Manuscript Formatting

 
Pneumon manuscripts are reviewed with the understanding that they:
  • are original
  • are not under consideration by any other publisher
  • have not been previously published in whole or in part
  • have not been previously accepted for publication
  • will not be submitted elsewhere until a decision is reached regarding their publication

Checklists
We advise the authors to follow the below guidelines and checklists when submitting an article. Guidelines and checklists proposed are based on the EQUATOR Network that is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and the wider use of robust reporting guidelines.

This transparency enables readers and reviewers to scrutinise the research adequately, evaluate its methodological rigour, and reproduce the methods or findings.

All observational studies should comply with the STROBE guidelines:
  • Combined Studies
  • Cohort Studies
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Cross-Sectional Studies

  • All systematic reviews should comply with the PRISMA guidelines:
  • PRISMA Checklist
  • PRISMA Expanded Checklist

  • All study protocols should comply with the SPIRIT guidelines:
  • SPIRIT Checklist

  • All case reports should comply with the CARE guidelines:
  • CARE Checklist

  • All randomized trials should comply with the CONSORT guidelines:
  • CONSORT Checklist

  • All meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology should comply with the MOOSE guidelines:
  • MOOSE Checklist

  • All qualitative studies should comply with the SRQR guidelines:
  • SRQR Checklist

  • All animal studies should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines:
  • ARRIVE Checklist


  • General instructions
    The authors are encouraged to consult the latest relevant publications in Pneumon to assist them in the preparation of the manuscript, especially the references and tables.

    Text Formatting
    All manuscripts should be submitted in a Word format, they should be single column and 1.5 spaced. Margins should be one inch at the top, bottom and sides of the page. Font size should be 11-pt or 12-pt, standard font in ‘Arial’ or ‘Times New Roman’ typeface. Manuscripts should be formatted in full justified paragraphs and headings should be left-aligned. Maths should be editable text.

    Title Page
    The Title page should list the title of the article and suggestions for a short running title of no more than 60 characters (including spaces). Also include the authors names, affiliations and contact details including email address for the corresponding author. Affiliations should contain each author’s department, institution (Institute, University), city, country.
    The Title of the article should be clear, concise and highlighting the research topic. It should not include rhetorical questions, literary language, quotations and special symbols.
    Authors cannot change the title of their article once it is accepted for publication, apart from very minor corrections.

    Abstract
    Authors are asked to supply a structured abstract of 250 words. For research articles, systematic reviews and brief reports, the abstract is limited to 250 words and should be structured as follows: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Abstracts for narrative reviews, study protocols and methodology papers are unstructured. Letters do not have an abstract.

    Keywords
    Include up to six keywords that describe your paper for indexing and for web searches of your manuscript.

    Main Text
    Research Papers, Systematic Review Papers and Short Reports sections are: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Narrative Review Papers are not necessarily structured. It is suggested though to include the sections Introduction, Developments and Conclusion. Study Protocols consist of Introduction, Methods, Discussion, and Conclusions. Methodology Papers should consist of Introduction, Methodological approach, Case studies or practical examples, Discussion, Conclusions.

    Use the guidelines below to structure these sections:
    1. A short introduction which should end with the study’s aims. The introduction should state clearly the objective of the paper as well as the context of the research or analysis.
    2. A methods section which should describe the study design, setting, participants, measures, variables and statistical analysis performed. This section should also include information on the study’s ethics procedures. AI technology use should be described in detail (data collection, analysis, figure generation). The tool, version and prompts should be described too.
    3. A results section, which should describe the study’s main findings and important aspects within the tables.
    4. A discussion section, which should include a discussion of the study’s main findings, comparisons with other studies, potential policy implications, the study’s strengths and limitations.
    5. A conclusions section, which should be short, concise and based on the results of the current study. General conclusions that do not stem from the manuscript's results should be avoided.

    Acknowledgements
    This section is for acknowledging individuals and institutions whose support the authors wish to mention (it is not compulsory). Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. The Acknowledgements section should be kept to a minimum. If the study was based on a pre-print, thesis, or conference proceedings, it should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. If an AI was used to support the writing of the manuscript, this should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments.

    Declaration Of Interests
    Declare any competing interests for each author. Pneumon adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. The author names on the ICMJE forms should be identical to the names in the manuscript. The ICMJE Conflict of Interest form is used by E.U. European Publishing.

    Funding
    All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.
    The sentence should begin: "This work was supported by". Proposal numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in parentheses as follows: "(proposal number xxxx)". The funding statement should only report grants awarded that are directly relevant to the study.

    Ethical Approval and Informed Consent
    All research involving human objects must have been reviewed and approved by an ethics committee prior to submission. Authors are requested to include ethical approval and informed consent detailed information in the "only for editors" section during their submission.

    Data availability and sharing
    Pneumon encourages data sharing and suggests to authors to make their underlying data available for other researchers when possible, by choosing for archiving the appropriate public repository by case. We ask all authors to include a data availability statement by choosing one of the following options during their submission:
    1. The data supporting this research are available from the author(s) on reasonable request.
    2. The data supporting this research cannot be made available for privacy or other reasons. [please give the reasons if possible]
    3. The data supporting this research are available from the following sources: [link] OR [DOI]
    4. The data supporting this research can be found in the Article appendix or supplementary content.
    5. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created.

