Author Guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Medical Research is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes original papers in all areas of biomedicine, including basic, clinical, and epidemiological studies not previously published. Submitted articles must be original contributions that present scientifically sound studies. Medical Research does not accept submissions that have been previously made available as preprints, provided that they have not undergone peer review. A preprint is a draft version of a manuscript made available online before extensive review in a journal. The journal accepts original articles, reviews (both narrative and systematic), meta-analyses, case reports/case series, and short communications. Manuscripts are prepared in accordance with the Instructions for Authors and must be accompanied by an abstract in Latin Serbian (only for corresponding author/s from Serbia) and English.

Manuscripts should be written in clear and grammatically correct English.

 Submission of the manuscript

Submission of a manuscript implies that it has not been previously published, is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and has been approved by all co-authors.

Manuscripts and supplementary material must be submitted through the online manuscript submission system: https://aseestant.ceon.rs/index.php/medi/login. 

During submission, in addition to the manuscript, authors must upload separate files containing all figures and a cover letter signed by the corresponding author, confirming the originality of the work and adherence to ethical standards in scientific research.

Submitted articles are subjected to the following pass-process:

· Upon completing manuscript submission, the Editorial Office will confirm the receipt of the article electronically and assign it a reference number that will be used for further identification.

· Upon receiving the manuscript, an initial internal quality check (editorial screening) is conducted to assess compliance with the technical and formal requirements defined in the Instructions for Authors and to identify potential issues such as conflicts of interest, adherence to ethical standards in studies involving humans or animals, data availability, and fulfillment of other scientific and editorial criteria.

· All manuscripts are subjected to plagiarism testing using IThenticate. Manuscripts with identified plagiarism or auto-plagiarism will be rejected.

· The ethical aspects of the research will be evaluated according to the criteria detailed in the Research and Publication Ethics section (see below Section ‘Ethical Guidelines for Authors’).

· The validity of statistical analysis will be checked.

· An initial assessment of the manuscript’s English language quality will be conducted by a professional language editor.

· If shortcomings are identified at this stage, the manuscript may be returned to the authors for correction or additional clarification before proceeding to the peer-review process.

· Double-blind peer review process: Two independent reviewers from the area of research of the submitted manuscript will be assigned. After receiving the reviewers’ opinion, the authors will be informed about the outcome of the review, and the Section Editorial Board will give its opinion on the changes or possible shortening of the text and inform the Editorial Board if the conditions for publication have been met. If the paper is accepted for publication, the distribution rights are transferred from the author to the journal.

 Authorship

Medical Research follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). All authors must meet the following authorship criteria:

· Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

· Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND

· Final approval of the version to be published; AND

· Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

All authors who meet all four criteria should be credited as authors. In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work.

Those who did not substantially contribute to the submitted article and did not fulfill the criteria described previously should be listed in the acknowledgements. The corresponding author is responsible for communicating with all co-authors regarding editorial queries and acts on their behalf throughout the submission, peer review, production, and post-publication processes. The corresponding author is also responsible for signing the publishing agreement on behalf of all the listed authors.

 Ethical Guidelines for Authors

Medical Research fully supports and follows ethical guidelines, recommendations, and policies of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Therefore, all manuscripts submitted to our journal must fully adhere to the highest ethical standards and be in accordance with the COPE and ICMJE recommendations, as well as relevant national and international laws and regulations. Authors are fully responsible for ensuring that studies involving humans or animals are conducted ethically, with appropriate institutional approvals, and in accordance with national legislation.

1. Studies Involving Human Participants

For all studies involving human subjects (particularly interventional and analytical):

· Authors must explicitly confirm in the manuscript that the study protocol was approved by an independent Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) prior to the initiation of the study.

· Informed consent must be obtained from all participants (or their legal guardians), and this must be explicitly stated in the manuscript.

· Study must meet all requirements of Helsinki Declaration

· The name of the ethics committee, its approval number/code (if applicable) must be provided in the Methods section.

