Instructions for Authors Home / Instructions for Autors



Before submitting their paper to the Editorial Office of the Serbian Archives of Medicine, authors should read the Instructions for Authors, where they will find all the necessary information on writing their manuscript in accordance with the journal's standards. It is essential that authors prepare their manuscript according to established specifications, as failure to do so will result in paper being delayed or rejected. Serbian Archives of Medicine provides no fee for published articles. By submitting a paper for publishing consideration, authors of a paper accepted for publication in the Serbian Archives of Medicine grant and assign all copyrights to the publisher - the Serbian Medical Society.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS. Serbian Archives of Medicine publishes papers that have not been, either in their entirety or partially, previously published, and that have not been accepted for publication elsewhere. Serbian Archives of Medicine publishes papers in English and Serbian. For better availability and citation, authors are encouraged to submit articles of all types in English. The journal publishes the following article types: editorials, original papers, preliminary and short communications, case reports, video-articles, images in clinical medicine, review articles, current topics, articles for practitioners, history of medicine articles, language of medicine articles, medical ethics (clinical ethics, publication ethics) and regulatory standards in medicine, congress and scientific meeting reports, personal view articles, invited commentaries, letters to the editor, book reviews, professional news, In memoriam and other articles. Original papers, case reports, preliminary and short communications, review articles, current topics, video-articles and images in clinical medicine are published in English only, while other article types may be published in Serbian if the Editorial Office reaches such decision.

The papers are always submitted with Summary in both English and Serbian, included in the manuscript file. The text of the manuscript should be typed in MS Word using the Times New Roman typeface, and font size 12 pt. The text should be prepared with margins set to 25 mm and onto A4 paper size, with double line spacing, aligned left and the initial lines of all paragraphs indented 10 mm, without hyphenation. Tabs and successive blank spaces are not to be used for text alignment; instead, ruler alignment control tool and Toolbars are suggested. In order to start a new page within the document, Page Break option should be used instead of consecutive enters. Only one space follows after any punctuation mark. If special signs (symbols) are used in the text, use the Symbol font. References cited in the text are numbered with Arabic numerals within parenthesis (for example: [1, 2]), in order of appearance in the text. Pages are numbered consecutively in the right bottom corner, beginning from the title page.

When writing text in English, linguistic standard American English should be observed. Write short and clear sentences. Generic names should be exclusively used for the names of drugs. Devices (apparatuses, instruments) are termed by trade names, while their name and place of production should be indicated in the brackets. If a letter-number combination is used, the number should be precisely designated in superscript or subscript (i.e., 99Tc, IL-6, O2, B12, CD8). If something is commonly written in italics, such as genes (e.g. BRCA1), it should be written in this manner in the paper as well.

If a paper is a part of a master's or doctoral thesis, or a research project, that should be designated in a separate note at the end of the text. Also, if the article was previously presented at any scientific meeting, the name, venue and time of the meeting should be stated, as well as the manner in which the paper had been published (e.g. changed title or abstract).

CLINICAL TRIALS. Clinical trial is defined as any research related to one or more health related interventions in order to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. The trial registration number should be included as the last line of the Summary.

ETHICAL АPPROVAL. Manuscripts with human medical research should contain a statement that the subjects' written consent was obtained, according to the Declaration of Helsinki, the study has been approved by competent ethics committee, and conforms to the legal standards. Experimental studies with human material and animal studies should contain statement of the institutional ethics committee and meet legal standards.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT. The manuscript must be accompanied by a disclosure statement from all authors (contained within the Submission Letter) declaring any potential interest or stating that the authors have no conflict of interest. For additional information on different types of conflict of interest, please see World Association of Medical Editors WAME, (http://www.wame.org) policy statement on conflict of interest.

AUTHORSHIP. All individuals listed as authors should be qualified for authorship. Every author should have participated sufficiently in writing the article in order to take responsibility for the whole article and results presented in the text. Authorship is based only on: crucial contribution to the article conception, obtaining of results or analysis and interpretation of results; design of manuscript or its critical review of significant intellectual value; final revision of the manuscript being prepared for publication.

The authors should enclose the description of contribution to the article of every co-author individually (within the Submission Letter). Funding, collection of data or general supervision of the research group alone cannot justify authorship. All other individuals having contributed to the preparation of the article should be mentioned in the Acknowledgment section, with description of their contribution to the paper, with their written consent.

