1. MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION
Thank you for your interest in Journal of Digestive Diseases. Please read the complete Author Guidelines carefully prior to submission, including the section on copyright. Note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.
Once you have prepared your submission in accordance with the Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jdd. For a downloadable PDF of the author guidelines, please click here.
The submission system will prompt authors to use an ORCID iD (a unique author identifier) to help distinguish their work from that of other researchers. Click here to find out more.
2. EDITORIAL AND CONTENT CONSIDERATIONS
Aims and scope
Journal of Digestive Diseases is the official English language journal of the Chinese Society of Gastroenterology and the Chinese Medical Association Shanghai Branch. The journal is produced monthly and publishes peer-reviewed original papers, review articles and editorials concerned with research relating to the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, liver, biliary tract and pancreas.
Editorial Review and Acceptance
The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to our readership. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are peer reviewed by two anonymous reviewers. The Editorial Board reserves the right to refuse any material for publication. Final acceptance or rejection rests with the Editorial Board. Where contributions are judged as acceptable for publication on the basis of scientific content, the Editor or the Publisher reserve the right to modify typescripts to eliminate ambiguity and repetition and improve communication between author and reader.
3. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Data Sharing and Data Accessibility
The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.
The journal is committed to integrity in scientific research and recognizes the importance of maintaining the highest ethical standards.
Authors’ Responsibilities
Prior to the submission of a manuscript, authors should familiarize themselves with and comply with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org) relating to:
• Authorship
• Conflict of interest
• Protection of patients’ rights to privacy
• Redundant or duplicate publication
• Sponsorship, authorship and accountability
Authors must state within the Methods section of their article that:
• the protocol for the research project has been approved by a suitably constituted Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken
• all human studies have been reviewed by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in an appropriate version of the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in Brazil 2013), available at http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html.
• all persons gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study.
• any experiments involving animals conform to relevant national or institutional guidelines for animal usage in research.
Authors should ensure that details that might disclose the identity of the subjects under the study should be omitted.
Failure to comply with these requirements may lead to automatic rejection of the submitted manuscript.
Wiley’s Author Name Change Policy
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.
Correction to authorship
In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Journal of Digestive Diseases will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. [Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”]
Clinical Trial Registration
The journal requires that the clinical trials submitted for its consideration are registered in a publicly accessible database. Authors should include the name of the trial register and their clinical trial registration number in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of their manuscript. If you wish the editor[s] to consider an unregistered trial, please explain briefly why the trial has not been registered.
Randomized controlled trials
Reporting of randomized controlled trials should follow the guidelines of ‘The CONSORT Statement’: http://www.consort-statement.org
Plagiarism Detection
The journal employs a plagiarism detection system. By submitting your manuscript to this journal you accept that your manuscript may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works.
Reproduction of Copyright Material
If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is the author’s responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ at http://exchanges.wiley.com/authors/faqs---copyright-terms--conditions_301.html.
Committee on Publication Ethics
This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).
4. PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT
Article Preparation Support
Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.
Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.
Optimising Your Article for Search Engines
Many students and researchers looking for information online will use search engines such as Google, Yahoo or similar. By optimising your article for search engines, you will increase the chance of someone finding it. This in turn will make it more likely to be viewed and/or cited in another work. We have compiled these guidelines to enable you to maximise the web-friendliness of the most public part of your article.
Manuscript Format and Style
Manuscripts should be submitted as Word documents (.doc, .docx; not write-protected), double-spaced with page numbers on the top right corner. Please write in a clear, concise, direct style.
No identifying details of the authors or their institutions should appear in the manuscript to facilitate double-blinded review. Authors should create a separate Word document and submit this as the ‘title page’.
Manuscripts should follow the style of the Vancouver agreement detailed in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' revised 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication', as presented at http://www.ICMJE.org/.
• Spelling: The journal uses US spelling. For word usage and word division, our authority is Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary supplemented by Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.
• Abbreviations: Abbreviations should be used sparingly - only where they ease the reader’s task by reducing repetition of long, technical terms. Initially use the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter use the abbreviation only.
• Special Characters: Use the correct characters in your character set for Greek letters and for mathematical and other symbols. The Symbol font includes Greek and some mathematical characters and other symbols.
• Units of measurement: All measurements must be given in SI or SI-derived units. Please go to the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) website at http://www.bipm.fr for more information about SI units.
• Trade Names: Chemical substances should be referred to by the generic name only. Trade names should not be used. Drugs should be referred to by their generic names. If proprietary drugs have been used in the study, refer to these by their generic name, mentioning the proprietary name, and the name and location of the manufacturer, in parentheses.
• Genetic Nomenclature: Standard genetic nomenclature should be used. For further information, including relevant websites, authors should refer to the genetic nomenclature guide in Trends in Genetics (Elsevier Science 1998).
