Authors' Guidelines - Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine

Authors’ Guidelines

Manuscript Submission

Manuscripts for Infect Dis Trop Med have to be submitted via Publishing Manager. The correspondence for each article must be carried on only by the corresponding author. He/She/Them must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list – please read the full details under “Authorship and Copyright” and that they have all approved the submitted version of the manuscript. The corresponding author can see the manuscript details in the submission system, if He/She/Them register and log in using the e-mail address provided during the manuscript submission.

All information entered during the submission process related to the manuscript should be identical to the final submitted version of the manuscript – please read the full details under “Presentation of Manuscripts”. Papers are accepted on the understanding that they have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere.

Authors must submit manuscripts that are not published, in press, or submitted to other scientific journals, books or other venues that could be considered formal publication (including preprints).

The submission process requires a full declaration of personal interests and funding interests from all Authors; these details should also be included in the manuscript (click here for detailed information).

A cover letter must also be included with each manuscript submission. It should mention the following information, as stated by the ICMJE guidelines:

The Journal makes a plagiarism check using a certificate program.

Revised Submission

Authors must resubmit the revised version of their article as a unique Word document (.doc, .docx). Authors must revise their manuscript using a word processing program and mark the changes within the document by using red text or highlighting the revised text in yellow. Authors must not use the “Track Changes” option in Microsoft Office documents to highlight the changes made in the revised version of their manuscript. Authors are also required to add continuous line numbering throughout the document to facilitate the review process.

The revised article must always be accompanied by a Word document containing the point-by-point response to reviewers’ comments.

Authors must resubmit the revised version of their article within 4 months after receiving the complete report from our reviewers. Articles that are not resubmitted within 4 months after the receipt of the complete reviewer reports will be withdrawn. However, authors can contact the Editorial Office at submission.idtm@verduci.it if they need to request a deadline extension for the resubmission of the revised manuscript.

Authorship and Copyright

Authors must fulfill the following criteria:

He/She/Them must have made a substantial contribution to research design, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data;
He/She/Them must have drafted the paper or revised it critically;
He/She/Them must have given approval of the submitted and final versions.

Infect Dis Trop Med Authors will be required to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (click to download PDF) for all papers accepted for publication. The signature of the CTA is a condition of publication. After submission, Authors cannot submit their manuscripts to other journals. After acceptance, the rights to the manuscripts are owned by the Publisher. The original completed Copyright Transfer Agreement must be signed by each author and sent by e-mail (submission.idtm@verduci.it) or uploaded to the Publishing Manager at submission. The Editors retain the usual right to modify the style and length of a contribution (major changes being agreed with the Corresponding Author) and to decide the time of publication.

Third-party Permission

Authors who wish to use or reproduce any third-party material, such as figures or tables, must obtain permission from the copyright holder (usually the original publisher). Once obtained, documents certifying the permission to use third-party content should be sent to submission.idtm@verduci.it for archiving purposes.

A statement indicating that permission has been obtained must be included in the relevant legend/footnote.

Preprint Policy

Please note that Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine does not accept submissions of manuscripts that have previously been made available online as a preprint on a preprint server or on the Authors’ own website.

Presentation of Manuscripts

The following parts should appear in all manuscript types and are mandatory for publication:

TITLE PAGE: The title page must contain the Authors’ names, appointments, and affiliations, along with the full contact details of the Corresponding Authors, including their current e-mail addresses. A full and a short-running title should be given, plus a small number of keywords (5-10) for indexing purposes. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article.
COVER LETTER: The cover letter briefly outlines the article’s relevance to the journal’s audience and how the article advances understanding of the field. It must include contact information [affiliation, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number] for all Authors. Authors should also indicate a Corresponding Author to whom correspondence will be sent if the manuscript is accepted for publication. In the Letter, the Authors must confirm that the manuscript has been submitted solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere (including preprint servers). They have to confirm that all the research meets the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the study country. The cover letter must be signed by the Corresponding Author on behalf of all the other Authors.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS: Abbreviations should be defined the first time they appear in the abstract, the main text, and the first figure or table.
ABSTRACT: The abstract should count a maximum of about 300 words. It should be organized into sections using the following headings: BACKGROUND (for case reports) or OBJECTIVE; PATIENTS AND METHODS or MATERIALS AND METHODS or SUBJECTS AND METHODS or CASE REPORT/PRESENTATION; RESULTS; CONCLUSIONS. ^*The Abstract is not mandatory for Letters to the Editor and Editorials. Please see full details under “Article Types”.

