Keloid Research invites authors to submit their research manuscripts, review articles, case reports and commentaries. The following guidance shall help the authors to format their written work.
- Any involvement by a Pharmaceutical or a Medical Device Company employee and/or medical writers supported by such companies must be disclosed within the body of the submission.
- The use of editing services for non-English speakers is permissible.
Please direct any questions regarding our publishing policy to the Editor-in-Chief prior to submission.
Authorship and Conflict-of-Interest Statements
For each author, include in this section his or her category of contribution and list any potential conflicts of interest. These statements will be posted online in the Authorship section. If the author(s) declare no competing financial interests, this must be explicitly stated and will be included in all versions of the article. Contributions and COI must appear both in the metadata and in the manuscript text.
References
Include references in numerical order at the end of the article according to the order of citation in the manuscript text. Text citations of reference should consist of superscript numbers. If you use citation software, check it carefully to ensure that it formats your references according to the current Keloid Research style.
Footnotes and abbreviations
Do not use footnotes; instead, sparingly use parenthetical statements within text. Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and thereafter applied consistently throughout the article. Do not use nonstandard abbreviations or abbreviate terms appearing fewer than three times. Give the chemical name of a compound after the first use of the common name. The common name may be used throughout the article. Abbreviate units of measure only when used with numbers.
Figures
When submitting a manuscript for review, image file formats accepted for uploading include: JPEG (.jpg), PDF, TIFF, and EPS. PowerPoint (.ppt) files are acceptable but are strongly discouraged due to conversion issues and poor resolution in the published article.
High-resolution image files are not preferred for initial submission as the file sizes may be too large. The total file size of the PDF for peer review should not exceed 10 MB. However, high-resolution figures are required for accepted articles entering into pre-production.
Figures legends
All legends must begin with a short, descriptive sentence that summarizes the intent and content of the figure. This sentence should be in boldfaced font. A more detailed explanation of the data contained in the figure and/or its parts should follow in standard (non-boldfaced) font.
Tables
Each table should have a brief, specific, descriptive title, giving sufficient explanation to make the data intelligible without reference to the text. Number all tables and cite in numerical order in the text, using Arabic numerals.
Editing services for non-English speakers
For non-English-speaking authors, a professional editing service may help improve the presentation of the paper. Papers with significant English language deficiencies may be returned without review.
Video Formats
Videos may be uploaded in one of the following formats:
- QuickTime (.mov)
- Audio Video Interleave (.avi)
- Windows Media (.wmv)
- Moving Pictures Expert Group (.mpeg or .mpg)
Submit all videos at the desired size and length. To avoid excessive delays for users accessing them on their Web browsers or downloading them, please keep videos below 5 MB in size, normally running between 30 and 45 seconds in length. To control the file size of MOV videos, use QuickTime’s “compress” option. Cropping frames and image sizes can also significantly reduce file sizes, and videos can be looped to play more than once, provided file size does not become excessive.
Online copyright transfer
Keloid Research requires all authors of accepted manuscripts to provide electronic copyright transfer signatures or to document their status as an NIH or other U.S. federal employee and thus unable to transfer copyright. Upon acceptance of a manuscript, an e-mail will be sent to all coauthors with instructions for providing their electronic signatures. Articles will not be published until all signatures are received by Keloid Research.
Manuscript file format
A Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) file of your accepted manuscript is required to allow the manuscript to be copy-edited and composed. You will be requested to upload the final text document after acceptance. Please note that publication of your article will be put on hold until you upload a Word or RTF document. You must make sure that the document you submit is the same as the one accepted. There cannot be ANY content changes from the final accepted version; however, you should remove any highlighted or red-lined text that may have been inserted to indicate revisions to the original submission.
Cover Illustrations
Cover illustrations are chosen by the Editor-in-Chief. Authors who submit a manuscript are encouraged to include a color image they consider suitable for the cover of Keloid Research as a supplemental file, with reference to this suggested cover figure in the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief. The author must own copyright to the image. The image must be sharp enough to allow magnification to the full size of the 6½ x 11 in. image area. Include a brief caption explaining the content of the figure.
Authorship criteria
All authors listed in a manuscript submitted to Keloid Research must have contributed substantially to the work. Upon submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author must indicate, in the online submission and in the Authorship section of the manuscript, the specific contribution of each author. Examples of appropriate designations include: designed research, performed research, contributed vital new reagents or analytical tools, collected data, analyzed and interpreted data, performed statistical analysis, and/or wrote the manuscript. An author may list more than one type of contribution and more than one author may have contributed to the same aspect of the work. The corresponding author assumes responsibility for obtaining permission from all coauthors for the submission of any/all version(s) of the manuscript and for any changes in authorship.
