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The Egyptian Journal of Medical Education
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The Egyptian Journal of Medical Education

Instructions for Authors of EJME

    For general information about the structure and content of a biomedical manuscript, authors should become familiar with the  ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts  before reading the specific instructions for EJME authors below.

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    The Egyptian Journal of Medical Education (EJME) is an innovative, online, peer-reviewed medical journal that aims to publish articles relevant for medical education professionals, educational systems developers, and users alike. Instructions for authors are subject to frequent revision. Please look them over carefully before submitting your manuscript.

    Manuscripts are considered with the understanding that they have not been published previously in print or electronic format and are not under consideration by another print or electronic publication. A complete report following a presentation at a meeting or the publication of preliminary findings elsewhere (eg, in an abstract) will be considered. Material that has been published on the Internet can also be considered, but any previous or simultaneous publication on the Internet must be disclosed in the cover letter. Include copies of potentially duplicative material that has been previously published or is currently being considered elsewhere, and provide links to duplicative material on the Internet. Point out possible overlaps with previously published or simultaneously submitted articles in your cover letter. Note that "duplicate publication or the submission of duplicate material is not necessarily unethical, but failure to disclose the existence of duplicate articles, manuscripts, or other material is unethical and may represent a violation of copyright material. A content overlap of just 10% may be considered duplicative.

 

Types of Papers That May Be Submitted

We accept the following (see details):

  • original papers .

  • short papers (original article < 1500 words)

  • viewpoints (opinion and discussion papers) 

  • consensus papers

  • reviews

  • tutorials

  • case reports

  • policy papers, proposals

  • commentaries

  • book/software reviews

  • news articles

Please indicate the intended type of paper on your cover page.

    We have no rigorous space restrictions for any of these papers, except for the short paper. However, we urge authors to be concise. A typical paper contains between 3000 and 6000 words.

In addition, all papers must contain the following sections: Abstract (see abstract format below), Keywords, Main article body (see below for original articles), Acknowledgements, Conflicts of Interest, References.

 

Acknowledgements, Conflicts of Interest

    A description of sources of funding, financial disclosure, and the role of sponsors must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. This description should include the involvement, if any, in review and approval of the manuscript for publication and the role of sponsors.

In addition, authors must disclose in a Conflicts of Interest section if they have personal financial interests related to the subject matters discussed in the manuscript. Editors, reviewers, and readers should be made aware of such conflicts of interests; thus, these facts must be disclosed (details for conflict of interest).

 

Format for Original Papers

    Papers should be written in accordance with the American Medical Association Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 9th ed. Baltimore, Md: Williams & Wilkins.

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   The following format ("IMRAD Format", Introduction, Methods, Research and Discussion) must be used for the paper:

  • Abstract (not exceeding 450 words for structured abstracts, see abstract format below)

  • Keywords - see Keywords

  • Introduction (eg, theory, hypotheses, prior work)

  • Methods (eg with the subheadings "Statistical Analysis", etc.)

  • Results (eg, user statistics, evaluation outcomes). If your study consists of different stages/parts, subheadings in this section should mirror subheadings in the methods section to describe these parts.

  • Discussion (eg, with the subheadings "Principal Results", "Limitations", "Comparison with Prior Work", "Conclusions")

  • Acknowledgements

  • Conflicts of Interest

  • [optional] Multimedia Appendix of supplementary files (eg, a PowerPoint presentation of a conference talk about the study, additional screenshots of a website, mpeg/Quicktime video or audio files, or Excel, Access, SAS, or SPSS files containing original data) - see Multimedia Appendix

  • References - see References

  • Abbreviations - see Abbreviations

    Please use subheadings within the main "Introduction," "Methods," "Results," and "Discussion" sections. For example, if you describe three different methods, use three subheadings within the "Methods" section. Also, use matching subheadings in the "Results" section if you report the results from each of the described methods.

    Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), Meta-analyses and systematic reviews are highly welcome.

 

Abstract Format

    The abstract for an original paper, systematic review, or consensus paper must not exceed 450 words and must be structured, using the following sections:

  • Background

  • Objective

  • Methods

  • Results (make sure to include relevant statistics here, such as sample sizes, response rates, P-values or Confidence Intervals. Do not just say "there were differences between the groups")

  • Conclusions

Proposals, comments, tutorials, reviews, and other types of papers may contain an unstructured abstract (max. 500 words).

