Submissions

Authorship and contributorship

Authorship credit should be based only on (1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; (2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; (4) 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 those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group do not, by themselves, justify authorship, nor does the fact of being in sole charge of the clinic or organisational unit in which the article was prepared. Such contributions should be listed as acknowledgements, as well as those of colleagues who provided reagents, discussions and critical input, editorial help, technical services, etc.

Disclosure of financial and non-financial relationships and activities, and conflicts of Interest

When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all relationships and activities that might bias or be seen to bias their work. All authors are requested to sign the ICMJE Conflict of Interest form. Disclosure information for each author needs to be part of a disclosure section in the manuscript.

Duplicate submissions

By their signature, the authors also certify that neither this manuscript, nor any other with substantially similar content by one or more of the same authors, has been published or accepted, or is currently being assessed by another journal with a view to publication. Previously published data can be reproduced in exceptional cases, provided that a full disclosure is made and a plausible reason for republication is given.

Plagiarism detection / scientific misconduct

The SMW supporting association is a member of CrossCheck, a service offered by CrossRef and powered by iThenticate software. In our online editorial system, all newly submitted manuscripts are automatically compared with the CrossCheck database. Submissions with overlaps to already published articles are carefully checked for plagiarism by the editorial team.

Scientific misconduct includes but is not necessarily limited to data fabrication, data falsification, purposeful failure to disclose relationships and activities, and plagiarism. We take allegations of misconduct very seriously. Problems concerning scientific misconduct are dealed following the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Obligation to register clinical trials

We require publicly accessible registration of interventional trials in any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) or in ClinicalTrials.gov at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication, in accord with ICMJE recommendations.

Ethics approval of research

We require every article reporting results of prospective research using human subjects or samples, or results of animal research, to include a statement that the study obtained ethical approval, including the name of the ethics committee(s) or institutional review board(s) and the number/ID of the approval(s). Where ethical approval is not required, the manuscript should include a clear statement of this and the reason why.

When reporting research involving human data, authors should indicate in the methods section whether the procedures followed were assessed and approved by a legally qualified ethics review committee (institutional or national) or, if no formal ethics committee is available, were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the study. Approval by a responsible review committee does not preclude editors from forming their own judgement whether the conduct of the research was appropriate.

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate in the methods section whether the institutional and national guides for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

Protection of patients’ rights to privacy

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors should disclose to these patients that the material will be available via the Internet after publication. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt.  

Patient consent should be archived by the authors and not submitted to the journal. The authors should provide the journal with a written statement that they have received and archived written patient consent. The informed consent form may be downloaded here.

Data sharing

All submitted research articles must contain a data sharing statement as described here.

Review process

Prior to publication, all manuscripts, with the exception of Editorials and Technical comments, undergo a single blind peer review, conducted by independent experts in the field and, if applicable, by a professional statistician.

The Editorial Board may decline a paper on the basis of internal review. They will then rapidly return the manuscript, usually within two weeks.

Authors who believe that their article has been rejected unfairly may submit an appeal via our online submission system or by sending an e-mail to the editorial office.

Editors and reviewers are explicitly requested to report conflicts of interest that could influence their opinion of the manuscript in question, in which case they will be excluded from the reviewing process of this manuscript. When an editor is author or co-author of a manuscript, she or he is excluded from publication decisions and has no insight into the reviewing process of the article in the manuscript management system.

Post-publication discussions

We welcome debate post publication either through letters to the editor (technical comments) or the comment functions.

If a correction of a published article is needed it is dealed following the ICMJE guidelines.

Article types

Review articles

Review articles report on the state of the art in medical science and/or medical technologies. We expect authors of reviews to be experienced and recognised experts in the relevant field. They should have actively participated in research on the topic of the review article and have specific personal experience.

Reviews should include a summary covering all essential points (250–400 words) and a list of references. The article text should typically not exceed 5000 words.

