Instructions for authors

Update 08-03-2023

Acta Medica Peruana (AMP) is the official scientific publication of the Peruvian College of Physicians; its objective is to spread medical knowledge to the medical and scientific community both nationally and internationally. It publishes papers in Spanish or English, on a quarterly basis.

AMP only receives original contributions (related with all medical specialties, clinical, surgical, as well as those dealing with public health issues, basic sciences, and medical education). These contributions may be included within the following categories:

  • Editorial
  • Original papers
  • Short original papers
  • Review articles
  • Case reports
  • Special articles
  • History of medicine
  • Letters to the editor

Every manuscript received by AMP is primarily evaluated by the Editorial Committee; if deemed as of interest for publication, if complying with formal requirements of instructions for authors, as well as with ethical and methodological requisites, it will undergo peer review (experts in this particular field) before being considered for publication.

The Instructions for authors follow recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE), as well as with requisites stated by SciELO and MEDLINE.

Regarding the editorial area, there are the standards by the International Organization for Standardization – ISO (www. iso. org) and the International System of Measures or Units (https://www. bipm. org/en/home).

You can download the Instructions for Authors - PDF version at: https://amp.cmp.org.pe/index.php/AMP/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/10

 

General considerations

First page

It must include the following:

  • Title in Spanish and English; preferably, with a 20-word maximum extension. Also, a 10-word or less secondary title may be included.
  • Authors list, including the following information for each one of them:

          - Name (as they may want it to appear in the publication) and data base.

          - Affiliation (two as a maximum; one institutional and the other academic).

          - Professional group and specialty, also, the highest academic degree obtained.

          - Current e-mail.

          - Phone number.

          - ORCID number for each author.

  • Authorship contributions. Contributions from each author for the manuscript must be clearly stated. These must comply with the four points stated by ICMJE and must be presented in detailed in the sworn affidavit.
  • Financing source.
  • Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. Every relationship, condition, or circumstance that might affect objectiveness when interpreting the paper must be declared. This may be an economical or institutional potential conflict (consultancy, scholarships, travel grants, travel allowances, etc.). The response generated when using the COI format must be included.
  • Acknowledgements (when appropriate, and stating the reason).
  • Corresponding author, his/her address, telephone number, and e-mail.

Authorship and institutional affiliation(s)

The complete list of involved persons, their order of appearance, and their institutional affiliations are the sole responsibility of the signing authors. Every authorship conflict or any ethical issues related with this will be settled according to the COPE rules.

Recognition of who is the author is based on ICMJE recommendations; therefore, each author must comply with these four criteria, with no exceptions:

1) Significant contributions for conceiving or designing the manuscript, or contributions for data collection, analysis, or interpretation;

2) Every important writing contribution or critical review of the manuscript contents;

3) Final approval of the version to be published; and

4) Assume responsibility with respect to every aspect dealt with in the manuscript, aiming to guarantee that every issue related with accurateness or integrity of any section in the paper will be adequately looked for and solved.

Academic degrees or professional groups are not determinants for establishing authorship(s) in a manuscript. Only contributions for developing the manuscript according to established authorship criteria must be taken into account.

Fundraising, data collection, or general supervision of the research group per se does not justify authorship. This information should be included in the acknowledgement section. Every author must detail what were his/her specific contributions for the manuscript and this information will be included in the paper, due to transparency reasons.

With respect to the order of appearance for the authors; in general, the first author is the one that worked the most and who wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and the last author usually is the junior researcher in the team. Every paper must state a single corresponding author. There may be exceptional cases when two corresponding authors may be included. These individuals are the ones that will be contacted by AMP with respect to the editorial process.

Those persons that may be included within the author list not complying with authorship criteria are called honorary authors. The aforementioned inclusion is considered as an ethical misconduct. Persons excluded from the author list are considered as ghost authors and this situation also is considered as an ethical misconduct. In case any person should consider he/she has been excluded from authorship, he/she may send a communication stating the evidence that he/she complied with authorship criteria. Should AMP detect this misconduct, COPE rules will be applied.

Every author must include his/her institutional affiliation(s), which must correspond to the institution where he/she is currently working or studying, and that may have contributed in some way for the development of research to be published. Up to two affiliations per author may be included. The ‘independent author’ term is also accepted.

The corresponding author must send the following data: address, telephone number, and e-mail. Any communication with respect to manuscript review and edition will be sent to this author.

Authors must show the way in which they wish their name(s) should appear in the publication and in the data bases. They should take into account that data bases are written in English and that they only consider the last name as surname. Here we show some ways for presenting names and how they would appear in data bases:

Table 1. Examples for coding authors’ names in data bases.

 Summary and keywords

Every article, except Editorials and Letters to the Editor, must have a summary in Spanish and in English. Also, key words in Spanish must be included, using Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS/MeSH) (https://decs.bvsalud.org/en/current-decs/), two words as a minimum and six words as maximum.

