Guidelines and Policies

Submissions must be sent to editor's email: editorial.crcj@gmail.com

Online Submission 
Submission and peer-review of all papers is conducted online, increasing efficiency for editors, authors, and reviewers, and enhancing publication speed. Once a paper has been submitted, all subsequent correspondence between the Editorial Office and the corresponding author will be by e-mail. 

Editorial Policy
A paper is accepted for publication on the understanding that it has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal, has been read and approved by all authors, and that the work has not been published before. The Editors reserve the right to make editorial and literary corrections. Any opinions expressed or policies advocated do not necessarily reflect the opinions and policies of the Editors. 

Declarations
Upon submission you will be required to complete and upload the declarations page to declare funding, conflict of interest and to indicate that ethical approval was given – all studies involving patients must have patient consent and ethical committee approval, please refer to the section on ‘Ethics’ below. This information must also be inserted into your manuscript under the acknowledgements section with the headings below. 
PLEASE NOTE that all funding must be declared at first submission, as the addition of funding at acceptance stage may invalidate the acceptance of your manuscript. 

Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following:

(1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data
(2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
(3) final approval of the version to be submitted.
The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors are aware of their obligations. 


The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate Ethical Committee related to the institution(s) in which the work was performed, and that subjects gave informed consent to the work.

The CRCJ requires institutional Ethics Committee approval for all human studies.

For retrospective studies of records either a statement of approval or a statement of exemption from the Committee is appropriate.

This statement should be provided upon submission of the manuscript. 

Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines. 

It is important that ethics committee oversight is independent, as stated by the ICMJE guidelines: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/protection-of-research-participants.html 

Patient confidentiality
Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients' images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, The Editor and Publisher must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to the Editorial Office on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.If consent for publication has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission. 

Registration of clinical trials
Registration in a public trials registry is a condition for publication of clinical trials in this journal in accordance with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors recommendations. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. A clinical trial is defined as any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects of health outcomes. Health-related interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (for example drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes). Health outcomes include any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration. 


Language Editing Services
Papers will only be accepted when they are written in an acceptable standard of Portuguese and English. 

Article Types
The following contributions will be accepted for publication. Please take careful note of the maximum length where applicable. Overlength articles will be returned to the authors without peer review: 
• editorials (commissioned by the editor)
• clinical papers: no more than 3000 words and 35 references
• research papers: no more than 4000 words and 40 references
• review papers - no limit on length or number of references
• technical notes (surgical techniques, new instruments, technical innovations) - no more than 1500 words, 10 references and 2 figures
• case reports - no more than 2000 words, 30 references and 10 figures


Please note: Case reports will be considered for publication only if they add new information to the existing body of knowledge or present new points of view on known diseases.

 

Criteria for Publication
Papers that will be considered for publication should be: • focused
• based on a sound hypothesis and an adequate investigation method analysing a statistically relevant series, leading to relevant results that back the conclusion
• well written in simple, scientific English/portuguese grammar and style
• presented with a clear message and containing new information that is relevant for the readership of the journal
• Note the comment above relating to case reports. • Please include a paragraph in your cover letter where you explain what is new about your study and why it will have an impact on your field of research. 

Following peer-review, authors are required to resubmit their revised paper within 30 days; in exceptional circumstances, this timeline may be extended at the editor's discretion. 

Presentation of Manuscripts
General points
Papers should be submitted in journal style. Failure to do so will result in the paper being immediately returned to the author and may lead to significant delays in publication. Spelling may follow British or American usage, but not a mixture of the two. Papers should be double-spaced with a margin of at least 3 cm all round. Each line must be numbered. 

Keywords
Please include a minimum of 3 keywords that are most relevant to the content of your article using the US National Library of Medicine MeSH terms. You can check whether your keywords are MeSH terms here: https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search. 

Including keywords with your article will ensure that your article will be found during PubMed, Scopus and other searches. 

Format
Observational or Case Cohort Studies, as well as Case Series must be presented in conformance with STROBE guidelines: http://www.strobe-statement.org 

Randomized Controlled Trials must be presented in conformance with CONSORT guidelines:  http://www.consort-statement.org 

Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses must be presented according to PRISMA guidelines:  http://www.prisma-statement.org 

Papers should be set out as follows, with each section beginning on a separate page: • title page
• abstract
• text
• acknowledgements
• references
• tables
• captions to illustrations.

Title page
The title page should give the following information: • title of the article
• full name of each author (ORCID)
• name and address of the department or institution to which the work should be attributed
• name, address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the author
responsible for correspondence and to whom requests for offprints should be sent
• sources of support in the form of grants
• key words. 
If the title is longer than 40 characters (including spaces), a short title should be supplied for use in the running heads. 

Abstract
250 words maximum. Should be structured. Must contain all relevant information, including results and conclusion. 

 

Text
Please ensure that the text of your paper conforms to the following structure: 

Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion section. 

References
The journal's reference style has changed. References should be numbered consecutively throughout the article, beginning with 1 for the first-cited reference. References should be listed at the end of the paper in the order in which they appear in the text (not listed alphabetically by author and numbered as previously). 

The accuracy of references is the responsibility of the author. References in the text should be numbered with superscript numerals following Vancouver style


Tables
A maximum of 3 tables 

Figures
maximum of 10 figures