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All manuscripts must be submitted online through the website: www.SMBS.salviapub.com. First-time users will have to register at this site‒registration is free but mandatory.

Registered authors can keep track of their articles after logging into the site using their username and password.

If you experience any problems, please contact the editorial office by e-mail: support@salviapub.com

The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Instructions for Authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction before they undergo editorial/ peer-review. Generally, the manuscript should be submitted in the form of several separate files.

Any images should protect the patient’s anonymity as far as possible. Any photos or medical imaging should not show the patient's name, medical record number, or date of birth. Images should be cropped only to show the key feature. As per journal policy, SMBS does not consider images with patient faces or patient facial features. If an image of a face must be published, this should be cropped so that only the affected area is shown. 

The SMBS is a signatory journal to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, issued by the ICMJE.

Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with “ICMJE Recommendations.” The uniform requirements and specific requirement of SMBS are summarized below.

 

SMBS publishes the following article types:

• Original articles
• Letters to the Editor
• Review articles/ Meta-analysis

 

For the more details, Click the relevant link to find style and formatting information for the article you are going to submit.

 

Authors are expected to comply with standard reporting guidelines for study designs. Check the EQUATOR Network for reporting instructions and supporting documentation. Documentation for specific studies should be uploaded as supporting information during manuscript submission. Read the submission guidelines.

1. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Reports of systematic reviews and meta-analyses must adhere to the PRISMA statement as a guide, and include a completed PRISMA checklist and flow diagram to accompany the main text. Blank templates of the checklist and flow diagram can be downloaded from the PRISMA web site.

Authors must also state within their Methods section whether a protocol exists for their systematic review, and if so, provide a copy of the protocol as Supporting Information.

We support the prospective registration of systematic reviews. Authors whose systematic review was prospectively registered (e.g., in a registry such as PROSPERO) should also provide the registry number in their abstract. Registry details and protocols will be made available to editors and reviewers and included alongside the paper for readers if the report is ultimately published.

 2.Diagnostic studies

Reports of studies of diagnostic accuracy should conform to the STARD requirements.

3. Microarray experiments

Reports of microarray experiments should conform to the MIAME guidelines published by the Functional Genomics Data Society (FGED), and the data from the experiments must be deposited in a publicly accessible database.

4. Biological and biomedical research

We recommend that authors refer to the BioSharing Portal for prescriptive checklists for reporting biological and biomedical research where applicable.

 

The manuscript should be prepared according to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and must comply with the ethical standards recommended by the Helsinki Declaration. 

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section.

Please note that your manuscript must include a 'Declarations' section including all of the subheadings (please see below for more information).

 

►File formats

The following word processor file formats are acceptable for the main manuscript document:

• Microsoft word (DOC, DOCX)
• Rich text format (RTF)
• TeX/LaTeX (use BioMed Central's TeX template)

Note: editable files are required for processing in production. If your manuscript contains any non-editable files (such as PDFs), you will be required to re-submit an editable file when you submit your revised manuscript, or after editorial acceptance in case no revision is necessary.

 

►Style and language

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood.

 

►Title page 

This file should provide:

1. The title of the manuscript, names of all authors/ contributors and name(s) of the department(s) and/ or institution(s) to which the work should be credited.

All information that can reveal your identity should be here. Use text/rtf/doc files. Do not zip the files.

2. The total number of pages, total number of photographs and word counts separately for abstract and for the text (excluding the references, tables figure legend, and abstract).
3. Acknowledgment, if any. One or more statements should specify (a) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chair; (b) acknowledgments of technical help; and (c) acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support. This should be included on the title page of the manuscript and not in the main article file.
4. The name, address, e-mail, Fax and telephone number of the corresponding author, who is responsible for communicating with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the proofs, if that information is not included on the manuscript itself.

 

►Declarations

The SMBS is a signatory journal to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, issued by the ICMJE.

Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with “ICMJE Recommendations.” The uniform requirements and specific requirement of SMBS are summarized below.

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

• Ethics approval and consent to participate
• Consent for publication
• Availability of data and material
• Competing interests
• Funding
• Acknowledgments

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections. If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

1. Ethics approval and consent to participate

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

• include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
• include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

See our editorial policies for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

2. Consent for publication

If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.

You can use your institutional consent form or our consent form if you prefer. You should not send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication).

See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

3. Availability of data and materials

All manuscripts must include an ‘Availability of data and materials’ statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. By data, we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate, and build upon the findings reported in the article. We recognize it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances, data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

• The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
• The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
• The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
• The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
• Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

SMBS also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely on the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs, should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].^{[Reference number]} 

4. Conflicts of Interests

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest, please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors' initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

5. Funding

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.

6. Authors' contributions

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies.

Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section.