References

Only those references cited within the text will be included, as a single reference [1], or if more than one reference is included [5–8], following a correlative order and between brackets. Vancouver format must be used, according to the ICMJE (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/unbiform_requirements.html). In case there are more than six authors, the first six will be included followed by ‘et al’. Also, the reference title may include a link directed towards the website where the reference may be accessed to, as long as the electronic version is available. Every reference must include its DOI number, when corresponding. Here we present some examples for references:

Published papers with DOI

Marmot M. Universal health coverage and social determinants of health. Lancet. 2013; 382 (9900): 1227-8. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61791-2.

Sanchez Clemente N, Ugarte-Gil CA, Solorzano N, Maguiña C, Pachas P, Blazes D, et al. Bartonella bacilliformis: a systematic review of the literature to guide the research agenda for elimination. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2012; 6 (10): e1819. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0001819.

Internet articles without DOI

Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [Internet]. 2012 [citado el 12 de agosto de 2019]; 102(6):23-29. Disponible en: https://insights.ovid.com/article/00000446-200206000-00031. 

Printed articles without DOI

Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002;935(1-2):40-6.

Books

Hulley SB, Cummings SR, Browner WS, Grady DG, Newman TB. Designing clinical research. 4th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins; 2013.

Chapters in books

McMillan W. Theory en healthcare education research: the importance of worldview. In: Cleland J, Durning SJ (editors). Researching medical education. Oxford: Willey Blackwell; 2015. p. 25-34.

Book on the internet

Manso G, Hidalgo A, Carvajal A, de Abajo FJ. Los primeros 25 años del sistema español de farmacovigilancia de medicamentos de uso humano [Internet]. Principado de Asturias: Universidad de Oviedo; 2010 [citado el 20 de febrero de 2017]. Disponible en: https://www.unioviedo.es/gaife/documentos/libro25aniversario/libro.pdf.

Chapters of books, pamphlets or similar

Fuente C, Rodríguez A, de Abajo FJ, Vargas E, Moreno A. Comité de Seguridad de Medicamentos de Uso Humano y su contribución a la salud pública. En: Manso G, Hidalgo A, Carvajal A, de Abajo FJ. Los primeros 25 años del sistema español de Farmacovigilancia de medicamentos de uso humano [Internet]. Principado de Asturias: Universidad de Oviedo; 2010 [citado el 14 de octubre de 2017]. p. 157-71. Disponible en: https://www.unioviedo.es/gaife/documentos/libro25aniversario/libro.pdf

Knowles NJ, Hovi T, Hyypiä T, King AM, Lindberg AM, Pallansch MA, et al. Picornaviridae. In: King AM, Adams MJ, Carstens EB, Lefkowitz EJ, editors. Virus taxonomy: classification and nomenclature of viruses: Ninth Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. San Diego: Elsevier; 2012. Pp. 855–80.

Thesis

Pesce H. La epidemiología de la lepra en el Perú [Tesis Doctoral]. Lima: Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos; 1961.

Website

International Committee of Medical Journal Editor [website]. Defining the role of authors and contributors. Vancouver: ICMJE; 2015 [accessed on February 1st, 2016]. Available at: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html.

Tables

These must be presented after the references, each in a different page. Tables must be orders using Arabic numbers and they must include all necessary information, both contents and title, so they may be interpreted without the need for going back to the text. Only a single horizontal line separating the table title from its body will be accepted. In no case vertical lines shall be accepted. Tables must be written using Word or Excel, no image formats (.jpg, .png, etc.) will be accepted, since tables must be presented in a format that is amenable for diagramming. All abbreviations and symbols used in the table must include their explanation(s) on their inferior part.

Figures

Statistics graphs, flow charts, diagrams, photographs, maps, or correlatively ordered numeric charts may be included as figures, and they may be placed after tables. Statistics graphs and flow charts may be presented in Excel or in currently used statistical packages. Other images may be presented using TIFF or JPG formats, with >600- dpi or >300- pixel resolution, and they should be added in different archives, so that appropriate edition may be made, aiming to obtain a proper layout. Legends for micrographs must state power and staining method(s). Maps must have a scale.

Should any figure show patients’ faces, a dark area must be placed covering their eyes so they may not be identified; also, authors must attach written authorization from patients or their legal representatives allowing their consent in case of publishing photographs that might allow their identification. If a previously published figure is included, the origin source must be stated and a written permission from the copyright holder must be sent to AMP.

Considerations for style

AMP uses the International System of Units. Scientific names of species must be written using italics. Colons (,) are used for decimals in Spanish and dots (.) in English. Titles of papers must not have abbreviations. Should abbreviations be used in the text, the complete name must be placed and then the abbreviation between brackets after its first mention. The use of abbreviations is not recommended for items appearing less than four times in the paper. For stating percentages, a single decimal (i.e. 10.1%) is recommended. When mentioning populations less than 50 individuals, the use of percentages is not recommended, only fractions should be used (i.e. 20/50). When using association measurements such as odds ratios (OR) and their confidence intervals (CI), the use of two decimals is recommended (i.e. OR; 2, 15; 95% CI: 1,10–3, 41). For p-values, up to three decimals may be used (i.e. p= 0,009).