The paper should then proceed conventionally with the following sections:

Introduction (or Background)
Materials and Methods (or Patients and Methods or Subjects and Methods)
Results
Conclusions
References

REFERENCES: References should be numbered in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text and should be located in superscript and not in parenthesis. References must follow numerical order and be identified in the text, tables, and legends by Arabic numbers in superscript.Authors should observe the following guidelines.

Do not attempt to make your output approximate or match the typeset page.
Be consistent in style (i.e., units, abbreviations).
End paragraphs in a uniform manner and in a different manner from line endings within paragraphs. A frequently used paragraph ending is simply two carriage returns.
Use double spacing in your document. Do not add extra line spacing (except as a normal paragraph ending indication) above or below titles, subheads, or between paragraphs.
Avoid using multiple spaces (horizontal) in your electronic manuscript. End sentences with only one space. Never use multiple spaces for the horizontal positioning of text.
Table and figure captions should be prepared in separate files and referenced within the text by the authors.
Additional tables or figures and/or extra methodological detail can be included in a separate Supplementary Appendix.

• DECLARATIONS

Graphical abstract: Even though a graphical abstract is optional, its use is encouraged as it draws more attention to the article. The graphical abstract aims to summarize the article’s contents in a pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a broad readership. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system (Publishing Manager). Authors should provide an image with a minimum of 531×1328 pixels (h×w). The image should be readable at a size of 5×13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file formats include: .TIFF, .PMG, .JPG.

Main Text

The main text of the articles should be organized into the above-mentioned sections: Introduction (or Background for case reports), Materials and Methods (or Patients/Subjects and Methods), Results, Discussion, Conclusions, and References.

This structure does not apply to Editorials, Letters to the Editors, or Brief Commentaries. For more information check Article types

For articles that are not based on original data (i.e., narrative reviews), the sections Materials and Methods (or Patients/Subjects and Methods) and Results can be replaced with other subheadings at the authors’ discretion.

Commentaries, Editorials, and Letters to the Editor do not require a structured organization of the main text. However, the use of the Introduction section and additional subheadings is encouraged for Commentaries and for Editorials.

Each section of the text should respect the following guidelines:

