Information and Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors: Submissions

To submit a manuscript, you must be one of the authors or an administrator working on behalf of the Corresponding Author. Submitting authors assume all responsibility for the article throughout the process of peer review and eventual publication.

Papers should be in Microsoft Word (.docx) or Portable Document Format (.pdf).

Please note that we will not edit the format, style or language of submitted manuscripts. To maximize the Scholarly Impact Quotient (SIQ: see below) of your paper, write clearly and simply, and ideally have your article edited by colleagues before submission.

If you have questions in the process of preparing and submitting your manuscript, contact us at support@cureus.com.

Required Manuscript Sections for Research Articles

Manuscripts for research articles submitted to Curēus are required to contain the following sections (detailed information about each section will follow below).

  • Title Page
    • First author full name and affiliation
    • All co-authors' full names and affiliations
    • Corresponding author's title(s), institutional affiliation(s), corresponding address, phone number, email address
  • Abstract
    • Keywords (at least 5)
  • Introduction
  • Materials and Methods
  • Results (not required for REVIEW papers)
  • Discussions
  • Conclusions
  • Competing Interests/ Conflict of interest statement/Financial disclosures
  • References (numerical format)
  • Tables (best embedded in the text)
  • Figures (best embedded in the text)

Additional Helpful Information to Include

  • List of abbreviations used (if any)
  • Authors' contributions
  • Authors' information (if any)
  • Acknowledgements

Although we will publish a variety of formats there is a preferred Curēus style.

Download the Microsoft Word template

Downlad Template

Details regarding required sections for peer reviewed papers

Title Page (a separate page)

This page should list the following:

  • Title of the article
  • First author: full name and affiliation(s)
  • All co-authors' full names and affiliations
  • Corresponding author's title(s), institutional affiliation(s), corresponding address, phone number, email address

Abstract (begins a new page, and is a separate page)

The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 300 words. Please structure your article abstract into the following sections:

  • Introduction: the background & rationale/purpose/principal aims of the study.
  • Materials and Methods: summary of how the study was conducted
  • Results: main findings
  • Conclusions: potential implications

Minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references within the abstract. Following the abstract, indicate at least 5 Keywords which describe your paper best and are relevant searchable terms to be used by readers.

Introduction (begins a new page)

The Introduction clearly should present background research, rationale and study aims. This section should end with a brief statement summarizing what is being reported in the article (e.g., The primary aim(s) of the study was/were....).

Materials and Methods

Materials and Methods should include the design of the study, type of materials/procedures/measures used, participants (including recruitment and consent procedures involved), a clear description of the statistical analyses/modeling employed to enable replication, and all associations/comparisons etc, the results of which will be described in the Results section. Authors may include a "statistical analysis" subheading in this section.

Results

Results of statistical analysis should include, where appropriate, relative and absolute risks or risk reductions (hazards ratios), strength of associations, power analyses/effect sizes, statistical significance levels (e.g., p-values) and confidence intervals. Results of heuristic analyses may be reported in this section.

Any statistical models and the included or excluded variables should be described above in the "statistical analysis" subheading of "Materials and Methods." ONLY actual results are to be reported in the Results section. Authors may include a "missing data" subheading in this section.

Discussion

The Discussion should interpret the authors' results in light of the primary aims, background and rationale of the study. This section may describe consistencies and inconsistencies with prior research studies/findings. Within the Discussion authors have an opportunity to describe the meaning of their results and how said findings relate to their underlying hypotheses and principal aims. Be careful to use words that allow for some doubt and room for further research, such as results "suggest", "may", "might", and avoid confirmatory descriptors, such as "we therefore proved" etc.

Please include a "limitations" section within the Discussion...after all, nobody's perfect!

Conclusions

The Conclusions section should be a brief summary of the main conclusions of the research, providing a clear explanation of their importance, relevance, clinical implications, novelty (if applicable), and future directions.

Competing Interests (Conflict of Interest Statement)

A competing interest exists when your interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by your personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors must disclose any financial competing interests; they should also reveal any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment were they to become public after the publication of the manuscript.

Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles.

  • Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

If you are unsure as to whether you, or one your co-authors, has a competing interest please discuss it with the editorial office.

References

  • All references must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any citations in figures, tables or legends.

Only articles and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text.

  • Notes/footnotes are not allowed.

Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited author(s) is the responsibility of the author. Journal abbreviations should follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Citations in the reference list should contain all named authors, regardless of how many there are. (i.e., "et al." is not appropriate for citations in Curēus).

We encourage authors to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 12) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.

Examples of the Curēus reference style are shown below.

  1. Article within a journal

    Koonin EV, Altschul SF, Bork P: BRCA1 protein products: functional motifs. Nat Genet 1996, 13:266-267.

  2. Article within a journal supplement

    Orengo CA, Bray JE, Hubbard T, LoConte L, Sillitoe I: Analysis and assessment of ab initio three-dimensional prediction, secondary structure, and contacts prediction. Proteins 1999, 43(Suppl 3):149-170.

  3. Book chapter, or article within a book

    Schnepf E: From prey via endosymbiont to plastids: comparative studies in dinoflagellates. In Origins of Plastids. Volume 2. 2nd edition. Edited by Lewin RA. New York: Chapman and Hall; 1993:53-76.

  4. Whole issue of journal

    Ponder B, Johnston S, Chodosh L (Eds): Innovative oncology. In Breast Cancer Res 1998, 10:1-72.

