Notes for Contributors - Annals of Tropical Paediatrics

Original papers in English will be considered for publication provided that they have not been published previously and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Following peer review, any

submissions accepted will be subject to editorial revision.

Declaration. An article will be published only if the following declaration has been received:

I . . . . . . . , senior author of the paper entitled . . . . . . . , which I have submitted for publication in Annals of Tropical Paediatrics: International Child Health, hereby agree that, if it is accepted for publication in the Journal, the copyright of the paper shall become the property of The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who may on request licence me to reproduce the paper or any part thereof without requiring any payment in respect thereof, provided that a full acknowledgment to The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine accompanies each reproduction. Any co-authors have seen this article and have agreed that it be submitted for publication in the Journal.

Date . . . . . . . Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The following instructions relating to submissions must be adhered to. Failure to conform can lead to delay in publication.

Authorship. Only authors who have made a substantial contribution to the design of the study, the collection of data or the analysis and have been involved in the writing up of the article should be included in the list of authors. Otherwise, names should be mentioned in Acknowledgments. If an article appears to have an excess number of authors, the editors may request justification for their inclusion.

Methods of submission. Completely electronic submissions should be sent by e-mail to vcoulter@liv.ac.uk; the copyright declaration and highquality prints of any photographs, however, should be sent by letter post. There should be one file for the text of the paper (including tables, set using cells rather than tabs) and figure legends, and one for each of the figures. Any of the more common word-processing formats (e.g. Word or WordPerfect) should be used for the text file. Files containing figures should be in their original, fully editable format (e.g. Excel, SPSS, Harvard Graphics, Powerpoint). Greyscale or full-colour photographs should be sent only as hard copy.

Manuscripts submitted by post (to Editorial Assistant, Annals of Tropical Paediatrics, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK) should consist of one full paper copy, two sets of any figures and an IBM-compatible disk containing the relevant files.

Typescript. When preparing manuscripts, authors will find it helpful to refer to back copies of the journal. Text should be on one side of A4 paper, left-justified and double-spaced. The first page should carry the title of the paper, name(s) and affiliations of the author(s) and name and address of the corresponding author with, whenever possible, an e-mail address and fax number; failure to supply an e-mail address or fax number is likely to delay publication. A short running title should also be supplied.

Original articles. An abstract of not more than 250 words should be supplied on a separate page, outlining the background, aim(s), methods, results and conclusions (others added as appropriate). The text, starting on a new page, should be presented under appropriate headings: Introduction, Materials (or Patients) and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References.

Case reports should have a shorter, unstructured summary with concluding sentence(s) summarising the important message of the report.

Short reports on clinical or laboratory observations should be limited to 1000 words and include an unstructured summary of less than 60 words, one or two tables or illustrations and a maximum of ten references. There should be no more than five authors.

Letters to the Editor should have a maximum of 400 words, one table or figure and not more than five references. No summary is necessary and headings, apart from ‘References’, are optional. Authors’ names and addresses should be listed at the end of the text, before the references.

Abbreviations must not be used without explanation the first time they occur and SI units must be used, except for blood pressure which is reported in mmHg.

Statistical methods. Describe statistical methods in enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Avoid relying solely on statistical hypothesis testing (such as the use of p-values) which fails to convey important quantitative information. Discuss the eligibility of experimental subjects. Give details about randomisation. Describe the methods for and success of any blinding of observations. Report complications of treatment. Give numbers of observations. Report losses to observation

(such as drop-outs from a clinical trial). References for the design of the study and statistical methods should be to standard works when possible (with pages stated) rather than to papers in which the designs or methods were originally reported. Specify any general-use computer programs used.

Put a general description of methods in the Methods section. When data are summarised in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used to analyse them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Avoid non-technical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as “random” (which implies a randomising device), “normal,” “significant”, “correlations” and “sample”. Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. The symbol ± should not be used. Use “mean (SD)” instead.

Tables should be typed on separate pages, numbered with Arabic numerals, and a title for each provided. As mentioned above, they should be set using cells rather than tabs. Any footnotes should be typed beneath the body of the table. Vertical rules should be avoided.

Illustrations. Figures and plates should be used only when necessary to illustrate particular structures or conditions, to summarise data or to record quantitative results. They should be numbered with Arabic numerals in the order in which they are cited and their approximate position indicated in the margin of the text. Photographs should be supplied preferably as appropriate disk files, but otherwise as high-contrast, glossy prints. Special attention should be paid to clarity of all figures.
, , , , , and  are the preferred symbols on line graphs. Units involving multiplication (e.g. eggs/g faeces
10-3) should be avoided, either by converting the units (eggs/mg faeces) or by renumbering the relevant axis. Each illustration should be clearly labelled on the back with its figure number, the paper title and the name(s) of the author(s); the top of the illustration should also be indicated. Legends for illustrations should be typed on a separate sheet, not on the illustrations themselves. Subject to editorial discretion, up to 16 pages of each issue may carry colour figures free of charge to the authors.

References must be indicated by superscripted numerals in the text (e.g. ‘…has been reported.1’ or ‘…, as shown by Soter.2’), numbered in the order in which they are first mentioned and listed in numerical order on a separate sheet at the end of the paper. References cited only in tables or illustrations must be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by their first mention in the text. Titles of journals must be abbreviated according to Index Medicus. References (adhering

to the Vancouver style) must include: (i) all authors’ surnames and initials (if there are six authors or fewer) or, when there are seven or more authors, the first three authors, followed by ‘. . , et al.’; (ii) full title of the paper; (iii) title of the journal; (iv) year of publication; (v) volume number, not issue number; (vi) first and last page numbers. Citation of chapters in books should include the author(s) and title of the chapter, editors’ names, title of the book, city of publication, name of publisher, year of publication and page nos if appropriate. Examples:

1 Balkaran BN, Roberts LA, Ramcharan J. Systemic lupus erythematosus in Trinidadian children. Ann Trop Paediatr 2004; 3:241–4.

2 Davis JM, Rosenfeld WN. Chronic lung disease. In: Avery GB, Fletcher MA, MacDonald MG, eds. Neonatology; Pathophysiology and Management of the Newborn. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1999; 29.

Rejected manuscripts will be held for 6 months before shredding. In exceptional circumstances, the top copy will be returned if requested before that time has elapsed.

Eprints. Authors of papers in the Annals of Tropical Paediatrics: International Child Health receive a screen-resolution PDF file of the published version. Orders for digital reprints may be made at the time proofs are distributed. A complete copy of the relevant journal issue will be sent about 3 weeks after publication.

Copyright. It is a condition of publication that authors vest copyright of their articles, including abstracts, in The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. This ensures full copyright protection and dissemination of the article and the journal to the widest possible readership in print and electronic formats, as appropriate. Authors may use the article elsewhere after publication without prior permission from the Publisher but with the permission of The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, provided that acknowledgment is given to the journal as the original source of publication. Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources.