The manuscript length, excluding references, should not exceed 5000 words.

Review Article:

A reviw article provides an exhaustive synopsis of research on a particular subject or offers a panoramic overview of existing research on a specific topic. It synthesizes finding from various sources, critically assesses the state of the field, and may provide insights into emerging trends and areas of debate. The manuscript length, excluding references, should not exceed 5000 words.

Case Report:

Meaningful clinical reports on patients and/or medical conditions warranting discussion are encouraged. These articles illuminate challenging diagnoses, uncommon presentations, or novel treatment approaches. These articles underscore the importance of personalized approaches to patient care and can serves as educational resources for healthcare professionals. The manuscript length, excluding references, should not exceed 2500 words.

Short Communication:

Short communications are concise reports that highlight potentially groundbreaking developments in research. These articles are particularly suitable for presenting preliminary results, innovative methodologies, or novel tool developments. Despite their brevity, short communications must provide sufficient context, methods, and outcome to enable readers to grasp the significance of the work. This format is ideal for disseminating initial findings that may lead to more extensive research projects. The manuscript length, excluding references, should not exceed 2500 words.

Letters to the Editor:

Letters to the editors are concise communications that offer readers the opportunity to express their opinions or provide insights on previously published articles. These letters can contribute to ongoing discussions or provide additional perspectives on a topic. While brief, letters to the editor should maintain scholarly rigor and contribute to the dynamic. The manuscript length, excluding references, should not exceed 2500 words.

Authors are required to offer explanations in the cover letter if the manuscript surpasses these stipulated limits. The word count pertains to the manuscript length, exclusive of content within the abstract, figures, tables, and references. For Original Articles and Short Communications, the BSCM journal employs a structured abstract format, while Reviews and Case Reports employ an unstructured format. The structured design encompasses the following sections: Objectives, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions.

Manuscript Preparation

BSCM aheres to ‘Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, updated December 2021’
(http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). For any information not mentioned here, the authors should refer to the ICMJE Recommendations.

Overview

• All manuscripts must be clearly and concisely written in American English.

• Manuscripts must fit the BSCM’s aim and scope, are not under consideration by any other journals, and have not been published previously.
• For the work or manuscript that has been partially presented or published, BSCM will consider if the submitted manuscript is substantially different from its previous publication(s) and not be considered redundant. The overlapping content must be clearly defined in the manuscript and informed in the cover letter.
• Together with disclosing details of preprint posting, authors can submit manuscripts made publicly available through community preprint servers before (or at the same time as) submission to BSCM.
• BSCM encourages authors to follow reporting guidelines provided by the EQUATOR Network (https://www.equator-network.org/).

Files and Formats

• Manuscripts should be typed double-spaced in a single column of A4 size paper and use a readable font (e.g., Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, or Verdana) with 12 pt. font size with adequate margins (2.5 centimeters/1 inch) in RTF or MS Word format.

• Main Manuscript should be numbered consecutively in the upper right-hand corner, starting with the abstract page.
• Files needed for submission include
1. Cover Letter
2. Title page
3. Main Manuscript, including Abstract, Main Text, Acknowledgments, Conflict of Interest, Funding, Additional Information (if any), and References.
4. Figures and images must be provided during submission as separate files in the file upload section (if any).
5. Tables (if any)
6. Supplementary Materials (if any)

CoverLetter
The cover letter should include the following items: i) type and title of the manuscript, ii) word counts, iii) article briefing, iv) authorship confirmation, v) confirming no previous publication or providing preprint posting/relevant publication details, vi) confirming that the manuscript is not under the consideration of other journals, vii) three potential reviewers, and viii) corresponding author’s contact information.

