Author Guidelines
Manuscript submission
Manuscripts (original articles) and supplementary material should be submitted to the journal via the online editorial system. To submit your manuscript, you should register as an author on the journal’s website.
Should you have any technical questions or problems, please contact support@consortium-psy.com using the email subject: ‘Query on editorial system’.
Before submitting your manuscript to the journal, please consult the requirements for manuscript formatting.
Manuscripts should be submitted in English or Russian. The language of publication is English; metadata are published in English and Russian. The final version of the manuscript is agreed with the corresponding author, whose contact details should be clearly indicated in the manuscript. All correspondence related to manuscript will be sent to the corresponding author only.
The editorial team may request additional information, which may include the primary research data.
In cases where the corresponding author fails to provide a timely response to requests from the editorial team, further consideration of the manuscript may be suspended, and the manuscript may be excluded from the publication plan.
Preparation and manuscript formatting
Cover letter
All the required supporting documents will be submitted together with the manuscript. Authors are required to upload a scanned original of the completed cover letter in PDF format. The cover letter should be signed by all the authors. In a cover letter the authors should confirm that:
- all participants who have made a significant contribution to the study are presented as co-authors;
- those who did not participate in the study should not be listed as co-authors;
- all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the document and agreed to submit it for publication.
General manuscript preparation guidelines
When submitting the manuscript to the journal, please consider the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
Editorial team selects manuscripts to be published in according with the Journal’s publication ethics statement (see in details here). The journal publishes the results of research conducted in compliance with the principles of biomedical ethics and that meet Good Clinical Practice (GCP) standards. The journal only accepts original manuscripts that have not previously been published (including publications in any other language) or submitted for publication in any other journal.
In case of ethics violation detection a manuscript will be rejected despite of publication stage.
Metadata
The title page should include:
- article’s title;
- authors’ names (first and middle name initials, full surname);
- place of work of each author (official name of the institution);
- the author responsible for correspondence with the editorial team should be tagged with an asterisk (*), and provide their e-mail and telephone contact details (for the use of the editorial team; these will not be published).
The final page should include information about the authors in the order of their presentation in the article:
- full name (first, middle name (if applicable), surname);
- position held; official name of institution, and name of department/division;
- degree(s);
- authors’ academic indices:
- ORCID (obligatory for all authors);
- ResearcherID, ScopusID (if applicable);
- e-mail addresses. The author responsible for correspondence with the editorial team should be tagged with an asterisk (*).
Text volume requirements
Manuscripts are accepted in DOC, DOCX, and RTF format. Text should be in the Times New Roman font, in 14-point font, with a one-and-a-half line spacing. All pages should be numbered.
Italic and bold typefaces are allowed for emphasis within the text; underlining is only applicable for Internet links.
Manuscript length (excl. abstract, illustrative materials, and bibliography):
- research results should not exceed 40,000 characters, including spaces;
- reviews should not exceed 60,000 characters, including spaces;
- case reports should not exceed 20,000 characters, including spaces;
- information, commentary, and letters to the editor should not exceed 10,000 characters, including spaces.
Longer manuscripts are only accepted with the specific agreement of the editors.
Manuscript structure
Recommended guidelines for manuscript structure
We recommend that authors follow the international guidelines for transparent and accurate reporting data in scholarly articles collected on the EQUATOR Network platform. Reporting guidelines for the main study types are:
Abstract structure
Abstracts should contain from 150 to 250 words. Abstracts should not contain acronyms, references, or illustrative materials.
Abstracts of the original article should be structured so as to contain:
- INTRODUCTION;
- AIM;
- METHODS;
- RESULTS;
- CONCLUSIONS.
Abstracts of narrative reviews and case reports can be prepared without structuring.
Four to five keywords should be provided.
Structure of original articles
The original article should contain the following sections:
Introduction
The introduction should include:
- a brief review of the literature with emphasis on recent research;
- research justification;
- research objective;
- research hypothesis.
Material and methods
These should ensure the possibility of the research being reproduced by other research groups by providing sufficient details to allow reproduction using the described study methods, and should include:
- design of the study;
- methods:
- inclusion and exclusion criteria;
- key and additional research outcomes;
- methods of the outcome estimation with an indication of the diagnostic tools and equipment used;
- principles of study group formation.
