2012 Impact Factor: 0.286
2012 Ranking: 127/151 in Medicine, General & Internal
Source: 2012 Journal Citation Reports ® (Thomson Reuters, 2013)
Scottish Medical Journal is a unique international information source for the latest news and issues concerning the Scottish medical community. Under the editorial leadership of Professor Robert Carachi, contributions are drawn from Scotland and its medical institutions, through an array of international authors. In addition to original papers, Scottish Medical Journal publishes commissioned educational review articles, case reports, historical articles, and sponsoring society abstracts.
Papers are accepted for publication on condition that they are offered to this journal alone and that they become the property of the Scottish Medical Journal.
Associations and Societies
Scottish Medical Journal is supported and sponsored by the following societies:
* The Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society of Glasgow
* The Scottish Paediatric Society
* The Scottish Radiological Society
* The Scottish Society for Rheumatology
* The Scottish Renal Association
* The Scottish Thoracic Society
* Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society
* Scottish Society of Physicians
* The Scottish Cardiac Society
* The Scottish Orthopaedic Club
* The Scottish Urological Society
Aims & Scope
Under the editorial leadership of Professor Robert Carachi and a distinguished editorial board, the journal aims for the prompt publication of original investigations in all branches of medicine in Scotland. Scottish Medical Journal provides a unique international information source for the latest news and issues concerning the Scottish medical community. Contributions are drawn from Scotland and its medical institutions, through an array of international authors. In addition to original papers, Scottish Medical Journal publishes, usually commissioned - educational review articles, case reports, historical articles, clinical memoranda and society abstracts.
Papers are accepted for publication on condition that they are offered to this journal alone and that they become the property of the Scottish Medical Journal.
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Scottish Medical Journal is published four times per year in February, May, August and November - under the editorial leadership of Professor Robert Carachi and a distinguished editorial board, the journal aims for the prompt publication of original investigations in all branches of medicine in Scotland. Scottish Medical Journal provides a unique international information source for the latest news and issues concerning the Scottish medical community. Contributions are all drawn from Scotland and its medical institutions, through an array of international authors. In addition to original papers, Scottish Medical Journal publishes, usually commissioned - educational review articles, case reports, historical articles and society abstracts. Papers are accepted for publication on condition that they are offered to this journal alone and that they become the property of the Scottish Medical Journal
All articles submitted to Scottish Medical Journal must comply with the instructions above. Failure to do so will result in return of the manuscript and possible delay in publication.
1. Peer review policy
Scottish Medical Journal publishes articles on all branches of medicine, review articles-usually commissioned, historical subjects of medical interest, and clinical case reports.
Authors submitting a paper, do so on the understanding that the work has not been published before, is not being considered for publication elsewhere, and has been read and approved by all the authors. Submission of the manuscript means that the authors automatically agree to assign exclusive copyright to RSM Press. Articles published in this journal are protected by copyright, which covers translation rights and the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute all articles printed in the journal. No material published in the journal may be stored on microfilm or videocassettes or in electronic databases and the like, or reproduced photographically, without the prior written permission of RSM Press.
Decisions on publication are based on the opinions of the editorial board.
Manuscripts are subject to editorial revision. The right is reserved to introduce such changes as may be necessary to make contributions conform to editorial standards. The journal cannot be held responsible for the opinions or statements expressed by its authors.
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2. Article types
Scottish Medical Journal also publishes invited review articles, short communications, and technical and instrumental notes. Manuscripts dealing with full-length reports, short reports or correspondence will be accepted for consideration. Extensive articles or series can be published as supplements, in which case special conditions apply.
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3. Authorship
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once the authorization of all contributing authors has been gathered. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- have made a substantial contribution to the concept and design, acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data
- drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content
- approved the version to be published.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section.
Please refer to the ICMJE Authorship guidelines at http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html.
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4. How to submit your manuscript
Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you carefully read and adhere to all the guidelines and instructions to authors provided below. Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
As an email attachment in Microsoft Word format only to smjsubmit@yahoo.co.uk.
All authors are required to declare any conflicts of interest when submitting papers for publication. Declarations of funding sources, a guarantor and a statement of contributorship are also required.
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5. Journal contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than SAGE. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
Scottish Medical Journal and SAGE take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the Journal. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article (removing it from the journal); taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; banning the author from publication in the journal or all SAGE journals, or appropriate legal action.
5.1 SAGE Choice and Open Access
If you or your funder wish your article to be freely available online to non subscribers immediately upon publication (gold open access), you can opt for it to be included in SAGE Choice, subject to payment of a publication fee. The manuscript submission and peer review procedure is unchanged. On acceptance of your article, you will be asked to let SAGE know directly if you are choosing SAGE Choice. To check journal eligibility and the publication fee, please visit SAGE Choice. For more information on open access options and compliance at SAGE, including self author archiving deposits (green open access) visit SAGE Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.