Title Page
The title page should include

• Type of manuscript: Original Articles, Short Communication, Review Articles, Case Reports, Letter to the Editor

• Manuscript title: The manuscript title should be concise and informative. Please avoid the use of any abbreviations.
• Running title: A short running title (no more than 50 characters including space)
• Author names: Full names (First, Middle (if any), and Last names) of all authors with superscript numbers to specify the affiliations. Provide the Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) (https://orcid.org/), if available.
• Author affiliations: Use a superscript number corresponding to each author to provide the name of the department/division, institution, city, and country.
• Corresponding author: Full name, complete address, and email address.
• Word count: Word count for abstract and text, as well as the numbers of references, figures, and tables.

Main Manuscript
Apart from Letter to the Editor, the sections of main manuscript may include:

• Abstract: Structured for Original Articles and Short Communications and unstructured for Reviews and Case Reports.

• Keywords (4-6 words).
• Main sections:
• Original Articles and Short Communications: i) Introduction, including the objective (s) of works, ii) Materials and Methods, which should include all essential elements necessary to allow replication of the experiment and interpretations, as well as ethical approval, if any, iii) Results, iv) Discussion, and v) Conclusions
• Reviews and Case Reports: appropriate headings and subheadings.
• Acknowledgments
• Conflicts of Interest
• Funding
• Additional Information (if any), e.g.,
• Author Contribution,
• Data Availability Statement,
• Supplementary Materials
• References

Back Matters

Acknowledgments:

Authors may thank or mention any individuals, groups, or organizations that provided assistance or made significant contributions to the paper but did not meet the criteria for authorship, including any professional editing or language services used in the preparation of the paper. If there are no acknowledgments, the authors should state, “None”.

Funding:

Authors submitting papers to BSCM must indicate any financial support they received for the reported work, including support from institutions, private individuals, and corporations. This information should include the name of the funding organization and the grant number. If no funding was received, authors should state, “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”

Conflict of Interest:

All authors should disclose any financial or other interests that may be relevant to the research or findings reported in the manuscript. Examples include funding from specific organizations, stock ownership in companies related to the research, or consulting or other work for organizations that may have an interest in the results. If there are no conflicts of interest to declare, the authors should state, “The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.”

Author Contribution:

BSCM encourages authors to specify the contributions of each individual who participated in the submitted work. By using the initials of first name and family name to specify each author, a sample author statement is:

A.B.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing – Review & Editing; C.D.: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation; E.F.: Visualization, Investigation; G.H.: Supervision; I.J.: Software, Validation

Data Availability Statement:

BSCM encourages authors to include information on the availability of the data used in the study. Here are a few examples,

• “The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.”
• “The data used in this study are available from [repository name and DOI or link] under [access conditions, such as open access, restricted access, etc.]”
• “The data used in this study are not publicly available due to [reason for non-disclosure, such as participant privacy, legal restrictions, etc.] but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.”

Supplementary Materials:

Supplementary materials are additional materials that provide additional information or data to support the findings or conclusions of a manuscript. These materials are not included in the main body of the manuscript but are made available to readers. Examples of supplementary materials include tables that are too lengthy to include in the main manuscript, figures or images that provide additional information or context, raw data or data processing scripts, additional methodologies, or detailed descriptions of techniques. The authors should submit these materials (if any) as separate file or files along with the main manuscript. They should also be referred to in the manuscript, usually in the methods, results, or discussion section.

Reference Format and Style

Reference Format:

• BSCM strictly adheres to the NLM’s or Original Vancouver Citation Style.

• The references cited in figure legends or tables should be included in sequence at the point where the figure or table is first mentioned in the main text.
• Names of journals should be abbreviated as used in Index Medicus.
• Spell out the names of journals that are not listed in Index Medicus.
• BSCM encourages the use of a bibliography software package, such as Endnote, Reference Manager, or Zotero.

Reference Style:

Authors should follow the standards summarized in the NLM’s Sample References webpage (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html) and detailed in the NLM’s Citing Medicine, 2nd edition. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7262/). Examples are as follows

Journal articles

1. Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7

1. Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002;935:40-6.
2. Lofwall MR, Strain EC, Brooner RK, Kindbom KA, Bigelow GE. Characteristics of older methadone maintenance (MM) patients [abstract]. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2002;66Suppl 1:S105.