- characteristics of patients or other objects/subjects of research;
- methods of statistical analysis.
The process by which study groups were formed can be presented graphically (“patient flow chart”). When referring to any equipment used in the study, you should indicate in brackets the manufacturer and country of origin; when listing drugs and chemicals, you should specify their international non-proprietary name, dosage, and route of administration.
If your study has been performed on humans or animals, please specify the ethics committee that has approved your research (please provide its conclusions, indicating document number, date of signing, and the official name of the ethics committee), as well as information about the informed, signed consent of the participants or evidence of compliance with the principles of bioethics.
Results
The research results should correspond with the research purpose and should offer data to confirm or reject the research hypothesis. Illustrative materials (graphs, tables, or figures) should be used with the relevant references in the text. Please avoid any repetition of information from illustrative materials in the text. It is recommended that you include no more than five illustrative elements. If necessary, tables with data or measuring scales, etc., may be presented as supplementary material to the main manuscript.
Discussion
The discussion should contain new and important aspects of the study results, an analysis of any possible mechanisms, and an interpretation of the results, as well as comparisons with other studies. Recommendations for clinical practice and the application of results in practice or in future studies are welcomed. The section should describe the strengths and weaknesses of the study, and make appropriate comparison with existing analogues. You should avoid any repetition of information from the ‘Introduction’ section and too detailed a presentation of the data from the ‘Results’ section.
Possible structure of the ‘Discussion’:
- main result – summary of the answer to the research question (one paragraph);
- strengths and limitations of the study;
- comparison of the results obtained with data from other studies, with an analytical assessment of your own results by comparison with other studies;
- application of the results – with regard to research activities, practical work, healthcare organizations.
Conclusion
The conclusion should be brief (a few sentences only) and should summarize the work carried out, the novelty of the data obtained, and the prospects for its future use.
Structure of reviews
A review may be systematic, or systematic with a meta-analysis or narrative. The type of review should be indicated in the title of the manuscript.
- Systematic review and meta-analysis
Prior to submitting the manuscript, you should register the systematic review with PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/). When registered, the registration number of the review in PROSPERO should be indicated in the manuscript.
When preparing a manuscript with a systematic review and meta-analysis, you should follow the PRISMA (http://prisma-statement.org/PRISMAStatement/Checklist.aspx) or AMSTAR (https://amstar.ca/Amstar_Checklist.php) systematic review plan.
The narrative review should contain an introduction that indicates the review justification and purpose. The main text of the review should be structured, and information should be presented in the titled sections. The review should include a discussion of the obtained results. The conclusion (obligatory section) should summarize the results, comply with the review’s purpose, and specify potential areas for the use of the data obtained in research and medical practice.
Structure of case report
The full text of a clinical case report should include:
- introduction (including a brief literature review);
- the clinical case;
- discussion of the results (with a comparison with previous results from the literature);
- conclusions.
Additional sections (for all manuscript types)
- Acknowledgements (this section is optional).
- Authors’ contributions.
- Conflicts of interest.
- Sources of funding.
- Authors’ contributions
An example of authors’ contribution information:
Authors’ contributions: A.M. Ivanov - research design development; B.S. Petrov, G.P. Sidorov - obtaining data for analysis, data analysis; M.M. Ivanova - writing manuscript; O.D. Sidorova - publication review; A.I. Semenov - study idea and purpose development, conceptualization of results. All the authors made a significant contribution to the article, check and approve its final version prior to publication.
- Acknowledgement (optional):
The provision of funding or laboratory materials and tools, technical article editing, scientific advice, or general management of the research team do not in themselves justify inclusion in the list of authors.
All team members who do not meet the criteria for authorship but who have assisted in conducting the research and writing the article should be listed, with their consent, in the ‘Acknowledgement’ section.
An example of acknowledgement information:
Acknowledgement. The authors are grateful to MD A.A. Ivanov for providing scientific advice and for correcting the article, and to V.V. Petrov, the director of Hospital No. 1, for providing administrative support for the study.
