Instructions for Authors

Updated April 1, 2023

For submission of your manuscript, please read the following Instructions carefully or visit the website of the St. Marianna University Society of Medical Science. (https://igakukai.marianna-u.ac.jp/journal.html)

  1. Journal of St. Marianna University considers papers from regular members of the St. Marianna University Society of Medical Science and from Society members in nursing or an allied health field. The journal also considers submissions from non-members in medicine, nursing, or an allied health field. Submission from regular members of the Society means that at least one of the authors is a regular member of the Society. Those who have paid a yearly dues (graduate students are required to pay four years of the membership fees) are eligible to submit papers to the journal. Invited papers are specially commissioned by the journal’s Editorial Board.

  2. If the first author is an associate member of the Society, authors need to include at least one regular member of the Society.

  3. To obtain authorship credit, a person must partake in ALL of the following four phases of research publication:

・ substantial contribution to research design, data collection and analysis;

・ drafting or revising any important intellectual content;

・ final review and approval before article submission; AND

・ agreement to be accountable “for all aspects of the work” necessary to ensure that “questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”

Manuscripts authored by a larger group of people should list not only the name of involved organizations but also the members who satisfy the four authorship criteria listed above.

If someone does not meet all four criteria above to be named as an author, he/she is recommended to be mentioned in the acknowledgment instead. Participating investigator, or participated in the writing or technical editing of the manuscript is not considered to be in the author(s). These need to be mentioned separately.

  4. Journal of St. Marianna University publishes the following types of papers: (1) original research, (2) concise reports of original studies, (3) case reports, and (4) review articles.
Subjects of the papers are limited to medicine and its associated disciplines. The authors are requested to certify that no part of the study described has been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or its equivalent) and that the manuscript is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. The authors are requested to transfer copyright of their paper, if accepted, to St. Marianna University Society of Medical Science.

  5. Journal of St. Marianna University accepts submission of papers that have been published on the preprint server by the time of submission to this journal. At the time of submission, author(s) will inform the journal whether it will be published on the preprint server. If there is a publication on the preprint server, submit the doi, etc. of the article to this journal. Manuscripts that have been reviewed and revised in the peer review of this journal and manuscripts that have been accepted by this journal cannot be published on the preprint server. We encourage you to post a link to the manuscript published in our journal (and a link to the site of the issue in which the article was published, if any supplementary material is available) with the article on the preprint server.

  6. Plagiarism is not acceptable in Journal of St. Marianna University submissions. The journal requires authors to use the iThenticate plagiarism screening tool to determine both text overlap and manuscript originality and submit an iThenticate Report when submitting an article as well as Certificate of Originality.
When submitting a paper published on a preprint server, the results of verification by iThenticate, two results need to be submitted: 1) the results of the paper and 2) two results in PDF format by excluding the relevant paper on the preprint server from the target preprint server.

  7. (1) For all articles and case reports, all disclosures should be stated at the end of the text (before the References).
(2) Authors must disclose via the online submission system any financial support or relationships that could be taken to constitute a conflict of interest with respect to the submitted data (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/) and submit the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest.

  8. Investigations involving human subjects must be approved by the committee responsible for ensuring compliance with human experimentation guidelines, such as the institutional or regional ethics committee. The authors are requested to provide the approval number in their manuscript.

  9. Studies involving genetic recombination must be approved by the authors’ institutional or regional genetic recombination safety commission. The authors are requested to provide the approval number in their manuscript.

10. The treatment of experimental animals must be in accordance with the guidelines of the institution or academic society to which the authors belong. The authors are requested to describe their compliance in the manuscript.

11. The Editorial Board is responsible for acceptance, rejection, the publication format, and the order of article publication. The Editorial Board can request that authors change the format, length, style, or other elements of their manuscript. Manuscripts, with the exception of invited papers, are subject to peer review by two referees. If authors are asked to revise their original manuscript, the revised manuscript must be re-submitted by the deadline indicated by the Editorial Board. The revision is principally limited to the parts indicated by the reviewers.

12. Articles submitted to Journal of St. Marianna University implies that it is the original work of the authors and is neither published before nor is being considered for publication elsewhere. Effective upon acceptance for publication, copyright of the article is transferred to the St. Marianna University Society of Medical Science, although all responsibility for its content rests with the authors. A Copyright Transfer Statement signed by all of the authors must be sent to the editorial office via ScholarOne Manuscripts. The authors are responsible for the final proofreading, at which time typographical and grammatical errors can be corrected. Substantial changes to the manuscript content are not allowed.

13. Review papers of no more than 6 actual printed pages in the published journal, original papers of no more than 6 printed pages, case reports of no more than 4 printed pages, concise reports of no more than 3 printed pages, and other articles of no more than 3 printed pages are published free of charge. The authors are responsible for the cost of additional pages. This does not apply to invited articles.

14. Authors are required to have their entire English manuscript (or the Abstract in English) checked by a native English speaker (preferably a native English medical editor) and to submit a certificate confirming that the English language in the paper has been reviewed and verified.

15. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owner(s). Such permission(s) may be submitted (optional), and the source must be specified under the table(s)/figure(s) or in the legends.

16. Authors should submit their manuscripts online via ScholarOne Manuscripts. Upload all your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Manuscript Preparation

I. General Instructions

  1. All manuscripts must be written in English, typed double-spaced with wide margins, and formatted to A4-size paper (approx. 1100 to 1300 words per page). Insert page number at the bottom (centered) and line numbers in the left margin. Use standard font such as Times, Times New Roman, or Century, either in point 11 or 12.

