Given the journal's new editorial team,1 we thought it a good time to revise our author guidelines, remind our readers of manuscript and editorial process logistics, and provide guidance on new recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for clinical trial manuscripts. We hope this will provide us with an opportunity to reconnect with our authors and reviewers to better clarify distinctions among manuscript types, especially between scientific articles and educational (CE/CME) articles. We invite you to read our fully updated author guidelines at https://journals.lww.com/aswcjournal/Pages/informationforauthors.aspx.
As a reminder, Advances welcomes submissions of original articles in all areas of skin and wound management. Manuscripts are considered for publication only if the work has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication by another periodical. Authors must state all possible conflicts of interest at the time of submission. All manuscripts must be submitted electronically using Editorial Manager. Ensuring that Advances publishes only the highest-quality articles is one of the reasons readers trust our publication. To this end, submissions undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review and also are screened using iThenticate, a tool that detects similarity between submitted manuscripts and other published literature. Accepted manuscripts are further enhanced through editorial revision for clarity, punctuation, grammar, syntax, and conformity to Advances' style.
Although our major submissions and review processes remain the same, we wanted to provide more detail and clarification for new and returning authors. Highlights of the new author guidelines include the following:
1. A new policy requiring compliance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors clinical trial registration and data sharing recommendations:
- As of July 1, 2018, manuscripts submitted that report the results of clinical trials should contain a data sharing statement.
- Clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after January 1, 2019, must include a data sharing plan in the trial's registration.
2. Better descriptions of the wide range of features and departments we accept, both qualitative and quantitative:
- CE/CME
- Original Investigations
- Literature Reviews
- Case Series
- Case Reports
- Wound Care Around the World
3. The creation/addition of concise, easy-to-read documents about writing and formatting articles
4. An easier way for authors to designate submitted articles as CE/CME using Editorial Manager
5. The integration of better guidance for peer reviewers into Editorial Manager
6. Streamlined instructions on submitting figures and tables/art items
As one of many new initiatives to facilitate high-quality peer review and faster turnaround times in Editorial Manager, we have also updated and expanded our Editorial Advisory Board and Peer-Review Panel; we are honored to include their names on our masthead in every issue, and we thank them for their efforts.
We hope that these changes will inspire our authors to write, educate, and inform our shared discipline with outstanding work and further to enable us to deliver high-quality, practical clinical content to you, our readership. If you have questions or feedback about these changes or would like to submit an article proposal for our consideration, please e-mail mailto:[email protected].
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