Please consider that for a review article to be maximally useful, the quality and clarity of the illustrations is of great importance. Figures should be self-explanatory. Well-designed tables are also important and are highly appreciated by readers.

Review articles should not include any primary data that have not been previously published in original articles. Reviews, however, should include most of the sections detailed for original articles including a statement on conflicts of interests, acknowledgements and funding sources where appropriate, as well as figures and figure legends.

Medical guidelines

Guidelines should be incorporated into a review article. The introduction should explain why this new guideline is necessary; the discussion should spell out how the new guideline differs from existing guidelines and why and how the medical evidence was reviewed. Guidelines must be endorsed by a medical specialty society or similar professional organisation.

Systematic reviews

Systematic reviews with or without meta-analyses can be submitted to SMW provided that they are comprehensive and fulfil the minimal set of PRISMA reporting criteria. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses need to be comprehensive (i.e. based on a systematic and broad search of at least 2–3 original research databases) and incorporate a valid risk-of-bias assessment. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should not duplicate other review efforts. Pre-registration of systematic review protocols is highly recommended (e.g. via PROSPERO).  Systematic reviews should include a structured summary (250–400 words).

Original articles

Original articles report on a significant advance in clinical or experimental medical sciences.

Reporting guidelines have been developed for most research contributions (including case reports, diagnostic studies and research protocols). Articles submitted to SMW should adhere to the corresponding guideline and reporting items, which are endorsed by the EQUATOR Network. Non-adherence may lead to articles being rejected during the initial technical check. If standardised reporting checklists have been used, please submit them as additional files; they should not be inserted directly into the manuscript or appendix. A user-friendly checklist tool created by the EQUATOR Network is available for the most common study types.

Original articles can be of variable length, from single well-documented observations (1 figure/table and 1000 words of text) to comprehensive studies (4 or more visual display items; up to 5000 words of text).

Original articles should be organised according to the conventional pattern (for details, see the ICMJE recommendations):

• Title page. Consists of a title; authors; author affiliations; address for correspondence including e-mail address).
• Summary. The summary should typically contain 250‒400 words (absolute limit: 600 words). It should contain a statement delineating what is known on the subject of the study, and what the current study adds to the body of knowledge. Summaries of clinical papers should be divided into the following headings: Study aims, Methods, Results, Conclusions. The clinical trial registration number should be added at the end of the summary. Summaries of reports of experimental science can be organised as indicated above, or else can be written as free unstructured text at the authors’ discretion.
• Introduction.
• Methods.
• Results.
• Discussion.
• Data sharing statement. Please provide details on the availability of any study data or reasons for not sharing them.
• Statement on funding sources and conflicts of interest.
• Acknowledgements.
• References.
• Tables.
• Figures and figure legends.

Surveys

SMW publishes cross-sectional surveys only exceptionally. To be eligible for the review process, surveys must either be population-based, multicentric (at least three centres) or have a longitudinal component (e.g. interventional or as part of a before-after study or randomised controlled trial). In all cases, the surveys must be of relevance for an international readership.

Study protocols

Methodological descriptions of studies can be considered for publication in the SMW given that these manuscripts include original findings beyond a pure report/replication of the study protocol (this should be uploaded to respective study registries in line with open science principles). An example of potentially suitable methodological submissions are cohort profile descriptions with a succinct report of the study methodology including a descriptive analysis of the cohort with focus on the data quality and representativeness.

Clinical reasoning

The “Clinical reasoning” section is intended to provide space for various types of submissions: case reports and case series, clinical problem-solving, clinical images and pharmacovigilance reports. The aim of these articles is to increase awareness of new clinical entities or unusual manifestations, to present and discuss diagnostic or therapeutic approaches in complex or particular situations and/or to enhance the reader’s clinical reasoning skills. Only articles advancing medical knowledge and/or providing new insight will be published.

Informed consent and sufficient anonymisation is mandatory. Authors are required to collect consent forms from all patients mentioned in the article. We will not consider any manuscript without consent. The informed consent form may be downloaded here.  

