Guidelines to authors

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GENERAL GUIDELINES

Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra comprises the following major sections (details and requirements here): Research articles and short research articles, Reviews, Case reports, Letters to the Editor and Editorials. Advice on appropriate design and reporting for each type of original article can be found in pages as ICMJE, ECUATOR Network and NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives. Authors should fill in the checklist and attach it during the submission of the manuscript.

Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Directors of Biomedical Journals (ICMJE), as well as the guidelines of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE), which strongly recommends to meet.

Manuscripts submitted to Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra must meet the following ethical requirements:

Authorship

According to the ICMJE (II.A.3), authors are only those who have made substantial contributions to 1) the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and 2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published; and 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.

People who do not simultaneously meet these four criteria should be recognized as collaborators, and listed in the acknowledgments’ section, after obtaining their written permission.

The order and list of authors must be carefully considered prior the manuscript submission. Before acceptance, any change in authorship must be asked to the Editor, justifying the modification and including the written agreement of all the authors from the two lists with the changes. If the manuscript has been accepted, the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors will only be evaluated in extraordinary circumstances. Once published, only justified changes regarding the identification of the authors (but not their order or composition) will be accepted by the Editor; these changes will not be reflected in the published article, but will be published as an erratum. We recommend to follow the FLAE (first-last-author-emphasis) approach, which considers the first and last author of equal importance. If authors follow the SDC (sequence-determines-credit) approach (the signature order indicates decreasing contributions), or EC (equal contribution) approach (all authors have contributed equally), it must be explicitly indicated. It is mandatory to indicate the contribution of each author using the CrediT system (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) or similar.

The corresponding author is responsible for being in contact with the journal during the editorial process, so they must provide a valid contact information and be contactable. The corresponding author is also responsible for ensuring that the author group receives: 1) the requirements from reviewers and copyediting editor, 2) the final edited manuscript and 3) the article proofs; they is responsible to reach an agreement within the author group regarding the answer for reviewers and editors. If an exceptional situation occurs, another author must contact the journal to assure that communication is not interrupted, which will cause the rejection of the manuscript.

If the list of authors includes the name of a group, the corresponding author must clearly specify the role of each member as authors or contributor. The name and institutional affiliation of each group memberwill be included in an appendix.

Integrity in research

Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra does not accept articles showing research misconduct. Plagiarism: appropriation of ideas, processes or results from another person (self-plagiarism if from the same author) without giving them due credit through a bibliographic citation. Data manipulation: fabrication or alteration of data, alteration of the equipment and techniques to modify them, or removing or changing results. The fraudulent manipulation of images, as well as add or delete information from them, is not allowed; only shine and contrast adjustments and color balancing are allowed. Citation manipulation: Authors are expected to select the most appropriate bibliographic references to support their statements, avoiding forcing the inclusion of self-citations, citations from the same group or from colleagues, or citations from the same journal. Likewise, only the bibliographical references that have been consulted should be included; if only the abstract has been read, it must be stated, and if it is not possible to avoid citing a work previously cited by another author, it must be stated. Authors are responsible to verify that the references are complete and exact.

Original work

Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra does not accept the simultaneous submission of the whole manuscript or parts of it to more than one journal. Authors must explicitly state in the cover letter that the manuscript has not been published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Manuscripts that involve a coincident publication or publication of the same intellectual material, extended or partial, will neither be accepted. The publication of communications of any kind in scientific meetings, material from an academic thesis, and manuscripts deposited in a preprints server are not considered previous published. If a submitted manuscript could be considered overlapping publication, the cover letter must state this fact, justifying why the manuscript meets the requirements of originality and deserves to be published, and attaching a copy of the related publication.

Authors are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner to reproduce any proprietary text, image, table, or other material, including those derived from such material, prior to submit the manuscript.

Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra uses Similarity Check (iThenticate) to verify the originality of submitted contents .

Transparent conduct

Authors must declare the existence or non-existence of funding sources for the study, indicating the sponsoring organizations, as well as if they have influenced any aspect of the study.

