Section 1: Publishing scope
The journal welcomes original articles of the following types from China and abroad: perspective, expert forum, original research article, review, case report, hot topic discussion and comments, etc. The journal’s scope includes genomics, proteomics, radiomics, metabolomics, AI medicine, mass data medicine, etc. The aimed readers are science researchers and clinical medical practitioners as well as educational and scientific management staff. The journal implements a peer review system.
Since January 1, 2018, the journal only accepts papers of funded research in principle. The authors are required to provide evidence of funding to the editorial office. The journal also accepts unfunded research paper with originality. In order to reduce the processing time and to match the right reviewers, the authors should clearly state the innovative points or the new ideas of the paper (such as new methods, new results, new viewpoints, new conclusions, having verified or falsified a hypothesis, etc.). It is recommended that this statement be placed at the very beginning of the paper (i.e. before the title of the paper).
Section 2: Requirement for Manuscript
1.Genneral Requirement: Manuscripts should be scientific and practical with clear argumentation, reliable reference, concise wording, clear structure and accurate data. Statistics should be used when necessary. Generally, original research articles shall not exceed 6,000 words (abstract, figures, tables and references included). Videos can be attached within the manuscript (online videos accessible through scanning QR code). Reviews and lectures generally shall not exceed 5,000 words, and other types of paper should not exceed 3,000 words.
2. Title: Title should be concise (within 20 Chinese characters) and clear, well reflecting the content of the article. There should be an English translation of the title.
3. Authorship: The authors’ names shall be put beneath the title regardless of their institutes. The order shall be determined before submission and shall not be changed thereafter. Those who are named as authors should directly participate in the research work or has an important guiding role (such as a graduate tutor). An author should be a person who: (1) participates in topic selection, study design or data analysis and interpretation; (2) drafts or revises key theories or other main content of the paper; (3) reviews and revises the paper according to comments from the editorial office, discusses it in academic community, and finally agrees on publishing. All the three conditions above must be met. Those who only participate in obtaining funds, collecting data, or only managing the research team cannot be named as authors. At least one author should be responsible for each main conclusion in the article. For a collective piece of work, one person should be responsible for the paper. Other contributors to the paper may be included in acknowledgement. If there is any non-Chinese citizen among authors, a letter of consent for publishing from the author should be submitted.
The following information of the first author should be specified: institute (specifying department), postal code, telephone and e-mail address. If the corresponding author is not the first author or the corresponding author and the first author are not from the same institute, the above information of the corresponding author should also be provided. Following information of authors should also be provided in English: the authors' name (Chinese Pinyin, surname capitalized), institute, city, postal code and email address. All those above should be present both in Chinese and English. The journal does not allow co-first authors. The editorial office will only contact the corresponding author. The submission should also include a brief introduction of the first author and the corresponding author (including sex, age, position, professional title, degree, research interest, etc.). The authors’ contribution should be specified at the end of the manuscript. The number of authors should not be over six and it is strictly forbidden to name an irrelevant person as an author.
4. Abstract: All academic articles should include Chinese and English abstracts. The abstract shall be structural and consist of four parts: Objective, Methods, Results (key statistics should be included) and Conclusion, while the abstracts for reviews need not to be structural. It should be written in the third person perspective by avoiding using subjects like "this article", "the author", "I" or “we”. Chinese abstract should be approximately 300~400 characters. English abstract should strictly match the Chinese abstract in content.
5. Key Words: Original research papers should have 2~5 key words both in Chinese and English. Please try to use the words listed in the latest MEDLINE medical thesaurus (MeSH) edited by the National Library of Medicine (USA). If there is no suitable word in the latest version of MeSH, the author could (1) select several directly related subject words; (2) use the subject word of the direct higher level in the tree-diagram; (3) If necessary, conventional words can be used and placed at the back. Acronyms should be restored to full spelling according to MeSH. For example, "HBsAg" should be "Hepatitis B Surface Antigen". The first letter of each English keyword should be capitalized. A space of two letters should be kept between two neighboring key words.