Conference proceeding

1. Harnden P, Joffe JK, Jones WG, editors. Germ cell tumours V. Proceedings of the 5^thGerm Cell Tumour Conference; 2001 Sep 13-15; Leeds, UK. New York: Springer; 2002.

1. Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza’s computational effort statistic for genetic programming. In: Foster JA, Lutton E, Miller J, Ryan C, Tettamanzi AG, editors. Genetic programming.EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5^thEuropean Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3-5; Kinsdale, Ireland. Berlin: Springer; 2002. p. 182-91.

Book and monographs

1. Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4^thed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.

1. Gilstrap LC 3^rd, Cunningham FG, VanDorsten JP, editors. Operative obstetrics. 2^nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002.
2. Breedlove GK, Schorfheide AM. Adolescent pregnancy. 2^nded. Wieczorek RR, editor. White Plains (NY): March of Dimes Education Services; 2001.
3. 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.

Electronic article

1. Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [Internet]. 2002 Jun [cited 2002 Aug 12];102(6):[about 1 p.]. Available from: http://www.nursingworld.org/AJN/2002/june/Wawatch.htmArticle

1. Williams JS, Brown SM, Conlin PR. Videos in clinical medicine.Blood-pressure measurement. N Engl J Med. 2009 Jan 29;360(5):e6. PubMed PMID: 19179309.
2. Zhang M, Holman CD, Price SD, Sanfilippo FM, Preen DB, Bulsara MK. Comorbidity and repeat admission to hospital for adverse drug reactions in older adults: retrospective cohort study. BMJ. 2009 Jan 7;338:a2752. doi: 10.1136/bmj.a2752. PubMed PMID: 19129307; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2615549.
3. eatright.org [Internet]. Chicago: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics; c2016 [cited 2016
   Dec 27]. Available from: http://www.eatright.org/.

Figures
Figures refer to both photographic/computer-generated graphs and charts/diagrams.

• Figures must be prepared in digital image files, and figure(s) must be submitted as separate file(s).

• Figures should be cited in numeric order (e.g., Fig. 1, Fig. 2) and indicate the insertion point after the paragraph where it is first cited. Do not insert figures in the main manuscript.
• Figures provided during submission must have sufficiently high resolution (minimum 1000 pixels width/height, or a resolution of 300 dpi or higher).
• Common formats are accepted, but TIFF, JPEG, EPS, and PDF are preferred.
• Figures should be in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel). There is no additional cost for publishing full-color graphics.
• Images of cells and western blots should be large enough to see the relevant features. In addition, uncropped, untouched, full original images of western blots should be uploaded with the other figure files.
• Diagrams with describing words (e.g., flow chart, coordinate diagram, bar chart, line chart, scatter diagram, etc.) should be editable in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint format.
• The figure caption should be placed under the figure.
• Use scale markers in the image for electron micrographs, and indicate the type of stain used.
• Digital art files should be cropped to remove non-printing borders (such as unnecessary white or black space around an image) and should not include embedded legend text, figure titles, or figure numbers.
• Labels, numbers, letters, arrows, and symbols should be clear, of uniform size, contrast with the background, and large enough to be legible after reduction to fit the width of a printed column.
• For figures with multiple parts, each part should be denoted by capital letters (A, B, C, etc.).
• Composite figures may be either submitted as one single print-quality image that is neatly labeled with uppercase letters using Arial/Helvetica bold font or submitted as separate panels (without labels), e.g., Fig. 1A.tif, Fig. 1B.tif, to be combined during production if accepted for publication.
• Multi-panel figures (for example Fig. 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D) should be submitted as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure.
• Each file should be saved as the appropriate figure number (e.g., Fig. 1.tif). Do not include the author name in the figure file name.
• Image orientation should be the same as intended for publication.
• Authors must be prepared to submit the original, unaltered files from which the submitted figures were derived if requested by the editorial office.
• Symbols and abbreviations must be defined in the figure or its legend.
• Figure titles and legends should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphic file.
• Legends for all figures should be included at the end of the manuscript, beginning with ‘Fig.’ in bold type, followed by the figure number also in bold type. Do not use any punctuation following the figure number, and do not place any punctuation at the end of the legend.
• The legend should define all elements included in the figure, such as boxes, circles, and arrows.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure legends.
• Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.
• Remove the margins as much as possible when preparing pictures (especially CT or MRI images).
• When submitting photos of patients, the patients must not be recognizable.
• In case the face of a patient is visibly recognizable, the patient’s consent must be obtained.
• Artwork generated from office suite programs such as CorelDRAW, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, and artwork downloaded from the Internet (low-resolution JPEG or GIF files) cannot be used.