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6. Statements and conventions
6.1. Acknowledgements
Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an ‘Acknowledgements’ section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.
6.2 Declaration of conflicting interests
Within your Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement you will be required to make a certification with respect to a declaration of conflicting interests. It is the policy of Scottish Medical Journal to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please include any declaration at the end of your manuscript after any acknowledgements and prior to the references, under a heading ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’. If no declaration is made the following will be printed under this heading in your article: ‘None Declared’. Alternatively, you may wish to state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.
When making a declaration the disclosure information must be specific and include any financial relationship that all authors of the article has with any sponsoring organization and the for-profit interests the organization represents, and with any for-profit product discussed or implied in the text of the article.
Any commercial or financial involvements that might represent an appearance of a conflict of interest need to be additionally disclosed in the covering letter accompanying your article to assist the Editor in evaluating whether sufficient disclosure has been made within the Declaration of Conflicting Interests provided in the article.
For more information please visit the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
6.3 Funding Acknowledgement
To comply with the guidance for Research Funders, Authors and Publishers issued by the Research Information Network (RIN), Scottish Medical Journal additionally requires all Authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit Funding Acknowledgements on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding or state in your acknowledgments that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
6.4 Other statements and conventions
6.4.1 Research ethics
All papers reporting animal and human studies must include whether written consent was obtained from the local Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee and an Ethics Committee reference number.
We accept manuscripts that report human and/or animal studies for publication only if it is made clear that investigations were carried out to a high ethical standard. Studies in humans which might be interpreted as experimental (e.g. controlled trials) should conform to the Declaration of Helsinki http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html and typescripts must include a statement that the research protocol was approved by the appropriate ethical committee. In line with the Declaration of Helsinki 1975, revised Hong Kong 1989, we encourage authors to register their clinical trials (at http://clinicaltrials.gov or other suitable databases identified by the ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/publishing_10register.html). If your trial has been registered, please state this on the Title Page. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate on the Title Page which guideline/law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
6.4.2 Patient consent
Authors are required to ensure the following guidelines are followed, as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published.
Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the submitted article.
6.4.3 Statistical analyses
Where statistical analyses have been carried out please ensure that the methodology has been accurately described. In comparative studies power calculations are usually required. In research papers requiring complex statistics the advice of an expert statistician should be sought at the design/implementation stage of the study.
6.4.4 Randomized controlled trials
All randomized controlled trials submitted for publication in Scottish Medical Journal should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information.
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7. Permissions
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
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8. Manuscript style
8.1 File types
Only electronic files conforming to the journal's guidelines will be accepted. Preferred formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are Word DOC, RTF, files are also accepted. Please also refer to additional guideline on submitting artwork below.
8.2 Journal Style
All manuscripts must be written in English. Manuscripts should be typed, double spaced including title page, abstract, text, acknowledgements, references, figures, tables and legends. Number pages consecutively beginning with the title page. Contributors with a non-English native language are encouraged to seek the help of a competent linguist who is familiar with medical terminology prior to submission. It is the author's responsibility to have the language revised before submitting the work for publication. Only minor language revisions are provided after submission.
Title page
Title page, including manuscript title, author(s)'s names and surnames, affiliation(s), corresponding author's name, address, fax and e-mail; must be uploaded, along with a word count. Total number of words must not exceed 2500 words.
Abstract
Structure your abstract under the headings: Background and Aims, Methods and Results, Conclusion. Abstracts should not exceed 200 words. Submit your abstract on the 2nd page.
Keywords
Choose three to five key words and preferably expressions not already used in the title of your article. Please also include the keywords within your manuscript text file after the abstract.
Abbreviations
Spell out non-standard abbreviations at their first mention in the text followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Avoid uncommon abbreviations and clinical jargon.
General advice notes
The description of methods and results should be in sufficient detail to allow repetition by others. Data should not be repeated unnecessarily in text, tables and figures. The discussion should simply repeat the results, but should present their interpretation against the background of existing knowledge.
Do not use footnotes, but instead incorporate the information in parentheses within the main text. Supply figure legends, tables and their headings on a separate page.
Units and Mathematics
Use the International System of Units (SI). Enter a zero preceding a decimal value below 1 (i.e. 0.123). Display mathematical expressions distinctly. In hand-written equations on scanned documents, distinguish e from c, u from n, and r from v, and capitals and lower case letters that are often indistinguishable when hand-written; also primes and apostrophes. Use the solidus (/) for fractions and exp (...) when the exponent is complicated. In displayed formulae, the horizontal fraction line is to be preferred.
Illustrations
Graphic elements and illustrations are accepted if providing unique data that can not be described in the text, and should be clearly marked with Arabic numbers as they appear in the text. To ensure correct placement in the journal layout, note the figure reference (abbreviated) within parentheses when referring to the figure in text, e.g. (Fig. 1).