6. Terminology: Medical terms shall be selected from the list published by the National Scientific and Technical Terms Review and Approval Committee. For technical terms that have not yet passed the approval, authors could take reference to the latest version of MeSH, the Annotation Sequence of Medical Subject Words and the Subject Words List of Traditional Chinese Medicine. For terms without commonly-used translation, the original words shall be included in bracket when they appear for the first time in the manuscript. The names of Chinese and Western medicines shall be subject to the latest version of the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China and the General Names of Chinese Medicines (both issued by the Chinese Pharmacopoeia Committee). If it is necessary to use a trade name, its general name shall be stated first. Traditional Chinese medicine should be correctly named, and those not included in the Pharmacopoeia should be noted with Latin names.
7. Figure and Table: Each figure/table shall be accompanied by a a title. Explaining materials and unusual abbreviations used in figures and tables shall be noted at the bottom. The decimal place of the same index should be consistent. The line diagram (operation diagram) should be drawn on white paper with a height-width ratio of 5:7. There should be scale marks in pictures of human specimen. The staining method and magnification times should be specified for pathological photos. If the tables or figures are quoted from another article, the source should be stated clearly.
8. Unit of Measurement: The unit of measurement should comply with the provisions of the International System of Units and Its Application / General Principles of Quantities, Units and Symbols / Quantities and Units (GB 3100 / 3101 / 3102-1993). Please refer to the third edition of the Application of Legal Units of Measurement in Medicine issued by the Chinese Medical Association Journal Office (published by the People's Military Medical Publishing House in 2001). Please note that the measurement of blood pressure has been restored to millimeter mercury (mmHg), but the conversion factor with kilopascal (kPa) (1 mmHg = 0.133 kPa) should be indicated when it is used for the first time in the manuscript. If there are more than one slash indicating divisions in a combined unit, it should be expressed in the form of negative power, such as ng·kg-1·min-1 or ng/(kg·min). Slash and negative power in combined units cannot be used together. The value of the standard unit should be placed first with the value of the old unit written in parentheses. However, if the same unit occurs repeatedly, the conversion factor between the standard unit and the old unit can be indicated at its first appearance. For the rest of the manuscript, only the value of the standard unit needs to be shown. The symbol of quantity should be in italics. For example, the symbol of absorbance (formerly known as optical density) is “A”.
9. Character Standard: Character usage shall strictly comply with the following regulations: the Law of National Common Language of the People's Republic Of China (2000-10-31); the Notice on Further Standardizing the Use of Characters In Publications issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication on December 24, 2010; the Provisions on Managing and Using of Chinese Characters In Publications issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication and the National Language and Writing Working Committee in 1992; the Simplified Chinese Character List issued by the National Language and Writing Working Committee in October 1986; the Modern Chinese General Character List issued by the National Language and Writing Working Committee and the Ministry of Education in June 2013.
10. Numeral Symbols: The numeral symbols shall comply with the Provisions on Use of Numbers in Publications (GB/T 15835－2011). 3-digit segmentation shall be implemented in numbers except for numbers in year, page, military code, model of apparatus and standard. Numbers in Gregorian calendar like century, year, month, date and time should be in Arabic numeral. If there is a range of percentage, the percentage symbol of the first number cannot be omitted, such as 5% ~ 95% cannot be written as 5 ~ 95%. The tolerance shall be written as (50.2 ± 0.6) %. The values multiplied with dimension units shall be written as follows: 4 cm × 3 cm × 5 cm instead of 4 × 3 × 5 cm3.
11. Statistical Symbols: Statistical symbols shall be printed in italics according to the Provisions of Statistical Vocabulary and Symbols (GB 3358.1-2009). Remarks: ① arithmetic mean is in English lowercase (median is still M); ② standard deviation is in English lowercase s; ③ t-test is in English lowercase t; ④ F-test is in English capital letter F; ⑤ Chi. square test is in Greek lower case χ2; ⑥correlation coefficient is in English lowercase r ; ⑦ degree of freedom is in Greek smallν; ⑧ probability is in English capital letter P (specific test value shall be given before P value, such as t value, χ2 value, q value, etc.).
12. Statistical Standard: For articles involving statistical analysis, it is recommended to have endorsement from statistical experts before submission. According to Health Statistics (8th edition), a national college textbook published by the People's Health Publishing House, when reporting the conclusion of a statistical test, the situation that P value is less than or equal to a certain value (generally 0.05) will be described as "the difference is statistically significant". The value of P or the corresponding inequality should be specified. In the case of using inequality to express P value, generally three standards (P > 0.05, P < 0.05 or P < 0.01) can be adopted. There is no need to further specify to a level of P < 0.001 or P < 0.0001.