 

Keywords

    Below the abstract, authors should provide 3 to 10 keywords or short phrases that will assist indexers in cross-indexing the article and that may be published with the abstract. Terms from the medical subject headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus should be used
(see  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).

 

References

  • Include a reference list (numbered 1., 2., 3. etc.) at the end of the paper. Do not use the footnote or endnote tool of your word processor to generate the reference list. Articles which contain footnotes as references will be returned without peer review.

  • Cite only published or accepted ("in print") work as reference. Submitted papers (not yet accepted for publication, documents not widely available (personal emails, letters), or oral communications (unless they are published as abstract) should not be cited as reference, but instead must be cited in the main body of text as "personal communication by NAME, DATE". Obtain the permission of the communicator to quote his communication.

  • Remove OLE Elements from reference management software (e.g. Endnote, Reference Manager)

  • Make sure that your references are correct by using the PubMed Citation Matcher.

  • We would greatly appreciate if you could append a [Medline] link after each reference, linking to the PubMed abstract of the article you are citing. This speeds up our copyediting /typesetting process and prevents citation errors.

  • Number references in the order they appear in the text; do not alphabetize.

  • Identify references within the body of the paper with Arabic numerals enclosed in square brackets (eg, [1,2]). Do not use superscripts.

  • When there is more than 6 author write 3 then et al. as stated in the example below.

  • References must comply with EJME style (see examples below). 

  • Websites and Web articles (URLs) should be cited as references in the reference section at the end of the manuscript - do not include links to websites in the text. Do not cite uncached "live" webpages and websites in the article or reference section. Provide the original URL, and an access date, which should be the date you cached the web reference.

  • Use Medline abbreviations for journal titles (see PubMed Journal Browser).

 

Examples:

A- Journal Articles:

Westberg EE, Miller RA. The basis for using the Internet to support the information needs of primary care. J Am Med Inform Assoc 1999 Jan-Feb;6(1):6-25. [Medline]

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. JAMA 1997;277:927-934. [Medline]

 

B-Books:

Iverson CL, Flanagin A, Fontanarosa PB, et al. American Medical Association Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 9th edition. Baltimore, Md: Williams & Wilkins; 1998.

 

C-Conference proceedings:

Kimura J, Shibasaki H, editors. Recent advances in clinical neurophysiology. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of EMG and Clinical Neurophysiology; 1995 Oct 15-19; Kyoto, Japan. Amsterdam: Elsevier; 1996.

 

 

 

D-Chapter in a Book:

Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, editors. Hypertension: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management. 2nd ed. New York: Raven Press; 1995. p. 465-78.

 

E-Journal article in electronic format:

Morse SS. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 1995 Jan-Mar [cited 1996 Jun 5]; 1(1):[24 screens]. URL:  http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/eid.htm

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Web References archived with WebCite ®

    As cited URLs tend to disappear months or years after citing online material, EJME now suggests that (instead of citing "live" web pages and websites in the article) authors use the WebCite ® technology (www.webcitation.org) to archive cited web references first before they cite them. Please go to www.webcitation.org and enter the URL you want to cite. The system will take a "snapshot" of the webpage or online document (e.g. pdf) so that it will remain available for future readers. WebCite will also give you detailed instructions on how to cite the web reference. Electronic journal articles or other material does not have to be archived with WebCite , but all other material which might disappear in the future should be archived first by the citing author.

 

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Abbreviations

    All acronyms/abbreviations (including common ones such as WWW and HTML) must be explained in parenthesis after their first occurrence. If many unfamiliar acronyms/abbreviations are used, please compile them in an "Abbreviations" section at the end of the paper.

 

Multimedia Appendix

    We strongly encourage to append multimedia appendices, for example a Powerpoint file containing additional screenshots or slides from a talk about the study, a Word, RTF, or PDF document showing the original instrument(s) used, a video, or the original data (SAS/SPSS files, Excel files, Access Db files etc.). Do not include copyrighted material unless you obtained written permission from the copyright holder, which should be faxed to the editorial office in case of acceptance together with your Publication Agreement form.

    Multimedia Appendices intended for publication must be numbered and referred to in the manuscript. Provide in-text citations (for example "see Multimedia Appendix 1") as well as a section with the heading "Multimedia Appendix" before the "References" section. Here, list all Multimedia Appendices and include a brief caption line for each Multimedia Appendix describing its contents.