Conflicts of interest should be declared for all authors in all types of articles. A conflict of interest implies the existence of any relations and/or personal interests that could potentially affect the results, interpretation of the data, and its unbiased perception. A conflict of interest can occur in the case of financial relations and cooperation with any organization (e.g., fees, educational grants, participation in expert councils, membership, work relations, consultancy work, ownership of a shop in a private property, etc.). In addition, a conflict of interest could relate to non-financial interests (e.g., personal or professional relationships, etc.) with regard to issues discussed in the article and/or materials.
If there are no conflicts of interest, please give the following statement at the end of the article:
An example of Conflict of interest information:
Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Research funding/review or clinical case report should be indicated. We request that you indicate whether the research received financial support, and the source of funding (grant, company support, etc.).
An example of Funding information:
Financing. The study was performed without external funding.
or
Financing. The study was performed with the support of… (official name of the company).
or
Financing. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant no.).
References
Editors request that authors comply with the NLM (National Library of Medicine) citation style when formatting references.
In order for the data relating to authors’ publications to be correctly presented in the international abstract and citation databases of research (SCOPUS, Web of Science, Google Scholar, etc.), you should follow certain rules when formatting references in a paper and in the list of references.
Editors would prefer authors to provide lists of references in English, considering the translation or transliteration of non-English sources in compliance with the presented recommendations.
The website https://www.citethisforme.com can be used to automatically generate a correct bibliographic description of an article in English in the NLM citation style.
In-text citations
- Each reference should be identified sequentially in the text, figures, or tables in square brackets and using arabic numerals. It is only possible to cite the reference in the figure or the table if it is in sequence with the references cited in the text;
- For multiple citations, place a comma (no space in front) between the numbers; join a closed series with a hyphen;
- Only the authors’ surnames should be quoted in the text. If there are two authors, provide both surnames; if there are more than two authors, quote the first surname followed by “et al.”.
General requirements for sources. It is recommended that you include bibliographic descriptions of scientific sources from the last decade in the list of cited sources (this does not refer to publications on the history of psychiatry). References to your own publications should not exceed 10% of the total number of citations.
Types of sources. It is acceptable to cite any source; however, references to unpublished work, state documents (government regulations, laws, etc.), or newspaper articles should appear as footnotes or in the text rather than in the list of references.
Order of presenting sources. The list of references should appear on a new page at the end of your paper. The page should feature the header ‘References’. References are to be listed numerically in order of citation, NOT in alphabetical order.
Presentation and number of authors. Authors’ names and initials should be specified in the list of references without a dot. If there are up to six authors, all authors should be listed. If there are more than six authors, only the first three authors should be listed, followed by “et al.” A comma should be inserted between the name of the last author and “et al.”
Titles and abbreviations. It is unacceptable to abbreviate (or change) the titles of articles or the names of journals. With reference to English language journals, official journal title abbreviations are acceptable. To find an authoritative list of journal title abbreviations, use the CAS Source Index, WorldCat library, or the Web of Science (ISI) catalogue, or MedLine catalogue (NLM Catalogue). If no official abbreviation for the journal title can be found, the name of the journal should be specified in full.
DOI. In all cases, when the source cited has a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), this should be specified at the end of the reference. To verify whether the DOI is valid, visit http://search.crossref.org/ or https://www.citethisforme.com, and enter the title of the source in English in the search box. The latter site, in addition to the DOI, automatically generates a correct bibliographic description of the article in English in the NLM citation style. The vast majority of journal articles since 2000 have been registered with CrossRef and thus have a unique DOI.
Punctuation:
- when indicating the author’s name, the initials should be placed after the surname;
- initials should not have spaces or points between them;
- authors’ names should be separated by commas;
- a full stop should be inserted after the name of publication;
- when indicating the date of the publication, publisher, or other data, the punctuation should comply with the examples listed below.
Language
References should be presented in Latin script. References to sources in non-Latin script should be presented as per the OFFICIAL TRANSLATION or TRANSLITERATION (depending upon the specific element of the description).
Translation and transliteration
Non-English information on sources in the list of references should either be transliterated (using the Latin script alphabet) or translated.
- If an article is presented in Latin script, it should be cited in the original language;
- If an article is presented in non-Latin script, an OFFICIAL TRANSLATION or Latin script transliteration should be provided. For books, a Latin script transliteration should be provided. The original language of the article should be indicated after the title, prior to the journal name;
- References may include both transliterated (e.g., authors’ names, names of journals) and translated (e.g., publication title) elements.
