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Author Guidelines

Scope and policy 

The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo (Journal of the São Paulo Institute of Tropical Medicine) is a journal devoted to research on different aspects of tropical infectious diseases. The journal welcomes original work on all infectious diseases, provided that data and results are directly linked to human health.  

The journal publishes, besides original articles, review articles, case reports, brief communications, and letters to the editor. The journal publishes manuscripts only in English

From 2016 on, the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo (Journal of the São Paulo Institute of Tropical Medicine) is published online only, maintaining the free access. 

The manuscripts must be submitted only written in English, so we strongly advise authors with English as a foreign language to have their manuscripts checked by a scientist with English as a first language or preferably by one of the suggested specialized companies:  

American Journal Experts:

http://www.journalexperts.com/

 

Nature Publishing Group Editing Service:

https://languageediting.nature.com/

 

authorserv:

http://www.authorserv.com/

 

Compreensive Language Editing and Proofreading:

www.comprehensiveproof.com/index.htm

The receipt of a manuscript with the English usage considered inappropriate can lead to the return of the paper to the authors even before the beginning of the review process.

 In 2016, the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo established a fee per published article. Beginning on January 2016, all the submitted articles will be charged if they are accepted for publication.  

These publication fees will supplement public funding from the Universidade de São Paulo and other grants from federal supporting agencies. This additional support is essential to ensure quality, the increment of the journal’s impact fator and number of citations, the maintenance of the electronic manuscript submission and review system, the review of the English style and of grammar issues.  

The fees will be of US$400 for original articles and reviews; and of US$250 for case reports, technical reports, brief communications and letters to the editor, provided that the number of pages are in accordance with the type of article. Only for Brazilian citizens the fees will be of BRL 1,500.00 for original articles and reviews; and of BRL 1,000.00 for case reports, brief communications and letters to the editor. Once the manuscript has been approved, the corresponding author will receive the instructions for the payment of the publication fee. Thereafter, the corresponding author will receive the proof of payment to be able to apply for funding agencies reimbursement.  

All types of manuscripts should be sent to the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo and they will be peer-reviewed by two to four reviewers of the Editorial Board and/or ad hoc reviewers.

The decision of acceptance for publication lies with the Editors and is mainly based on the recommendations of these reviewers.  

A cover letter stating the following items should be sent to the Editorial Office: 1) The manuscript and all parts of it have not been submitted elsewhere; 2) There are no financial or other relationships of any of the authors of the manuscript that might lead to any conflict of interest; 3) The submitted manuscript has been read by all authors carefully. All authors agree that the manuscript represents their work. 4) Describe sources of funding that have supported the work. Please also describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the paper; and decision to submit it for publication; 5) The corresponding author will be responsible for the communication with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the paper. The manuscripts will be received only by online submission at: http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/rimtsp-scielo

At the same site the authors can check the status of the submission any time. The electronic file will be used for editorial assessment and online refereeing, and the editorial decisions on the manuscript will be communicated to the corresponding author. Only the corresponding author will be contacted and always by e-mail, so be sure to designate an author who checks frequently the e-mail account.  

Authors may suggest potential reviewers for their work provided that they give the e-mail address and affiliation of each scientist they have proposed. Please do not suggest scientists of the same affiliations of the authors. 

Form and preparation of manuscripts 

Types of articles:  

Original Articles: The text must contain a maximum of 6,000 words including abstract and references. The body of the manuscript should be preceded by a nonstructured abstract (with no sub-headings), with a maximum of 500 words. Then, authors should proceed to sections of Introduction, Material and Methods (containing the research’s ethical approval) Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments and References (limited to 40). Pages should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Tables and figures should be referred to in the text. Tables and figures should be numbered and contain a brief specific title. Figures such as drawings, maps, photographs, photomicrographs or electron micrographs should be planned to suit the size of a single or double page column. Figures in black and white or in color should be submitted in TIF format, in high resolution (1,200 DPI).  

Review Articles: Should be presented in the same format of original articles. Review articles are intended to investigators who are experts in a certain field and have made substantial contributions to this specific area of knowledge. This type of manuscript should focus on the description of the state of art, highlighting the major breakthroughs regarding the subject. The number of references are limited to 60.  

