Submission guidelines

Editorial Policies

The "Journal of Artificial Organs" publishes original articles, review papers, minireviews, brief communications, case reports, technical forum, letters to the Editor, editorials, and selected conference papers. All papers will be evaluated by at least two independent referees. Manuscripts are evaluated in terms of their originality, statistical reliability of all data, and applicability to the aim of the journal as a whole. In selecting papers for publication, the editors give preference to those submissions that are concise and comprehensible.

Legal Requirements

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Manuscript Submission via Editorial Manager

Authors should submit their manuscripts to “Journal of Artificial Organs” online. Please log in directly at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/jao and upload your manuscript following the instructions given on the screen. Please use the Help option to see the most recently updated system requirements.

Editorial Manager

Conflict of Interest

Authors must indicate whether or not they have a financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research. This note should be added in a separate section before the reference list as “Conflict of interest”. If no conflict exists, authors should state: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

In addition, the manuscript must be accompanied by the “Certification / Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form”. To download this form, please follow the hyperlink on the right.

Certification / Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form (Download pdf, 101 kB)

Articles

• Original articles: Presentations of important new research results and technical innovations in the area of artificial organs. The text of original articles should be divided into the following sections: introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. The length of the manuscript should be limited to eight printed pages of approx. 800 words per print page including illustrations, tables, and references (1 Figure / Table equates to 400 words).
• Review articles: Critical presentations of broad topics of potential interest to those active in the area of use and development of artificial organs.
• Minireviews: Timely, concise, sharply focused reports on current topics or interests in the area of artificial organs. Manuscripts should not exceed three printed pages.
• Brief communications: Brief presentation of new research findings and technical innovations. The text should be divided into introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. The manuscript should not exceed four printed pages with no more than two figures (or tables).
• Case reports: Careful, complete discussions of patients and clinical events which may serve to enlighten or advance the understanding of the development, testing, or clinical use of artificial organs. The size of the manuscript should be limited to four printed pages, with no more than five figures (or tables).
• Technical Forum: A forum for presenting techniques and operations or groundbreaking　studies in the area of artificial organs. Brief and informal presentation with no more than one figure and five references within three printed pages. No abstract is required.
• Letters to the Editor: Concise, thoughtful responses to previous articles or editorials in the pages of the Journal of Artificial Organs.
• Editorials: Comments by organizations or individuals on topics relevant to the readership, either by members of the Editorial Board or by invited contributors.

• Manuscripts should include the number of words and pages calculated using the above estimation.

• Manuscripts that exceed the maximum number of pages may be returned to the authors without peer-review.

Manuscript Preparation

Save your file in doc format. Do not submit docx files.

The abstract, text, references, tables, and figure legends must be typed double-space with wide margins. Names of up to three preferred referees, if any, should be indicated. Incomplete or improperly prepared manuscripts will be returned to the authors without review. A separate title page should be provided. The abstract, text, acknowledgments, references, tables, legends, and figures should begin on separate sheets and follow in that order. Units of measurement, abbreviations, and symbols should follow the International System of Units (SI). Abbreviations should be defined at first appearance, and their use in the title and abstract should be avoided. Generic names of drugs and chemicals should be used.

When animals are used in the research reported, the authors must state: “Institutional guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals have been observed.”

In studies involving human and/or animal subjects, the authors must include: “All subjects enrolled in this research have given their informed consent, which has been approved by my institutional committee on human and/or animal research, and this protocol has been found acceptable by them.” The registration number provided by the committee and above description should be included in the methods section as “Ethical approval”. If the study does not involve human and/or animal subjects, this should also be specified.

• Title page: Titles should be brief, specific, and informative. Include the full names of all authors; Academic affiliation; Address to which proofs are to be sent; including a fax number, telephone number, and e-mail address; and 3-5 key words or phrases for indexing. The corresponding author should be available to be contacted throughout the entire review and production process. A second corresponding author should also be named in case there is any difficulty contacting the designated corresponding author. In addition, state the field of your research by choosing the most appropriate term from the following list: Artificial Heart (basic); Artificial Heart (clinical); Cardiopulmonary Bypass; Artificial Lung / ECMO; Blood Vessel Prosthesis; Pacemaker; Artificial Valve; Biomaterials; Tissue Engineering / Regenerative Medicine; Artificial Kidney / Dialysis; Apheresis; Artificial Liver, Pancreas; Artificial Skin, Muscle, Bone / Joint, Neuron; or Others.
• Abstract: A concise description (not more than 250 words) of the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions is required.
• Equations: Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.

  Note: If you use Word 2007, do not create the equations with the default equation editor but use the Microsoft equation editor or MathType instead.

• Footnotes: Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables. Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols. Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.
• Acknowledgments: Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

References

Citation: Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets.

Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].

3. This effect has been widely studied [1–3, 7].

Reference List:

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.

The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.

• Journal article

Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci 1999;36:234–5.

• Article by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med 2000; doi:10.1007/s001090000086

• Book

Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

• Book chapter

Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. pp. 251–306.

• Online document

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see http://www.issn.org/services/online-services/access-to-the-ltwa/

ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.

• For each table, please supply a table title. The table title should explain clearly and concisely the components of the table.

• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table title.

• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Figures

Electronic Figure Submission:

• Supply all figures electronically.

• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.

• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MS Office files are also acceptable.

• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

• Name your figure files with “Fig” and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line art:

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.

• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.

• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.

• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone art:

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.

• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.

• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination art:

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.

• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color art:

• Color art is free of charge for online and print publication.

• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure lettering:

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).

• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).

• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.

• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.

• Do not include titles or captions into your illustrations.

Figure numbering:

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

• Figures should always be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order.

• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.). If illustrations are supplied with uppercase labeling, lowercase letters will still be used in the figure legends and citations.

• If an appendix appears in your article/chapter and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures, “A1, A2, A3, etc.” Figures in online appendices (Electronic Supplementary Material) should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure captions:

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.

• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.

• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.

• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.

• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure placement and size:

• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.

• Figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm wide and not higher than 234 mm.

• The publisher reserves the right to reduce or enlarge figures.

Permissions: If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Electronic supplementary material

Electronic supplementary material will be published in the online version only. It may consist of

• Information that cannot be printed: animations, video clips, sound recordings

• Information that is more convenient in electronic form: sequences, spectral data, etc.

• Large original data, e.g. additional tables, illustrations, etc.

Submission:

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.

• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.

Audio, Video, and Animations:

• Always use MPEG-1 (.mpg) format.

Text and Presentations:

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.

• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets:

• Spreadsheets should be converted to PDF if no interaction with the data is intended.

• If the readers should be encouraged to make their own calculations, spreadsheets should be submitted as .xls files (MS Excel).

Specialized Formats:

• Specialized formats such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting Multiple Files:

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

Numbering:

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables (e.g., “. . . as shown in Animation 3”).

• Name your files accordingly, e.g., Animation 3.mpg.

Captions:

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files:

• Electronic supplementary material will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. (Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’).
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (i.e. ‘salami-slicing/publishing’).
• Concurrent or secondary publication is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. Examples include: translations or a manuscript that is intended for a different group of readers.
• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).
• Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the claims made. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.
• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person.
• Research that may be misapplied to pose a threat to public health or national security should be clearly identified in the manuscript (e.g. dual use of research). Examples include creation of harmful consequences of biological agents or toxins, disruption of immunity of vaccines, unusual hazards in the use of chemicals, weaponization of research/technology (amongst others).
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

*All of the above are guidelines and authors need to make sure to respect third parties rights such as copyright and/or moral rights.

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:

  - an erratum/correction may be placed with the article

  - an expression of concern may be placed with the article

  - or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

• The author’s institution may be informed
• A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

Fundamental errors

Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article. The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.

Suggesting / excluding reviewers

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.

Authorship principles

These guidelines describe authorship principles and good authorship practices to which prospective authors should adhere to.

Authorship clarified

The Journal and Publisher assume all authors agreed with the content and that all gave explicit consent to submit and that they obtained consent from the responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.

The Publisher does not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship. It is recommended that authors adhere to the guidelines for authorship that are applicable in their specific research field. In absence of specific guidelines it is recommended to adhere to the following guidelines*:

All authors whose names appear on the submission

1) made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work;

2) drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content;

3) approved the version to be published; and

4) agree 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.

* Based on/adapted from:

ICMJE, Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors,

Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication, McNutt at all, PNAS February 27, 2018

Disclosures and declarations

All authors are requested to include information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee for research involving humans and/or animals, informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals (as appropriate).

The decision whether such information should be included is not only dependent on the scope of the journal, but also the scope of the article. Work submitted for publication may have implications for public health or general welfare and in those cases it is the responsibility of all authors to include the appropriate disclosures and declarations.

Data transparency

All authors are requested to make sure that all data and materials as well as software application or custom code support their published claims and comply with field standards. Please note that journals may have individual policies on (sharing) research data in concordance with disciplinary norms and expectations.

Role of the Corresponding Author

One author is assigned as Corresponding Author and acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately addressed.

The Corresponding Author is responsible for the following requirements:

• ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the names and order of authors;
• managing all communication between the Journal and all co-authors, before and after publication;*
• providing transparency on re-use of material and mention any unpublished material (for example manuscripts in press) included in the manuscript in a cover letter to the Editor;
• making sure disclosures, declarations and transparency on data statements from all authors are included in the manuscript as appropriate (see above).

* The requirement of managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors during submission and proofing may be delegated to a Contact or Submitting Author. In this case please make sure the Corresponding Author is clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Author contributions

In absence of specific instructions and in research fields where it is possible to describe discrete efforts, the Publisher recommends authors to include contribution statements in the work that specifies the contribution of every author in order to promote transparency. These contributions should be listed at the separate title page.

Examples of such statement(s) are shown below:

• Free text:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Example: CRediT taxonomy:

• Conceptualization: [full name], …; Methodology: [full name], …; Formal analysis and investigation: [full name], …; Writing - original draft preparation: [full name, …]; Writing - review and editing: [full name], …; Funding acquisition: [full name], …; Resources: [full name], …; Supervision: [full name],….

For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

For articles that are based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis, it is recommended that the student is usually listed as principal author:

A Graduate Student’s Guide to Determining Authorship Credit and Authorship Order, APA Science Student Council 2006

Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

Changes to authorship

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Please note that author names will be published exactly as they appear on the accepted submission!

Please make sure that the names of all authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage are generally not permitted, but in some cases it may be warranted. Reasons for these changes in authorship should be explained. Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. Please note that journals may have individual policies on adding and/or deleting authors during revision stage.

Author identification

Authors are recommended to use their ORCID ID when submitting an article for consideration or acquire an ORCID ID via the submission process.

Deceased or incapacitated authors

For cases in which a co-author dies or is incapacitated during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative.

Authorship issues or disputes

In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, the Journal will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

Confidentiality

Authors should treat all communication with the Journal as confidential which includes correspondence with direct representatives from the Journal such as Editors-in-Chief and/or Handling Editors and reviewers’ reports unless explicit consent has been received to share information.

Color in print

Online and print publication of color illustrations is free of charge.

Proof reading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Online First

The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.

To find out more about publishing your work Open Access in Journal of Artificial Organs, including information on fees, funding and licenses, visit our Open access publishing page.