Introduction: The authors in the introduction session should place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important in comparison with published articles. They should define the aim of the work and clearly explain the specific hypothesis being tested. It is fundamental to specify if the observation could be based on previous research by others or your own pilot study and to include a summary of findings from previous, relevant studies.
Materials/Patients/Subjects and Methods: The Methods section should prioritize clarity in explaining the rationale and approach for conducting the study in a specific way. New experimental procedures and protocols should be described in detail, while well-established methods can be briefly described but appropriately cited. The materials and analysis should provide robust information to allow replication of the study. Study design should be described in detail, and descriptions of reagents and equipment (if present) should facilitate replication. Statistical methods and software programs must be described in detail within a specific paragraph (Statistical Analysis) to allow a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the results. The Methods section should incorporate a declaration confirming the approval of the research by a local, regional, or national review entity (such as an ethics committee or institutional review board) and adherence to the Helsinki Declaration. Authors employing AI technology should sufficiently detail its utilization in the methods section to facilitate replication of the approach, specifying the tool utilized and version.
Participants selection and description
Provide a detailed explanation of how participants, whether healthy individuals, patients, or controls, are selected for observational or experimental purposes. This should include clear criteria for eligibility and exclusion, as well as a description of the source population. The sex of the participants should also be reported.
Animal studies
Research involving animals should adhere to globally recognized standards and to the ARRIVE guidelines for documenting experiments involving live animals. Animal species/strain, sex, source (vendor name, location), age range, weight and any additional data should be indicated. Please note that we encourage the use of both male and female animals. The use of single-sex should be scientifically justified.
Data collection
In the case of DNA/RNA quantification methods, they must be well described in terms of calculation and references adopted to enable researchers’ access to the raw data. The oligonucleotides sequence, as well as the PCR protocols, should be described in detail in the manuscript. DNA, RNA, and protein sequences used in the manuscript should be provided with an accession number. New sequence information must be deposited to the appropriate database (GenBank, EMBL, or DDBJ.) prior to submission of the manuscript. Instruments used must be accompanied by their model’s name, city, state, and country of manufacture in round brackets. The clone’s name and source of monoclonal antibodies should be reported.
Cell lines
The contamination or misidentification of cell lines negatively impacts the validity of research observations. Therefore, authors are required to describe the source of the cell line, as well as the method used for authentication, in the Materials and Methods section.
Statistical methods
Statistical methods must be clearly described for original articles based on animal or human studies. The statistical methods and statistical software program(s), as well as the version used, should be described. Two-tailed significance tests should be used unless explicitly stated. Controls should be described as completely as experimental subjects. Measures of location should be accompanied by measures of variability (e.g., mean and confidence intervals) as well as conventional probability values. Clinical trial reports should include a description of the statistical power of the study.
Results: This section must contain all results obtained during (and, if applicable, after) the study, mentioning all study outcomes and findings based on the supporting data. Tables and Figures must summarize the most important findings. Supplementary materials and/or technical details can be inserted as supplementary files and appendixes.
Discussion: In the discussion section, the authors do not simply restate the results, but they have to explain them widely, interpret the results, anticipate the conclusions, and highlight important aspects and findings of the study. In these sections, references to other literature articles are usually suggested in order to better explain the framework of the study. A final paragraph with limitations of the study (if any) is strongly suggested in order to strengthen the validity of your work.
Conclusions: In this final section, all general outcomes of your study must be mentioned, as well as the need for further studies if such conclusions remain limited. Any suggestions or advice for other authors should be added in order to make your work a valuable contribution to scientific literature.

UNITS AND ABBREVIATIONS

All measurements should be in SI units, with the exception of hemoglobin (g/dL) and blood pressure (mmHg). Original observations recorded in other units should be stated, together with the appropriate conversion factors. Standard abbreviations without punctuation are used. Units, Symbols, and Abbreviations (1988) published by the Royal Society of Medicine, and SI: The International System of Units (1982) from HMSO both provide useful guides. Abbreviations, used sparingly, should follow the first full spelling, in parentheses.

GENETIC NOMENCLATURE

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided. Use Italics for genes.

DRUG NAMES

Generic names should, in general, be used. If an Author desires, brand names may be inserted in parentheses. Drug names are spelled out according to the European Pharmacopoeia, but the American spelling should be used after the first use of a drug name.

STATISTICS

Methods should be referenced. Two-tailed significance tests should be used unless explicitly stated. Controls should be described as completely as experimental subjects. Measures of location should be accompanied by measures of variability (e.g., mean and confidence intervals) as well as conventional probability values. Clinical trial reports should include the power of the study design.

