Formatting guidelines

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 COVER OR TITLE PAGE

This page should be a separate electronic file to the rest of the article, and must contain the following elements:
 

• Header: information about the first author, beginning with the last name or names connected by a hyphen, followed by the initial or initials of the first name. Then the brief title of the article in Spanish (six words).

• Title in Spanish, first word capitalized and the rest in lower case, without abbreviations or acronyms. Maximum length: 12 words.

• Title in English, first word capitalized and the rest in lower case, without abbreviations or acronyms. Maximum length: 12 words.

• Full name of author, without abbreviations, initials, specialty, academic degree, or working position.

• Start with first name, then last name; when both surnames (paternal and maternal) are listed, they must be connected with a hyphen.

• Full details of the institutional affiliation of the authors (one only): service, department or area, institution, city, and country.

• Name and email of the author responsible to monitor the article and phone number with area code.

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 ABSTRACTS

Abstracts must be integrated at the beginning of the electronic file containing the article. These must be arranged as follows:
 

• Maximum length: abstract in English: 1600 characters including spaces; abstract in Spanish: 1500 characters including spaces.
• Structured into sections for the following articles:

1. Original contributions: Background (including objective), Methods (design, sample size, patient selection criteria, procedures, statistical methods), Results, and Conclusions. 
2. Clinical case: background (including objective), Clinical case, and Conclusions.

• In a single paragraph, without sections, in Editorials, Review and Opinion articles, and corresponding to the Itinerant sections (see Policies section).

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 KEYWORDS

In the file containing the article, the keywords follow the abstracts. Assignments will be made according to the following databases:  

• In Spanish, for health descriptors from the Biblioteca Virtual en Salud: http://decs.bvs.br
• In English, for language controlled by the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html
• At least three and up to five terms must be included.

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 TEXT OF THE PAPER

The presentation will be as follows:

• In 12-point Arial font, double spaced, with top and bottom margins of 3 cm, and left and right 2.5 cm.
• Paragraphs are continuous, without page breaks.
• The maximum length (excluding figures) depends on the nature of the document: editorials, 4 pages; original, review and opinion articles, 20 pages; clinical cases: 16 pages, and papers corresponding to the Itinerant sections, 16 pages.
• The use of acronyms is reserved for long terms that are repeated at least 10 times in the article. The full meaning of each acronym is written the first time it is mentioned.
• The generic names, dosage, and routes of administration of drugs or chemicals are those found in the international nomenclature.

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This section is placed after the "Conclusions" and before the "References" in the same electronic file of the article. This section may include recognized partnerships that do not justify authorship, such as general support from any area or department, and technical help. It can also express thanks for material and financial support by specifying these, as well as financial relationships that may pose conflicts of interest.

Persons who collaborated intellectually but whose participation does not justify authorship may be cited by name, adding their function or type of collaboration. It is important to inform people or institutions for their consent. This section should be placed before the list of references.

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 REFERENCES

For quantity and nomenclature it is suggested:

• Between 25 and 30 are considered sufficient for Original articles; 25 to 35 for Review and Opinion articles; between 15 and 20 for Clinical cases; and betwen 20 and 25 for paper correponding to the Itinerant sections (see Policies section).

• The body of the text makes distinction with Arabic numerals in superscript arranged consecutively in the order they are mentioned. The convention is to list them at the end of the body of the article, distinguishing them with the References section.

For nomenclature, the US National Library of Medicine models are used to structure them*:

 

Journal articles with more than six authors

The names of the first six are followed by et al.:

Revilla-Monsalve MC, Arreola F, Castro-Martínez G, Escobedo-de la Peña J, Fiorelli S, Gutiérrez C, et al. Pruebas de laboratorio útiles para el control de la diabetes mellitus. Hemoglobina glucosilada. Rev Med Inst Mex Seguro Soc. 1995;33(5):501-4.
 

(The NLM Catalog: Journals referenced in the NCBI Databases records the abbreviations of journals included in Index Medicus: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals).

 

Books

Healey PM, Jacobson EJ. Common medical diagnoses: an algorithmic approach. Second edition. Philadelphia, USA: WB Saunders Company; 1994.
 

Book chapters

Anspaugh S. Educating library users in two-year higher education institution. In: John Lubans Jr, editor. Educating the library user. New York, USA: RR Bowker Company; 1974. p. 69-82.

 

Database on the Internet 

Online Archive of American Folk Medicine. Los Angeles: Regents of the University of California 1996. Available from: http://www.folkmed.ucla.edu/
 

Journal articles on the Internet

Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs. 2002 Jun [cited 2002 Ago 12];102(6):[about 1 p.]. Available from: http://www.nursingworld.org/AJN/2002/june/Wawatch.htmArticle

 

Articles with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

Zhang M, Holman CD, Price SD, Sanfilippo FM, Preen DB, Bulsara MK. Comorbidity and repeat admission to hospital for adverse drug reactions in older adults: retrospective cohort study. BMJ. 2009 Jan 7;338:a2752. doi: 10.1136/bmj.a275
 

Homepage/website

Cancer-Pain.org [Internet]. New York: Association of Cancer Online Resources, Inc.; c2000-01 [Actualizado 2002 May 16; citado 2002 Jul 9]. Disponible en: http://www.cancer-pain.org/
 

For other references not considered here, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html

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 TABLES

• They are integrated into the same electronic file of the article after the references, not interspersed in the text of the article.
• The titles of the tables explain their content and correlate them with text that they accompany.
• The information contained does not repeat that presented in the text or figures.
• The reference in the body of the text is ordered with Roman numerals.
• The total including figures does not exceed six.
• They are created using the Tables function in the word processor (Word) or with programs like Excel or Powerpoint.
• The edges of the cells are visible, the title is in the top cell, and notes are in the bottom cell.

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 FIGURES

• These include photographs, drawings, graphs, diagrams, and algorithms, in overall order, identified progressively with Arabic numerals according to their mention in the text.
• Titles and explanations (figure captions) are presented together in the text file, after the tables.

• The information contained does not repeat that presented in the text or tables.
• The total including tables does not exceed six.

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 Photographs and drawings

• Separate electronic files for each image are to be sent in JPG or TIFF format, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and a maximum of 350 dpi, respecting the original color and image size.
• The images with very small sources, pixellated (with jagged edges) or unfocused are not usable for professional editorial work, so they should not be attached to an article.

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 Charts, diagrams, and algorithms

• Editable (modifiable) and created in Excel or Powerpoint. All graphs, diagrams, and algorithms created in Excel can go in different "sheets" of the same file, and those made in PowerPoint can be in different slides of a file.
• If programs such as CorelDRAW, Illustrator, Photoshop, or Design Graphic are used to create images, an electronic file is to be sent for each graph.
• If they are generated in SPSS, SAS, or Stata, a pdf form (Acrobat) is to be exported from the source program, and an electronic file sent for each.

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For additional information on these rules for authors, we recommend consulting the Recommendations for Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (December 2015) in http://www.icmje.org/