  5. Complete book

    Margulis L: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1970.

  6. Book with institutional author

    Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification: Annual Report. London; 1999.

  7. Electronic Journal Articles

    Huynen MMTE, Martens P, Hilderlink HBM (2005) The health impacts of globalization: a conceptual framework. Global Health 1: 14. Available: http://www.globalizationandhealth.com/content/1/1/14. Accessed 25 January 2012.

Tables and Figures

Tables, figures and photos should be embedded directly in the document where indicated. The use of tables, figures and pictures should be simple and make your results visually appealing and easily "digestible" for the reader.

Please note that this recommended presentation of tables and figures differs markedly from most conventional medical journals.

Not required for review, but recommended and helpful information

List of Abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text, they should be defined in the text at first use (following the Abstract section), and a list of abbreviations can be provided, which should precede Competing Interests and Authors' Contributions.

Authors' Contributions

To give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section.

An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made significant contributions to study conception and design, data acquisition, and/or data analysis and interpretation, 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.

We suggest the following or a similar format (please use initials to refer to each author's contribution): AB carried out the molecular genetic studies, participated in the sequence alignment and drafted the manuscript. JY carried out the immunoassays. MT participated in the sequence alignment. ES participated in the design of the study and performed the statistical analysis. FG conceived of the study, and participated in its design and coordination and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship may be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Authors' Information

You may choose to use this section to include any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader's interpretation of the article, and understand the standpoint of the author(s). This may include details about the authors' qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials. Note this section should not be used to describe any competing interests.

Ackowledgements

You should acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the paper but did not meet the criteria for authorship.

The role of a scientific (medical) writer must be included in the acknowledgements section, including their source(s) of funding.

Authors should obtain "permission to acknowledge" from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

Style and Language

General

Currently, Curēus only accepts manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be either US English or British English. There is no explicit limit on the length of articles submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article.

Typography

Please use the following standards:

  • Double-line spacing.
  • Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks.
  • Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines.
  • Capitalize only the first word and proper nouns in the title (including titles of figures and tables).
  • All pages should be numbered.
  • Use the Curēus reference format.
  • Footnotes to text may not be used.
  • Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full.
  • Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF.
  • Placement of section/subsection headings: e.g., centered for primary sections, left alignment for subsections.

Units

SI Units should be used throughout (liter and molar are permitted, however).

Copyright

All published papers are to be the original work of the authors, which has not been previously published. It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that previously copyrighted and unauthorized materials are not uploaded onto Curēus' website. In the event that a previously copyrighted article is presented as original work within this journal, and Curēus receives a DMCA-compliant takedown request from the valid copyright holder, the paper in question will promptly be taken down from this website and a notification of the removal of the paper will be posted on the site.

  • * Previously published material may be submitted only to the Curēus Library

Evidence of plagiarism, falsification of data, or other scientific misconduct associated with a published paper will, at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief, result in removal of the paper from the website and the printing of a retraction, as consistent with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.icmje.org).

The copyright of each published article within Curēus rests with the authors. However, an irrevocable right to display a published paper within the Curēus website is assigned to Curēus Inc.

Legal-ese

The statements and opinions contained within the published papers of Curēus are solely those of the authors, and not the journal itself. The appearance of advertisements in Curēus is neither an endorsement of efficacy nor warranty of safety of the product in question. Curēus disclaims any responsibility for injury or lost property stemming from the ideas or products referenced in the articles or advertisements contained within this journal.

The Curēus peer review process

The Curēus peer review process is designed to help authors create and publish the best scholarly paper possible. Reviews take place at two levels:

When you submit a paper, we ask you to invite reviewers (ideally 3-5) who have expertise relevant to your paper. These reviewers can be colleagues, advisors or professors.

In parallel, Curēus Editors will review each submitted paper and invite additional reviewers, and Curēus will use the keywords associated with a manuscript to solicit reviews from a much larger group of experts.

The pre-publication review process may last up to four weeks, during which time you have the opportunity to revise your manuscript based upon the reviewers’ comments. In some cases the process is as fast as 72 hours, mostly depending on the availability of reviewers. Once the review process has concluded, and you have approved publication of the edited article, it is published and made available on Curēus.

You will be invited to rate the reviewers of your paper. This process is unique to Curēus and enables us to build a stronger reviewer community and will help us highlight and build value for reviewers contributing their time and energy to the community.

Editorial Policies

As a peer-reviewed medical journal, the following editorial policies apply:

  • Any manuscript submitted to Curēus must not already have been published in or be under consideration by another journal. Exceptions will be made for peer-reviewed scholarly papers that represent translations of articles originally published in another language. In this case, the consent of the journal in which the article was originally published must be obtained and the fact that the article has already been published must be made clear on submission and stated in the abstract.
  • Manuscripts that are derived from papers presented at conferences are eligible for publication unless they have been published as part of the conference proceedings in a peer reviewed journal. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.
  • Submission of a manuscript to Curēus implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Generic drug names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses in the methods section.
  • Curēus requires all authors to declare competing financial or other interests that have the potential to jeopardize the objectivity of their work.
  • Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.
  • Submission of a manuscript to Curēus implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article.
  • Articles containing plagiarized or offensive materials, or shown to have no redeeming scientific merit will be rejected at the sole discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.