Declarations and Final Statements

Conflict of Interest: All authors must disclose any personal and financial relationships with other people or organizations that could influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential competing interests include consultancies, employment, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications and registrations, and grants or other funding. In this section, authors must disclose any potential conflict of interest. Example of authors’ declaration of personal interests: (i) [Name of individual] has served as a speaker, a consultant and an advisory board member for [names of organizations] and has received research funding from [names of organization]. (ii) [Name of individual] is an employee of [name of organization]. (iii) [Name of individual] owns stocks and shares in [name of organization]. (iv) [Name of individual] owns patent [patent identification and brief description]. If authors do not have conflicts of interest to disclose, they should include the following sentence in this section: “The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose”.
Ethics Approval: An Ethics Committee should have approved human and animal studies but, in questionable matters, the Editors reserve the right to reject papers. For more details, visit the page “Policy, Licensing, and COI”. Example of Ethics Statement: “This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 (as revised in 2013), and the protocol was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF THE INSTITUTE (project or protocol identification number XXX and date of approval).” OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).”
Informed Consent: Informed consent must be obtained for studies involving human participants. A statement that informed consent was obtained from the study participants must also appear in the manuscript as follows: “All subjects provided written informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study.”. Example of Informed Consent declaration: “Written informed consent was provided by the patient (and/or his/her parents) for permission to receive therapy and to publish this case report.”
Acknowledgments: Brief acknowledgments of subjects who have made genuine contributions to the article and who endorse the data and conclusions should be included. In this section, authors must include written permission to use any copyrighted text and/or illustrations. In this section, authors are required to disclose any source of financial support to their work and/or all relevant consultancies within 12 months prior to submission (for more details, visit the page “Policy, Licensing, and COI”).
Funding: In this section, authors must list any funding source and funding interests. For example: “This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers xxxxx, yyyyy]”. Example of declaration of funding interests: (i) This study was funded [in part or in full] by [insert name of funding organization], grant number [insert grant or another identification number]. (ii) The [writing or preparation] of this paper was funded in part by [insert name of funding organization]. (iii) Initial data analyses were undertaken by [name of individuals if not listed as Authors] who are employees of [name company] and received funding from [insert name of funding organization]. (iv) Writing support was provided by [insert name of individual(s)] of [name company] and funded by [insert name of funding organization]. If the work was not supported by any source of funding, authors should use the following sentence “No funding is declared for this article”.
Authors’ contributions: For transparency purposes, we request a short paragraph indicating the individual contribution of each author for articles with more than one author (author names should not be abbreviated). This information includes substantial contributions to the conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the article or making critical revisions related to the relevant intellectual content of the manuscript; supervision; validation and final approval of the version of the article to be published.
ORCID ID: In this section, authors should include their ORCID ID, a unique and persistent author identifier to help distinguish their work from that of other researchers. ORCID ID should be supplied as follows: e.g., Giuseppe Nunnari: 0000-0002-7117-3174.
Data availability statement: Infect Dis Trop Med encourages authors to provide a statement about data availability in their articles containing original data. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the study results can be found, including, if applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Data availability statements can also indicate if data are available on request from the authors and where no data are available, if appropriate. To learn more about the policies concerning the availability of data and materials, please refer to the section “Policy, Licensing, and COI”.
Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one of the following forms):
- The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the repository [NAME], [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].
- The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLICLY AVAILABLE] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
- Data sharing does not apply to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
- The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
- All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and/or its supplementary material].
Artificial Intelligence: At submission, the authors must disclose whether and how they used artificial intelligence or assisted technologies in the production of the study (including figures) in the cover letter as well as in the manuscript in an appropriate statement at the end of the text. Authors are responsible for the material submitted and produced by artificial intelligence and must be able to declare that there is no plagiarism in the manuscript, including figures.

Artificial Intelligence Disclosure

At submission, authors must disclose whether and how they used artificial intelligence (AI) or assisted technologies in the production of the study, including figures, in both the cover letter and in an appropriate statement at the end of the manuscript. This disclosure should detail the specific AI tools and technologies used and the extent of their contribution to the research and manuscript preparation.

Authors bear full responsibility for the content submitted and produced by AI. They must ensure and declare that there is no plagiarism in the manuscript, including figures, and that all AI-generated material complies with ethical and academic standards. This includes verifying the originality and accuracy of the AI-generated content and ensuring proper citation and acknowledgment of sources.