  2. Original articles, Review Articles and Case Studies require an Abstract in English (less than 600 words) .

II. Manuscript Format

  1. Title page
The title page should contain the type of manuscript, article title, full names of the authors and their affiliations. Designate one author as a corresponding author and supply his/her complete postal address, telephone number, extension number (or hospital PHS number), and E-mail address. The running title and keywords need to be included on the page.

  2. Original Articles must be organized as follows: 1) Title Page, 2) Abstract, 3) Introduction, 4) Materials and Methods, 5) Results, 6) Discussion, 7) Conclusion (if applicable), 8) Acknowledgments (if applicable), 9) Conflicts of Interest, 10) References, 11) Figure Legends, 12) Figures, and 13) Tables.

  3. Title
Capitalize the first letter of all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. If a word is hyphenated, the word after the hyphen should be capitalized as well. The title does not require a period at the end.

e.g.: Sucrose and a High-Fat Diet Enhance Visceral Fat Tissue Gain and Lipid Deposition in the Aorta of Spontaneously Hypertensive Hyperlipidemic Rats

  4. Authors’ names
If there are more than three authors, put an “and” before the last author.

e.g.: Yoshiko Iwai¹, Junzo Hamanishi², Kenji Chamoto¹, and Tasuku Honjo³

Authors’ affiliations need to correspond to the numbers attached to the authors’ names shown as above. If all authors have the same affiliation, numbers are not necessary.

  5. Key words (no more than 5 words/phrases)

  6. Running title (no more than 40 letters)

  7. Author contributions
Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; to have approved the submitted version; AND to have agreed to be accountable for questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work.
Please state the role(s) of each author in their initials.

  8. Text
Original research and concise reports should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion (optional). For case reports, the Results section should be replaced by Case Presentation.

(Text formatting)

(1) Use Arabic numerals.

(2) Use international (SI) units.

(3) An abbreviated term should be spelled out in full, with the abbreviation shown in parentheses, at its first appearance in both the abstract and main manuscript.

(4) References should be cited as superscript numbers followed by a single parenthesis:“^{1, 2, 4)}” or “^1-3)”. References should be numbered consecutively in the order cited in the text.

  9. List of References
References should be numbered consecutively in the order cited in the text. Journal titles should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus. References should be shown according to the following styles:

10. Financial Support
List all funding and grant-awarding organizations, along with their names and grant reference numbers as follows.
Example 1: This study was carried out with the support of St. Marianna University School of Medicine.
Example 2: This research was supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Basic Research (C) 19K07926.
Example 3: This study was funded by the St. Marianna University School of Medicine Research Grant 2022-1.

11. Conflicts of Interest
All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Authors must disclose any interests before the References section such as:

Conflicts of Interest
Mariko Sei reports grants from ABC Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. and honoraria from YYY Pharma Inc., during the conduct of the study. She also reports grants from XYZ Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, outside the submitted work.

All authors are requested to submit an International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Please download the file from http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/.

If there are no conflicts of interest, please state:
The authors have nothing to disclose.

12. Figures
Each Figure should be prepared on a separate A4-size page. Photographs should be of high quality and clear. The figure legends should be typed and listed together on their own page at the end of the main manuscript and not on the Figures themselves.

13. Tables
Each Table should be prepared on a separate A4-size page. The title of each Table should appear above the Table, and details required for interpretation of the Table should appear beneath the Table.

Note: Tables and Figures must be submitted in editable Word or Excel files, not as PDF files, and Figures must be submitted in the following acceptable graphic formats: docx, xlsx, pptx, jpg, tif, gif, eps, etc.

14. Supplementary Materials

1) The following information may be posted as supplementary material(s).
– Supplementary figures and tables
– Large amount of data (sequences, spectra, etc.)
– Unprintable data such as video and audio

2) Supplementary figures and tables should be converted to pdf. Use csv or xlsx for large amounts of data, mp4 or wmv for videos, and mp3 for audio.

File formats such as exe, com, shs, vbs, txt, htm, html, and zip cannot be submitted.

3) The file(s) submitted by the author will be printed as it is/they are, layout, font size, etc. should be the same as the ones used in the manuscript.

4) For pdf, csv, and xlsx, write the title and description in each supplementary material.

5) For mp4, wmv, and mp3, create a pdf with the title and description. Even if there are multiple of these supplementary materials, the title and description should be included in one pdf.

6) In the manuscript, indicate where supplementary materials should correspond to, such as: Supplementary Fig. 1, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Material 1, etc.

7) Create a section for “Supplementary information” and state such as “There are several supplementary materials. See attached supplementary figure 1-3 and supplementary table 1-2.”

Manuscript Submission

  1. Authors should submit their manuscripts online. All submissions are made via ScholarOne Manuscripts. Go directly to https://igakukai.marianna-u.ac.jp/online_submission.html and upload all your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen. Please ensure the order of the authors are same authors registered in the system. Please also make sure that the updated files are clean files.

Detailed submission system requirements and process are described in the Submission Manual on the website of the St. Marianna University Society of Medical Science.

  2. A cover letter is required for the submission. Authors should summarize their manuscript and highlight their most important findings and their implications to show why the manuscript would be of interest, and address it to the Editor-in-Chief. Upload the Certificate of Originality, Copyright Transfer Agreement Form, Certificate of English Language Editing (if applicable) and iThenticate Report as well.

  3. Number(s) for the Figures and Captions need to be uploaded in the Caption/Legend Section of the system, however, figure legends need to be included in the manuscript itself as well.

  4. Number(s) for the Tables and legends/explanations need to be uploaded in the Caption/Legend Section.

  5. Save all files to be uploaded with file names such as MainDocument.docx, Fig1.jpg or Table1.xlsx. Do not use any special character(s) or space between words in the file names.

  6. The total size of all files to be uploaded should be no more than 20MB.