Figure files should be kept as separate files, in TIF, EPS, PDF or JPG format. Providing these formats will guarantee that the quality of the graphics is good throughout the publishing process, if provided with sufficient resolution.
Photographic illustrations should be rendered with at least 300 dpi; please use CMYK color conversion if possible. Graphs made with Office software such as Microsoft Excel, can be provided in their original format to facilitate conversion into printable format with preserved quality. Any other line graphs/illustrations should preferably be provided in EPS format with a resolution of at least 600 dpi to prevent ragged lines when printed. A figure image should be at least 160 mm in width at the appropriate resolution.
Case Reports
These will be summarised in the Journal and full text will be available on the Journal website. The authors should not include names, initials or hospital numbers of patients, which might lead to their recognition. A patient must not be recognisable in any photograph unless written consent has been obtained.
Authors of case reports are requested to include the following within their manuscripts. Failure to do so could delay the peer review process:
Title which facilitates retrieval with electronic searching
Authors of case (corresponding author indicated by *)
Abstract: (150 words): introduction, case presentation and conclusion
Keywords (up to 5)
Introduction
Case presentation: medical history, clinical features
Investigations where relevant
Differential diagnosis
Treatment including other therapeutic options.
Operative findings
Outcome, prognosis and follow up
Discussion including review of similar published cases
Conclusion with learning points (3 to 5 bullet points)
Competing interests
Authors contributions
Patient consent (to be included with submission)
References (Vancouver style)
Figures, tables, images
8.3 Reference Style
References should follow the Vancouver format. In the text they should appear as numbers starting at 1. At the end of the paper they should be listed (double-spaced) in numerical order corresponding to the order of citation in the text. All authors should be quoted for papers with up to three authors; for papers with more than three authors, list the first three followed by 'et al.'. Abbreviations for titles of medical periodicals should conform to those used in the latest edition of Index Medicus. The first and last page numbers for each reference must be provided. Abstracts and letters must be identified as such. Articles that have been accepted for publication but not yet published should be listed as 'in press'.
Examples:
1. Jakobsen JÅ, Brabrand K, Egge TS, et al. Review Article. Doppler examination of the allografted kidney. Acta Radiol 2003;44:3-12
2. Avni EF, Hall M, Damry N, et al. Vesico-ureteric reflux. In: Fotter R, ed. Pediatric Uroradiology. Berlin: Springer, 2001:121
For further examples, please turn to the guidelines from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.
8.4 Manuscript Preparation
The text should be double-spaced throughout and with a minimum of 3cm for left and right hand margins and 5cm at head and foot. Text should be standard 10 or 12 point.
8.4.1 Your Title, Keywords and Abstracts: Helping readers find your article online
The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting SAGE’s Journal Author Gateway Guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
8.4.2 Corresponding Author Contact details
Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.
8.4.3 Guidelines for submitting artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit SAGE’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from SAGE after receipt of your accepted article.
Photographic illustrations should be rendered with at least 300 dpi; please use CMYK color conversion if possible. Graphs made with Office software such as Microsoft Excel, can be provided in their original format to facilitate conversion into printable format with preserved quality. Any other line graphs/illustrations should preferably be provided in EPS format with a resolution of at least 600 dpi to prevent ragged lines when printed. A figure image should be at least 160 mm in width at the appropriate resolution. For further guidance on how to prepare your digital image see http://art.cadmus.com/da/index.jsp.
8.4.4 Guidelines for submitting supplemental files
This journal is able to host approved supplemental materials online, alongside the full-text of articles. Supplemental files will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. For more information please refer to SAGE’s Guidelines for Authors on Supplemental Files.
8.4.5 English Language Editing services
Non-English speaking authors who would like to refine their use of language in their manuscripts might consider using a professional editing service. Visit English Language Editing Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
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9. After acceptance
9.1 Proofs
We will email a PDF of the proofs to the corresponding author.
9.2 E-Prints
SAGE provides authors with access to a PDF of their final article. For further information please visit Offprints and Reprints on our Journal Author Gateway.
9.3 SAGE Production
At SAGE we place an extremely strong emphasis on the highest production standards possible. We attach high importance to our quality service levels in copy-editing, typesetting, printing, and online publication (http://online.sagepub.com/). We also seek to uphold excellent author relations throughout the publication process.
We value your feedback to ensure we continue to improve our author service levels. On publication all corresponding authors will receive a brief survey questionnaire on your experience of publishing in Scottish Medical Journal with SAGE.
9.4 OnlineFirst Publication
A large number of journals benefit from OnlineFirst, a feature offered through SAGE’s electronic journal platform, SAGE Journals Online. It allows final revision articles (completed articles in queue for assignment to an upcoming issue) to be hosted online prior to their inclusion in a final print and online journal issue which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. For more information please visit our OnlineFirst Fact Sheet.
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10. Further information
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the Editorial Office as follows:
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to smjsubmit@yahoo.co.uk.