13. Abbreviation: Abbreviation should be used as few as possible. When it has to be used, the full name shall be stated in the first time. The Chinese abbreviation or the English full name and abbreviations shall be marked in parentheses, and the latter two shall be separated by a comma (if the abbreviation is well-known, the English full name can be omitted). Abbreviation shall not be split into different lines.
14. References: References shall be in accordance with Rules for Post-Text Reference Format (GB/T 7714-2015) and a document type code shall be marked after the title. The cited literatures should be marked with Arabic numerals according to the order in which it appears in the text and be arranged accordingly at the end of the text. Internal documents, unpublished materials (excluding accepted materials to be published), personal communications, etc. should not be cited as references except for true necessity. In such case, they can be quoted and indicated in the main text body. For each reference, only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al.". The journal names in roman letters shall be abbreviated in the standard format of Index Medicus. Full names are always used for Chinese journals. Each reference should indicate its start and end page. References should be carefully checked by the author against the original text. For example:
［1］ 徐志伟，苏肇伉，丁文祥，等.双调转术(Double-Switch手术)的临床应用［J］.精准医学杂志，2003，19：134-135.
［2］ ARIS A, DELGADO LJ, MONTIEL J, et al. Multiple intracardiac lesions after blunt chest trauma[J]. Ann Thorac Surg, 2000,70:1692-1694.
［3］ 顾恺时.胸心外科手术学［M］.2版.北京：人民卫生出版社，1993:394-399.
［4］ KIRKLIN JW, BARRATT BOYES BG. Cardiac surgery[M]. 2nd. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1993:749-824.
［5］ 余建斌.我们的科技一直在追赶：访中国工程院院长周济［N/OL］.人民日报，2013-01-12(2).
15. Funding information: If the paper or the study has obtained national, ministerial or provincial funds or is part of a key research project, it shall be footnoted at the bottom-left of the title page. A copy of the fund certificate should be submitted. If other levels of funding projects are indicated, written certificates from relevant administrative departments should also be submitted.
Section 3: Publishing Ethics
1. Plagiarism: This journal only accepts original articles that have not been submitted to other journals nor have been published, and the manuscripts submitted shall not contain any plagiarized content. All manuscripts would be tested by the plagiarism checking system of CNKI and Wanfang Data. The test will be taken twice when the manuscript is just received and shortly before publishing. Should any plagiarism be verified, the editorial office will immediately reject the manuscript and all submission from all signed authors ever since. Any content overlapping with existing published works must have all necessary permissions and must be marked clearly in the manuscript.
2. Multiple Submission: Multiple submission or redundant publishing is strictly prohibited. Should multiple submission be verified, the editorial office will immediately reject the manuscript and all submission from all signed authors ever since.
3. Trial Registration: Clinical trials must include a unique registration number obtained from WHO first-class Clinical Trial Registration Center. The clinical trial registration number shall be put at the end of the abstract, with a subheading of "Trial registration" (the font and size should be the same as other subheadings in the abstract), specifying registering institution and registration number. The abstract of paper on prospective clinical trial research shall contain the core elements listed in the CONSORT statement (Conditioned Standards of Reporting Trials: http://www.consort-statement.org/home).
4. Medical Ethics: The ethical issue and informed consent of the study must comply with common principles of medical ethics. When research participants are humans, the author should explain whether its procedure comply with the ethical standards formulated by relevant committee (institutional, regional or national) responsible for human trials. The approval document of the committee (including an approval number) should be submitted. Consent letter from research participants or their relatives must be obtained, but not submitted to the editorial office. When reporting animal experiments, the study should comply with guidelines published by relevant committee on animal rights. All ethical matters mentioned above should be stated at the end of the manuscript.
5. Conflicts of Interest: All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing/personal status/affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization/employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is mentioned, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against the competitive product.
6. Confidentiality: If the study involves confidential issues, a letter of approval for publishing from relevant administrations must be provided.