Brief Communications, Case Reports and Letters to the Editor: Should report new observations of critical medical importance. Brief Communications should follow the same format of original articles, not exceeding 2,500 words. Case Reports should focus on clinical and laboratory findings, summarizing the introduction, limiting discussion to the essential, calling attention to novelties regarding diagnosis, treatment, outcome of patients, not exceeding 2,000 words. Letters to the Editor should state, from the beginning, why the subject merits this type of publication, highlighting the innovative aspects attained by the research, not exceeding 1,500 words. In these categories of manuscripts (Brief Communications, Case Reports and Letters to the Editor), the number of references is limited to 20, and the attachments, which may be figures (photographs, maps, graphics, etc.) or tables, must not exceed 3 (the sum of figures and tables).  

Acknowledgments: Should be brief, and should not include thanks to anonymous referees and editors, or effusive comments. Private or Governmental organizations that have provided financial support to the research should be mentioned, together with the grants or contribution numbers and period of validity.  

Authors’ Contributions: The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo encourages authors to include a statement to specify the individual contributions of each co-author. 

As the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo reviewers work blindly, the Acknowledgments and the Authors’ Contributions must not be included in the main text of the manuscript, but in the title page. This statement will be included in the body of the text on the final version of the article.  

References:

The list of references, including only those actually mentioned in the text or tables, should be in Vancouver format, listed in order of the citation on the text, and numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals followed by a dot. The citations on the text must be in superscript format, only the numbers without parentheses.

Ex. has been widely applied in clinical practice12

Ex: according to the protocol used by Silva et al.21 

References must be formatted be as follows: 

a) Articles from journals: Last names and initials (only the two first initials) of all authors (unless there are more than six, when only the first six should be given followed by et al.), full title of the article, title of the journal (title abbreviations by NLM can be found on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals), the year of publication, the volume number, the first and last page numbers.

Ex.: Velho PE, Faria AV, Cintra ML, Souza EM, Moraes AM. Larva migrans: a case report and review. Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo. 2003;45:167-71.

Ex.: Costa E, Lopes AA, Sacramento E, Costa YA, Matos ED, Lopes MB, et al. Penicillin at the late stage of leptospirosis: a randomized controlled trial. Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo. 2003;45:141-5. 

b) Books: Last names and initials of all authors, full title of the book, edition, place of publication, the publisher, and the year.

Ex.: Lewin JK. Genes and virus. 2nd ed. Boston: Jones and Bartlett; 2008.  

c) Chapter of book: Last names and initials of all authors of the chapter, full title of the chapter, last names and initials of all authors of the book, full title of the book, edition, place of publication, the publisher, the year, the pages of the chapter.

Ex.: Ferreira HO. Doença de Chagas. In: Farhat CF, Carvalho ES, Carvalho LH, Succi RC, editores. Infectologia pediátrica. São Paulo: Atheneu; 1998. p. 531-7. 

d) Websites: Name of the organization, full title of the document cited, place of publication (if available), the Publisher (if available), the year (if available), date of citing, URL of the precise document cited (not the organization URL)

Ex.: World Health Organization. Leprosy elimination. Geneva: WHO; 2014 [cited 2014 Dec 15]. Available from: http://www.who.int/lep/situation/new_cases/en/

Ex.: Brasil. Ministério da Saúde. Malária. Brasília: Ministério da Saúde; 2015. [cited 2015 Nov 05]. Available from: http://www.saude.gov.br/malaria 

e) Thesis: The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo will not accept the citation of master of Science, PhD thesis, or similar work.

 f) Softwares: The softwares used should not originate references, but be cited in the text as equipment:

Ex: The SPSS statistical software (version 16.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for all the calculation. 

Ethical Guidelines:

Papers must state in the Material and Methods section that: 1) informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and from parents or legal guardians of minors together with the approved consent of the Ethical Commission 2) a consent term was applied to study participants in the case of children over the age of seven and adolescents besides the consent obtained from parents or legal guardians of minors together with the approved consent of the Ethical Commission 3) the maintenance of experimental animals complies with the guidelines of the use of laboratory animals prevailing in the country.  

Numbers:

Numbers that begin a sentence or those that are less than 10 should be spelled out using letters. Centuries and decades should be spelled out, e.g. the Eighties or Nineteenth Century. Laboratory parameters, time, temperature, length, area, mass, and volume should be expressed using digits.  

