Author Guidelines

Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research is a peer-reviewed, general biomedical journal. It publishes original basic and clinical research, clinical practice arti­cles, critical reviews, case reports, evaluations of scientific methods, works dealing with ethical and social aspects of biomedicine as well as letters to the editor, reports of asso­ciation activities, book reviews, news in biomedicine, and any other article and information concerned with practice and research in biomedicine, written in the English.

Original manuscripts will be accepted with the under­standing that they are solely contributed to the Journal. The papers will be not accepted if they contain the mate­rial that has already been published or has been submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere, except of prelimi­nary reports, such as an abstract, poster or press report presented at a professional or scientific meetings and not exceeding 400 words. Any previous publication in such form must be disclosed in a footnote. In rare exceptions a secondary publication will acceptable, but authors are required to contact Editor-in-chief before submission of such manuscript. the Journal is devoted to the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice as established by Commit­tee on Publication Ethics-COPE (posted at www.publica- tionethics.org.uk).

Manuscripts are prepared in accordance with „Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals" developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Consult a current version of the instructions, which has been published in several journals (for example: Ann Intern Med 1997;126:36-47) and posted at www.icmje.org, and a recent issue of the Journal in prepar­ing your manuscript. For articles of randomized controlled trials authors should refer to the „Consort statement" (www. consort-statement.org). Manuscripts must be accompanied by a cover letter, signed by all authors, with a statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by them, and not published, submitted or accepted elsewhere. Manuscripts, which are accepted for publication in the Journal, become the property of the Journal, and may not be published anywhere else without written permission from the publisher.

Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research is owned and published by Medical Faculty University of Kragujevac. However, Editors have full academic freedom and authority for determining the content of the journal, according to their scientific, professional and ethical judgment. Editorial policy and decision making follow procedures which are endeavoring to ensure scientific credibility of pub­lished content, confidentiality and integrity of auth ors, reviewers, and review process, protection of patients' rights to privacy and disclosing of conflict of interests. For difficulties which might appear in the Journal content such as errors in published articles or scientific concerns about research findings, appropriate handling is provided. The requirements for the content, which appears on the Journal internet site or Supplements, are, in general, the same as for the master ver­sion. Advertising which appears in the Journal or its internet site is not allowed to influence editorial decisions.

Address manuscripts to:

Serbian Journal of Experimental and

Clinical Research

The Medical Faculty Kragujevac

P.O. Box 124, Svetozara Markovica 69

34000 Kragujevac, Serbia

Tel. +381 (0)34 30 68 00;

Tfx. +381 (0)34 30 68 00 ext. 112

E-mail:ana@medf.kg.ac.rs

Manuscript should also be submitted through online manuscript submitting system at the address: scindeks-eur.ceon.rs/index.php/sjecr

MANUSCRIPT

Original and two anonymous copies of a manuscript, typed double-spaced throughout (including references, ta­bles, figure legends and footnotes) on A4 (21 cm x 29,7 cm) paper with wide margins, should be submitted for consid­eration for publication in Serbian Journal of Experimen­tal and Clinical Research. Use Times New Roman font, 12 pt. Manuscript should be sent also on an IBM compatible floppy disc (3.5"), written as Word file (version 2.0 or later), or via E-mail to the editor (see above for address) as file attachment. For papers that are accepted, Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research obligatory requires authors to provide an identical, electronic copy in appro­priate textual and graphic format.

The manuscript of original, scinetific articles should be arranged as following: Title page, Abstract, Introduc­tion, Patients and methods/Material and methods, Re­sults, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, Figure legends and Figures. The sections of other papers should be arranged according to the type of the article.

Each manuscript component (The Title page, etc.) should begins on a separate page. All pages should be num­bered consecutively beginning with the title page.

All mea su re ments, except blood pres su re, should be re­ported in the System International (SI) units and, if neces­sary, in conventional units, too (in parentheses). Generic names should be used for drugs. Brand names may be in­serted in parentheses.

Authors are advised to retain extra copies of the manu­script. Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research is not responsible for the loss of manuscripts in the mail.

TITLE PAGE

The Title page contains the title, full names of all the authors, names and full location of the department and in­stitution where work was performed, abbreviations used, and the name of corresponding author.

The title of the article should be concise but informa­tive, and include animal species if appropriate. A subtitle could be added if necessary.

A list of abbreviations used in the paper, if any, should be included. The abbreviations should be listed alphabeti­cally, and followed by an explanation of what they stand for. In general, the use of abbreviations is discouraged unless they are essential for improving the readability of the text.

The name, telephone number, fax number, and exact postal ad dress of the author to whom communications and reprints should be sent are typed et the end of the title page.

ABSTRACT

An abstract of less than 250 words should concisely sta­te the objective, findings, and conclusions of the studies described in the manuscript. The abstract does not con­tain abbreviations, footnotes or references.

