Author Guidelines
Instructions for authors:
Please read Instructions carefully to improve your paper’s chances for acceptance for publishing. Thank you for your interest in submitting an article to Stomatološki vjesnik.
These instructions for publishing of articles in Stomatološki vjesnik / Stomatological review are made in accordance with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors – uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (www.ICMJE.org).
The journal publishes only articles which have not been published so far. All the received papers are submitted to scientific peer-review evaluation by two or more reviewers. Authors should NOT in addition post a hard copy of the manuscript and submission letter, unless they are supplying artwork, letters or files that cannot be submitted electronically, or have been instructed to do so by the editorial office.
Type of papers suitable for publishing in Stomatološki vjesnik (Journal in following text):
Original Articles, Case Reports, Reviews, Letters to the Editors, Current Perspectives, Editorials, and Fast-Track Articles are suitable for publishing in Stomatološki vjesnik. Papers must be fully written in English, and it is responsibility of the authors. After the acceptance, the Journal provides English language editor.
Editorial process:
All submitted manuscripts are initially evaluated by at least two scientific and academic members of editorial board. An initial decision is usually reached within 3–7 days.
Submitted manuscripts may be rejected without detailed comments after initial review by editorial board if the manuscripts are considered inappropriate or of insufficient scientific priority for publication in Stomatološki vjesnik.
Peer review:
Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert scientists in the relevant field to assess the scientific quality of the paper. Decisions on reviewed manuscripts are usually reached within one month. When submission of a revised manuscript is invited following review, the revision must be received in short time of the decision date. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor’s decision is final.
Criteria for acceptance:
Submitted manuscripts may be rejected without detailed comments after initial review by editorial board if the manuscripts are considered inappropriate or of insufficient scientific priority for publication in the Journal. All other manuscripts undergo a complete review by reviewers or other selected experts. Criteria for acceptance include originality, validity of data, clarity of writing, strength of the conclusions, and potential importance of the work to the field of dentistry and similar bio-medical sciences. Submitted manuscripts will not be reviewed if they do not meet the Instructions for authors, which are based on “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” (http://www.icmje.org/). All submitted manuscripts are checked for text similarity with a software for detection of potential plagiarism, according to the rules od University of Sarajevo for publishing scientific articles.
Authorship:
All authors have to sign the copyright assignment form. We ask all authors to confirm that: they have met the criteria for authorship as established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors; they believe that the paper represents honest work, and are able to verify the validity of the results reported.
Redundant or duplicate publication:
We ask the authors to confirm in the copyright assignment form that the paper has not been published in its current form or a substantially similar form (in print or electronically, including on a web site), that it has not been accepted for publication elsewhere, and that it is not under consideration by another publication. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has provided details of what is and what is not duplicate or redundant publication (http://www.icmje.org). In the submission letter to the editors, authors are asked to draw attention to any published work that concerns the same patients or subjects as the present paper.
Author Contributions:
Authors are required to include a statement to verify the contributions of each co-author in the copyright assignment form.
Patient consent forms:
The protection of a patient’s right to privacy is essential. The authors may be asked by the editorial board to send copy of patient consent forms on which patients or other subjects of the experiments clearly grant permission for the publication of photographs or other material that might identify them. If the consent form for the research did not specifically include this, authors should obtain it or remove the identifying material.
Ethics committee approval:
The authors must state clearly in the submission letter and in the Methods section that the conducted studies on human participants are with the approval of an appropriate named ethics committee. Please also look at the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki (http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm). Similarly, the authors must confirm that experiments involving animals adhered to ethical standards and must state the care of animal and licensing guidelines under which the study was performed. The editorial board may ask author(s) for copy of ethical committee approval.
Declaration of Interest:
We ask the authors to state all potential financial support received for the work. This applies to all papers including editorials and letters to the editor (see below). If you are sure that there is no conflict of interest, please state that.
Copyright:
Copyright assignment form contains authors’ statement that all the copyrights are transferred to the publisher if and when the manuscript is accepted for publishing. Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the publisher and credit the source(s) in the article.
Submitting process:
Texts are to be electronically submitted in English at www.stomatoloskivjesnik.ba Our online submission system guides you stepwise through the process of entering your article details and uploading your files.
Scientific papers articulately written can have up to 15 pages, while case studies can have up to 8 pages. All figures and tables are included and should be placed at the end of a document.
The authors’ names, affiliations and address should not appear in the body of the manuscript, to preserve anonymity. The names and affiliations of the authors, and optional ID number of authors (eg. ORCID) should be presented separately during submission.
Additional information for corresponding author should be given as follows: *Correspondence: Name and Surname, Address, phone and e-mail.
