AUTHOR INSTRUCTIONS

AUTHOR INSTRUCTIONS

MANUSCRIPTS PREPARATION

Types of manuscripts

Types Content Original Article Original Articles include randomized controlled trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic testing, outcome studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rate.Review Review articles that summarize the current state of understanding of a topic.Case Report Case Reports should detail new, interesting, or unusual cases. Cases with clinical signi ficance or implications will be given priority.Editorial Editorials are nearly always solicited, although unsolicited editorials may occasionally be considered.Letter to Editor Letters to Editor include the contents and references.Commentary Commentaries are always solicited by the editors. These manuscripts should include relevant background information, comments on the paper, areas that need further investigation, and future directions. The relevant manuscript should be included in the reference list.

General formats of manuscripts

1. Title

Provide a concise and speci fic title (no more than 12 notional words) that clearly re flects the manuscript’s content. And a running title (3-6 words) should also be provided.

2. Authors and af filiations

· Include all authors’ full names. Once accepted, authors cannot be added or deleted, and the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all authors.

· Provide full af filiation information (complete name of the department, institution, city, postcode, province/state, and country) for all authors.

· Indicate a single corresponding author. The name, title, institution, address, telephone number, and e-mail of the corresponding author should be given, to ensure prompt communication.

3. Abstract

· The abstracts of Original Articles (maximum 200 words) should be structured under four separate headings (Aim,Methods, Results, Conclusion).

· Reviews and Case Reports should generally have unstructured abstracts (200 and 100 words, respectively).

· Editorial, Commentary and Letter to Editor do not require an abstract.

· The first person (I, we) and citations should not be used in the abstract. Abbreviations should be used sparingly and de fined at their first use.

4. Keywords

Supply 3-8 relevant key words that describe the subject of their research, in order to improve its visibility.

5. Text

(1) Original Article

The main content of Original Articles should include four sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion.

Introduction

The information in this section should always be referenced. It should indicate the broad context and should include a brief review of the key literature related to the study.

Methods

This section should provide enough detail for the research to be reproduced elsewhere; protocols for new methods should be included, but well-established methodological procedures may simply be referenced. Full details of methods used should be included in the manuscript rather than in a supplementary file. If methods used are as per a published paper, the corresponding reference should be cited.

Ethics and patient consent

A statement on ethics committee permission and patient consent must be included in the “Methods” section (if the experiment involves the relevant content).

Selection and description of participants

Selection of observational or experimental participants (patients or laboratory animals, including controls) should be clearly described, including also eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the sources.

Technical information

· Identify the methods, apparatus (list manufacturers’ names and locations in parentheses), and procedures in suf ficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results.

· Give references to established methods, including statistical methods (see below); provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known; describe new or substantially modi fied methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations.

· Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.

· Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol,interventions (e.g. methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking(blinding).

Statistics

· Quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as con fidence intervals) whenever possible.

· Authors should report losses to observation (e.g. dropouts from a clinical trial).

· Specify the statistical methods used to analyze data that are summarized in the “Results” section.

· Avoid non-technical use of technical terms in statistics, such as “random” (which implies a randomizing device), “normal”,“signi ficant”, “correlations”, and “sample”.

· De fine statistical terms, abbreviations, and all symbols used.

· Specify the computer software used. Use upper-case italics to denotePvalues (i.e.P＜ 0.048).

· For allPvalues include the exact value and not less than 0.05 or 0.001.

· Mean differences in continuous variables, proportions in categorical variables, and relative risks including odds ratios and hazard ratios should be accompanied by their con fidence intervals.

Results

All the results, including those in all figures and tables, should be analyzed and explained precisely. In addition, this section should also include all primary and secondary outcome measures analyzed.

Discussion

The discussion should be concise and tightly worded. It should include paragraphs on the generalizability, clinical relevance,strengths, and limitations of the study. And the main findings of the study should be summarized in the section.

(2) Other article types

For Review, generally section titles depend upon the topic being reviewed. The article should include introduction and the main content (with appropriate headings). There should be a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting,extracting, and synthesizing data (these methods should also be summarized in the abstract).

For Case Report, headings in the main text should include Introduction, Case report, and Discussion.

There are no special format rules for the text of Editorial, Commentary, Letter to Editor.

6. Declarations

One or more of the following categories may apply:

· Contributions that do not justify authorship, such as general support from a departmental head.

· Acknowledgments of technical help.

· Acknowledgments of material support, which should specify the nature of the support.

Authors’ contributions

Indicate the contributions of each author. Contributions should be categorized as follows, as applicable: concept, design,de finition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis,statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing, and manuscript review,etc.

Financial support and sponsorship

· State whether there are funders to the speci fic study being submitted.

· For each funder, state the funder name, grant number (where applicable), and the individual to whom the grant was awarded.