• Case reports and Case series: New, unusual or surprising and significant observations that train diagnostic skills. Case reports submitted to SMW must adhere to the CARE guideline: https://www.care-statement.org/checklist. Articles should use a structured format: Abstract (max. 250 words), Introduction, Case description(s) (according to the CARE checklist), Discussion, References (max. 15). The article text should typically not exceed 2000 words.
• Clinical problem-solving: Teaching cases that encourage reflection about the diagnosis and treatment strategy in the case described. They should address situations that raised doubts and questions during the diagnostic or therapeutic process and involve clinical considerations. The authors present the clinical information sequentially. At each relevant diagnostic or therapeutic step, they discuss possible options and explain their clinical reasoning. Articles should include a structured abstract (max. 250 words). The article text should typically not exceed 2500 words with max. 15 references.
• Clinical images: Particularly striking clinical photographs (one figure with 1–2 images) with short accompanying text (max. 150 words). A summary is not needed.
• Pharmacovigilance reports: Case reports on suspected adverse events of drugs or pharmacovigilance aspects must follow the “Guidelines for Submitting Adverse Event Reports for Publication” by Kelly et al. (doi: 10.1002/pds.1399), which have been endorsed by the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and the International Society of Pharmacovigilance.

Viewpoints

Viewpoints are typically invited short review articles that discuss original papers published in SMW or elsewhere. They should include a summary covering all essential points (250–400 words) and up to 10 references. The article text should typically not exceed 1300 words.

Technical comments

Technical comments are comments on articles published in SMW. They should not exceed two pages, including illustrations, references and tables. Technical comments provide a forum for respectful debates on the conclusions (and occasionally the methodology) of papers published in SMW.

Preparation of manuscript

Please submit your article online as a PDF file containing a title page with the names and affiliations of all authors and consecutive line numbers. Figures and tables may be inserted within or after the main body text; however they should always be included in the PDF file, as this is the file forwarded to the external reviewers. Letters to the editor or other accompanying documents should be submitted as separate files. 

Use only standard abbreviations. Do not use abbreviations in the manuscript title. Unless the abbreviation is a standard unit of measurement, it should, at its first occurrence, be written out in full with the abbreviation in brackets. Use abbreviations only for items that are used repeatedly in your manuscript.

Always use SI units. Results in other units may be added in brackets.

Please indicate measures per row (and throughout the manuscript) as follows: mean (SD), median (IQR), n (%) or as appropriate with units per variable.

Tables and figures should be commented upon in the text and their position marked at the appropriate point.

Lengthy tables should be included only if absolutely necessary; extensive tables and datasets (e.g. sequencing results) may be submitted as supplementary materials.

Tables should be created with separate rows and columns. Please use a separate cell for each data value and do not add new rows within an existing cell.   

Figures should each be submitted with a legend. Captions should be formulated so as to allow the figure to be understood without reference to the text. All abbreviations employed should be explained in the caption if not already included in the list of abbreviations.

Please group logically related panels into multipanel figures, and adjust the size of each panel such that all graphs are approximately the same size within the same figure. For labels, use sans serif fonts (e.g. Arial) of a uniform and easily readable size. A resolution of at least 300 dpi at the final publication size is required. 

If you have included figures or tables from other publications in your article, you must obtain permission from the rights holder to use them before submitting your manuscript. If you are including figures or tables that have been adapted from published papers, then you are also responsible for obtaining the publisher’s permission to adapt them. Please submit a copy of this permission with your article.

References must be numbered sequentially and inserted in the main body text with numbers in square brackets (preceding punctuation). Where more than one reference is cited, they should be separated by a comma. For sequences of three or more consecutively numbered references, the first and last number of the sequence should be separated by an en dash (–).

References should follow the standards summarised in the NLM’s Sample References webpage. If possible, the references should contain the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the articles.

Submission page: https://smw.ch/index.php/smw/submission