Formatting requirements:
Manuscripts should be prepared using a standard word processing program and presented in a clear readable format with easily identified sections and headings.
Manuscript should be written in Times New Roman 12 used for the text and Times New Roman 11 for tables and references, Normal, 1.5 spacing A4 format). Margins should be not less than 3 cm. Pages should be numbered consecutively. Abbreviations should be defined on their first appearance in the text; those not accepted by international bodies should be avoided. Use only standard abbreviations. Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement. Footnotes in the main text are to be avoided.
Include the following sections: Title, Abstract and Keywords, Text, Acknowledgements, Declaration of interest, References, Individual tables and figures with captions.
- The Title should carry the full title of the paper and a short title to be used as a ‘running head’ (and which should be so identified). The title needs to be concise and informative.
- The abstract should be structured and of no more than 250 words. The abstract should state the Objective(s) of the study or investigation, basic Methods (selection of study subjects or laboratory animals; observational and analytical methods), main Results (giving specific data and their statistical significance, if possible), and the principal Conclusions. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations.
- The Keywords: the abstract should be followed by a list of 3–5 keywords or short phrases which will assist the cross-indexing of the article and which may be published. NLM descriptors can be found on http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html.
- Introduction should represent a concise and plain problem overview and research objective. Papers directly related to the problem elaborated in the article should be briefly mentioned.
- Materials and Methods implemented in the work should be detailed enough to enable the reader to repeat the described research.
- Results should be represented clearly and precisely without any additional comments and comparisons. Tables and pictures should be mentioned in this part, if applicable, to emphasize where they will show in final paper.
- Discussion should give overview and comparison of authors’ results with the similar studies published in the past.
- Conclusion is a separate chapter of the paper, brief and concise. It follows the discussion and extracts the most important conclusions of the research related to the objective(s).
- Tables: Each table with its title should be made in Word or Excel and it should be placed at the end of the article, not inside the text. The tables should be ordinal numbers which are associated with the text.
- Images: Charts, photos, diagrams, x-rays – these are all considered images, and should be placed on separate pages at the end of the manuscript. Each image must have an ordinal number related to the order of appearance inside the text. Each image must also have a description. Photos and x-rays have to be delivered in JPEG or GIF format with the 300 DPI resolution. Reproduction and/or taking over of the photos is not allowed without specifying the authorship.
- Literature used in the paper should be indicated in Arabic numbers in the order of appearance and quoting in the paper. They should be assigned Arabic numerals, which should be given in brackets, e.g. [17]. It should be cited according to the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.ICMJE.org).
- Acknowledgements: One or more statements should specify (a) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a department chairman; (b) acknowledgements of technical help; (c) acknowledgements of financial and material support, specifying the nature of the support.
- Declaration of Interest: A statement must be provided listing all financial support received for the work and, for all authors, any financial involvement (including employment, fees, share ownership) or affiliation with any organization whose financial interests may be affected by material in the manuscript, or which might potentially bias it. This applies to all papers including editorials and letters to the editor. If you are sure that there is no conflict of interest, please state this.
- Author contributions: At submission, we require corresponding authors to specify the contributions of all authors to the submitted manuscript using the relevant credit roles, as follows: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Roles/Writing – original draft; and Writing – review & editing. Note that not all roles may apply to every manuscript, and authors may have contributed through multiple roles. (eg. Authors’ contributions: Conception and design: XX and YY; Acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data: YY and ZZ; Drafting the article: XX, YY and ZZ; Revising it critically for important intellectual content: XX, ZZ; Approved final version of the manuscript: XX, YY and ZZ)
Submission checklist
Please use checklist before submission to the Journal for review. Make sure that the following items are present:
- One author that has been designated as the corresponding author should provide contact details (e-mail address and full postal address);
- Cover Letter is mandatory and should contain permission for use of copyrighted material and declaration that there is no conflict of interest;
- Manuscript should be prepared as recommended in Formatting section
- For figures include relevant captions;
- For tables include titles, descriptions and footnotes;
- Ensure all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided;
- Spelling and grammar need to be checked in the manuscript;
- All references mentioned in the Reference List need to be cited in the text and vice versa;
- Referee suggestions with contact details need to be provided.
Post acceptance:
All correspondence concerning the copy, editing and production of accepted manuscripts should be addressed to Stomatološki vjesnik/Stomatological review.
Publication fee
There is no fee for article submission (ASC), article processing (APC) or publication in Stomatološki vjesnik. Optional charges for colour reproduction of figures may apply. Authors will be informed about this when the poof is supplied to them. The charges must be completed before the article is released.