• Species Names: Upon its first use in the title, abstract and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species and authority) in parentheses. However, for well-known species, the scientific name may be omitted from the article title. If no common name exists in English, the scientific name should be used only.
• Nucleotide Sequence Data: Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’.
Addresses are as follows:
DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp
EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Submissions http://www.ebi.ac.uk
GenBank http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Parts of the Manuscript
Manuscripts should be presented in the following order: (i) title page, (ii) abstract and keywords, (iii) text, (iv) acknowledgments, (v) references, (vi) appendices, (vii) tables (each table complete with legend and footnotes) (viii) figure legends, and (ix) figures. Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter.
Title page
The title page should contain (i) the title of the paper, (ii) the full names of the authors and (iii) the addresses of the institutions at which the work was carried out together with (iv) the full postal and email address, plus facsimile and telephone numbers, of the author to whom correspondence about the manuscript, proofs and requests for offprints should be sent, (v) a short running title (less than 40 characters, including spaces). The present address of any author, if different from that where the work was carried out, should be supplied in a footnote.
The title should be short, informative and contain the major keywords. The authors’ names should be listed as follows: personal name first, family name second, with family name in upper-case letters (e.g. Le Feng LIANG).
Abstract and keywords
All articles must have a structured abstract that states in 250 words or fewer the purpose, basic procedures, main findings and principal conclusions of the study. Divide the abstract with the headings: Aim, Methods, Results, Conclusions. The abstract should not contain abbreviations or references. Five keywords, for the purposes of indexing, should be supplied below the abstract, in alphabetical order, and should be taken from those recommended by the US National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) browser list: www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html
Main Text
Authors should use subheadings to divide the sections of their manuscript: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. Do not number headings.
Acknowledgments
The source of financial grants and other funding must be acknowledged, including a frank declaration of the authors’ industrial links and affiliations. The contribution of colleagues or institutions should also be acknowledged. Personal thanks and thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.
References
All references should be numbered consecutively in order of appearance and should be as complete as possible. In-text citations should cite references in consecutive order using Arabic superscript numerals. Sample references follow:
Journal article:
1. King VM, Armstrong DM, Apps R, Trott JR. Numerical aspects of pontine, lateral reticular, and inferior olivary projections to two paravermal cortical zones of the cat cerebellum. J Comp Neurol 1998;390:537-551.
Book:
2. Voet D, Voet JG. Biochemistry. New York: John Wiley & Sons; 1990. 1223 p.
Please note that journal title abbreviations should conform to the practices of Chemical Abstracts.
For more information about AMA reference style - AMA Manual of Style
Appendices
These should be placed at the end of the paper, numbered in Roman numerals and referred to in the text. If written by a person other than the author of the main text, the writer’s name should be included below the title.
Tables
Tables should be self-contained and complement, but not duplicate, information contained in the text. Number tables consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals. Type tables on a separate page with the legend above. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Column headings should be brief, with units of measurement in parentheses; all abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for P-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.
Figures
All illustrations (line drawings and photographs) are classified as figures. Figures should be numbered using Arabic numerals, and cited in consecutive order in the text. Each figure should be supplied as a separate file, with the figure number incorporated in the file name. Colour figures may be published free of charge.
Preparation of Electronic Figures for Publication: Although low quality images are adequate for review purposes, print publication requires high quality images to prevent the final product being blurred or fuzzy. MS PowerPoint and Word Graphics are unsuitable for printed pictures. Scans (TIFF only) should have a resolution of 300 dpi (halftone) or 600 to 1200 dpi (line drawings) in relation to the reproduction size. EPS files should be saved with fonts embedded (and with a TIFF preview if possible).
For scanned images, the scanning resolution (at final image size) should be as follows to ensure good reproduction: line art: >600 dpi; half-tones (including gel photographs): >300 dpi; figures containing both halftone and line images: >600 dpi.
More advice on figures can be found at Wiley’s guidelines for preparation of figures:
http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/illustration.asp
Figure legends
Type figure legends on a separate sheet in double-spacing. Legends should be concise but comprehensive - the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement. If figures have been reproduced from another source, a letter from the copyright holder, stating authorization to reproduce the figure, must be sent to the Editorial Office with the manuscript.
Graphical abstracts
Journal of Digestive Diseases publishes graphical abstracts for each article, displayed online in graphical form with a brief abstract (in addition to the <250 word abstract above).
The online table of contents will display a schematic figure to convey the core message of your paper, alongside a short abstract highlighting the major findings of the paper. Authors should submit a new and stand-alone image, not already included in the paper. Your graphical abstract should be simple, colourful and contain minimal text to attract additional readers. Your short abstract should consist of 2-3 sentences (max 500 characters with spaces) summarising the key findings presented in the paper. Graphical abstract entries should be submitted to Scholar One in one of the generic file formats and uploaded as ‘Graphical Abstract’ during the initial manuscript submission process. The image should be supplied as a tif or a pdf and fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm, and be fully legible at this size.