7. Acknowledgments

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgments and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

 

►References

All the references must be prepared by the Vancouver style. For the references number limitation, please see the specific guidelines for each article types. Also, below you can find general formation:

• All references in the text must be numbered consecutively, place each citation immediately after the term or phrase and usually before the period; they should appear like the following: [1, 2, 5, 6] or [7-9].
• Listing references, follow abbreviate names of journals according to the journal list in PubMed.
• Citations in the reference list should contain named authors up to 6; if more than 6, list the first 6 authors followed by” et al.”. Some examples of the journal's reference style are shown below. Please carefully follow the reference style precisely:

 

1. Journal Article:

Urita Y, Watanabe T, Imai T, Samana W, Heiram A, Ehsak A, et al. Influence of chronic ethanol consumption on extra-pancreatic secretory function in rat. N Am J Med Sci 2009; 1(4): 239-43.

 

2. Book Chapter:

Ramphal R. Infections due to Pseudomonas species and related organisms. In: Fauci AS, Braunwald E, Kasper DL. Eds. Harrison Principles of Internal Medicine. 17th ed. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Medical; 2008:949-56.

 

3. Complete Book:

Margulis L: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1970.

 

4. Link/URL:

U.S. positions on selected issues at the third negotiating session of the Framework

Convention on Tobacco Control. Washington, D.C.: Committee on Government Reform, 2002. (Accessed March 4,2002, at http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_tobacco/index_accord.htm).

Unpublished work accepted for publication but not yet released should be included in the reference list with the words “in press” in parentheses beside the name of the journal concerned. References must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents.

 

Note: Personal communications or manuscripts either “in preparation” or “submitted for publication” are unacceptable as a reference.

Note: You can download the SMBS Endnote style that available in http://www.SMBS.salviapub.com.

 

►Figures

1. General formatting

When preparing figures, please follow the formatting instructions below.

• Figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text and uploaded in this order. Multi-panel figures (those with parts a, b, c, d, etc.) should be submitted as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure.
• Figures should be uploaded in the correct orientation.
• Figure titles (max 10 words) and legends (max 350 words) should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphics file.
• Figure keys should be incorporated into the graphic, not into the legend of the figure.
• Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration. Cropping figures improves accuracy when placing the figure in combination with other elements when the accepted manuscript is prepared for publication on our site. For more information on individual figure file formats, see our detailed instructions.
• Individual figure files should not exceed 10 MB. If a suitable format is chosen, this file size is adequate for extremely high-quality figures.
• Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have previously been published elsewhere. In order for all figures to be open access, authors must have permission from the rights holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non-open access journals. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source included in the reference list.

2. Figure file types

We accept the following file formats for figures:

• EPS (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
• Microsoft Word (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
• TIFF (suitable for images)
• JPEG (suitable for photographic images, less suitable for graphical images)
• PNG (suitable for images)
• BMP (suitable for images)
• CDX (ChemDraw - suitable for molecular structures)

3. Figure size and resolution

Figures are resized during publication of the final full text and PDF versions to conform to the SMBS standard dimensions, which are detailed below.

3.1. Figures on the web

• width of 600 pixels (standard), 1200 pixels (high resolution).

3.2. Figures in the final PDF version

• width of 85 mm for half page width figure
• width of 170 mm for full page width figure
• maximum height of 225 mm for figure and legend
• the image resolution of approximately 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size

Figures should be designed such that all information, including text, is legible at these dimensions. All lines should be wider than 0.25 pt when constrained to standard figure widths. All fonts must be embedded.

4. Figure file compression

• Vector figures should if possible, be submitted as PDF files, which are usually more compact than EPS files.
• TIFF files should be saved with LZW compression, which is lossless (decreases file size without decreasing quality) to minimize upload time.
• JPEG files should be saved at maximum quality.
• Conversion of images between file types (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) should be kept to a minimum to avoid degradation of quality.

 

►Tables

Include a title for each table (no longer than 30 words) in a single file.

• Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material.
• Tables with more than 10 columns and 25 rows are not acceptable.
• Explain all nonstandard abbreviations in footnotes.
• For footnotes use the following symbols: *, †, ‡, §, ||,¶, **, ††, ‡‡-
• Tables with their legends should be provided at the end of the text after the references. The tables along with their number should be cited at the relevant place in the text
• Submit tables in a word processing—not an imaging—format.
• Identify statistical measures of variations, such as SD or SE. Do not merely repeat information in the text.
• All P values should be reported as exact numbers to 2 digits past the decimal point, regardless of significance, unless they are lower than 0.01, in which case they
• should be presented to 3 digits. Express any P values lower than 0.001 as P<.001. P values can never equal 0 or 1.
• Obtain permission for all fully borrowed, adapted, and modified tables and provided a credit line in the footnote.

