Submissions

Author Guidelines

SUBMITTING A MANUSCRIPT
All manuscripts must be written in English and in accordance with the ICMJE Recommendations (Recommendations by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, formerly the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts) available at the following webpage: http://www.icmje.org/.

Submissions must contain the following items, submitted as separate files:

1. COVER LETTER

The Cover letter is a concise statement signed by all authors outlining the research being submitted and its relevance to the journal’s scope, and guaranteeing that the manuscript has not been published before.

2. TITLE PAGE

The title page contains all the forms of the manuscript’s titles: both the full and running title in English, as well as the full title in Croatian. These are followed by the full names and affiliations of all the authors*, and the full name and contact of the corresponding author.

3. BLINDED MANUSCRIPT

The file containing the manuscript must be blinded, i.e. it must exclude the authors’ names and affiliations. These will be listed in the Title page. The manuscript must not contain a list of references. These will be listed in the References file.

The text of the manuscript should be formatted as a Microsoft Word file with 1.5 line spacing, Times New Roman 12pt font and numbered pages (in the bottom right corner).

The manuscript must be structured in a way to include the following chapters, in exactly the presented order: Abstract and Keywords in English and Croatian, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements and Conflict of Interest.

Abstract and Keywords

The abstract (summary) must be submitted in both English and Croatian and must comprise no more than 250 words in each language. Each abstract is followed by a maximum of 6 keywords in the appropriate language. The keywords should be capitalized, italicized and separated by semicolons.

The abstract states the purposes of the study or investigation, basic procedures, main findings, and principal conclusions. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations. The keywords following the abstract will assist indexers in cross-indexing the article, so they should use terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus.

Introduction
The introduction states the purpose of the article and summarizes the rationale for the study or observation. In this chapter, provide only strictly relevant references and exclude data or conclusions from the work being reported.

Methods
Describe the selection process for study subjects and clearly identify all their important characteristics. Specify carefully what the descriptors mean and explain how the data were collected. Identify the methods, specialized equipment and software with the manufacturer’s name and address in parentheses, and procedures in sufficient detail to allow others to reproduce the results. Provide references to established methods and statistical methods used. Describe new or substantially modified methods, provide reasons for using them and evaluate their limitations. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used. Use only generic names of drugs. All measurements should be expressed in SI units.

This chapter should also include a description of the statistical methods you used – with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. Whenever possible, quantify your findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty. Specify any general-use computer programs used.

Results

Describe the results of your study. This chapter does not need to be very long, as the results will naturally be elaborated on in the Discussion.

Discussion
Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. Do not repeat in detail the data or other material provided in the Introduction or the Results section. Include in the Discussion section the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research, but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by the data. Relate the observations from your study to other relevant studies. State new hypotheses when warranted, but clearly label them as such.

Conclusion

Provide a quick summary of your main hypothesis and results in light of the discussion, and highlight why this is important: opens new avenues of research, importance for future studies in the area, brings about a new discovery, etc.

Acknowledgements

List all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship, such as a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged.

Disclosure of Conflict of Interest

It is the policy of Acta Clinica Croatica to ensure balance, independence, objectivity and scientific rigor in the Journal. All authors are expected to disclose to the readers any real or apparent conflict(s) of interest that may have a direct bearing on the subject matter of the article. All sources of funding of the papers submitted for publication, as well as possible authors’ and reviewers’ conflicts of interest must be clearly disclosed at the end of manuscript under the heading Acknowledgements. For more information, please visit this website.

References
Referencing must follow the NLM standards (available here).
References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in the text, tables and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript. Also, the reference list must include matching DOI numbers for each reference, where applicable.

These NLM resources are regularly updated as new media develop, and currently include guidance for print documents; unpublished material; audio and visual media; material on CD-ROM, DVD, or disk; and material on the Internet. References to papers accepted but not yet published should be designated as “in press” and in case of e-publication ahead of print, the author should provide DOI. The author should obtain written permission to cite such papers, as well as verification that they have been accepted for publication.

4. OPTIONAL

Suggestion of reviewers
If they wish to do so, the authors may suggest up to five relevant reviewers (at least two foreign) who hold a PhD degree, excluding co-authors and employees of the authors’ institutions. Possible reviewers should be listed with their affiliation, institution name and email address. However, the final selection of reviewers will be determined by the Editors.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON ETHICS AND FORMATTING
Ethics

Papers dealing with experiments on human subjects should clearly indicate that the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional or regional responsible committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983. Never use patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Papers dealing with experiments on animals should indicate that the institution’s or a national research council’s guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

*Authorship
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgments. All authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the whole work, from inception to published article.

Tables
Type out each table with 1.5 spacing. Do not submit tables as photographs. Number tables consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each. Give each column a short heading.

Figures
Figures and illustrations should be professionally drawn and photographed. Make sure that letters, numbers and symbols are legible even when reduced in size for publication. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text. If photographs of people are used, either the subjects must not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use the photograph. The preferred formats are JPEG and TIFF, although any format in general use that is not application-specific is acceptable. Make sure that the minimum resolution is 300 dpi.

Abbreviations
Use only standard abbreviations. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.

EDITORIAL PROCESS
After submission of the manuscript, the author will receive a letter confirming manuscript receipt. Each manuscript is checked for text similarity and manually verified by the editor. We use CrossRef Similarity Check with the Ithenticate algorithm. All manuscripts appropriate for the reviewing process are anonymously sent to at least two reviewers. Acta Clinica Croatica is committed to promote peer review quality and fairness. The reviewers are asked to treat the manuscript with confidentiality. Authors are welcome to suggest up to five potential reviewers for their manuscript (excluding co-authors and employees of the authors’ institutions), or to ask for the exclusion of reviewer(s) and the reasons for it. The Editorial Board may or may not accept the authors’ suggestions regarding reviewers.
Usually four to six months after submission, the authors will receive the reviews. The instructions, objections and requests made by the reviewers should be closely followed. The authors are invited to revise their manuscript in accordance with the reviewers’ suggestions, and to explain amendments made in accordance with the reviewers’ requests. Manuscripts that receive more than one reviewer’s recommendation for “major review” are sent, after revision, to the same reviewer who makes the final recommendation about the revised article. Based on the reviewers’ suggestions and recommendations, the Editorial Board makes the final decision about the acceptance of the submitted article for publication.
The authors will receive a letter confirming the acceptance of their paper submitted for publication. Before publication, every manuscript undergoes the language editing process. The corresponding author will receive page-proof version of the article to make final corrections of possible printing errors.