    Multimedia Appendices can be uploaded as "supplementary files" during the submission process. Clearly indicate if these files are for publication or meant for the reviewers'/editors' eyes only (ideally, mark it in/on the electronic document itself if it is not intended for publication).

 

Figures and Tables

    Include all figures and tables in the manuscript at the location where they should appear in the final manuscript.

- Figures and tables should appear in the main manuscript file (rather than being separate files - although you should upload additional hi-res figures under "supplementary files") at the location they should appear in the article (rather than at the end of the manuscript)

- Illustrative figures should also be uploaded as separate (supplementary) high resolution files, i.e. ideally uncompressed formats (eg, in .jpg format), even if the figures are included in your manuscript file. The file names should contain the number of the figure (eg, fig1.jpg, fig2.jpg).

- When preparing tables, please make sure that for each row you create a new table row, rather than writing multiple rows into one cell.

 

    Use portrait format and 10-12 pt fonts for tables. Do not use landscape paper formats for tables or smaller fonts to squeeze more information (more columns) into a table. If you have too many columns and the table becomes too wide so that you would have to use a smaller font, consider breaking the table into multiple tables. We will always typeset tables in normal font and in portrait orientation. Tables with too many columns will have very narrow columns and look squeezed.
Footnotes for tables must always be a-z (superscript). Do not use symbols such as * or ** .

   Please always include tables and figures in the manuscript file and attach a separate HD copy, do not submit tables as separate (supplementary) files ONLY .

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Important Notes on Reporting P values

    The actual P value should be expressed (P = .04) rather than expressing a statement of inequality (P < .05), unless P < .001. The P value should be expressed to 2 digits whether or not it is significant. When rounding, 3 digits is acceptable if rounding would change the significance of a value (eg, P = .049 rounded to .05). If P < .01, it should be expressed to 3 digits.

P values less than .001 should be reported as P < .001. Expressing P to more than 3 significant digits does not add useful information since precise P values with extreme results are sensitive to biases or departures from the statistical model.

    The traditional reporting of P values (indicating only that P < 0.05) simply indicated whether the results were "statistically significant" or not. But P values of 0.051 and 0.049 should be interpreted similarly despite the fact that the 0.051 is greater than 0.05 and is therefore not "significant" and that the 0.049 is less than 0.05 and thus is "significant." Reporting actual P values avoids this problem of interpretation. P values should not be listed as not significant (NS) since, for meta-analysis, the actual values are important and not providing exact P values is a form of incomplete reporting.

    Do not use 0 before the decimal point for statistical values P, alpha, and beta because they cannot equal 1. For some statistical values (eg, kappa) even if they cannot ever equal 1, use 0 if they are used infrequently.

P is always italicized and capitalized.

Authors who are not sure how to report their quantitative results should consult the following book:

 How to Report Statistics in Medicine: Annotated Guidelines for Authors, Editors, and Reviewers (Medical Writing and Communication), Thomas A. Lang

 

Novel Paper Components: Original Data, Animations, etc

    As a modern journal covering innovative methods of Medical Education, we want to be innovative in our style and format and take advantage of the possibilities available by publishing online. We do not want, as many online journals do, to reproduce an exact version of a traditional printed journal.

We therefore encourage you to experiment with novel methods of presentation whenever you feel it is appropriate and helps the reader, for example,

  • animated gifs

  • other media (movies)

 

Online Submission

Web-Based Manuscript Submission

  • There are NO FEES for submission of your papers, the process is totally FREE OF CHARGE.

  • Submissions are accepted through the EJME automated processing system or email.

  • You should attach your manuscript as a .doc .docx (Microsoft Office Word) file, as well as the original supplementary files such as figures in good .jpg (preferably HD) resolution.

  • Upon submission, you will receive an email acknowledging receipt of your paper. If you do not receive a response within 24 hours, please verify that the paper has been submitted through EJME email.

 

Title Page

    The first page of your manuscript should be a title page containing the type of paper; the title; all authors' names, degrees, and affiliations; and the corresponding author's contact address (including phone and fax numbers) and email address.

 

Acceptable Languages

All manuscripts MUST be in English.

    Non-English speakers are advised to seek help from professional copyeditor before submission. Although accepted by EJME, manuscripts are also edited for language, a poorly written manuscript has lower chances to be accepted, and multiple typos and grammatical errors often reflect poorly on the author.