Likewise, authors must declare the existence or not of any conflict of interest that could have affected the information provided and/or the interpretation of the data. Examples of conflicts of interest are: financial and/or personal relationship with people or organizations that may have influenced the author's work, such as jobs, consultancies, actions, fees, patent applications/registrations related to the content of the manuscript, funds, travel grants, testimony or participation in courses/conferences as a paid expert, and relationships with sponsors who may restrict the access/analysis/interpretation of data related to the manuscript; other competing interests may be, religious, ideological, academic or intellectual.

Ethical Responsibility

Research carried out with people, biological samples and/or personal data must be carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and be authorized by a research ethics committee prior to the start of the research. The written informed consent by the participants (or their representatives) must be obtained to both participate in the study and their data and/or images to be published. Organic Law 3/2018, of December 5, on data protection requires that the use of pseudonymized personal data for biomedical research purposes be subject to the prior opinion of an ethics committee.

Clinical trials will be reported following the CONSORT guidelines; the fill in checklist and the flow diagram will be uploading at submission. ICMJE recommends registering clinical trials before or during recruitment of participants. Authors must state the clinical trial registration number and the registry date in the manuscript and at the end of the abstract.

Anonymous surveys would not require the consent of the participants, since the acceptance to participate in them would imply consent. If the data collection of the survey is part of a research project, it must be submitted to the evaluation of an ethics committee.

Authors must have obtained the consent of the patient or comply with the protocol established in each center in order to access the clinical registry of patients for research purposes.

When experimental research on animals was performed, authors must state the legislation and/or institutional guideline they complied with, as well as the name of the ethics committee that approved the study along with its registration number.

An ethical statement must be included into the Material and Methods section, containing guidelines/legislation followed, the name of the ethics committee that gave its approval, the registration number, and authors declaration that written consent from the participants and from the copyright owner to reproduce any proprietary element was obtained. The corresponding author must keep the documents and send them to the journal only if they are required.

The publication of an article that infringes these rules is the sole responsibility of the authors and may lead to retraction or withdrawal.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Submissions to Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra must be prepared according to the following instructions:

1) Format. The manuscript will be in Word or compatible format, vertical DIN-A4 size, with double spacing and 2.5 cm margins, Arial/Courier/Times New Roman font, size 12. Use bold only for section headings, and italics only for words not written in the original language. All pages must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals.

2) Tables. They will be attached at the end of the manuscript, numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals according to the order of appearance in the text; the exact place where each table will be located will be specified. Tables will be well designed and self-explanatory, their information must not duplicate that shown in text or figures. The title and a footer containing definitions of the whole abbreviations and symbols present in the table will be included. Vertical layout is recommended. Each line must correspond to a row of the table; do not enter spaces or line breaks within cells.

3) Figures. They will be attached at the end of the manuscript, numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals according to their order of appearance in the text; the exact place where each figure will be placed will be specified. The figures, in shades of gray except on justified occasions, must provide significant information not shown in text or tables. A caption must be provided for each figure. In case of images, the caption will indicate the technique and those graphic elements (as arrows) used to highlight certain relevant elements. In case of graphics, the caption will include the definitions of all the abbreviations and symbols used in it. For copyrighted images, the caption must state that the copyright owner has granted permission for their use.

The figures must be sent as independent files, one per figure, in addition to be attached at the end of the main text. Formats: images in editable JPEG format and graphs in editable format, according to the Microsoft Office program used to generate them (Excel, Power point, Word). Avoid figures with low resolution and/or in non-optimized formats for screen viewing. Recommended minimum resolution: 300 dpi for color or grayscale images (halftone), 900 dpi for line graphics and 600 dpi for a combination of both types. Choose a size that allows for optimal viewing into the manuscript.

4) Gender policies. The journal Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra encourages using concise and fluid scientific communication from a gender perspective. Manuscripts must be written in Spanish with inclusive and non-sexist language; it is encouraged to as much as possible using colective nouns (las personas enfermas, la ciudadanía, profesionales de Medicina) instead of the generic masculine noun (los enfermos, los ciudadanos, los médicos). Moreover, the language must be precise, avoiding substantive and/or adjective splitting (las enfermeras y los enfermeros) as well as using bars (los/las enfermeros/as). Notwithstanding, once the gender perspective was stablished, and given that effective communication is the priority, authors must follow the guidelines from the Real Academia de la Lengua española RAE and use the generic masculine noun or that of the predominant sex in a group (las enfermeras).