Transliteration standard. Use the BSI (British Standard Institute, UK) standard for transliteration: https://antropophob.ru/translit-bsi.
- Names of authors, editors. Surnames and initials of all authors should be indicated in the reference as they appear in the original publication. If the authors’ names are presented in the original publications in Latin script, this variant should be used in the reference (regardless of the transliteration system used in the original source). If the authors’ names are not given in Latin in the official sources (journal websites, databases), they should be transliterated in accordance with the BSI standard.
- Article title. If the article cited has an official translation or a translated title in English (this should be checked on journal websites or in databases), this variant should be given. If no title is presented in Latin script in the official publication, a title transliterated in accordance with the BSI standard should be provided.
- Journal title. Certain non-English, scientific journals have official titles in English in addition to titles in native languages (e.g., the Russian Journal of Psychiatry, in addition to the Russian language title, has both the official name in English, ‘Russian Journal of Psychiatry’ and the transliterated title ‘Rossiiskii psikhiatricheskii zhurnal’). Thus, either the translated or transliterated title of the journal should be provided in the reference. The translated title of the journal may be taken from the official journal’s website (or where it is possible to use data governing the accurate quotation of English language titles from the article cited) or checked in databases. You should not translate journal titles yourself.
- Place of publication. According to the NLM Citation Guide (last edition), you need not indicate the place of publication.
- Name of publisher. The name of the publisher should only be transliterated (except in rare cases where publishers have official English language titles).
Examples of citing in ‘References’
All examples can be found under the link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/. Should you require any additional information or assistance, the CP editorial team is at your disposal (editor@consortium-psy.com)
Units of measurement and abbreviations
Units should be provided in the International System of Units (SI). If the study was carried out using devices that provide measurements in other units, these need to be converted to the SI system with an indication of the conversion factor or software version in ‘Materials and methods’.
Abbreviations/acronyms should not be used except for those that are generally accepted. The meanings of abbreviations/acronyms in the text of the article must be given in full at their first mention (e.g., neuromuscular disease (NMD)).
Gene names should be specified in italics; protein names should be specified in regular font.
Illustrative materials
Illustrative materials can include photographs, figures, images, diagrams, graphs, charts, and tables. Illustrative materials should be submitted in the form of high-quality images to enable good picture reproduction quality in both the electronic and printed versions of the journal. Should the illustrative materials have previously been published, the author is obliged to provide permission for their use otherwise their use will be considered plagiarism and the study will not be accepted for publication.
Illustrative material should be submitted as separate files and should be accompanied by links in the relevant sections within the body of the article text. References should appear in parentheses, e.g., (fig. 1), (table 1).
Figures, graphs, diagrams, and charts should be provided in editable formats. Illustrative materials should meet further technical requirements:
- tables should be presented in their original Word or Excel versions. If other programs were used (e.g., EndNote), the associated files should be provided in PDF format, with a copy function available;
- images, illustrations, graphs, and diagrams should be presented in TIFF or EPS format; JPG files should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch);
- photographs are accepted in TIFF or JPG format, with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. If a photograph is small (for example, 3 × 4 cm), you should choose a resolution of 1200 dpi when scanning. The eyes of patients or healthy subjects in photographs should be masked; if not, the author should submit patients’ written permission for their full likenesses to be presented.
If you cannot provide files in these formats, please contact the editorial staff for assistance.
All figures must be numbered and provided with captions. Fragments/elements of figures should be presented as lower-case letters – “a”, “b”, etc. All abbreviations, symbols in the form of curves, letters, numbers, etc., used in the figure should be explained in an associated caption.
Tables should be ostensive and should display a title and serial number. Graph headers should correspond to their content. The data in the tables should not repeat any data in the figures or text, or vice versa. All abbreviations/acronyms should be explained in a footnote to the associated table. You need to specify the statistical method used for analysis and for the corresponding confidence value (p). All information contained in the table, including its title and notes (if applicable), should be presented in the language of the article. If the table size exceeds one typewritten page, the table should be provided as a separate file in a DOC, DOCX, or RTF format.