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Final Checklist

    Before you submit your manuscript to EJME, make sure that you avoid the following common formatting / editorial problems:

A. all in-text references must be numbers in square brackets like this [1]. Do not use the author-year system. Do not use round brackets. Do not use superscript.
B. EJME does not use footnotes or endnotes (except for tables). If you have footnotes, please delete them or incorporate them into the text
C. URLs must be cited as references and preffered to be be archived using WebCite (www.webcitation.org)
D. in addition to the WebCite URL, please also mention the original URL in the references
E. please list only one corresponding author with full address, including phone, fax, and email address
F. Major headings for ALL original papers must be Introduction - Methods - Results - Discussion
G. Please add subheadings under Introduction/Methods/Results/Discussion
H. You must have more than one subheadings in each section, otherwise please remove the subheading
I. Your subheadings in the methods section should usually mirror the subheadings in the results section (i.e. for each result type there must be an explanation in the methods on how these results were obtained)
J. please check our Instructions for Authors on how P-values should be reported
K. If you want to include a multimedia appendix, please insert a reference ("Multimedia Appendix 1: [caption]") just before the Acknowledgements section
L. End your introduction with a clear statement of what the aim of this paper or study is, or what the hypotheses are.
M. Start your discussion with a short summary of what the main finding(s) of this study was/were
N. Although there is no formal space limit, avoid overly long manuscripts. In particular, the introduction should be succinct
O. For original papers, the abstract must be structured (Background-Objectives-Methods-Results-Conclusions)
P. Please include more quantitative results in the abstract (sample size, P-values, odds ratios with confidence-intervals etc.)
Q. Please clean up your references, following our instructions for authors. Do not use "and" between author names. For each author, provide last name and initial - in that order - without punctuation.

G). Do not use quotation marks for the titles. If you can, provide Medline-links or PMIDs in the format PMID:1234567
R. For all results for which you provide a relative result (percentage), you should also provide the absolute number, e.g. "132 out of 264 participants (50%) ". If n is less than 100, do not use decimal points in your percentages. Otherwise, do not use more than one decimal place.
S. Do not number your headings
T. Figures and tables should appear in the main manuscript file (rather than being separate files - although you should upload additional hi-res figures under "supplementary files") at the location they should appear in the article (rather than at the end of the manuscript)
U. Cite an appropriate number (typically 20-40) of scholarly references.

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Cover Letter (or title page)

    The online submission process allows you to enter a comment for the editor in the submission form or  into the cover letter. Here you may briefly explain why you think your article is innovative and important.

 

Peer Reviewer Nominations

    During the submission process, authors may be asked to nominate 2 to 4 external referees to review their manuscript (please provide at least their full name and email address). The best reviewers are authors of publications on which your research builds and which you cite. Peer reviewers must have a publishing track in the area the manuscript deals with, however, avoid nominating overly senior (and busy) individuals.

When suggesting peer reviewers, conflicts of interests should be avoided, that is, suggested referees should not:

  • be from the same department or division as one of the authors (the same university should also be avoided);

  • have been a research supervisor or graduate student of one of the authors within the past six years;

  • have collaborated with one of the authors within the past six years or have plans to collaborate in the immediate future;

  • be employees of non-academic organizations with which one of the authors has collaborated within the past six years; or

  • be in any other kind of potential conflict of interest situation (eg, personal, financial) (see details for conflict of interest).

We ask applicants not to contact suggested referees in advance. The editor reserves the right to send the manuscript to other referees.

You may request, in the cover letter, that some researchers not be involved in the review of your paper.

 

Editorial Processes

    When EJME receives a manuscript, the Editor-in Chief or Assistant Editor will first decide whether the manuscript meets the formal criteria specified in the Instructions for Authors and whether it fits within the scope of the journal. When in doubt and before rejecting a manuscript on the basis of initial review, the editor will consult other members of the Editorial Board. The Editor-in Chief may assign a section editor to the manuscript, who will guide the manuscript through the peer-review process.

    Manuscripts are then sent to an external experts for peer review. The number of peer-reviewers depends on the complexity of the manuscript, but we typically approach 3 peer-reviewers, expecting 1-2 peer-reviews back before we make a decision. Authors may be asked to suggest 2 peer reviewers during the submission process, but it is at the discretion of the editor whether or not these reviewers will be approached.