PLAGIARISM. Since January 1, 2019 all manuscripts have been submitted via SCIndeks Assistant to Cross Check (software iThenticate) for plagiarism and auto-plagiarism control. The manuscripts with approved plagiarism/autoplagiarism will be rejected and authors will not be welcome to publish in Serbian Achieves of Medicine.

TITLE PAGE. The first page of the manuscript (cover sheet) should include the following: title of the paper without any abbreviations; suggested running title; each author's full names and family names (no titles), indexed by numbers; official name, place and country of the institution in which authors work (in order corresponding to the indexed numbers of the authors); at the bottom of the page: name and family name, address, phone and fax number, and e-mail address of a corresponding author.

SUMMARY. Along with the original article, preliminary and short communication, review article, case report, article on history of medicine, current topic article, article for language of medicine and article for practitioners, the summary not exceeding 100-250 words should be typed on the second page of the manuscript. In original articles, the summary should have the following structure: Introduction/Objective, Methods, Results, Conclusion. Each segment should be typed in a separate paragraph using boldface. The most significant results (numerical values), statistical analysis and level of significance are to be included. The conclusion must not be generalized, it needs to point directly to the results of the study. In case reports, the summary should consist of the following: Introduction (final sentence is to state the objective), Case Outline (Outline of Cases), Conclusion. Each segment should be typed in a separate paragraph using boldface. In other types of papers, the summary has no special outline.

KEYWORDS. Below the summary, 3 to 6 keywords or phrases should be typed. The keywords need not repeat words in the title and should be relevant or descriptive. Medical Subject Headings - MeSH (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh) are to be used for selection of the keywords.

TRANSLATION INTO SERBIAN. The third page of the manuscript should include: title of the paper in the Serbian language; each author's full name and family name (no titles), indexed by numbers; official name, place and country of the institution in which authors work. On the fourth page of the manuscript the summary (100-250 words) and keywords (3-6) should be typed, but this refers only to papers in which a summary and keywords are compulsory. The terms taken from foreign literature should be translated into comprehensible Serbian. All foreign words or syntagms that have a corresponding term in Serbian should be replaced by that term.

 

If an article is entirely in Serbian (e.g. article on history of medicine, article for "Language of medicine," etc.), captions and legends of all enclosures (tables, graphs, photographs, schemes) - if any - should be translated into English as well.

 

STRUCTURE OF THE MANUSCRIPT. All section headings should be in capital letters using boldface. Original articles and preliminary and short communications should have the following section headings: Introduction (objective is to be stated in the final paragraph of the Introduction), Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References. A review article and current topic include: Introduction, corresponding section headings, Conclusion, References. The firstly named author of a review article should cite at least five auto-citations (as the author or co-author of the paper) of papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Co-authors, if any, should cite at least one auto-citation of papers also published in peer-reviewed journals. А case report should consist of: Introduction (objective is to be stated in the final paragraph of the Introduction), Case Report, Discussion, References. No names of patients, initials or numbers of medical records, particularly in illustrations, should be mentioned. Case reports cannot have more than five authors. Letters to the editor need to refer to papers published in the Serbian Archives of Medicine within previous six months; their form is to be comment, critique, or stating own experiences. Publication of articles unrelated to previously published papers will be permitted only when the journal's Editorial Office finds it beneficial.

All enclosures (tables, graphs, photographs, etc.) should be placed at the end of the manuscript, while in the body of the text a particular enclosure should only be mentioned and its preferred place indicated. The final arrangement (position) of the enclosures will depend on page layout.

 

ABBREVIATIONS. To be used only if appropriate, for very long names of chemical compounds, or as well-known abbreviations (standard abbreviations such as DNA, AIDS, HIV, ATP, etc.). Full meaning of each abbreviation should be indicated when it is first mentioned in the text unless it is a standard unit of measure. No abbreviations are allowed in the title. Abbreviations in the summary should be avoided, but if they have to be used, each of them should be explained when first mentioned in the text of the paper.

 

DECIMAL NUMBERS. In papers written in English, including text of the manuscript and all enclosures, a decimal point should be used in decimal numbers (e.g. 12.5 ± 3.8), while in Serbian papers a decimal comma should be used (e.g. 12,5 ± 3,8). Wherever applicable, a number should be rounded up to one decimal place.

 

UNITS OF MEASURE. Length, height, weight and volume should be expressed in metric units (meter - m, kilogram - kg, gram - g, liter - l) or subunits. Temperature should be in Celsius degrees (°C), quantity of substance in moles (mol), and blood pressure in millimeters of mercury column (mm Hg). All results of hematological, clinical and biochemical measurements should be expressed in the metric system according to the International System of Units (SI units).