Some recommendations about design and analysis. When the biological variable sex when is registered, do not refer to it as gender (social construct about roles and behaviors associated to each sex). The journal encourages authors to disaggregate result by sex following the SAGER guidelines (Heidari y col. 2016: https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41073-016-0007-6). Briefly: 1) a sufficient number of both men and women should be included in order to present data disaggregated by sex (and/or gender) and discuss their implications; 2) if a sex (and/or gender) analysis was not conducted, authors should give the rationale, and further discuss the implications of the lack of such analysis on the interpretation of the results; 3) if the study is carried out in a single sex, it must be clearly specified and justified the reasons for any exclusion of males or females (also if one sex is not adequately representated).

MANUSCRIPT LAYOUT

The first page (can be more than one page) must show the following elements:

• title in Spanish and English, maximum 20 words,
• full name and surname(s) of each author, as they wish to be cited,
• Affiliation of each of authors(name of the institution in which the research was developed and/or where the author works) indicated by correlative lowercase letters in superscript after the last name of each author; maximum three per author,
• email address and (if available) ORCID of each author,
• correspondence: name and surname(s) of the author of correspondence, telephone and full postal address (institutional or private), permanent electronic address,
• acknowledgements, or indicate not applicability,
• funding, with this format: This work has been funded by Institution 1, city, country [project number xxxx] and Institution 2, city, country [project number yyyy], or indicate not applicability,
• conflicts of interest: list them or indicate not applicability,
• number of words of the abstract and the text of the article (not including bibliography, abstract or legends/footnotes of tables and figures).
• type of contribution made by each author; CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) or another system can be used.

Article text. It will be arranged into the following sections:

Abstract. Authors must follow the specifications for each type of article to prepare it. In Spanish and English; authors can delegate its translation to the Draft Board of the journal. when it is structured, it must comprise the following sections: Background (objective of the study), Methodology (sample selection, measurement and analysis methods), Results (main findings, preferably showing statistical parameters) and Conclusion (relevance of the study and/or results). In Case Reports, the Abstract should give the context to the pathology, make a brief presentation of the patient and state the relevance of the presented case. In Special Collaboration, the Abstract will reveal the main contributions of the study.

Keywords. After the Abstract, authors should indicate a maximum of 5 keywords that will be used for indexing the article; they must be obtained from the DeCS (Descriptors in Health Sciences) or MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) for keywords in English) thesauri.

Introduction. It should briefly provide the necessary context for the reader to understand the text that follows, highlighting the knowledge gaps that justify the study. The last paragraph will clearly state the objectives of the work. In Case Reports, it should be very brief: a paragraph to explain the context of the pathology and another one to justify the presentation of the case. Must not contain tables or figures.

Material and methods. Wrote in past tense. This section indicates the location (anonymized) and the temporal context of the study, and the target population. The criteria for selecting the sample, the estimation of the sample size, the variables to be analyzed, the techniques used, the measurement instruments, and the statistical methods to analyze the results obtained must be described in sufficient detail to replicate the study. The ethical aspects that regulated the study should always be declared.

Results. Wrote in past tense. They describe, without interpreting, the observations made with the method used. The most relevant results will be highlighted, and the use of tables and figures will make it possible to lighten the text of numerical data and descriptions; Avoid duplicating the information presented. Clinical case: it will contain a clear, sequential and justified description of the case presented.

Discussion. Authors should compare their results with those from similar articles and interpret areas of agreement and disagreement, without repeating the results. Authors will indicate their own opinions on the findings, supporting them with the published literature. A critical appraisal of the limitations of the study should be made, including how certain aspects of the methodology may affect the relevance and validity (internal and external) of the obtained results. This section includes the conclusion, which must be derived from the results and highlight the meaning and clinical application of the most relevant results; guidelines for future research may be indicated. Please, avoid generalities. In Case reports, the Discussion should focus on the case presented, support or discuss the findings and actions taken, and avoid becoming a review of the topic; it should end with a conclusion that highlights the relevance of the presented case.

