INSTRUCTION TO AUTHORS

Description

Chinese Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics (CJCP) is an academic journal specializing in pediatrics that is sponsored by the Central South University and Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education of China. It primarily reports leading research findings and clinical experiences in pediatrics, as well as experimental research that has guiding significance for pediatric clinical practice and is closely linked to pediatric clinical work. The main audience includes professionals engaged in pediatric clinical practice, teaching, and research. The mission statement of CJCP : Reflecting Contemporary Pediatrics, Engaging with the World. It is recognized as a statistical source journal for scientific papers in China, a core journal in the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), and a core journal in the Chinese academic journal list maintained by Peking University Library. It has been indexed by renowned international databases such as MEDLINE/PubMed/PMC, Scopus, Chemical Abstracts (CA), Embase, the World Health Organization's Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM), and EBSCO. The journal is published monthly on the 15th and is available to the public both domestically and internationally.  The Chinese series publication number is CN 43-1301/R, and the ISSN is 1008-8830. All manuscripts submitted to this journal must undergo peer review and will be open access after publication. In 2019, the journal was included in China's first batch of high-quality scientific journals in the clinical medicine field, classified in the T2 zone for pediatrics, and listed in the Q1 zone of Chinese academic journals. 

Columns

The main columns include original articles (clinical research, rare/difficult disease studies, case analyses, child healthcare, epidemiological surveys, and experimental research), clinical experience, expert lectures, reviews, and standards/protocols/guidelines. Contributions for expert lectures, reviews, and commentary sections are mostly solicited.

Manuscript Submission and Publishing

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically via email to cjcp1999@csu.edu.cn.

For overseas authors, please submit manuscripts written in English and ensure that a native English-speaking researcher reviews the accuracy of the English before submission. 

Currently, no manuscript processing fees are charged for submissions from abroad.

The authors must take full responsibility for their manuscript, and CJCP is entitled to make changes to the wording and sentence expression of the manuscript according to the provisions of the “Copyright Law” of China.

Generally, the authors will be notified of the decision regarding the manuscript by email within 4 to 6 weeks of submission. If accepted, the manuscript will be published within 4 months of the completion of any necessary revisions. When submitting a manuscript, authors must confirm that they have not submitted their work or a similar manuscript elsewhere.

If invited to submit a revised version of the manuscript, the corresponding author must address all the reviewer’s comments. Please use red marks to indicate the corrected parts in the article. In cases where the manuscript is returned for revision and is not received by CJCP within 4 weeks, it will be deemed to have been withdrawn.

Authors will be given an opportunity to proofread the manuscript prior to publication. Authors should return the proof to the editorial department within 3 working days.

After the manuscript has been accepted, a Copyright Transfer & Publication Statement Letter should be provided. The copyright for all articles published in CJCP, including the charts and tables therein, belongs to CJCP. The journal is entitled to publish accepted articles online, on CD, etc., and no part of the article may be reproduced elsewhere without approval from the journal.

Ethics and Informed Consent

When reporting research involving human data, authors should indicate whether the research is in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki as revised in 2013. The manuscript should contain a statement that the research has been approved by the ethics committee (institutional and national), which should be documented in the Methods section of the paper. If this study was not approved by the ethics committee, include a statement explaning why it was exempt，such a manuscript will not be accepted.

Manuscripts describing research involving human subjects should indicate that written informed consent was obtained from the parents or guardians of the child, when appropriate, assent from the subjects themselves (for prospective research, it is mandatory, and for retrospective research, it depends).

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

A statement of conflicts of interest must be included at the end of the manuscript. The author contribution statement should follow the main text. Clinical trials must provide the clinical research registration number.

Peer-Review Policy and Process

CJCP uses internal editorial experts and external reviewers to review all submissions. Some manuscripts may be rejected during the internal editorial review phase due to poor quality or because they do not fall within the scope of the journal. For these manuscripts, decision-making is usually quick. For the remaining manuscripts editors will select two or more experts from the expert database of the journal for external review. CJCP uses single-blind peer review (reviewers are anonymous, while authors’ identities are known to reviewers). After receiving review comments, the editor-in-chief makes a decision to accept or reject the manuscript, and probably asks the author to make revisions based on the review comments. Authors may suggest that specific individuals be or not be involved as reviewers, but the final decision of acceptance or rejection rests with the editorial board.

The following manuscripts will be given priority in processing and publication: manuscripts on subjects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation, or the Provincial or Ministry science foundations; experimental research involving important innovations; prospective clinical research conducted jointly by multiple centers; and clinical case studies with long-term follow-up visits.

All manuscripts must be peer reviewed before they are accepted for publication to ensure that all published manuscripts provide valuable and scientific knowledge.

Requests for the Manuscript

1. Cover letter: It is written by the first author or corresponding author to the editorial department of CJCP for submission. Please declare intentions to publish in CJCP and confirm you have not submitted elsewhere and the manuscript has not been published elsewhere. Please confirm that the author list and the author sequence are appropriate, state whether there is a conflict of interest, and list the innovations and research significance of the manuscript, the authors’ contributions to the manuscript, and the corresponding author and first author's contact ways. If you have any requirements, you can tell us in the cover letter.

