Instructions for authors
● You can only submit your manuscript through our website (www.wcjm.org).
● We only accept original papers, which should be innovative, scientific, practical, and readable. Please do not submit one manuscript to more than one journal, otherwise you will be blacklisted.
● The author must carefully confirm before submission that the information of all the authors is accurate, and indicate it in detail in the manuscript, including the authors’ names and their order, corresponding author, authors’ institution, etc. The author of the manuscript must be a member who directly participates in the research work or has an important guiding role (such as graduate tutor), and it is strictly forbidden to register names of irrelevant personnel; after submission, any change of authors’ information is not allowed. If the information of the authors is not included in the submission, the manuscript will be rejected.
● The journal employs the Academic Misconduct Literature Check System of Science and Technology Periodicals (AMLC) to check every manuscript, and the manuscripts suspected of any academic misconduct will be rejected.
● If the research content is supported by any funded project, please provide the scanned copy of the fund approval document for verification when submitting the paper; if not, the manuscript will be rejected.
● If the content of the article involves the results of statistical analysis, please provide a screenshot of the results of the statistical software for verification; if not, the manuscript will be rejected.
● For clinical research involving human beings or animal experimental research, the scanned copy of medical ethics review approval document must be provided for verification; if not, the manuscript will be rejected.
● Please be sure to include the statement of conflict of interest and the contribution statement of co-authors.
● For manuscripts to be published, the author must sign a copyright transfer agreement with the editorial department.
● The peer review of the manuscripts is for free; for published manuscripts, there is a page charge according to relevant regulations, and the page charge notice will be formally posted online (do not remit money to personal account to avoid being cheated); two copies of the issue will be sent to the author if the manuscript gets published.
● If the author does not receive any notice from the editorial department of this journal after 3 months of contribution, the manuscript can be submitted to other journals; but upon the submission, the author should notify the West China Medical Journal to avoid multiple contribution. If the article is not intended to be published, the original manuscript will not be returned. Please keep the original copy. The author shall be responsible for any confidential matter by themselves.
Format of paper
Title
The title should be concise and to the point, the Chinese title should be within 20 words, and the English title should be capitalized.
Author's names
The authors’ names are sorted according to their contribution to the article, and each author’s detailed name, city and postal code must be provided. The corresponding author is fully responsible for the paper, and his/her email must be provided.
Funded project
If a project fund is involved in the article, please indicate the name and serial number of the fund in both Chinese and English.
Abstract
The submitted article should adopt a structural abstract in both Chinese and English within 400 words for each version. However, for a short treatise or summary, the Chinese and English abstract of less than 200 words is needed. The abstract should include objective, methods, results, and conclusion written from the third-person perspective. The content of the Chinese and English abstracts should be basically consistent, and the English abstracts can be slightly expanded to facilitate foreign exchange.
Key words
Generally, 3-5 key words should be selected. The words listed in the medical thesaurus should be used correctly, and free words can also be used if necessary.
Text
The paper should be divided into four parts: preface (introduction), materials and methods (clinical data), results, and discussion. Preface: The preface should summarize the theoretical basis, research ideas, research status at home and abroad, and clarify the research purpose. Materials and methods (clinical data): This part should describe the selection and basic situation of experimental objects (human or experimental animals), list the literature of establishing experimental methods, and clarify the improvements of new or substantially improved methods. All cases, animals, plants, drugs, reagents, and instruments shall be provided with source, batch number, and specification. The observation methods should be listed in detail. Results: According to the logical order of materials and methods, the research results should be described in detail and objectively. Discussion: This part focuses on new findings and conclusions drawn from the research, which should be closely related to the contents of the report.
Special attention:
● The hierarchical serial numbers of titles in the manuscript should be clear and accurate. The serial numbers of the first level titles are 1, 2, and 3; for the second level titles are 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3; for the third level titles are 1.1.1, 1.1.2, and 1.1.3. In principle, they can be divided into three levels of titles. If necessary, they can be arranged in the form of ①, ②, ③, and ④.
● The chart should be concise, scientific in design, and avoiding repetition with the text. The charts and tables of the manuscript should be coded consecutively according to the order in which they appear in the text, and each chart should be crowned with chart (table) titles and notes. The table should adopt three line forms, and the effective digits of the same index data in the table should be consistent. The main observation contents should be indicated by arrows in the histological picture, the staining method and magnification factor should be indicated, and the scale should be provided when the size is involved; the clinical picture should be marked with arrows to indicate the lesion position; if there is a patient’s portrait photo, it should be approved by the patient and attached with explanation; if the statistical chart is made by Excel, please provide excel raw data; if it is produced by statistical software, it should be presented as a vector diagram and can be edited (wmf, eps, emf, or pdf format).
● Statistical methods need to introduce the statistical software package, data description method, inter group difference test method, and test level α value, and provide specific statistics and P value for statistical results. Statistical symbols should be written in accordance with relevant provisions of statistical terms and symbols.
Acknowledgement
This part is devoted to expressing gratitude to those who participate in part of the work, provide technical assistance, provide work convenience, give guidance but are not qualified for authorship, as well as organizations or individuals who provide financial assistance. It should be noted that the consent of the person who has been appreciated should be obtained.
Reference
The references should be recorded according to GB7714-2015 "description rules for bibliographic references". This journal adopts the sequential coding system, and the documents are sorted according to the order in which they appear in the text. The number of references is required to be more than 15 for Articles, more than 25 for Reviews, more than 3 for Case Reports, and more than 8 for other types.
Author contribution
For co-authored articles, please indicate the contribution of each author in the research and publication.
Conflict of interest
Indicate whether there are conflicts of interest among the authors in the process of research and writing. If there are funded projects, it should be stated whether the financial support affects the viewpoint of the article and the statistical analysis and report of the objective results of the research data.
Ethics
If the article submitted to West China Medical Journal is a clinical study, it should be indicated whether the clinical study conforms to the principles stipulated in the Declaration of Helsinki (DoH), whether it has been approved by the Medical Ethics Committee (if approved, the name of the committee and the approval number should be provided), and whether the patients have given their informed consent; if the article is a clinical trial research, it is recommended that the Chinese clinical trial registration number be provided. Animal experimental research should indicate whether it has been approved by the animal welfare ethics committee, and provide the name of the committee and the approval number as well as the license number of the animal.