Quick Start Guide To Submission

Quick Reference Submission Criteria

FORMAT OF ALL ARTICLES

Manuscripts must:

• Be in English
• Be in Microsoft Word format
• Be typed in 12-point font with double-spacing in an A4 size document
• Have 1 inch margins surrounding the document.

IMAGES, FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Your article can contain no more than four figures. Each should contain sufficient information so that the figure is intelligible without reference to the text. Figures and images should be:

• In colour
• In a common electronic format such as .jpg, .tif, .gif, etc.
• Each in a separate file (named figure 1, figure 2 etc.)

Each figure should have a corresponding legend which gives the title and number. List these on a new page after your references, then attach the corresponding figures/images as separate files. Label them clearly so we can match the legend to the figure. In the body of your text, indicate where the image should appear.

NB: Images should be of sufficiently high resolution. This is very important as low resolution images will not look good in print. Minimum file size for photographic images is 500kb. We would strongly recommend providing images which are several Mb in size as we can always shrink images that are too big, but we cannot enlarge images that are too small.

TABLES

You may submit up to four tables. Try to construct your tables as simply as possible. Number them consecutively with Arabic numerals in the order of their first citation in the text, and supply a brief title for each. Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations. Please include appropriate table legends with table number and title on a new page after your references. If you have image/figure legends too, please put the image and table legends on separate pages.

MEDIA FILES

If you would like to reference a video or other media file in your manuscript, the RCSIsmj is happy to host the file on our website so that our readers can view it. Please do not ask us to host copyrighted material. If any video involves a real patient, you will have to demonstrate to us that you have received their express permission to use the material. Contact editorsmj@rcsi.ie for more details.

REFERENCES

Reference citations should appear as numerical superscript throughout the text and listed in their order of appearance. The RCSIsmj will follow the citation style of the British Medical Journal (Vancouver style). If using a Bibliography manager like Endnote, use the British Medical Journal style. Papers accepted but not yet published may appear with the name of the journal followed by the words “In Press”.

Journal citations should follow the following order. List all authors when six or less, otherwise list only first three and add et al.

• First author’s last name, initials
• Second author’s last name, initials, etc.
• Title of article in italics
• Name of Journal abbreviated according to the style of Index Medicus
• The year of publication
• The volume number in parenthesis ( )
• First and last page numbers

Example: 1. Schwimmer JB, Burwinkle TM, Varni JW. Health-related quality of life of severely obese children and adolescents. Jama 2003;289(14):1813-9.
References to books should give the names of any editors, place of publication, editor, and year.
Example: 2. Whittaker R. Complement: mechanisms and functions. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1989.
Information from manuscripts not yet in press, papers reported at meetings, or personal communications should be cited only in the text, not as a formal reference.
Authors should get permission from the source to cite personal communications.

IMPORTANT ISSUES

Authorship
You, the student, must be first author. Other authors you list should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. If in doubt, RCSIsmj editors may require contributors to justify the assignment of authorship. All manuscripts submitted to the RCSIsmj must contain original work not previously published elsewhere. All authors are required to provide their details with their submission in the author information document.

Double Publication
Articles submitted to the RCSIsmj cannot be subsequently re-published in a separate peer-reviewed journal. Students undertaking research must submit work that is significantly different from the final manuscript intended to be sent to a later journal. For example, you may write an article based on subsets of data with different analyses or interpretations, similar to RCSI research day.
If you have any doubt as to what constitutes double publication, contact either RCSIsmj or the principal investigator involved in the research. In all cases, you must ensure that your principal investigator is aware and approves of their submission to RCSIsmj.

Peer Review
All submissions to the RCSIsmj undergo review by our peer review team. Two or three members of the team will review your submission, as will the editorial staff. During the review process all papers will be subjected to fact-checking as well as edits for content and style. This process helps us to maintain a high standard of work published in the RCSIsmj. Authors of peer-reviewed articles will receive constructive feedback from the reviewers as an aid to perfecting their writing technique.