 

The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. However, there is no need to submit the “First Page” or “Covering Letter” file while submitting a revised version. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, the ‘referees’ remarks along with point to point clarification at the beginning in the revised file itself. Also, they are expected to mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article.

 

Withdrawal is an action that takes the manuscript out of the review process and places it back into the author's dashboard. In General, we do not suggest article withdrawal, since it wastes valuable manuscript processing time, money, and works invested by the publisher.

 

►Withdrawal Steps

• Pre-Review: is a period that an author(s) submit(s) her/his article until to be sent for review.
• Peer-Review: is a period that manuscript submitted completely into the website and included in the review process.
• Review – Final Decision: is a period from the acceptance of an article until to be sent for publication if the article meets the journal standards.
• Post-Publication: when a paper is published (online and/or hard copy).

 

►Regulations

• Pre-Review: The author(s) can withdraw their papers at this step without paying any charges and/or posting compelling reasons.
• Peer-Review: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 300 Euro as the withdrawal penalty.
• Review – Final Decision: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 500 Euro as the withdrawal penalty.
• Post-Publication: Withdrawing at this step is not possible at all.

 

The retraction is a public statement made about an earlier statement that is going to be removed from the journal. The retraction may be initiated by the editors of the journal, or by the author(s) of the paper. However, since the editors are responsible for the journal’s content, they always make the final decision to retract the material. The journal editors may retract publications even if all or some of the authors refuse to retract the publication.

Only published items can be retracted. Publications should be retracted as soon as possible when the journal editors are convinced that the publication is seriously flawed and misleading (or is redundant or plagiarized).

 

►Regulations

The authors should be providing compelling reasons as follow:

• Plagiarism
• Bogus claims of authorship
• Multiple submission
• Fraudulent use of data
• Infringements of professional ethical codes
• Redundant publication
• Failure to disclose a major competing interest

Note: Authors sometimes request that articles are retracted when authorship is disputed after publication. If there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings or the reliability of the data, it is not appropriate to retract a publication solely for an authorship dispute. In such cases, the journal editor should inform those who are involved in the dispute that s/he cannot adjudicate in such cases, but they may be willing to publish a correction to the author/contributor list if the authors/contributors (or their institutions) provide appropriate proof that such a change is justified.

 

►Retraction Steps

• A retraction note entitled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
• In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
• The original article is retained unchanged saving for a watermark on the .pdf file version on each page to indicate that it is “retracted.”
• The HTML version of the document is removed.

For more detail information, see the below:

Wager E, Barbour V, Yentis S, Kleinert S. Retraction Guidelines. Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Sep 2009. Available from: http://publicationethics.org/files/retraction guidelines.pdf

 

We accept all terms and conditions of COPE about plagiarism, and in case any attempt of plagiarism is brought to our attention accompanied by convincing evidence, we act based on flowcharts and workflows determined in COPE.

 

►Covering letter

 Signed by all contributors

• Previous publication /presentations mentioned
• Source of funding mentioned
• Conflicts of interest disclosed

 

►Authors

• Last name and given name provided along with Middle name initials (where applicable)
• Author for correspondence, with the e-mail address provided
• Number of contributors restricted as per the instructions
• Identity not revealed in the paper except the title page (e.g., name of the institute in Methods, citing the previous study as 'our study,' names on figure labels, name of the institute in photographs,etc.)

 

►Presentation and format

• Double spacing
• Margins 2.5 cm from all four sides
• Page numbers included at the bottom
• Title page contains all the desired information
• The abstract page contains the full title of the manuscript
• Abstract provided (structured abstract of 300 words)
• Keywords provided (three or no more than 10 words) Introduction should be short and arresting
• State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale for the study or observation. Give only strictly pertinent references
• The references cited in the text should be before punctuation marks
• References according to the journal’s instructions, punctuation marks checked
• Send the article file without ‘Track Changes.'

 

►Language and grammar

• Uniformly American English
• Write the full term for each abbreviation at its first use in the title, abstract, keywords and text separately unless it is a standard unit of measure. Numerals from 1 to 10 spelled out.
• Numerals at the beginning of the sentence spelled out
• Check the manuscript for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors
• If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer's name and address (city and state/country).
• Species names should be in italics

 

►Tables and Figures

• No repetition of data in tables, graphs, and main text
• Actual numbers from which graphs were drawn, provided
• Figures necessary and of good quality (color)
• Table and figure numbers in Arabic letters (not Roman)
• Labels pasted on the back of the photographs (no names written)
• Figure legends provided (not more than 300 words)
• Patients' privacy maintained (if not permission was taken)
• A credit note for borrowed figures/tables provided
• Write the full term for each abbreviation used in the table as a footnote