 

LENGTH OF PAPER. The entire text of the manuscript - title page, summary, the whole text, list of references, all enclosures including captions and legends (tables, photographs, graphs, schemes, sketches), title page and summary in Serbian - must not exceed 5,000 words for original articles, review articles and articles on history of medicine, and 3,000 words for case reports, preliminary and short communications, current topics, articles for practitioners, educational articles and articles for "Language of medicine", congress and scientific meeting reports; for any other section maximum is 1,500 words.

 

Video-articles are to last 5-7 minutes and need to be submitted in the flv video format. The first shot of the video must contain the following: title of the journal in the heading (Serbian Archives of Medicine), title of the work, last names and initials of first and middle names of the paper's authors (not those of the creators of the video), year of creation. The second shot must show summary of the paper, up to 350 words long. The final shot of the video may list technical staff (director, cameraman, lighting, sound, photography, etc.). Video-articles need to be submitted along with a separate summary (up to 350 words), a single still/ photograph as an illustration of the video, and a statement signed by the technical staff renouncing copyrights in favor of the paper's authors. To check the required number of words in the manuscript, please use the menu Tools-Word Count, or File-Properties-Statistics.

 

ARTICLE ENCLOSURES are tables, figures (photographs, schemes, sketches, graphs) and video-enclosures.

 

TABLES. Each table, with its legend, should be self-explanatory. The title should be typed above the table and any explanatory information under the table. Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals in order of citation in the text. Use MS Word, the menu Table-Insert-Table, inserting the adequate number of rows and columns. By the right click of the mouse, use the options Merge Cells and Split Cells. Use Times New Roman, font size 12 pt, with single line spacing and no indent to draw tables. Abbreviations used in tables should be explained in the legend below each respective table.

 

If the manuscript is entirely in the Serbian language, tables and corresponding legend should be both in Serbian and English. Also, the table cells should contain text in both languages (do not create two separate tables with a single language!).

 

FIGURES. Figures are all types of visual enclosures, and photographs, schemes, sketches and graphs are published as 'figures' in the Serbian Archives of Medicine. Figures should be numbered in Arabic numerals in order of citation in the text. Only original digital photographs (black-and-white or color), of minimum 300 dpi, and jpg or tiff format, are acceptable (small, blurry and photographs of poor quality will not be accepted for publishing!). If authors do not possess or are not able to provide digital photographs, then the original photos should be scanned in 300 dpi, and saved in original size. If a paper needs to be illustrated with a considerable number of figures, several figures will be published within the paper, and the rest will be available in the electronic version of the paper as a PowerPoint presentation (every figure needs to be numbered and be accompanied by legend). Video-enclosures (illustrations of a paper) can last 1-3 minutes and are submitted in the flv format. Along with the video, a still/photograph representative of the video is also needed, as it will be used as a placeholder in the electronic version of the paper, and as an illustration in the printed version.

 

If the manuscript is entirely in the Serbian language, photographs and corresponding legend should be both in Serbian and English.

 

Photographs may be printed and published in color, but possible additional expenses are to be covered by the authors.

GRAPHS. Graphs should be plotted in Excel in order to see the respective values distributed in the cells. The same graphs should be copied and pasted to the Word document, numbered in Arabic numerals by order of citation in the text. The text in the graphs should be typed in Times New Roman. Abbreviations used in graphs should be explained in the legend below the respective graph. In the printed versions of papers, graphs are generally published in black-and-white; therefore, it is suggested to avoid the use of colors in graphs, or to utilize colors of significant difference in brightness.

 

If the manuscript is entirely in the Serbian language, graphs and corresponding legend should be both in Serbian and English.

 

SCHEMES (SKETCHES). Schemes and sketches are to be submitted in jpg or tiff format. Schemes should be drawn in CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator (programs for drawing vectors, curves, etc.). The text in the schemes should be typed in Times New Roman, font size 10 pt. Abbreviations used in schemes should be explained in the legend below the respective scheme. If the manuscript is entirely in the Serbian language, schemes and corresponding legend should be both in Serbian and English.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT. List all those individuals having contributed to preparation of the article but having not met the criteria of authorship, such as individuals providing technical assistance, assistance in writing the paper or running the department securing general support. Financial aid and all other support in the form of sponsorship, grants, donations of equipment and medications, etc., should be mentioned too.