References. Ideas and data from others must be adequately referenced through the corresponding bibliographical references. Reference to textbooks and meeting minutes will be avoided as much as possible; “unpublished observations” and “personal communication” cannot be listed, but can be cited in parentheses within the text. Its format can be consulted here. As a general rule, up to the first six authors are listed, followed by the expression et al if more than six authors. Journal names must be abbreviated according to the style used in Index medicus/Medline, and whenever it exists, the DOI must be included in URL format (https://doi.org/10.etc.). References will be arranged into the text according to the order of appearance, with consecutive Arabic numerals in floating numbers (superscript) and, if a reference manager is used, without field codes.

Annexes. They contain extended information about the work or the research process: applied questionnaires, tables of less relevant data, in-depth descriptions of methods, apparatus or mathematical calculations. They will be numbered as I, II, etc.

Supplementary material. Authors can attach information related to their article (raw data, descriptions, statistical results, tables with ancillary data, additional calculations, infographics, etc.) that will be available online as a different file than the text of the published article.

SUBMISSION

One author of the manuscript must enter the website of the journal Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra in RECYT and register as author. In the right side menu of the main page, click the “Submit an article” button. Read carefully the "Checklist for the preparation of shipments" before pressing the button "Make a new shipment", as you must comply with all requirements.

In addition to the text of the article, you must upload a cover letter, in PDF format and signed by all the authors, indicating:

• section the article belongs to,
• a explanation about the original contribution and relevance of the study,
• a statement that the article has not been published or is being submitted to another journal
• a declaration that the article is original; if it is related to another article, the coincident part must be indicated and why the results merit its independent publication,
• a statement that the ethical standards of research were met and the necessary authorizations, consents and permits were obtained,
• the identification of all authors: full name, academic degree, position and organization, email and (if available) ORCID code,
• a statement regarding funding and conflict of interest signed by each author,
• a statement accepting the copyright and the personal data management policy.

The system will guide you through a five-step process; upon completion, the corresponding author will receive a virtual acknowledgment of receipt.

EDITORIAL PROCESS

Initial triage

All the submitted manuscripts are read by at least two editors who assess whether topic, layout, novelty and scientific content merit their possible publication. Manuscripts considered not relevant or that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected. The editorial board of the journal will communicate the reasoned decision to the authors within approximately two weeks.

If the editors of the journal consider that the content is of interest and meets the formal requirements, it will be pass to peer-review, after checking the originality of the content using Similarity Check (a service offered by Crossref with iThenticate technology).

Peer-review process and editorial decission

The peer review process is double-blinded. The editors or a member of the editorial board will invite two or three external reviewers to evaluate the manuscript in a three-week period. The peer-review process is double-blind type and reviewers are selected according to their field of expertise and previous performance. They must inform the Editor of any competing interests before accepting the invitation to review the manuscript. A statistician editor evaluates also the design and results of articles. Editorial and Letters to the Editor are evaluated by the editorial team; if they are unsolicited, they will be evaluated by the editorial team and/or subjected to peer review before decide on their acceptance.

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the scientific quality, relevance and originality of the manuscript. They also address if design, results and discussion support the conclusion, which must give answer to the aims of the study. In case of the two recommendations being discrepant each another, editors will ask a third reviewer from the area of the negative recommendation.

The reviewers’ reports are analyzed to take an initial decision: the manuscript is accepted, requires revision, or is rejected; this decision should be taken within six weeks from the reception of the manuscript. The reviewers’ comments, along with those from one editor, are submitted to authors. The modified manuscript is expected to be returned within a fixed time depending on the extension of the suggested modifications but less than two months. Manuscripts not submitted within this time frame are subject to withdrawal from editorial process. A first decision asking for a revised manuscript does not imply that acceptance will automatically follow.

