Instruction to Authors

Chinese Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics is a professional academic journal in the field of pediatrics, supervised by the Ministry of Education and sponsored by Central South University and Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. It primarily publishes leading research achievements and clinical experience in pediatrics, as well as basic research that is closely integrated with clinical practice and provides guidance for pediatric care. The journal’s readership mainly consists of professionals engaged in pediatric clinical practice, teaching, and research. The journal’s mission is to "reflect contemporary developments and reach a global audience."

Columns
The main columns include Original Articles (covering clinical research, rare/complex disease studies, child health care, epidemiological surveys, and experimental research), Clinical Experience, Expert Lectures, Commentaries, Reviews, and Standards · Protocols · Guidelines. Manuscripts for Expert Lectures and Commentaries are primarily by invitation.

Submission Guidelines
All submissions must be made online. Please visit the journal’s website at www.zgddek.com, click “Online Submission,” and follow the step-by-step instructions. The journal does not accept submissions by mail or email. In special circumstances, please contact the editorial office directly.

Manuscripts must be strictly prepared in accordance with the journal’s required format. Submissions that do not meet the formatting requirements must be revised and approved before they can be sent for peer review.

Priority will be given to papers funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, provincial-level or ministerial-level scientific funds, studies with significant experimental innovations, and prospective multicenter collaborative clinical research. Projects supported by funding must be supported by an approval document and a copy of the first page.

Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscripts. In accordance with the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China, the journal reserves the right to make textual edits or abridgements to submitted manuscripts.

Ethical Issues and Informed Consent
Manuscripts must adhere to fundamental principles of medical ethics. For studies involving human subjects, approval from the institutional medical ethics committee must be obtained, and the approval number should be cited in the paper. Informed consent must also be obtained from the participants or their guardians (mandatory for prospective studies; for retrospective studies, this depends on the specific situation). A statement of conflicts of interest must appear at the end of the manuscript. An author contribution statement should be included after the main text. Clinical trials must provide a clinical research registration number.

Manuscript Processing and Publication
For manuscripts accepted for peer review, authors are generally notified of the review outcome via email within 4–6 weeks. Accepted manuscripts are typically published about six months after submission. Authors can check the status of their submissions online via the journal’s website. Manuscripts should not be submitted to other journals before receiving the review outcome.

When revising a manuscript, authors must include a response letter addressing each comment raised during peer review and make revisions using the tracking mode in Word. Unless there are special circumstances, a revised manuscript not returned within eight weeks will be considered withdrawn.

Authors are responsible for proofreading before publication. The proof must be returned within three working days.

The journal does not charge a review fee. Accepted manuscripts are subject to a page fee of 850 RMB per page. Invited articles and guideline/consensus papers are exempt from the page fee.

The copyright for all articles published in the Chinese Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, including any figures and tables, belongs to the journal’s editorial office. The journal, which is indexed in multiple domestic and international databases, has the right to publish accepted papers online, on CD, and in other formats. Authors will receive two copies of the issue in which their article appears.

Manuscript Format
A complete submission must include two parts: a cover letter and the main text. Each part should start on a separate page but be included in the same file.

1.     Cover letter: It is written by the first author or corresponding author to the editorial office of CJCP for submission. It should state that all authors agree to the submission and publication in CJCP, confirming that the manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by any other journal, and that there are no disputes regarding authorship or institutional affiliations. It should also disclose any potential conflicts of interest, summarize the manuscript’s innovations and research significance, and specify each author’s contribution to the work. The cover letter must include the institution, address, postal code, telephone number, and email of both the corresponding author and the first author. Any special requests may also be included in the cover letter.

2.     Word Count: Original articles should generally not exceed 7,000 Chinese characters; reviews and lectures should generally not exceed 5,000 Chinese characters; clinical experience reports and case reports should generally not exceed 3,000 Chinese characters.

3.     Font: Use Songti, size 5 for the main text and Chinese abstract; use Times New Roman, size 5 for the English abstract and references, with 1.5 spacing.

4.     Title: All manuscripts must include both Chinese and English titles. The title should accurately and concisely convey the core content of the paper and should not exceed 25 Chinese characters.

5.     Authors: The journal follows a corresponding-author responsibility system. The corresponding author is generally the project leader or graduate supervisor and should be familiar with the entire manuscript, taking full responsibility for the article. The corresponding author’s name, gender, academic title, and email should be listed as a footnote on the first page of the manuscript. Author names are placed below the title, separated by spaces. Below the author names, list the full name of each institution, department, city/province, and postal code. If authors are from different institutions, superscript Arabic numerals should be added to the right of the author names. For group authorship, both the primary author and corresponding author must be indicated. Chinese names in the English abstract should be written in Pinyin (e.g., 李小明 as LI Xiao-Ming). The first author’s name, gender, degree, and academic title should be included as a footnote. Except for multicenter studies, the journal does not accept authors with equal contributions.

6.     Abstract: Articles must include Chinese and English abstracts within 350 words, written in the third person. For clinical research, child health care, epidemiological surveys, and experimental studies, the abstracts should be structured, including “Objective,” “Methods,” “Results,” and “Conclusion.” For rare/complex disease studies, reviews/lectures, and case reports, the abstracts should be descriptive (within 200 words). The English abstract should also include the title, all author names, and the corresponding author’s institution, department, city, postal code, country, and email.

7.     Keywords: After both the Chinese and English abstracts, 3–5 keywords in Chinese and English must be listed, separated by “;”. Preferably, keywords should be selected from the medical subject headings (MeSH) listed in the Index Medicus by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Commonly used free terms may be used if necessary. Keywords must include the research subjects.