    Authors' contributions
    The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies. The authors have the option to give a brief outline of their contribution. Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section.

    Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): If you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the "Acknowledgements" section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

    Tables, Figures and Supplementary material
    Tables and Figures should be placed at the end of the manuscript and be numbered sequentially in order of appearance in the text. However authors should ensure that every table or figure is referred to in the body of the text. Each table or figure should be accompanied by a short, descriptive title and in the footnote should define any acronyms, abbreviations or symbols used, statistical methods applied and any other information needed so that the table or figure may stand alone. Superscripts used to refer to table footnotes should be lowercase alphabetical symbols. Captions should be given separately in editable form and not part of the table or figure. Numbers in the table should not contain commas, and numbers less than unity should have a zero in front of the decimal point. Decimal numbers should be represented with the use of a full stop.

    The number of actual tables (no sub-tables) that an article can contain should not exceed five. However, they have to be of value as determined by peer review. Extra tables can be included in the Appendix. The content of the tables should be such that the data are of sufficient resolution for comfortable reading. Tables should be submitted in their original Word format (not via Excel), and they should be legible. Avoid using vertical rules. Horizontal rules should be used only above and below column headings and at the bottom of the table. Do not create a table using only tabs or spaces to create columns. Tables should not duplicate material contained in the main text.

    The number of figures should not exceed four. Extra figures can be included in the Appendix. Figures can be submitted in greyscale, black or white or in color as the journal is published online. The journal prefers that figures be created in Excel. Do not embed a figure file as a picture into Excel or Word, but submit them as individual files. The data of figures should be attached in a Word format. Size the figure to the column or page width of the journal, and set the resolution at 300 dpi or greater. Figures containing a large amount of text, particularly flow diagrams, should be send in an editable form.

    Supplementary material should be submitted in a Word format.

    References
    We recommend no more than 36 references, these must be numbered sequentially, as they first appear in the text. They should be superscripted and where more than one reference is cited, these should be separated by a comma, for example, 1, 12, 16, while for a continuous sequence of numbers, give the first and last number of the sequence separated by a hyphen, for example, 4-7. The Reference list should thus be sequentially numbered using plain text (i.e. without use of footnote or endnote etc). Please check the reference list and ensure that there is no duplication of references. References should follow the AMA format.

    Journal article citations
    Citation format:
    Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume(issue number):initial-final page.
    (Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
    Example:
    Raptis CA, Ludwig DR, Hammer MM, et al. Building blocks for thoracic MRI: Challenges, sequences, and protocol design. J Magn Reson Imaging. 2019;50(3):682-701.

    Journal articles Online
    All references that are from journal articles must contain a Digital Object Identifier (DOI): A DOI is a unique character string created to identify a digital object, such as a journal article in an online environment. The DOI is a permanent identifier of all versions of an article and the DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document. The DOI must be included in the citation.
    Citation format:
    Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume(issue number):initial-final page. Doi.
    Example:
    Raptis CA, Ludwig DR, Hammer MM, et al. Building blocks for thoracic MRI: Challenges, sequences, and protocol design. J Magn Reson Imaging. 2019;50(3):682-701. doi:10.1002/jmri.26677

    Books
    Citation format:
    Authors. Title. Volume number (for more than 1 volume). Edition number. Name of publisher; year of publication: page numbers.
    (Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
    Example:
    Patterson JT. The dread disease: cancer and modern American culture. Harvard University Press; 1989.

    Web links and URLs
    All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number, and included in the reference list, rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the item, the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed.

    Website
    Citation format:
    Authors. Title. Name of the website. Published date. Updated date. Accessed date. URL.
    Example:
    International Programme on Chemical Safety: Ten chemicals of major public health concern. World Health Organization. 2010. Accessed October 20, 2020. https://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/chemicals_phc/en/

    Report Online
    Citation format:
    Authors or Institution. Title. Published date. Accessed date. URL.
    Example:
    World Health Organization. Equitable access to essential medicines: a framework for collective action. Published March, 2004. Accessed November 24, http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/pdf/s4962e/s4962e.pdf

    Single blind peer-review policy
    All papers submitted for publication are assessed with the single blind anonymity rule, as to the names of the reviewers observed. Authors’ names and affiliations may appear in the attached text/tables/figures.

    Proofs
    Minor changes to the manuscript will only be accepted. Beyond minor corrections, there will be no author changes accepted that are outside the style of the journal. Rewording, restructuring or changes of style to the manuscript will not be accepted.

    Article download statistics
    After publication, article download statistics are freely available to all readers via the "stats" tab next to each article.

    Checklists
    We support the use of Checklists during manuscript preparation. Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including:
    • randomized trials (CONSORT),
    • systematic reviews (PRISMA),
    • observational studies (STROBE),
    • meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE) and
    • qualitative studies (RATS).
     
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    ISSN:1105-848X
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