Tables

• Tables should be submitted as separate files.

• Tables in the main manuscript document should be provided as text, not as an image.
• Each table should include the table title, appropriate column heads, and legends.
• Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate the textual materials.
• Tables should be cited in numeric order (e.g., Table 1, Table 2) and indicate the insertion point after the paragraph where it is first cited. Do not insert tables in the main manuscript.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lowercase letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.
• Abbreviations used in the table must be defined in a footnote to the table.
• Legends for all tables should be included at the end of the manuscript, beginning with ‘Table’ in bold type, followed by the table number also in bold type. Do not use any punctuation following the table number, and do not place any punctuation at the end of the legend.

Specific Issues

Authorship Changes:
BSCM journals follow the COPE guidelines for changes in authorship. It requires that any changes to the author list after submission, including additions, deletions, or changes in ordering, must be agreed upon by all authors and must be approved by the journal. Requests for changes must come from the corresponding author and include an explanation for the change. If authorship issues are identified after publication, corrections may be made. In case of an authorship dispute, the journal will not intervene and will instead refer the issue to the authors’ institution. BSCM’s Authorship Change Form can be downloaded at the end of this webpage.

Human and Animal Studies:
If the manuscript contains human subjects or regulated animals., the authors must identify the committee or organization (e.g., the institutional ethics review committee) that approved the studies in the Material and Methods section of the manuscript. Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must adhere to the ethical principles of the WMA Declaration of Helsinki or other relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations.

Names of Drugs, Devices, and Other Products:
Do not use the specific brand names of drugs, devices, and other products and services, unless it is essential to the discussion. Otherwise, please use a descriptive name. If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer’s name and address.

Statistics:
Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to judge its appropriateness for the study and to verify the reported results. Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. Specify the statistical software package(s) and versions used. Manuscripts should conform to the Statistical Analyses and Methods in the Published Literature (SAMPL) Guidelines, which can be found at http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/sampl/.

Abbreviations:
Do not include the abbreviations in the title. Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Units of Measurement:
Measurements of length, height, weight, and volume should be reported in metric units (meter, kilogram, or liter) or their decimal multiples. All measurements should follow the International System of Units (SI) which could be accessed from https://www.bipm.org/en/measurement-units. Drug concentrations may be reported in either SI or mass units, but the alternative should be provided in parentheses where appropriate. Use a capital letter ‘L’ for liter in the units of measurements in the text, figures, and tables (e.g., g/dL, mg/dL, IU/L, and mEq/L).

Owner and Supporter

Chiang Mai University Faculty of Medicine (CMU Medicine) is the exclusive owner and supporter of BSCM, which aims to assist academics, researchers, and practitioners in disseminating and accessing reliable knowledge and research findings in biomedical sciences and clinical medicine for the benefit of humanity. To achieve this goal, all articles published in BSCM are free for all, without any article processing charges (APC) for authors and no paywall for readers. The journal does not engage in any form of marketing or accept any advertising. Furthermore, the content published in BSCM is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY, version 4.0), which allows sharing and adaptation of the published material while properly crediting the original source.

Contact address 

Biomedical Sciences and Clinical Medicine Office,

Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand. 

Telephone: +66-53-935270; Fax: +66-53-936234

E-mail:bscm@cmu.ac.th