    EJME reviewers will be anonymous. Names of reviewers will NOT be stated with the article when it is published. Authors and reviewers should not directly contact each other to enter into disputes on manuscripts or reviews.

    After peer review, the editor will contact the author. If the author is invited to submit a revised version, the revised version has to be submitted by the author within 1 week. Otherwise, the manuscript will be removed from the manuscript submission queue and will be considered rejected.  

 

Speed of Peer Review

    Medical Education research is a fast-moving field, and EJME acknowledge the need of our authors to communicate their findings rapidly. We therefore aim to be extremely fast (but still thorough and rigorous) in our peer-review process. Please note that actual times to review and edit papers vary and primarily depend on the quality of the paper upon first submission.

    Although the total process may be as short as 2 weeks, we can not provide any guarantees on the speed of peer review or publication.

 

Criteria for Selection of Manuscripts

    Manuscripts should meet the following criteria: the study conducted is ethical ; the material is original; the writing is clear; the study methods are appropriate; the data are valid; the conclusions are reasonable and supported by the data; the information is important; and the topic is interesting to our readership.

 

Ethical Issues

    Medical education research raises novel questions of ethics and human dignity. If necessary, informed consent, protection of privacy, and other human rights are further criteria against which the manuscript will be judged. Papers must include a statement that the study was approved by the institutional review board, in accordance with all applicable regulations, and that informed consent was obtained after the nature and possible consequences of the study were explained.

EJME also encourages articles devoted to the ethics of medical education research. We will ask authors to disclose any competing interests in relation to their work.

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Plagiarism

 

    EJME is dedicated to the fight against plagiarism, the stealing of paragraphs and ideas from articles and websites without appropriate references. We are one of the the leading Egyptian scholarly journals which check submitted manuscripts against the Web, using one of the most sophisticated plagiarism detection software systems, to see whether significant portions of submissions have been taken from websites without appropriate credit.

    It is perfectly acceptable to take direct quotes from websites, but the reference (URL) must be given and the citation must be included in quotation marks. If portions of the manuscript have already been published by the author on other websites, this does not necessarily exclude the material from publication in EJME; however, the EJME Editorial Board does need to know which portions of the manuscript have been previously published and where. The author should include a note in the cover letter indicating which portions have been published elsewhere.

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Open Access Model

"Open access" means that the content of EJME is freely available. The definition, according to the Budapest Open Access Initiative, is as follows:

    "By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." (Budapest Open Access Initiative - Definition of Open Access)

    EJME is one of the generation of open access medical journals, supporting free and unrestricted access to research information on the Web. EJME operates in line with the Budapest Open Access Initiative. The following excerpt from the Budapest Open Access Initiative explain the philosophy and business model behind this approach:

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Open Publication License, Authorship Responsibility, Declaration of Competing Interests

EJME papers are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

    The license grants others permission to use the content in whole or in part, and insures that the original authors and publisher / publication venue (the Egyptian Journal of Medical Education) will be properly credited/cited when content is used. It grants others permission to redistribute the content. Under this license, EJME becomes the original publisher of the work, but the article may be redistributed by anyone (eg, on the Web, in books as book chapters, or on a CD-ROM) However, authors should not publish the same article again in the academic body of literature, as this constitutes duplicate publication and scientific misconduct. This ensures the widest possible distribution of research for the authors.

Can I republish, print, distribute, or resell EJME content?
Yes, however, redistributors of EJME content are required to adhere to the following:

  1. Acknowledge the original author and publisher/journal, that is, the original source must be exactly cited as indicated at the bottom of each published article, including the URL of the original article on the EJME website.

  2. It must be clear that the material published has been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

If these two conditions are met (usually by including the entire "please cite as" and copyright statement which is at the end of each article), no written permission is required from the copyright holder to redistribute or reprint the material. 

While not required, it is considered good practice to inform the editor, author, and publisher if articles are redistributed. If books or CD-ROMs are produced, the author and publisher should receive a free copy. We do not recommend mirroring the entire EJME site, unless you can ensure that the content (including instructions for authors, editorial board, etc) is updated automatically. We want to avoid having multiple outdated copies of the same article or Web page on the Internet.

 

Publication agreement

    If the paper is accepted, authors must sign and return by e-mail a publication agreement, an authorship responsibility form, and a declaration of competing interests form before the manuscript can be published. A preview of these forms is available here.

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