· Authors must be prepared to provide an official copy of such approval, in Serbian or English, at any time upon request of the Editorial Board.

· If the study involves vulnerable individuals and groups, additional safeguards must be described. According to the International Ethical Guidelines (CIOMS, 2016), vulnerable individuals and groups are those who may lack the capacity to protect their own interests: i) limited capacity to give consent (minors, adults with cognitive impairments, individuals who are acutely medically compromised or terminally ill). Ii) institutionalized individuals. Iii) pregnant and breastfeeding women (pregnancy in itself does not render a person vulnerable, but rather the circumstances that may affect the fetus or baby, or limit the woman’s autonomy), as well as other potentially vulnerable research participants.

 Example statement:

“This study was conducted in accordance with Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committee of [Institution], approval number [XXXX/Year]. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to inclusion in the study.”

Additional requirements for Clinical Trials:

· Clinical trials must be registered in a publicly accessible database (e.g. ClinicalTrials.gov, EudraCT, ISRCTN).

· The registration number must be included in the manuscript.

· The trial should adhere to CONSORT reporting guidelines.

 For purely descriptive studies (e.g. case reports, registry-based research) or studies using data from existing medical records:

· Authors must confirm that the study was reviewed and approved by an Ethics Committee/IRB or provide an official statement that the committee waived the need for approval, with appropriate justification.

· Informed consent may be waived if permitted by the ethics committee, but authors must ensure that patient confidentiality is strictly protected in accordance with GDPR and national laws.

· Any potentially identifying data must be anonymized.

 Example statement:

“This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of [Institution], approval number [XXXX/Year]. The requirement for informed consent was waived”.

 2. Studies Involving Animals

All studies involving animals must comply with the ARRIVE guidelines, local legislation, and international principles of animal welfare and well-known 3Rs (e.g. Directive 2010/63/EU, NIH guidelines).

· Authors must explicitly state that the experimental protocol was reviewed and approved by an institutional Animal Ethics Committee, including the name of the institution and approval number.

· The type of animals used, housing and husbandry conditions, and efforts to minimize suffering must be described.

· Humane endpoints and euthanasia methods must be reported and justified.

 Example statement:

“All animal procedures were approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of [Institution], approval number [XXXX/Year], and conducted in accordance with the Directive 2010/63/EU and institutional guidelines.”

 3. Data Privacy and Confidentiality

All personal data must be handled in accordance with applicable data protection regulations.

Authors must ensure that no identifying information (e.g., names, initials, images) is published unless strictly necessary and written informed consent for publication is obtained.

Identifiable patient data or images must not be published without explicit, written informed consent for publication.

Images and case reports must be fully anonymized or consent must be obtained.

Medical Research has a zero-tolerance policy on plagiarism. All submitted manuscripts will be screened using plagiarism detection software. Any overlap of text, figures, data, or ideas from previously published work (including the authors’ own) must be clearly cited and justified. Duplicate or redundant publication (i.e., publishing substantially the same work in more than one journal) is strictly prohibited.

Authors are expected to:

- Properly cite all sources and previously published work.

- Indicate clearly any reuse of material (e.g., figures, tables) with appropriate permissions.

- Provide transparency if the work builds upon prior publications, with references to related articles and an explanation of novel contributions.

 In cases of suspected plagiarism or unethical publishing practices, the editorial board will follow COPE’s flowcharts and procedures for investigation and will act accordingly.

4. Documentation

Authors must be prepared to provide copies of ethics approval letters (in English or Serbian language) and consent forms upon request by the editorial office. Authors are fully responsible for any violation of ethical principles.

Failure to meet ethical requirements may lead to manuscript rejection or retraction post-publication.