Units:

The International Unit System must be used, with the exception of blood pressure values which are to be reported in mmHg. Please use the metric system for the expression of length, area, mass, and volume. Temperatures are to be given in degrees Celsius.  

Devices and equipment:

The Materials and Methods section must include sufficient technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated. The sources of all media (i.e., name and location of manufacturer) or components of a new formulation must be provided.

When centrifugation conditions are mentioned, give enough information to enable another investigator to repeat the procedure: brand of the centrifuge (manufacturer), model of the equipment and model of the rotor, temperature, time at maximum speed, and centrifugal force (X g rather than revolutions per minute).

For devices and other products, the specific brand or trade name, the manufacturer and their location (city, state, country) should be provided the first time the device or product is mentioned in the text. Thereafter, the generic term (if appropriate) should be used.

Ex: QIAamp® DNA Mini Kit (QIAGEN Inc., Hilden, FL, USA).  

Names and identification of drugs and other products:

Authors are asked to use the Recommended International Nonproprietary Name (rINN) for medicinal substances, unless the specific trade name of a drug is actually relevant to the discussion. Generic drug names should appear in lowercase letters in the text. If a specific proprietary drug needs to be identified, the brand name may appear only once in the manuscript in parentheses following the generic name the first time the drug is mentioned in the text.

The description of new methods should be complete and give sources of unusual chemicals, reagents, equipment, or microbial strains. When large numbers of microbial strains or mutants are used in a study, authors are asked to include tables identifying the immediate sources (i.e., sources from whom the strains were obtained) and properties of the strains, mutants, bacteriophages, and plasmids, etc.  

Patient identification:

The informed consent is not needed if the patient cannot be identified from any material in a manuscript. In the absence of the informed consent, identifying details, such as patient initials, specific dates, specific geographic exposures, or other identifying features(including body features in figures), should be omitted, but this must not alter the scientific meaning.

Important information that is relevant to the scientific meaning should be stated so that the patient cannot be identified, e.g., by stating a season instead of a date, or a region instead of a city.

If a patient can be identified from the material in a manuscript, the informed consent is required. It can be obtained from the patient(s) or their parents/legal guardians in the case of minors.

For children of seven years old or more, beyond the informed consent of the parents/legal guardians, an informed assent of the child should be provided.

The Informed consent requires that the patient has had the opportunity to see and approve the manuscript prior to submission. The written informed consent must state either that the patient has seen and approved the complete manuscript, or that the patient declines to do so.

The patient consent should be attached as an additional file at the time of the manuscript submission. A statement attesting the receipt and archiving of the written consent of the patient should be included in the published article.  

Randomized Controlled Trials and Clinical Trials:

The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo supports the policy of Clinical Trials registration delivered by WHO and the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) recognizing the importance, in open access, of these initiatives for the registration and international knowledge of the information on clinical studies. Therefore, from 2007 on, only papers of clinical research dealing with these issues having an identification number provided by one of the clinical assays validated by established criteria from WHO and ICMJE will be accepted. The addresses can be found in the ICMJE site (http://www.icmje.org). The trial registration number should be written at the end of the summary.  

Submission of manuscripts:  

The manuscripts will be received only by on-line submission at: http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/rimtsp-scielo, where the authors can check the status of the submission any time. The electronic file will be used for editorial assessment and online refereeing, and the editorial decisions on the manuscript will be communicated to the corresponding author by e-mail.

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

Todas as submissões devem atender aos seguintes requisitos.

  • A contribuição é original e inédita, e não está sendo avaliada para publicação por outra revista; caso contrário, deve-se justificar em "Comentários ao editor".
  • O arquivo da submissão está em formato Microsoft Word, OpenOffice ou RTF.
  • URLs para as referências foram informadas quando possível.
  • O texto está em espaço simples; usa uma fonte de 12-pontos; emprega itálico em vez de sublinhado (exceto em endereços URL); as figuras e tabelas estão inseridas no texto, não no final do documento na forma de anexos.
  • O texto segue os padrões de estilo e requisitos bibliográficos descritos em Diretrizes para Autores, na página Sobre a Revista.
  • Em caso de submissão a uma seção com avaliação pelos pares (ex.: artigos), as instruções disponíveis em Assegurando a avaliação pelos pares cega foram seguidas.

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