Con flicts of interest

Provide a statement of any relationships that might lead to a con flict of interest. All authors should disclose any and all con flicts of interest they may have with: publication of the manuscript, an institution or product that is mentioned, and/or its importance to the study outcome. Authors should also disclose con flicts of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

Patient consent

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, computed tomography scans, or pedigrees, unless the information is essential for scienti fic purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian when applicable) provides written informed consent for publication. Authors should indicate here that they have obtained written informed consent, and that a copy of the consent will be available if requested.

Ethics approval

· For some speci fic studies involving human participants, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional)and with the Helsinki Declaration when reporting studies on human beings.

· For studies involving animals, authors should indicate whether an institution’s or a national research council’s guide,such as the guidelines issued by the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals(CPCSEA), or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals, was followed.

· Authors are also expected to indicate whether an approval from a regional/national/institutional or independent Ethics Committee or Review Board was obtained.

7. References

should be consecutively numbered in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not alphabetic order).· There should be no more than 5 continuous references cited in one position (e.g. [1-6] should be avoided).

· All authors’ names should be listed in the references (do not useet al.).

· Journal names should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus.

· Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as “unpublished observations” with written permission from the source.

· Avoid citing a “personal communication” unless it provides essential information not available from a public source, in which case the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text.

The commonly cited types of references are shown here; for other types of references, please refer to ICMJE Guidelines(www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).

Standard journal articles (list all authors) Parija SC, Ravinder PT, Shariff M. Detection of hydatid antigen in the fluid samples from hydatid cysts by co-agglutination. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 1996;90:255-6.Both personal authors and organization as author Vallancien G, Emberton M, Harving N, van Moorselaar RJ; Alf-One Study Group. Sexual dysfunction in 1,274 European men suffering from lower urinary tract symptoms. J Urol 2003;169:2257-61.Chapter in a book Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93-113.Article not in English Zhang X, Xiong H, Ji TY, Zhang YH, Wang Y. Case report of anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor encephalitis in child. J Appl Clin Pediatr 2012;27:1903-7. (in Chinese)Books Sherlock S, Dooley J. Diseases of the liver and billiary system. 9th ed.Oxford: Blackwell Sci Pub; 1993. p. 258-96.

8. Tables

· All tables should be consecutively cited at the relevant place in the text.

· Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material.

· Explain all non-standard abbreviations in the legend. Symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters used to identify parts of the illustrations must be identi fied and explained in the legend.

· Obtain permissions for all tables that are reproduced in full, and for adapted and modi fied tables, and acknowledge the source and the permission in the legend.

· Provide tables as editable text rather than in image format.

9. Figures

· Figures should be consecutively numbered according to the order in which they were first cited in the text.

· Labels, numbers, and symbols should be clear and uniformly sized. Explain all non-standard abbreviations in the legend.Symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters used to identify parts of the illustrations must be identi fied and explained in the legend. Explain the internal scale (magni fication) and identify the staining method in photomicrographs.

· If a figure has been published elsewhere, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material.

· If photographs of individuals are to be used, they must be accompanied by written permission from the concerned individual(s).· Submitting sharp, glossy, unmounted color photographs with a maximum height of 4 inches and width of 6 inches in JPEG/TIF format. Ensure that the image has a minimum resolution of 500 dpi or 1800 × 1600 pixels. (Histograms, line graphs and flow charts are suggested in an editable format).

· The Journal reserves the right to crop, rotate, reduce, or enlarge images to an acceptable size.

10. Multimedia files (optional)

· Introduce the research background and the topic of the paper, and highlight the innovative aspects of the research, such as novel methods, important or breakthrough results, and the impact in the research field.

· Videos or audio files are only accepted in English. The presentation and introduction should be easy to understand. The frames should be clear, and the speech speed should be moderate.

· Supply a brief overview of the video or audio files in your manuscript text.

· The duration of the video or audio files should be limited to 3 min. The file size should be limited to 500 MB.

· Use professional software to produce high-quality video files, to facilitate acceptance and publication along with the submitted article. Upload the videos in .mp4, .wmv, or .rm format (preferred over .mp4) and audio files in .mp3 or .wav format.11. Supplementary information (optional)

All supplementary information should be uploaded as a separate file, clearly labeled with the manuscript title and author list.Designate each item as either Supplementary Table, Figure, Video, or Note. Each type of supplementary information should be continuously numbered (for example, Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Figure 2, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Table 2, and so on).

Editing rules of manuscripts

Abbreviations

In general, terms should not be abbreviated unless they are used repeatedly and the abbreviation is helpful to the reader.Standard abbreviations should be de fined in the abstract and in the text on first mention. Certain commonly used abbreviations, such as DNA, RNA, ATP,etc., can be used directly without further explanation. Abbreviations are not preferred in the title and key words. Abbreviations used in the tables and figures should be de fined in the legends.

Italics

General italic words likevs., et al., etc., in vivo, in vitro;ttest,Ftest,Utest; related coef ficient asr, sample number asn,and probability asP; names of genes; names of bacteria and biology species in Latin.