 

REFERENCES. The reference list is the responsibility of the authors. Cited articles should be readily accessible to the journal's readership. Therefore, following each reference, its DOI number and PMID number (if the article is indexed for MEDLINE/PubMed) should be typed. References should be numbered in Arabic numerals in order of citation in the text. The overall number of references should not exceed 30, except in review articles, where maximum of 50 is acceptable, and in meta-analysis, where up to 100 references are allowed. The number of citations of original articles must be at least 80% of the total number of references, and the number of citations of books, chapters and literature reviews less than 20%. If monographs and articles written by Serbian authors could be included in the reference list, the authors are obliged to cite them. The majority of the cited articles should not be older than five years. Use of abstracts as references is not allowed. If it is important to comment on results published solely in the form of an abstract, it is necessary to do so within the text of the article. The references of articles accepted for publication should be designated as in press with the enclosed proof of approval for publication.

 

The references are cited according to the Vancouver style (Uniformed Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals), rules and formats established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org), used by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and scientific publications databases. Examples of citing publications (journal articles, books and other monographs, electronic, unpublished and other published material) can be found on the web site (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html). In citation of references, the defined standards should be strictly followed, because it is one of the essential factors of indexing for classification of scientific journals.

 

SUBMISSION LETTER. The manuscript must be accompanied by the Submission Letter, which is signed by all authors and includes the following: 1) statement that the paper has never been published and concurrently submitted for publication to any other journal; 2) statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all authors who have met the criteria of authorship; and 3) contact information of all authors of the article (address, email, telephone number, etc.). Blank Submission Letter Form can be downloaded from the journal's web site (http://www.srpskiarhiv.rs/en/submission-letter/SubmissionLetterForm2023.pdf).

Additionally, the authors should submit the following copies of all permits for: reproduction of formerly published material, use of illustrations and publication of information on known people or disclosure of the names of people having contributed to the work.

 

MEMBERSHIP FEE AND SUBSCRIPTION RATES. In order to publish their article in the Serbian Archives of Medicine, all authors and co-authors, medical doctors and doctors of dental medicine, must be members of the Serbian Medical Society (according to Article #6 of the Statute of the SMS) for the year in which the manuscript is being submitted. All authors pay an Article Processing/Submission Charge for the coverage of all editing and publishing expenses. Domestic authors pay 3000 RSD, and those from abroad €35 (the amount in dinars for authors from abroad is 4200 RSD). The editing and publishing fee is required for substantive editing, fact and reference validations, copy editing, and publishing online and in print. An author who had already paid the fee can have more articles submitted for publishing consideration in the year the fee was paid. All domestic authors who pay this fee may, if they desire so, receive the printed version of the journal in the year when the fee is paid. Please note that the payment of this charge does not guarantee acceptance of the manuscript for publication and does not influence the outcome of the review procedure, in accordance with the good publishing practice. The journal accepts donations from sponsors to create a sum for payment reductions or waivers for authors unable to cover the Article Processing/Submission Charge (a justification of the inability to pay should be provided in such cases).

The requirement for paying the Article Processing/Submission Charge does not apply to students or to journal subscribers. Institutions (legal entities) cannot by their subscription cover this condition on behalf of the authors (natural persons). Copies of deposit slips for membership and Article Processing/Submission Charge should be enclosed with the manuscript. Foreign authors are under no obligation to be members of the Serbian Medical Society. All the relevant information can be obtained via email address of the Editorial Office (office@srpskiarhiv.rs) and on the journal's web site (http://srpskiarhiv.rs/en/subscription/).

 

SUBMISSION. The online submission system will guide you through the process of entering your article details and uploading your files. All correspondence, including notification of Editorial Office, requests for revision and Editor's decision will be sent by e-mail.

 

Please submit your manuscript and all enclosures via:

https://aseestant.ceon.rs/index.php/sarh

NOTE. The papers not complying with these instructions will not be reviewed and will be returned to the authors for revision. Observing the instructions for preparation of papers for the Serbian Archives of Medicine will shorten the time of the entire process of publication and will have a positive effect on the quality and timely release of the journal's issues.

 

For further information, please contact us via the following address:

 

ADDRESS:

Serbian Archives of Medicine Editorial Office

Kraljice Natalije 1

11000 Belgrade

Serbia

Phones: (+381 11) 409-2776, 409-4479

E-mail: office@srpskiarhiv.rs

Website: www.srpskiarhiv.rs

 

ISSN 0370-8179

ISSN Online 2406-0895

OPEN ACCESS