 Technical preparation of the manuscript 

1. General information

Manuscripts must be submitted as Microsoft Word documents in .doc or .docx format. Please use Times New Roman font, with the font size of 12 pt, with double spacing, 2.5 cm margins with alignment on both left and right side. All pages should be numbered consecutively in the lower right-hand corner, starting from the title page. Main section headings should be in bold, while subheadings should be italicized.
Figures/images/pictures should be submitted as separate files. The main document and figures should be blind. Please exclude all information that may indicate to an individual or institution from the main document. Acknowledgements, Financial Disclosure, or other information that indicates an individual or institution should be included in the title page.

2. Title page for all types of manuscripts

A separate title page must be submitted with all manuscripts. A separate title page is required to ensure the anonymity of the authors during the peer review process. The title page will not be sent to the peer reviewers.

 The title page must include the following:

· The title should be informative, specific, and relevant, without abbreviations. It should identify if the study reports human or animal data. The title is preferably written in capital letters, Times New Roman, with the font size of 12pt (bold).

· Running title – an abbreviated version of the title that will appear at the top of every page subsequent to the title page. It should not exceed 60 characters, including spaces.

· Full names of all authors and their affiliations (department, university, city, zip code, and country according to the PubMed/MEDLINE standard format). The initials of any middle names can be added. All affiliations are marked with numbers in the superscript. Corresponding author should provide an e-mail address. A maximum of two joint first authors can be indicated by the addition of a superscript symbol. The symbol must be defined below the affiliations by adding the following statement: “These authors contributed equally to this work”.

· ORCID for all authors is required. Please include this information on the Title page.

· Corresponding author - state the full name, institution where the corresponding author is employed, with the address, telephone number and e-mail address.

· Acknowledgements

In this section, authors should mention the contribution of institutions, associates,  colleagues and other people important for the research who do not fulfill criteria for the authorship. This section of the article typically acknowledges the institutions and grant donors whose support made the research possible. It refers to all forms of financial assistance for the realization of the study. If this is not the case, this section can be marked with Not applicable.

· Funding Information

In this section, authors should mention all sources of financial support received for the research, including grants, institutional funding, or sponsorships. The full name of the funding agency and the grant number (if applicable) should be clearly stated. If the study did not receive any specific funding, authors should indicate this by stating: "The authors declare that the study received no funding”

 · Conflicts of interest

All authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Any influence of funding sponsors on the choice of research project, study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to publish must be disclosed in this section. If there are no conflicts of interest, please add ‘The authors have no conflicts of interest to report' in the respective section.

 · Author Contributions

Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND has approved the submitted version (and version substantially edited by journal staff that involves the author’s contribution to the study); AND agrees to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature.

For manuscripts with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used "Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; Methodology, X.X.; Software, X.X.; Validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; Formal Analysis, X.X.; Investigation, X.X.; Resources, X.X.; Data Curation, X.X.; Writing – Original Draft Preparation, X.X.; Writing – Review & Editing, X.X.; Visualization, X.X.; Supervision, X.X.; Project Administration, X.X.; Funding Acquisition, Y.Y.”, etc. "Authorship must include and be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work. Please read the section concerning the criteria to qualify for authorship carefully".

 · Ethical approval statement

Animal and human experiments should follow the Declaration of Helsinki and must be approved by the local ethical committee. The statement should contain appropriate statement. If the study does not include human or animal subjects, please provide the statement “Not applicable” For more details and statement examples, please see section: “Ethical Guidelines for Authors”.

 · Informed consent statement

Any research article representing a study involving human subjects should contain this statement. Please add “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.” OR “Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” This statement may be omitted if the study did not involve human subjects. Written informed consent for publication must be obtained from all participating patients who can be identified in the study. Please state “Written informed consent has been obtained from the patient(s) to publish this paper” if applicable. For more details see section: “Ethical Guidelines for Authors”.

 3. Cover letter (for all types of manuscripts)

A cover letter must be included with each manuscript submission. The corresponding author/s sign the cover letter and includes the following: 1) a statement that the paper has never been published and concurrently submitted for publication to any other journal; 2) a statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all authors who have met the criteria of authorship.