Units

Use SI units. There should be space between number and unit (i.e. 23 mL). Units can be omitted sometimes (i.e. 2-3 mL, 2+ 3 mL) while sometimes not (i.e. 2 cm × 3 cm). Hour, minute, second should be written as h, min, s.

Numbers

Numbers appearing at beginning of sentences should be expressed in English. When there are two or more numbers in a paragraph, they should be expressed as Arabic numerals; when there is only one number in a paragraph, number ＜ 10 should be expressed in English and number ＞ 10 should be expressed as Arabic numerals. 23243641 should be written as 23,243,641.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Cover letter

A cover letter provided by authors should include the following:

· Summarize the important points of the manuscript, including a brief description and the highlights of the study.

· Make clear that the manuscript is an original study that has not been previously submitted to or accepted by any other journal, that it has been approved by all the authors, that ethics approval has been obtained, that written informed consent has been obtained from participating subjects in the case of research involving humans, and that each author believes that the work reported in the manuscript has been carried out and reported honestly and with integrity. If the manuscript was presented as a contribution to a meeting, the organization, place, and exact date on which it was read should be indicated.· The name, address, e-mail, and telephone number of the corresponding author who is responsible for communicating with the other authors concerning revisions and final approval of the proofs should be listed.

Submission checklist

· The author details should be checked for all authors, to ensure that all the information provided is correct and is suitable for publication.

· The article file should be in .docx/.doc files. If file size is large, graphs can be submitted separately to reduce the size of the article file.

· The formats, size, and de finition of images and tables should be checked carefully. Tables in the manuscript should be in editable format, rather than as images.

· References: check the order, number, and formats of the references carefully.

Submission online

All manuscripts should be submitted online to the submission system at www.editorialmanager.com/hres. First-time users are required to register at this site; registrations are free. Registered authors can track their articles after logging into the site using their user name and password. If you experience any problems, please e-mail the editorial of fice at editorialof fice@hrjournal.net.The revised version of a manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for the initial submission.

When submitting a revised manuscript, authors are requested to include the referees’ remarks along with point-by-point responses; these should be placed together at the beginning of the revised file, immediately ahead of the revised article. In addition, authors are expected to mark as underlined or colored text the revisions that they have made to their article.

PUBLICATION INFORMATION

Article processing charges

All manuscripts submitted toHepatoma Researchare assumed to be submitted under the Open Access publishing model.Under this publishing model, when a paper is accepted for publication, authors are required to pay an Article Processing Charges -$299. There is no submission charge as such, but only the publication processing fee after the paper is accepted for publication. There are no additional charges based on color, length, figures, or other elements. Payment of this charge allows Hepatoma Research to recover its editorial and production costs.

The following special discounts are offered to authors and editorial board members:

· Editorial Board Members ofHepatoma Researchare allowedTWOfree publications annually. Subsequent submissions from Editorial Board Members are published at 50% discount of the standard publication fee.

·Hepatoma Researchprovides an automatic waiver of Article Processing Charges to high quality research articles or reviews.

APC Waivers

We offer waivers to authors based in any of the following countries, which were classi fied by the World Bank as low income countries or lower middle countries.

· Low income countries. Authors resident in these countries may apply to receive up to a 100% waiver of the standard publication processing fee;

· Lower middle income. Authors resident in these countries may apply to receive a 50% waiver of the standard publication processing fee.

If you are living in a developing country and need to apply for a waiver please email us editorialof fice@hrjournal.net with the following information:

· Your name and institution with full address details

· Reason for applying for a waiver

· Title of your paper

· Country of residence of any co-authors.

Processing rules

All manuscripts submitted toHepatoma Researchundergo single-blind peer review. Manuscripts are initially reviewed by a journal editor who passes them on to the Editor-in-Chief, who will send them to a research field-appropriate Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member, who invites at least 3 peer reviewers to give comments and recommendations. Peer review comments and Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member comments are then returned to the corresponding author. After revision, the final decision will be made by Editor-in-Chief. Generally it takes an average of 7 weeks from submission to final decision.

After acceptance, manuscripts will undergo editing, typesetting and proof reading. The final proofed manuscripts will be immediately released online following a “continuous publication” schedule. Generally it takes an average of 3 weeks from acceptance to online publication.

Manuscripts may be rejected in the states of: journal editor initial review (for high copy rate, ethical problems, poor writing structure, or poor English), Editor-in-Chief initial review (for low academic value), after peer review (based on review comments), and final decision (overall consideration of all comments and revisions).

Manuscripts which could not be revised back within the speci fied period will be withdrawn.

License to publish

The copyright is owned by all authors. Authors need to submit a completed license to publish (template provided below) to theHepatoma Researchwithin 2 weeks of manuscript acceptance via e-mail (scanned image).

The journal will publish the manuscripts under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, which permits the users to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, or to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided that the users appropriately acknowledge the original authors and the source.

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