Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts should be double-spaced, use Times New Roman, 12-point font, be left aligned, with 1-inch margins, and pages numbered with the title page numbered as page 1. Do not embed author names, dates, fonts, links, footnotes in a hidden field, field codes, bookmarks, comments, hypertext links, passwords, objects, worksheets, databases, artwork, or slides (such as PowerPoint) in the text. Do not use line numbers and do not use double spaces between sentences.   

The links below may provide guidance on scientific writing and style.

The Kansas Journal of Medicine endorses the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (ICMJE). Please provide the following information when indicated according to the instructions.

  • Authorship: All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Include first names of the author, not initials. The order of authorship should be a decision of the co-authors. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions: (l) to conception and design or to analysis and interpretation of data; (2) to drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) to final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet all three criteria (adapted from ICMJE).
  • Acknowledgements: One or more statements should specify (1) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship; (2) acknowledgments of technical help; (3) acknowledgments of financial and material support, specifying the nature of the support; and (4) financial relationships that may pose a conflict of interest (adapted from ICMJE).
  • Conflict of Interest: Authors must disclose to the Editor any commercial affiliations that might pose a conflict of interest. These include patent-licensing agreements, stock ownership or other equity interest, consultancies, institutional affiliations, and corporate sponsorship. If your article is accepted for publication, we require each author to submit a ICMJE disclosure form (adapted from ICMJE).
  • Protection of 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 Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives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. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. When informed consent for publication has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article." (from ICMJE)
  • Protection of human and animal rights: When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). 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 doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed (adapted from ICMJE).

Abbreviations/Acronyms: All abbreviations and acronyms should be expanded, followed by the abbreviation or acronym in parentheses, upon first mention in the abstract, as well as in the body of the manuscript. All subsequent uses should use the abbreviation or acronym. Abbreviations and acronyms should be kept to a minimum and should not be used if only used once. Abbreviations and acronyms should be defined again when used in tables and figures.

Abstracts: Abstracts are required for Original Research articles and Brief Reports. Abstracts must be limited to 250 words with the following headings: Introduction, Methods (including information on design, setting, participants, interventions, and main outcomes measured), Results, and Conclusions. Abstracts should be double spaced, use Times New Roman, 12-point font, be left aligned with no indentation, use bolded headings followed by a period, and a single space between sections. 

Headings and Subheadings: Headings (such as Introduction, Methods, Results, etc.) are bold, left aligned, and placed above a paragraph. Subheadings are indented, capitalized, bolded, and included with the first line of text, followed by a period. 

        Ex. This is a Subheading. This is the first line of text.

REDCap® Instructions: Please cite the publications below in study manuscripts using REDCap® for data collection and management. We recommend the following boilerplate language:

Study data were collected and managed using REDCap® electronic data capture tools hosted at the University of Kansas Medical Center.1,2 

1    Harris PA, Taylor R, Thielke R, Payne J, Gonzalez N, Conde JG. Research electronic data capture (REDCap) – A metadata-driven methodology and workflow process for providing translational research informatics support. J Biomed Inform 2009; 42(2):377-381. PMID: 18929686.

2    Harris PA, Taylor R, Minor BL, et al. The REDCap consortium: Building an international community of software partners. J Biomed Inform 2019; 95:103208. PMID: 31078660.

Citations: Citations should be superscripted Arabic numerals and follow punctuation in most cases. Exceptions include when listing information from several sources and when using the author's name. Citations should be numbered in chronological order. 

References: Information for formatting references can be found on the references page. 

Keywords: After the reference section, include 2-5 keywords or short phrases that will assist indexers in cross-indexing your article and that may be published with the abstract. Use terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus.

Tables:

  • Cite each table in the text in consecutive order as Table 1, Table 2, etc.
  • Kansas Journal of Medicine follows the AMA Manual of Style, 11th Edition, for table formatting (section 4.1). All tables must be created in Word format or Excel with editable, selectable text. Submitting a graphic image of a table is not acceptable.
  • Table text should be single spaced and use Times New Roman, 12-point font.
  • Do not submit tables as photographs.
  • Number each table consecutively in the order of its first citation in the text and supply a brief title.
  • Give each column a short heading. Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading.
  • Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations.
  • Identify statistical measures of variation such as standard deviation and standard error of the mean.
  • If data are used from another published or unpublished source, obtain permission and acknowledge fully.
  • Tables spanning more than two pages of the Word document may be reformatted during production to appear as supplemental tables.

Figures and Images: Cite each figure in the text in consecutive order as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. Please include a figure legend. Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Provide captions to illustrations separately, not embedded in the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used. Authors should submit figures according to the specifications listed below. Use Times New Roman font in your illustrations. Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text. 

Image Quality: Generally, Authors submit raw image data files to a publishing house in various formats (ppt, pdf, tiff, jpg, xml, etc.). The files are then normalized to produce print or electronic output. The Kansas Journal of Medicine requires the normalized output, which is high-resolution and of sufficient width and quality to be considered archival. Images generated at low resolution for display purposes are not acceptable.

Graphics will be rejected if images are not submitted at or above their intended display size.

Intended display size is the physical size of a digital image as it will be displayed in the printed product, website, etc.

Example: Image size is 900 pixels wide by 600 pixels in height, and the resolution is 300 dpi.

Pixel dimension/resolution = physical width
900 pixels/300 dpi = 3 inches physical width
600 pixels/300 dpi = 2 inches physical height
Intended Display Size = 3 x 2 inches

The following image resolutions are accepted: Line Art 800 dpi, Combo (Line Art + Halftone) 600 dpi, Halftone 300 dpi. Image files also must be cropped as close to the actual image as possible.