The modified manuscript will be assessed by the editorial team and/or will be send to a new review round. The last version of the manuscript will be accepted or rejected according to the reviewers’ recommendations along with the editorial team opinions. The decision of the Editor-in-Chief is final and is aimed to be taken within eighteen weeks from submission. The Draft Committee will communicate the final editorial decision to authors by RECYT. Authors must respond with the clean copy of the manuscript containing the last modifications and all the personal data previously removed.

Copyediting

If the work is accepted, the authors must attend the formal requirements from the copyediting editor, who will contact the corresponding author by RECYT, attaching the edited manuscript and the suggested modifications. These changes must be accepted or corrected through change control and comments, attaching the document to the discussion in RECYT. Several stages of editing-correction may be required.

The copyediting process will produce an orderly, concise and correct manuscript, which will be the approved by authors and editors. All authors of the manuscript must indicate by writing their agreement with this final edited version.

Production

Translation. Accepted articles are published in the language of submission (Spanish or English). To publish in English after completing the editorial process in Spanish is allowed, but authors must indicate this at submission, and translate the final edited version into English.

The journal uses the services of a professional translator to check the English content of accepted articles. This service is free for authors.

Review of the layout version (galley proofs). The corresponding author will receive the PDF of the galley proof of the electronic article attached to a message from Draft Committee by RECYT.

The goal of this revision is to detect typos and formatting mistakes, and to ensure the coincidence of the whole content (text, tables, figures) with the final approved version. No major changes or new information will be accepted.

The corresponding author has a period of 48 hours to send the corrections in a single document, preferably the PDF file with comments. The galley review is the responsibility of the authors; delaying their answer implies delayed or unreviewed publication of the article.

PUBLICATION

Open access

Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra provides its contents in open access, meaning that all content is freely available at no charge to users or their institutions.

Users can read, download, reproduce, distribute, print, copy, publish and link to the article in any medium; prepare derivative works of the article, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without seeking prior permission from publishers or authors, as defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative  (BOAI), provided that authorship and initialpublication in Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra (year, volume and DOI identifier of the article) are acknowledged.

The manuscripts will be published free of charge for the authors in electronic format on the web page of the journal in RECYT; in the following weeks it will be available from SciELO and from PubMed Central. The article reference will appear in PubMed/MedLine shortly after its publication.

Copyright

Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra is published by the Department of Health of the Government of Navarra (Spain), which holds the copyright over the published content, which is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. 4.0.

Authors are allowed and encouraged to electronically disseminate the preprint (version submitted to the journal) and/or postprint (version accepted for publication) versions of their manuscripts. Likewise, they are allowed and encouraged to self-archive, deposit or include the published version of their manuscript in institutional, national or international repositories, explicitly indicating that the manuscript was published for the first time in Anales del Sistema Sanitario Navarra (year, volume and DOI identifier). from the article).

License

The editorial institution allows published articles diffusion under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). That is, all content is freely available, without any charge to the user or their institution. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link the full texts of the articles in this journal so long as authors receive credit as authors and Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra is cited as the source of first publication of the article.

Privacy statement

The publishing institution (Department of Health of the Government of Navarra) is responsible for processing the personal data that users (data holders) have provided to the journal Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra. The contractual relationship with the users (RGPD art 6.1.b) or the consent of the users themselves (RGPD art 6.1.a) legitimate the said data processing. The Spanish Foundation of Science and Technology (FECYT) will be in charge of processing the personal data that it processes on behalf of the publishing institution for the provision of the service.

The personal data requested from the authors will be used exclusively to manage the editorial process of the article submitted by authors to Anales del Sistema Sanitario de Navarra, and will not be available for any other purpose or to another person. The personal data requested from readers will be used exclusively to manage their access and notify the release of a new issue or a remakable situation or incident occurs.

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) acts as data processor for each of the files owned by the journals hosted in its repository (RECYT). Thereof, FECYT facilitates the exercise of your rights of access, rectification, cancellation and opposition, according to the terms described in Spanish Law on the Protection of Personal Data, by contacting the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology headquarters located at C/ Pintor Velázquez nº 5 - Edificio Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 28100 Alcobendas (Madrid). You can also exercise your rights at protecciondatos@fecyt.es, providing your identification credentials.