2. Length of the whole text: The maximum total length should be no more than 10 printed pages for original, review and lecture articles. In a whole, it is preferred that manuscripts are concise and comprehensive.

3. Authors: The corresponding author is responsible for communicating with the editors on matters related to the manuscript. The corresponding author is generally the principal investigator of the study or is a supervisor of graduate students, should be familiar with all the contents of the article and takes full responsibility for the article. Non-original articles do not require identification of a corresponding author.

The names of all the authors should be placed under the title. List the working institution after the author name. If authors come from different working institutions, their affiliations should be indicated using Arabic numbers to the upper right of the author’s name. The journal does not recognize co-first authors except in multicenter studies.

4. Abstract: The abstracts for original articles should be structured, no longer than 300 words. The abstracts include four sections: “Objective”, “Methods”, “Results” and “Conclusions”. For the articles, such as case analysis, rare disease research, expert lectures/commentary, and reviews, the abstracts are descriptive (unstructured), no longer than 150 words.

5. Key words: For each article, three to five key words are needed. Between every key word, a semicolon (;) is to be used. It is recommended to use the words as key words from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) published by the American National Library. If necessary, the common free words can be used. The key words must include the research subject.

6.Text: In the “introduction”, describe the creativity and feasibility of the research, and expand on the research background and theories, with reference to all the existing key literature, as well as providing your hypotheses and stating the purpose of the research. In the “Materials and Methods”, describe in detail the selection of the study subjects, the instruments and reagents used (indicate the place of origin and manufacturer), and the experimental procedures. In the experimental procedures section, sufficient detail should be given to permit others to repeat the experiments. The “Results” should be described in a logical order, and the data in the figures and tables should not be repeated. Finally, the “Discussion” must integrate the research findings with the results of prior research based on the research purpose, and draw appropriate inferences based on the results.

7. Tables: Tables should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they are cited in the text. Each table should have a heading. A three-horizontal-line table should be used when formatting tables. In situations where statistical data is listed, a fine horizontal line may be added above the bottom line. Notes with the tables may be listed by means of superscript, such as “a, b, c…”. The number of cases in each group/subgroup is usually listed in the table.  The paper should contain no more than 4 tables.

8. Figures: Each figure may consist of several pictures that should be numbered consecutively according to the order they are cited in the text. The title of each figure should be written underneath it, followed by a figure legend to explain the figure, so that readers can understand the contents of the figure without the need for reference to the text of the article. Use arrows to indicate positive results in the figure. For microscopic photos, a scale bar should be placed in the bottom right corner of the photo. For JPG or TIF documents, it is recommended that a definition of at least 300 dpi pixels be used. The bar chart, line graph and forest map in the text should be displayed in vector graph.  The paper should contain no more than 4 figures.

9. Statistics: Statistical symbols should be written in italics. The statistical analytical methods (e.g., variance analysis for the randomized design groups) used in the manuscript should be stated in the Methods section. The specific value of the statistical quantity (e.g., t=3.45, χ²=4.68, F=6.79, P=0.023, etc.) should be indicated in the Results section.

10. Abbreviations: Acronyms or abbreviations can be used if the phrase appears more than three times in the abstract or text. They should be expanded when first appear, then followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Common abbreviations may be used directly, for example, WBC, RBC, Hb, T, P, R and BP. Abbreviations are not usually used in the title. Use as few abbreviations in the abstract and text as possible.

11. Acknowledgements: Acknowledgements are listed after the main text of the article, and before the references, if any. The funding agency, the subjects and the personnel who have contributed to the research should be acknowledged.

12. References: There is no limit to the number of references that can be cited, but it should be relevant to the contents of the article, and the author should have personally read it. Where possible cite literature from the last 5 years and from formal publications.

References should be numbered in the same order that they initially appear in the text. In the text they should be denoted with a superscript Arabic numeral in square brackets.

The first three authors of the reference must be listed. When there are more than three authors, only the first three can be listed, then additional authors should be abbreviated to “et al”. If the reference is from a journal, please add [J] following the title; add [M] if it is from a monograph; add [D] if it is from a degree paper; add [J/OL] if it is from an electronic journal; and add [EB/OL] if it is from an online data source. The PMID number, PMCID number and DOI number (if any) must be added to the cited journal. Examples are as follows:

[1] Jones RL, Homa DM, Meyer PA, et al. Trends in blood lead levels and blood lead testing among US children aged 1 to 5 years, 1988-2004[J]. Pediatrics, 2009, 123(3): e376-385. PMID: 19254973. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2007-3608.

[2] Berseth CL. Disorders of the liver[M]//Taersch HW, Ballard RA. Avery′s Diseases of the Newborn. 7th ed. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998: 928-932.

[3] European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Update: hepatitis of unknown origin in children[EB/OL]. (April 19, 2022)[April 30, 2022]. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/update-hepatitis-unknown-origin-children.

[4] Tan JJ. The correlation study of child abuse and children’s emotional and behavioral problems in a elementary school of Changsha[D]. Changsha: Central South University, 2014.

Website: www.zgddek.com; Email: cjcp1999@csu.edu.cn

Mailing address: Editorial Office of Chinese Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, 87 Xiangya Road, Changsha 410008, Hunan, CHINA

Tel: +86-731-84327402; Fax: +86-731-84327922