Section 4: Peer Review and Editorial Policy
1. Preliminary Review: After submission, the editorial office will firstly conduct a preliminary review of the manuscript. The editorial office will reject the manuscripts which are insufficient in originality, having serious scientific or technical mistakes, lacking valuable information, or not in the scope of the journal. All authors shall be responsible for their own writing. In accordance with relevant provisions of the Copyright Law, the journal can make textual amendments and deletions to the manuscript. However, if the amendment involves a change of meaning, the editorial office will contact the authors for confirmation.
2. Peer Review: The journal conducts peer review process on manuscripts that have passed the preliminary review. The manuscripts will be sent to two or more reviewers. The journal follows a double-blind review process. A reviewer's comment and decision (accept / reject / modify) will be passed onto the authors. The authors must respond to the reviewer's every comment and submit the revised version in time. This process would be repeated until the reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.
3. Time Limit: The result of the review will generally be sent to the authors via SMS and e-mail within 2~3 months. Some manuscripts may take longer. If the review result is not received more than 3 months after submission, the authors can re-submit the manuscript to other journals after confirming with the editorial office. For the manuscript that needs to be revised and supplemented, the revised version should be uploaded onto the submission system through "Author Center" no later than 4 months. In case of difficulties, it is necessary to explain the situation to the editorial office in time. If the revised manuscript is not received in half a year, it would be regarded as withdrawal. The revised manuscript uploaded onto the system more than six months after notification of revision will be regarded as a new submission.
4. Status Inquiry: After submission, the author can check the status through the online system. The authors can make inquiries via telephone or email. If the authors intend to submit the manuscript to another journal, please contact Journal of Precision Medicine editorial office in the first instance and do not make multiple submission. Please keep a copy of your manuscripts for they will not be returned to you after submission (including figures).
5. Submission by Editors: The editorial staff / editors / editorial board members should not be involved in publishing decisions on papers which they have written themselves or have been written by their family members or colleagues. Any such submission should be strictly subject to the journal’s usual editorial process. Peer review should be handled independently from the relevant author/editor and their research groups.
Section 5: Correction and Retraction.
1. General Situation: Articles published online or in print are considered the final and complete version. In principle, Journal of Precision Medicine does not make corrections or retractions on published articles. However, in case of the situation described below, corrections or retractions may be carried out if truly necessary.
2. Correction: If there appears to be an unintended scientific mistake in the article which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusions, the editorial office will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, detailing the changes made to the original article and indicating the source of the article. The journal will release the corrected new version of the article, and specify the changes to the original article and the date of update. In addition, the superseded version will also be archived. Readers can obtain it directly, but only the latest version of the article should be used for citation.
3. Retraction: In the following cases, the editorial office would retract published articles and issue retraction statements:
1) If an article is found to have severe scientific errors making the results and conclusions of the article unreliable;
2) For article suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will initiate an investigation and issue a statement to inform readers of the risks associated with the article. Once the investigation is completed, the result will be made public. If the academic misconduct is confirmed, the article will be immediately retracted and a retraction statement will be issued by the editorial office.
Section 6: Copyright and Archive
1. OA Policy: Journal of Precision Medicine is an open access journal. Once published, all articles will be immediately and permanently available for readers to read and download free of charge. For more information, please refer to the Open Access Policy page on this website.
2. Copyright: All authors must sign the "Copyright Transfer Agreement" and agree to transfer the copyright of the article to the Editorial Office of Journal of Precision Medicine. The journal has right to publish the papers in various ways such as electronic edition and CD-ROM editions.
3. Archive: Since 2018, all journal articles have been digitally archived and can be searched and downloaded from the journal website. In order to ensure data security, all information has also been backed up in the editorial office. Before 2018, the hard and soft copy of each issue of the journal had been kept in the editorial office for archiving. In addition, other relevant materials are also kept by the editorial office, such as supplementary information and forms provided by the authors.
Section 7: Fees
Once the manuscript publishing is confirmed, an APC shall be payable, which will be specified in a publishing notice issued to the authors (RMB200~300 per one thousand characters; color processing fee may be charged case by case). After publishing, two free copies of the current issue shall be posted to the author.
Section 8: Method of Submission
Please submit your manuscript through the Author Center on the journal's website: http://jpmed.qdu.edu.cn
When submitting online, please be sure to fill in the contact information of the first author or corresponding author in detail, such as mailing address, postal code, e-mail address, mobile phone number and landline number.
