I. Authorship Guidelines

1.     Significance of Authorship

  (1) Authorship indicates the persons responsible for the paper. It’s the authors who bear full responsibility for the content.

  (2) Medical papers summarize and document scientific and technological achievements in medicine. They represent the results of the authors’ hard work and creative intelligence, reflect their contributions to the medical field, and serve as an objective measure of social recognition and respect. Authorship is therefore a deserved honor and also an assertion of the authors’ contribution to be credited.

(3) Authorship facilitates communication between editors, readers, and authors, allowing for the exchange of information, discussion, and mutual improvement. Author names are listed in order beneath the title, and the sequence should be determined at the time of submission and should not be changed during the production process.

2.     Authors should meet the following criteria:

 (1) Participation in the selection of the research topic and study design, or involvement in the analysis and interpretation of data.

 (2) Drafting or revising critical theoretical or other major content of the manuscript.

 (3) Ability to review and respond to editorial revisions, defend the work within the academic community, and give final approval for publication.

All three criteria must be met. Individuals who only provided funding or collected data cannot be listed as authors, and those who performed only general management of the research team are also not eligible. Other contributors to the study should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section. To support multicenter collaborative studies, a footnote may indicate: “The first authors from each participating center are considered co–first authors of this paper.”

The statement of Authors’ contributions should be included after the main body text.

3.     Corresponding Author

When the first author and the corresponding author are not the same person, the corresponding author’s name, academic title, gender, affiliation, and email address should be listed as a footnote. Only one corresponding author can be designated, who should have played a primary role in selecting the research topic and designing the study, participated in writing the manuscript, and be able to respond to inquiries from the editorial office and readers, taking full responsibility for the paper. The journal follows a corresponding-author responsibility system for original articles.

4.     Affiliation Issues

If the first author changes affiliation due to graduation, job transfer, or completion of training, the affiliation listed on the manuscript should be the original institution where the study or training was conducted. The cover letter should also be approved and stamped by the original institution. At the time of publication, the first author’s current affiliation, department, and postal code may be indicated separately.

5. Plagiarism Detection

All manuscripts submitted to this journal shall be tested for plagiarism using the detection system developed by CNKI and Wanfang. If plagiarism or multiple submissions are found, the manuscript will be rejected.

II. Medical Ethics

Research must adhere to fundamental principles of medical ethics. For studies involving human subjects, approval from the institutional ethics committee must be obtained, and the approval number should be documented in the manuscript. In addition, informed consent must be obtained from participants or their legal guardians (mandatory for prospective studies; for retrospective studies, consent is required as appropriate).

Clinical trials should, in principle, be registered with an international clinical trial registry or the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, and the registration number must be indicated in the manuscript.

Measures must be taken to protect the privacy of research participants, avoiding any text, data, images, or other materials that could identify individual patients.

For reports of animal experiments, authors should indicate whether the study followed institutional and national standards for the management and use of laboratory animals.

III. Competing Interests

All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing / personal status / affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization / employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is involved, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against competitive products.

The statement of competing interests should be included after the main body text.

IV. Editorial Guidelines for Editors, EBM, and Reviewers

Editors, editorial board members, and invited reviewers should handle manuscripts in a fair, objective, and timely manner. They must adhere to the principles of blind peer review, ensuring the confidentiality of both manuscript content and reviewer information. Manuscripts should be sent for review promptly, and review comments should be communicated to authors in a respectful and constructive manner.

Editors, editorial board members, and reviewers must avoid using rude, defamatory, or biased comments. Decisions regarding manuscript acceptance or rejection should be based on academic quality, originality, clarity, and relevance to the journal, while allowing authors to appeal editorial decisions.

Editors, editorial board members, and reviewers should provide clear, objective, and well-supported evaluations, respecting different academic viewpoints. If a reviewer is unfamiliar with the manuscript topic, they should inform the editorial office. Reviews should be completed within the specified timeframe; if delays occur due to objective reasons, the editorial office should be notified promptly.

If editors, editorial board members, or reviewers have any conflicts of interest that could affect objective judgment regarding a manuscript, they should recuse themselves or disclose the conflict to the editorial office to ensure fair and impartial review.

V. Statement for AI Usage

AI models and tools may only be used for language checking and proofreading, and must not be used for drafting or writing manuscripts. All scientific contributions and intellectual work must be completed by humans, and AI cannot be listed as an author. If AI models or tools are used in the research for data processing or analysis, authors must provide a detailed description of their use in the “Methods” section and assume full responsibility for any AI-generated content, including any violations of publication ethics or infringement. The editorial office prohibits the use of AI in manuscript evaluation, decision-making, or communication with authors. During the review process, manuscripts and supplementary materials will not be uploaded to any public AI platform to avoid infringement, privacy breaches, or confidentiality risks.