If authorship is attributed to a group listed as author (e.g., only the group name is in the byline or in addition to one or more individual authors), all members of the group must meet the full criteria and requirements for authorship as described above and they are acknowledged as authors in Medline. The group members who do not meet the formal authorship criteria listed above but who contributed materially as collaborators may be named in the Appendix and if the manuscript is accepted, their names will be listed in an online supplemental Appendix. The group members listed in Acknowledgments or in the Appendix are acknowledged as collaborators in Medline/PubMed.
All individuals share responsibility for any manuscript they coauthor. Some coauthors have responsibility for the entire manuscript as an accurate, verifiable report of the research. These include coauthors accountable for the conception or execution of the research reported in the paper, the integrity and analysis of the data, or the writing of the manuscript. Coauthors with specific, limited contributions to a paper are responsible for their contributions but may have only limited responsibility for other results. While not all coauthors may be familiar with all aspects of the research presented in the manuscript, all coauthors should have in place an appropriate process for reviewing the accuracy of the reported results. Each author should review and approve the manuscript before publication. The corresponding author is responsible for the integrity of the work as a whole.
For more information on this important topic, see the Authorship section in the CSE’s White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications.
Conflict of interest disclosure
The Keloid Research Foundation (KRF), as the publisher, and Keloid Research journal are committed to ensuring the integrity of all their activities. The conflict of interest disclosure policy for Keloid Research contributors requires each author to disclose all relevant financial and other interests, regardless of amount or value, which might be construed as resulting in an actual, potential, or apparent conflict in one’s role as contributor to Keloid Research.
At the time of submission to Keloid Research, authors are required to disclose any potential conflict of interest, which may include one or more of the following: employment; consultancy within the past two years; ownership interests (including stock options) in a start-up company, the stock of which is not publicly traded; ownership interest (including stock options but excluding indirect investments through mutual funds and the like) in a publicly traded company; research funding; honoraria received directly from an entity; paid expert testimony within the past two years; any other potential financial relationship (e.g., holding a patent or receiving royalties); and/or membership on another entity’s Board of Directors or its advisory committees (whether for profit or not for profit).
Any involvement by pharmaceutical or medical device company employees or medical writers supported by a pharmaceutical or medical device company in the writing of an article must be clearly defined and disclosed in the Conflict-of-Interest Disclosure section of the manuscript (if the individual is an author) or the Acknowledgments section (if the individual is not an author).
For Review Articles: Pharmaceutical or medical device company employees and medical writers supported by a pharmaceutical or medical device company are not permitted to have any role in writing these articles. Please direct any questions regarding this policy to the Editor-in-Chief prior to submission.
If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and to collectively list All pertinent commercial relationships in the manuscript (under the Acknowledgment section or in the Authorship section) and in the metadata of the online submission.
It is important to note that this policy and the disclosure statements will not be regarded as creating a presumption of impropriety in the existence of financial interests or other relationships of a commercial nature. Instead, Keloid Research’s purpose is to inform its editors, reviewers, and readers of the existence of financial relationships pertinent to the article in the interest of full transparency in the peer review and publication processes.
During the peer review process any conflicts of interest will be disclosed only to editors and reviewers, who will keep them confidential.
If the paper is accepted for publication in Keloid Research, all disclosures, including statements of no conflict of interest, will appear in published article, in the Authorship section.
Upon acceptance, all authors are asked to sign their electronic copyright transfer which is available to all authors upon successful initial submission and requires authors to confirm that any relevant conflicts of interest are disclosed in the manuscript. An article will not be published in the journal until all signatures are received.
Originality
Keloid Research accepts only manuscripts that describe original work, no part of which has been currently submitted for publication elsewhere except as brief abstracts. Authors should take care to exclude overlap and duplication of text or figures between manuscripts dealing with related materials. Copies of existing manuscripts with overlapping or duplicated material should be submitted together with the manuscript as supplemental data files so that the Editors can judge the originality of the material and its suitability for publication. Submission of duplicate (redundant) content, already published elsewhere, will be considered a breach of ethical conduct and will trigger severe consequences. See also section III. D. “Overlapping Publications” of the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and section 3.2.2 “Definition of Research Misconduct” in CSE’s White Paper on Publication Ethics.
A manuscript containing material that was previously presented as a digital poster presented in a conference or meeting with an online poster repository or videotaped will be considered for publication in Keloid Research as long as significant new information is included.
Principles for publication of medical research involving human subjects
All studies that involve human subjects must abide by the rules of the appropriate institutional review board (or equivalent organization) of the institution in which the research was conducted and by the tenets of the World Medical Association’s most recently revised Declaration of Helsinki.
Published studies that involve human subjects should not provide subjects’ identifying information (e.g., names, true initials, recognizable images) unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or the patient’s parent/guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. If your study requires the appropriate written consent, please submit a patient-signed copy of the consent to our Editorial Office.
Errata
Errata are short corrections to published articles. They may correct scientific errors which may result in misunderstandings but do not change the conclusions of the article, errors of omission (such as author names or references), or errors in the writing or publication process. Errata are subject to editorial approval.