Supporting Information
Supporting information is not essential to the article but provides greater depth and background and may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc. This material can be submitted with your manuscript, and will appear online, without editing or typesetting. Guidelines on how to prepare this material and which formats and files sizes are acceptable can be found at: http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/suppmat.asp
Please note that the provision of supporting information is not encouraged as a general rule. It will be assessed critically by reviewers and editors and will only be accepted if it is essential.
5. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
• A cover letter should be included in the ‘Cover Letter Field’ of the ScholarOne system. The text can be entered directly into the field or uploaded as a file.
• The covering letter must contain:
o An acknowledgment that all authors have contributed significantly
o A statement that all authors are in agreement with the content of the manuscript.
o A statement confirming that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.
o If tables or figures have been reproduced from another source, the cover letter must include a statement confirming that the authors have permission to reproduce the material and that appropriate acknowledgments have been included in the text.
o Authors must declare any financial support or relationships that may pose conflict of interest, for more detail refer to the section ‘Conflict of Interest Declaration’ above.
• Authors must declare any financial support or relationships that may pose conflict of interest in the ‘Conflict of Interest’ field in the ScholarOne System.
• Two Word-files need to be included upon submission: A title page file and a main text file that includes all parts of the text in the sequence indicated in the section 'Parts of the manuscript', including tables and figure legends but excluding figures which should be supplied separately.
• The main text file should be prepared using Microsoft Word, doubled-spaced, on one side only of A4 paper. The top, bottom and side margins should be 30 mm. All pages should be numbered consecutively in the top right-hand corner, beginning with the first page of the main text file.
• Each figure should be supplied as a separate file, with the figure number incorporated in the file name. For submission, low-resolution figures saved as .jpg or .bmp files should be uploaded, for ease of transmission during the review process. Upon acceptance of the article, high-resolution figures (at least 300 d.p.i.) saved as .eps or .tif files will be required.
Associate your ScholarOne account with your ORCID iD
ORCID iD is a unique and persistent identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and connects you and your research activities. We encourage you to register for an ORCID iD and then associate it with your ScholarOne account. Click here to find out how.
6. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE
Accepted papers will be passed to Wiley’s production team for publication. The author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Wiley’s Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be asked to complete an electronic license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper. More details on the copyright and licensing options for the journal appear below.
Wiley’s Author Services: Tracking your paper’s progress
Author Services also enables authors to track their article through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The corresponding author will receive a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://www.authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/eachecklist.asp for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.
Accepted Articles
The journal offers Wiley’s Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. This service ensures that accepted ‘in press’ manuscripts are published online very soon after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting. Accepted Articles are published online a few days after final acceptance, appear in PDF format only, are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked, and are indexed by PubMed. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.
The Accepted Articles service has been designed to ensure the earliest possible circulation of research papers after acceptance. Given that copyright licensing is a condition of publication, a completed copyright form is required before a manuscript can be processed as an Accepted Article.
Accepted articles will be indexed by PubMed; therefore the submitting author must carefully check the names and affiliations of all authors provided in the cover page of the manuscript, as it will not be possible to alter these once a paper is made available online in Accepted Article format. Subsequently the final copyedited and proofed articles will appear in an issue on Wiley Online Library; the link to the article in PubMed will automatically be updated.
Proofs
Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Page proofs should be carefully proofread for any copyediting or typesetting errors. Online guidelines are provided within the system. No special software is required, all common browsers are supported. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email. Return of proofs via e-mail is possible in the event that the online system cannot be used or accessed.
Early View
The journal offers rapid speed to publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. Early View articles are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before allocation to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.
Offprints
A PDF reprint of the article will be supplied free of charge to the corresponding author. Additional printed offprints may be ordered online for a fee. Please click on the following link and fill in the necessary details and ensure that you type information in all of the required fields: http://www.sheridan.com/wiley/eoc.
Author Marketing Toolkit
The Wiley Author Marketing Toolkit provide authors with support on how to use social media, publicity, conferences, multimedia, email and the web to promote their article.
Article Promotion Support
Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.
7. COPYRIGHT, LICENSING AND OPEN ACCESS
Accepted papers will be passed to Wiley’s production team for publication. The author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Wiley’s Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be asked to complete an electronic license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.
Authors may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.
For more information about this journal's APC's, please visit the Open Access Page.
Standard Copyright Transfer Agreement: FAQs about the terms and conditions of the standard CTA in place for the journal, including standard terms regarding archiving of the accepted version of the paper, are available at: Copyright Terms and Conditions FAQs. Note that in signing the journal’s license agreement authors agree that consent to reproduce figures from another source has been obtained.
Funder Open Access and Self-Archiving Compliance: Please click here for more information on Wiley’s compliance with specific Funder Open Access and Self Archiving Policies, and click here for more detailed information specifically about Self-Archiving definitions and policies.
Author Guidelines updated August 2021