Below the abstract, 3 to 8 keywords or short phrases are provided for indexing purposes. The use of words from Medline thesaurus is recommended.

INTRODUCTION

The introduction is concise, and states the reason and specific purpose of the study.

PATIENTS AND METHODS/MATERIAL AND METHODS

The selection of patients or experimental animals, in­cluding controls, should be described. Patients' names and hospital numbers are not used.

Methods should be described in sufficient detail to permit evaluation and duplication of the work by other investigators.

When reporting experiments on human subjects, it should be indicated whether the procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the Committee on human experimentation (or Ethics Committee) of the insti­tution in which they were done and in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. Hazardous procedures or chemicals, if used, should be described in details, including the sa­fety precautions observed. When appropriate, a statement should be included verifying that the care of laboratory ani­mals followed accepted standards.

Statistical methods used should be outlined.

RESULTS

Results should be clear and concise, and include a mi­nimum number of tables and figures necessary for proper presentation.

DISCUSSION

An exhaustive review of literature is not necessary. The major findings should be discussed in relation to other pu­blished work. Attempts should be made to explain diffe­rences between the results of the present study and those of the others. The hypothesis and speculative statements should be clearly identified. The Discussion section should not be a restatement of results, and new results should not be introduced in the discussion.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This section gives possibility to list all persons who contributed to the work or prepared the manuscript, but did not meet the criteria for authorship. Financial and ma­terial support, if existed, could be also emphasized in this section.

REFERENCES

References should be identified in the text by Arabic numerals in parentheses. They should be numbered con­secutively, as they appeared in the text. Personal communi­cations and unpublished observations should not be cited in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text in parentheses. Abbreviations of journals should conform to those in Index Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clini­cal Research. The style and punctuation should conform to the Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research style requirements. The following are examples:

Article: (all authors are listed if there are six or fewer; otherwise only the first three are listed followed by "et al.")

12. Talley NJ, Zinsmeister AR, Schleck CD, Melton LJ. Dyspepsia and dyspeptic subgroups: a population-based study. Gastroenterology 1992; 102 (3): 1259-68.

Book: 17. Sherlock S. Diseases of the liver and biliary system. 8th ed. Oxford: Blackwell Sc Publ, 1989.

Chapter or article in a book: 24. Trier JJ. Celiac sprue. In: Sleisenger MH, Fordtran JS, eds. Gastro-intestinal dise­ase. 4th ed. Philadelphia: WB Saunders Co, 1989: 1134-52.

The authors are responsible for the exactness of reference data.

For other types of references, style and interpunction, the authors should refer to a recent issue of Serbian Jour­nal of Experimental and Clinical Research or contact the editorial staff.

Non-English citation should be preferably translated to English language adding at the end in the brackets native language source, e.g. (in Serbian). Citation in old lan­guage recognized in medicine (eg. Latin, Greek) should be left in their own. For internet sources add at the end in small brackets ULR address and date of access, eg. (Ac­cessed in Sep 2007 at www.medf.kg.ac.rs). If available, in­stead of ULR cite DOI code e.g. (doi: 10.1111/j.1442-2042 .2007.01834.x)

TABLES

Tables should be typed on separate sheets with table numbers (Arabic) and title above the table and explanatory notes, if any, below the table.

FIGURES AND FIGURE LEGENDS

All illustrations (photographs, graphs, diagrams) will be considered as figures, and numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. The number of figures included should be the least required to convey the message of the paper, and no figure should duplicate the data presented in the tables or text. Figures should not have titles. Letters, nu­merals and symbols must be clear, in proportion to each other, and large enough to be readable when reduced for publication. Figures should be submitted as near to their printed size as possible. Figures are reproduced in one of the following width sizes: 8 cm, 12 cm or 17 cm, and with a maximal length of 20 cm. Legends for figures should be given on separate pages.

If magnification is significant (photo micrographs) it should be indicated by a calibration bar on the print, not by a magnification factor in the figure legend. The length of the bar should be indicated on the figure or in the figure legend.

Two complete sets of high quality unmounted glossy prints should be submitted in two separate envelopes, and shielded by an appropriate cardboard. The backs of sin­gle or grouped illustrations (plates) should bear the first authors last name, figure number, and an arrow indicating the top. This information should be penciled in lightly or placed on a typed self-adhesive label in order to prevent marking the front surface of the illustration.

Photographs of identifiable patients must be accompa­nied by written permission from the patient.

For figures published previously the original source should be acknowledged, and written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce it submitted.

Color prints are available by request at the authors expense.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Both letters concerning and those not con cerning the articles that have been published in Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research will be conside­red for publication. They may contain one table or figu­re and up to five references.

PROOFS

All manuscripts will be carefully revised by the publisher desk editor. Only in case of extensive corrections will the manuscript be returned to the authors for final approval. In order to speed up publication no proof will be sent to the authors, but will be read by the editor and the desk editor.