Manuscripts should be submitted with a cover letter stating that the report is not submitted for publication elsewhere and that all authors have agreed to its submission. Studies should be carried out in accordance with the relevant local, national, and international guidelines. All papers will be sent out for external peer review. We aim to notify authors of acceptance, need for revision or rejection within 4 weeks of submission. However it may take longer depending on the volume of submissions in our evaluation queue.
Upon acceptance of the paper the authors agree to publish their article in JBUON under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This means that everyone is free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
- for any purpose, even commercially.
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — If one uses the published article in any form, they must give appropriate credit to JBUON and the article’s author(s) and provide a link to the article’s Issue in JBUON’s website. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests JBUON or the article’s authors endorses them or their use.
- No additional restrictions — If one uses the published article in any form, they may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Contributors of accepted articles are provided with proofs and corrections and need to be returned within one week from receipt of the proof by e-mail at editorial_office@jbuon.com. If this deadline is not met, the publication of the article will be postponed and in extreme cases the article will be rejected.
A cover letter to the publisher testifying authorship responsibility and financial disclosures or conflicts of interest is required for the reviewing procedure and should be included in each manuscript submission.
JBUON publishes material in the form of editorials, reviews, original articles, short communications, special articles, commentaries, letters to the editor, and correspondence. Position articles and medical hypotheses are also welcome the length of which will be agreed between editor and author. Manuscripts should be written in English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscripts checked by an English-speaking colleague prior to submission. Manuscripts should be typewritten (double-spaced) and must be submitted by filling the online submission form that can be found after logging in your account.
Editorials, reviews
Editorials and reviews may be solicited by the editor. Unsolicited reviews will also be considered. The length of the editorial will be agreed upon between editor and author while reviews summarizing state-of-the art of a particular field should not exceed 3000 words.
Original articles
Manuscripts are accepted for publication with the understanding that they represent new contributions to the scientific literature and have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. They should generally be no longer than 3000 words and must be prepared according to specific instructions (see below).
Short communications
Short communications generally summarize clinical trials, important clinical observations, and significant preliminary experimental data. Studies with negative results are also accepted when their knowledge is of interest to the scientific community.
Special articles
Special articles review a specific field providing at the same time original or partially known data. They should not exceed 2000 words and 20 references.
Commentaries
Commentaries usually deal with reports of scientific meetings which are of broad interest to the scientific community. They must be no longer than 2000 words.
Letters to the Editor
Letters are welcome and will be published if appropriate. They usually deal with clinico-laboratory observations. They should be titled, not exceed 500 words, and have a maximum of 5 references. Up to 1 table or figure may be submitted, but will be published at the discretion of the Editor. No more than 4 authors should appear.
Correspondence
Correspondence includes comments on papers published in JBUON. It should be no longer than 500 words and contain up to 10 references.
Instructions for original articles
Original articles in general should be organized in the following order:
Title page
The first page should contain the following information: 1) Title of the paper; 2) Authors’ names; 3) Corresponding affiliation(s) and name of Institution(s) in which the work was done; 4) Acknowledgements for research support; 5) Name, title(s), mail address, and e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers of the author to whom correspondence regarding the manuscript should be directed.
Summary
The second page should contain a summary of no more than 250 words and a maximum of 6 keywords (in alphabetical order, suitable for indexing). Summary must be organized and formatted according to the following headings: Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusions.
Main text
The text should be organized and formatted under the following headings: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion.
Tables and figures
Tables and figures must be listed in the order they are cited in the text using Arabic numerals and should be placed each on a separate page at the end of your file. Ensure that each table and figure is cited in the text. A short descriptive title should appear above each table and any footnotes, suitably identified, below. Provide headings for all columns and indicate units of measurement, where applicable. Always separate the individual columns using tabs, not spaces.
Type figure legends on a separate page and identify in the legend any lettering used in the figure. Photomicrographs should have the magnification and details of staining techniques. All figures should be submitted in electronic format(s) and meet the specifications described below.
References
The accuracy of references is the responsibility of the authors. References should be entered consecutively by Arabic numerals in square brackets in the text. The reference list should be written in numerical order on a separate page. Follow the standard form of Index Medicus. References to Abstracts and Letters to the Editor must be identified as such. Citation of papers in preparation or submitted for publication, unpublished observations and personal communications should not be included in the reference list. They can, however, appear in the text (e.g. J. Smith, personal communication).