Failure to properly disclose the use of AI tools may lead to the rejection of the manuscript or retraction of the published work if discovered post-publication.

References, Tables, and Figures

REFERENCES

When reporting the reference numbers in the text, you have to follow these rules: “1-2” must be written as “1,2” and so on. You have to put “-“ just in case you have many consecutive numbers. For example: “1,2,3,4,5,6” must be written as “1-6”;

References numbers must follow a chronological order within the text and must be inserted before the punctuation with no space. (YES¹². – NO.¹²)

Complete all the references as follows: you must list all the Authors (NOT et al), year without month of publication, and acronym of the journal. You have to write the international acronyms without any punctuation; you must put a space after the semicolon and colon (NOT 2014;2014:907915, YES 2014; 2014: 907915); moreover, initial and final pages must be entirely reported (NOT 135-46; YES 135-146).

In the references, you must substitute “and” with “,” (comma) before the last author’s name;

INCORRECT: Carvalho J. F. Lack of response of Chikungunya chronic infection with low-dose naltrexone: a case series. Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine 2024;10:e1390.

CORRECT: Carvalho JF. Lack of response of Chikungunya chronic infection with low-dose naltrexone: a case series. Infect Dis Trop Med 2024; 10: e1390.

Web references

The full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any additional information, if known (e.g., author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references should be included in the reference list.

Authors must carefully check the appropriateness of the references before submitting the manuscript.

ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

Figure legends should be included in the main text of the manuscript and not form part of the figures. The Authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible. For the accepted file format, see below:

ACCEPTED FILE FORMATS

Document Files

Graphic Files

• Word

• GIF
• TIF (or TIFF)
• EPS
• PNG
• JPG (or JPEG)
• BMP

• QuickTime
• MPEG
• AVI

The figure resolution/specification for various types of original figures, at their final size, should be as follows: Line art – Minimum 600 dpi, measuring preferably 13×18 cm and no more than 20×25 cm in size. Halftone (i.e., both B/W and Color photographs) – Minimum 300 dpi, measuring preferably 13×18 cm and no more than 20×25 cm in size. Line and tone (line art and halftone combined) – Minimum 600 dpi, measuring preferably 13×18 cm and no more than 20×25 cm in size.

For line figures, the lines should be solid, the text in a standard font and not blurred, and the overall image should be sharp and clear. Avoid using tints if possible; if they are essential to the understanding of the figure, try to make them coarse. As a guide, if the electronic files are viewed at 400% on the computer screen and they look blurred or pixelated in any way then they will NOT be of sufficient quality for printing.

Tables should be self-contained and complete; they must not duplicate the information already contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files (word files), not pasted as images. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for p-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

Figure and table legends must be able to stand alone in the text, and thus, full descriptive legends for all figures and tables should be supplied.

Original Images of Blots and Gels

To uphold the integrity and scientific validity of blotting techniques, i.e., Western blots and the reporting of gel data, authors are advised to upload original, uncropped, and unadjusted images as Supporting Information files when submitting their manuscript initially.

Therefore, it is strongly suggested to include either a single PDF file or a zip folder containing all original images featured in the manuscript figures and, if applicable, supplementary figures. Authors are required to label each original image to correspond with the figures in the main article.

Requirements for Reuse of Published Figures

If an author of a submission is re-using a figure or figures published elsewhere, or that is copyrighted, the author must provide documentation that the previous publisher or copyright holder has given permission for the figure to be re-published. Infect Dis Trop Med editors consider all material in good faith that their journal has full permission to publish every part of the submitted material, including illustrations.

TABLES

Tables and table legends should be contained in a separate Word file. Tables should be self-contained and understandable without reference to the text, and they should not duplicate the information that is already included in the text. Tables must be numbered consecutively in the text in ARABIC numerals (e.g., Table 1) and must be cited in the text.

Tables must be supplied in their original, editable format (preferably Microsoft Word). Tables uploaded as images or illustrations (e.g., tables in .jpg, .tif, or other image formats) are not accepted. All abbreviations included in the tables must be defined in the footnotes. Tables and table footnotes can include superscript references at the author’s discretion.

Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used and *, **, *** should be reserved for p-values. Statistical measures (such as SD or SEM) should be defined in the Table heading.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

Supplementary material should be uploaded to Publishing Manager and supplied as a separate file in both the following formats: .doc/.docx and .pdf. The authors should use the prefix “Supplementary” for each supplementary document submitted (e.g., Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Figure 1). Files larger than 10 MB should be sent directly via email to submission.idtm@verduci.it.

Authors must submit supplementary material together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each supplementary file. If authors wish to make changes to supplementary material at any stage of the process, they should make sure to provide an updated file. Including large datasets in supplementary information is not recommended. The preferred approach is to make the data accessible through repositories.

Research and Publication Ethics

An Ethics Committee should have approved human and animal studies but in questionable matters, the Editors reserve the right to reject papers.

According to the ICMJE recommendations, all investigators should ensure that the planning conduct and reporting of human research are in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki as revised in 2013. All authors should seek approval to conduct research from an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board) and be prepared to provide documentation if requested by editor during the review process. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the local, regional, or national review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. Approval by a responsible review body does not preclude editors from forming their own judgment on whether the conduct of the research was appropriate. All research on humans must have approval from the IRB (Institutional Review Board) or from equivalent local Ethics Committees. The age and sex of all subjects should be provided in the main text or in the Supplementary Material.

Infect Dis Trop Med follows the guidelines on Good Publication Practice: COPE and ICMJE. These guidelines aim to ensure that articles are published in a responsible and ethical manner, trying to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication.

Moreover, as Infect Dis Trop Med follows the ICMJE’s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, we expect that Authors, reviewers and editors follow the best-practice guidelines on ethical behavior.

Authors, the journal and reviewers must abide to the following:

Authors and the Journal have to follow the Good Publication Practice: COPE and ICMJE guidelines during submission. Please, also check the Scientific Misconduct, Expressions of Concern, and Retraction guidelines from ICMJE.
Authors and reviewers have to guarantee confidentiality and do not have to share information about manuscripts, including peer-review, their content or status in the review process, concerns raised by reviewers, and the final decision about rejection or acceptance, to anyone other than the Authors and reviewers.
Infect Dis Trop Med and reviewers have to ensure the processing of manuscripts timely. On the other hand, Authors have to ensure timely communication and availability to reply to concerns during the review and publication process.
The peer review is the most critical assessment of the scientific process and should be followed in a rigorous manner. Specific information about our peer-review process is available here.
Integrity should be the standpoint for both Authors and the journal. The editorial decisions about the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript should be based on the research’s originality, contribution to the scientific society, relevance to the topic of the journal, and quality standards. Those decisions should not be jeopardized by commercial interests or personal relations.
The spread of academic culture and scientific knowledge should also support diversity and inclusion for Authors as well as reviewers, editorial board members and editorial staff.

ANIMAL ETHICS

Research involving animals should adhere to globally recognized standards and to the ARRIVE guidelines for documenting experiments involving live animals. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed, but in questionable matter, the Editors reserve the right to reject papers. This statement is mandatory for acceptance and publication of the manuscript. Authors should ensure that the experimental conditions and procedures of their research minimize any harm to animals.

Animal species/strain, sex, source (vendor name, location), age range, weight and any additional data should be indicated. Please note that we encourage the use of both male and female animals. The use of a single sex should be scientifically justified.

The project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be stated in the “Ethics Approval” statement. Research procedures must be carried out in accordance with national and institutional regulations. Statements on animal welfare should confirm that the study complied with all relevant legislation.

INFORMED CONSENT

All research involving human participants necessitates informed consent from the participants (or their parent/legal guardian if they are under 16 years old), and this consent should be explicitly mentioned in the manuscript. Manuscripts reporting studies involving vulnerable groups, or cases where consent might not be fully informed, will be subject to the editor’s discretion.

Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained in case Authors wish to include case details or other personal information or images of patients in their publication. This is to comply with all applicable laws and regulations concerning the privacy and/or security of personal information, including, but not limited to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679.

Patients have the right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potentially identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS

Images of patients or research subjects should not be used unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been given as part of the consent.
If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, Authors should provide assurances that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning.
Formal consents are not required for the use of entirely anonymized images from which the individual cannot be identified – for example, x-rays, ultrasound images, laparoscopic images etc.
If consent has not been obtained, it is generally not sufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the individual concerned.

CELL LINES

The Materials and Methods section should report the origin of any cell lines. The contamination or misidentification of cell lines negatively impacts the validity of research observations. Therefore, authors are required to describe the source of the cell line, as well as the method used for authentication, in the Materials and Methods section. References must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. Confirmation of written informed consent must be provided if the line is of human origin in case de novo cell lines were used. Editors reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.

CLINICAL TRIALS

All clinical trials submitted to Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine for consideration of publication must be registered in accordance with the ICMJE recommendation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) defines a clinical trial as “any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes.”

When submitting your manuscript, please include the unique trial number and the name of the registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov or ISRCTN) at the end of the abstract and in your cover letter. It is recommended to complete the registration at the time of obtaining the first participation consent. Acceptable registries should contain the minimum 24-item trial registration dataset at the time of registration and must be a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

To align with ICMJE policy, investigators registering device trials on ClinicalTrials.gov must select the option of public posting before device approval, thus opting out of the lockbox. Approval to conduct a study by an independent local, regional, or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board) does not fulfill the ICMJE requirement for prospective clinical trial registration. For instance, registering retrospectively at the point of manuscript submission fails to fulfill ICMJE requirements.

Secondary analyses of primary clinical trials should be referenced by the trial registration number of the primary trial rather than being registered as distinct clinical trials. This information must also be disclosed in the statements and authors must cite the source by inserting the unique identifier.

UNETHICAL PUBLICATION PRACTICES

Authors who want to publish in our Journal must follow the guidelines on Good Publication Practice as reported in COPE and Council of Science Editors. These guidelines aim to ensure that articles are published in a responsible and ethical manner.

On a practical level, the first step is an early investigation using our anti‐plagiarism software. Our Journal makes a plagiarism checker by a certificate program on all the articles. Also, articles that are related to the suspected case of plagiarism or other unethical practices are checked accurately by either the reviewer’s feedback and observations or the Editors’ own observations. Our anti‐plagiarism software, however, will not identify “salami slicing”. So, it is imperative that each case is looked at individually and therefore, we do not advocate the use of one statement of actions to penalize the offender. Each case is considered separately and, as editors, we will need to decide if it is a deliberate action on the part of the author or if it is due to a lack of understanding of the requirements of ethical writing. This can happen for new Authors or some Authors where translation to English is often difficult. An example of this is where there are no words/phrases in that language that translate into English, and a developing practice that we noted is the ‘borrowing’ of words, phrases or often sentences that are considered appropriate for what Authors mean to say.

Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine disapproves of any kind of malpractice and unethical practice.

For further information regarding Unethical Publication Practice, please check the Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication, Image Integrity and Manipulation sections in the Policy, Licencing and COI.

Licensing

Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license to articles. If you submit your paper for publication in our journal, you agree to have the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license applied to your work as follows:

BY) Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NC) NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
SA) ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

No additional restrictions: You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Notices: You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as advertising, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

Reprints

Paper reprints shall be charged. Electronic offprints are sent to the first Author at his/her first email address on the title page of the paper on request. For this reason, please ensure that the name, address, and email address of the Corresponding Author are clearly indicated on the manuscript title page if He/She/Them are not the first author of the paper.

Preservation and Archiving

Our Journal is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and to ensuring accessibility by upgrading digital file formats to comply with new technology standards.

All our files are archived and preserved in CLOCKSS.