8.     Headings: Except for “Introduction” and “Discussion,” all sections of the main text should have headings. Headings should be in first and second-level formats. First-level headings are numbered with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3…), while second-level headings use decimal numbering (1.1, 1.2…; 2.1, 2.2…). The use of third-level or deeper headings is discouraged.

9.     Main Body Text: The “Introduction” should highlight the study’s novelty and feasibility, present the research background and theoretical basis, cite key references, and state the hypothesis and research objectives. The “Materials and Methods” section should describe the selection of experimental subjects and the number of cases in each (sub)group, instruments and reagents (including source and manufacturer), and the research or experimental procedures. Experimental studies must provide sufficiently detailed steps to allow reproducibility. The “Results” should be presented in a logical sequence without repeating data already shown in tables or figures. The “Discussion” must focus on the research objectives, analyze the results to reveal the essence of the findings, and draw appropriate conclusions.

10.  Tables: Tables should be numbered consecutively in the order they appear in the text and placed within the text. Each table must have a number and a title. Tables should use the three-line format; if statistical data need to be listed, a thin line may be added above the bottom line. Comparisons showing statistical significance should be indicated with superscripts “a, b, c…” and explained in the table footnotes. The number of cases in each group/subgroup must be listed. English abbreviations must be explained with their full Chinese terms in the table footnotes.

11.  Figures: A figure may consist of multiple images and should be numbered consecutively in the order they appear in the text and placed within the text. Each figure must have a caption below it. Figure legends, placed after the caption, should provide sufficient explanation so that the figure can be understood independently of the main text. Lesions or positive findings should be indicated with arrows; for microscopic images, the magnification should be noted in the lower right corner. Images must be of high clarity and contrast, preferably provided in JPG or TIF format, with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Line charts, forest plots, and bar charts should be provided as vector graphics. The number of cases in each (sub)group should be indicated. Comparisons showing statistical significance should be marked with superscripts “a, b, c…” and explained in the figure legends.

12.  Numbers: Follow the national standard Usage of Numbers in Publications. Arabic numerals should be used for centuries, years, months, days, times, counts, and measurements.

13.  Units of Measurement: Units such as seconds, minutes, hours, and days should generally be represented by lowercase English letters “s, min, h, d” following the number. In compound units, slashes should not exceed one; for example, “mg/kg/d” should be written as “mg/kg per day” or “mg/(kg·d)”.

14.  Statistical Methods: The specific statistical analysis method used should be clearly stated (e.g., analysis of variance for randomized group design data). When reporting statistical results, the exact values of the test statistics should be provided (e.g., t = 3.45, χ2 = 4.68, F = 6.79, P = 0.023). All statistical symbols should be italicized.

15.  Abbreviations: An abbreviation may be used when a term appears three times or more. When first introduced in the abstract and main text, the full Chinese term should be provided, followed by the full English term and abbreviation in parentheses. Common abbreviations may be used directly without the English full term, such as WBC, RBC, Hb, T, P, R, BP. Titles generally should not use abbreviations, and their use in abstracts and main text should be minimized.

16.  References: References must be closely related to the content of the article and personally read by the authors, preferably published in the last five years. For review articles, the number of references should reach 30 or more, with at least 70% of references published within the last five years. References should be cited using a sequential numbering system, indicated in the text with superscript Arabic numerals in square brackets according to their order of appearance. Cited references should be formally published works; textbooks, abstracts, and other reviews should be avoided whenever possible. List all of the first three authors; if there are more than three authors, list the first three followed by “et al.” for English references or “等” for Chinese references. Complete information for year, volume, and issue must be provided. For English journal references, journal names should follow the internationally recognized abbreviations consistent with PubMed. References should indicate the type of source: journal “[J]”, monograph “[M]”, online journal “[J/OL]”, online material “[EB/OL]”, or dissertation “[D]”. For cited journal articles, include PMID, PMCID, and DOI numbers if available. Examples are as follows:

[1] 蒋峰原,刘慧苹,陈利婷,等.血清脑红蛋白评估新生儿低血糖脑损伤的临床价值[J].中国当代儿科杂志, 2019,21(6):573-579. PMID: 31208512. PMCID: PMC7389575. DOI: 10.7499/j.issn.1008-8830.2019.06.014.

[2] 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-e385. PMID: 19254973. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2007-3608.

[3] 倪佳臣. 常见症状的鉴别诊断[M]//胡亚美,江载芳. 诸福棠实用儿科学(上册). 7版. 北京：人民卫生出版社, 2002: 250-282.

[4] Berseth CL. Disorders of the liver[M]//Taersch HW, Ballard RA. Avery's Diseases of the Newborn. 7thed. Philadelphia: W.B.

Saunders Company, 1998: 928-932.

[5] European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Update: hepatitis of unknown origin in children [EB/OL]. (2022-04-19) [2022-04-30]. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/update-hepatitis-unknown-origin-children.

[6] 谭晶晶. 长沙市某小学儿童虐待与儿童情绪及行为问题的相关性研究[D]. 长沙: 中南大学, 2014.

Submission Website: www.zgddek.com

Email: cjcp1999@csu.edu.cn; ddek@vip.163.com

Contact Address: Editorial Office of Chinese Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, 87 Xiangya Road, Kaifu District, Changsha, Hunan Province, China, 410008. Phone: 0731-84327402

Fax: 0731-84327922