For periodicals provide authors’ names and initials, full title of the paper, journal title abbreviated using Index Medicus abbreviations, year of publication, volume number, first and last page. Note: list all authors when 6 or less; when 7 or more list only the first 3 and add “et al.”, e.g.: Bauduceau O, Bollet MA, Pons P et al. The use of computed tomography in radiotherapy treatment planning for breast cancer. How does conventional radiotherapy planning compare with virtual? JBUON 2008; 13:245-251.
For books provide author(s)’ name and initials, title of the pertinent chapter or section title, name(s) of editor(s), title of the book with number of edition if no first edition, location and name of publisher, year, or section title and page numbers, e.g.: Bommer GT, Fearon ER. Molecular abnormalities in colon and rectal cancer. In: Mendelsohm J, Howley PM, Israel MA, Gray JW, Thompson CB (Eds): The molecular basis of cancer (3rd Edn). Saunders, Philadelphia, 2008, pp 409-421.
Electronic manuscript
Text
Electronic manuscript formats should be readable by commonly available word processing software (e.g. rich text format [.rtf], Microsoft Word document [.doc], Open Office document [.odt]). Do not submit manuscripts saved in portable document format (.pdf) as they cannot be easily edited. Any words or phrases in the text that you wish to emphasize should be indicated throughout the paper in italic and not in bold. Please delete any annotations or comments from the final text file.
Figures
If your article includes figures, please note that electronic submission involves at least two computer files depending on the number of the figures you use: 1) one text file containing the manuscript and the figures at the end of the text, as described above (.doc, .docx, .odt, .rtf) and 2) each figure separately in their original digital format (.jpg, .png, .pdf, .eps, .xlsx, .xls).
Permissions
Written permission to reproduce borrowed material (illustrations, tables and photographs) must be obtained. Authors must ensure that appropriate permission has been obtained for the publication of identifiable clinical photographs. Borrowed and previously published material should be acknowledged in the captions in this style: “Reproduced by kind permission of… (publishers) … from … (reference)”. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain all such permissions from the original publishers and authors, and to submit them with the manuscript.
Proofs
After manuscript correction by the Editorial Office authors will receive their paper via email in doc format for proofreading. Proofs should be returned to the Editorial Office via e-mail within one week. The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. After publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum.
Offprints
The corresponding author will receive electronically a reprint in PDF format via e-mail for his/her own files and will be responsible for the distribution of the PDF reprint among his/her co-authors.
Authorship responsibility
The journal’s definition of what qualifies as authorship is based on the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Authors are those who have contributed to the conception and design of the article, the acquisition of data, or the analysis and interpretation of data, as well as the writing of the article or the revision of its content; and have read and approved the final version of the article before submission.
Ethics
For studies involving data relating to human or animal experimental investigations, appropriate institutional review board approval is required and should be described in the article. For details, please refer to the section of ‘Ethics policy’ via Journal information page.
Conflicts of interest
Authors are required to disclose all relevant financial support and potential conflicts of interest in their cover letter, within the manuscript, and on the copyright transfer agreement. If there are no financial disclosures from any author, this should be stated as well. In addition, authors have an ethical responsibility to ensure all research discussed in their work is credible and data are accurate prior to publication. Authors must also clearly identify in the manuscript any discussion of investigational or “off-label” use of drugs or medical devices. The authors will be required to submit such disclosures when submitting their manuscript in the cover letter. Only if conflicts of interest exist will this appear in the published form of the manuscript.
Acknowledgements
All other persons who contributed to the work should be listed in “Acknowledgements”. These include people who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or general support. All financial support should be clearly acknowledged as well as any detail regarding the role of the funding organization in the creation of the manuscript.
Corresponding author’s responsibilities
The corresponding author is the point of contact with the Editorial Office and Publisher. He or she is responsible for:
Collecting signed copyright transfer agreements and CME disclosure forms (if the manuscript is associated with a CME quiz) from all authors and submitting these to the Editorial Office with the manuscript.
Sharing the reviewers’ comments with the other authors and ensuring the requested revisions are made or clearly disputed before resubmitting the manuscript.
Page proofs. The Editorial Office will e-mail page proofs to the corresponding author. It is up to the corresponding author to share these proofs with the other authors. The corresponding author is responsible for incorporating all the corrections made by the authors and returning the proofs to the Editorial Office within 1 week.
Publication fees
JBUON is an independent open-access journal providing free access to the full text of all published articles to all online interested readers around the world. To cover the costs of the publication procedures authors selected for publication pay a fee of 520 euro per article, irrespective of the number of pages, number of tables, figures and color illustrations. This fee is equally distributed among all authors.