ISSN 1562-8264 printed version
ISSN 2078-676X online version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and Policies
• Preparation and Style of Manuscripts
• Manuscript Submission

The SAJCC is a medical journal that carries research articles and letters, editorials, clinical practice and other articles related to Critical Care and Intensive Care.

Peer review process:
Original articles are first reviewed by an Editorial Advisory Group with the power to recommend rejection or referral for review by one or more subject referees. Manuscripts from review may be accepted, returned to author for revision or rejected. All final decisions on a manuscript are at the Editor's discretion.

Open Access policy:
The journal provides open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There are no publication fees. Printed copies of the Journal are posted to all members of the Critical Care Society of Southern Africa and are distributed at the Society’s National meetings.

Comments Policy:
The posting of comments to published articles requires registration with this journal website. Only constructive comments that relate to the published material will be permitted. Posted comments solely represent the opinions of the respective user and not those of the SAJCC, and do not imply endorsement by the SAJCC. The SAJCC reserves the right to remove comments without notice that are abusive, threatening, defamatory, contain advertising or spam, or violate another user’s privacy. The SAJCC reserves the right to revoke the privileges of users that post inappropriate material. Such material may be brought to the attention of the publisher (publishing@hmpg.co.za). The SAJCC reserves the right to modify this policy without notice.

Notifications:
Readers of the SAJCC are encouraged to register with the journal website to receive notifications of new issues online (open access).

Plagiarism:
Plagiarism is defined as the use of another’s work, words or ideas without attribution or permission, and representation of them as one’s own original work. Plagiarism may take many forms, ranging from major plagiarism (the copy–and–paste of large amounts of text), to minor plagiarism without dishonest intent (e.g. when an author uses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper) and even self–plagiarism (the reuse of significant, identical or near–identical portions of one’s own work without citing the original version).

The journal subscribes to cross Check, an initiative to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. All manuscripts submitted to the journal are automatically scanned against the Cross Check database to verify originality.

Manuscripts containing plagiarism will not be considered for publication in the journal. If plagiarism is brought to light after a manuscript has been published, the journal will proceed to conduct a preliminary investigation. Suspected misconduct will be reported to the institutes and funding agencies of the authors concerned. The journal reserves the right to formally retract such manuscripts and publish statements to reference material as plagiarism.

Author Guidelines
Accepted manuscripts that are not in the correct format specified in these guidelines will be returned to the author(s) for correction, and will delay publication.

• AUTHORSHIP
  Named authors must consent to publication. Authorship should be based on substantial contribution to: (i) conception, design, analysis and interpretation of data; (ii) drafting or critical revision for important intellectual content; and (iii) approval of the version to be published. These conditions must all be met (uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals; refer to www.icmje.org).


• CONFLICT OF INTEREST
  Authors must declare all sources of support for the research and any association with a product or subject that may constitute conflict of interest.


• RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL
  Provide evidence of Research Ethics Committee approval of the research where relevant.
• PROTECTION OF PATIENT'S RIGHTS TO PRIVACY
  Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives informed written consent for publication. The patient should be shown the manuscript to be published. Refer to www.icmje.org.


• ETHNIC CLASSIFICATION
  References to ethnic classification must indicate the rationale for this.


• MANUSCRIPTS
  Shorter items are more likely to be accepted for publication, owing to space constraints and reader preferences. Original articles not exceeding 3 000 words, with up to 6 tables or illustrations, are usually observations or research of relevance to critical care. References should preferably be limited to no more than 15. Please provide a structured abstract not exceeding 250 words, with the following recommended headings: Background, Aims, Methods, Results, and Conclusion. Short reports or scientific letters, which include case reports, side effects of drugs and brief or negative research findings should be 1500 words or less, with 1 table or illustration and no more than 6 references. Please provide an accompanying abstract not exceeding 150 words. Editorials, Opinions, etc. should be about 1000 words and are welcome, but unless invited, will be subjected to the SAJCC peer review process.
  Review articles are rarely accepted unless invited. Letters to the editor, for publication, should be about 400 words with only one illustration or table, and must include a correspondence address. Obituaries should be about 400 words and may be accompanied by a photograph.


• MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION
  Refer to articles in recent issues for the presentation of headings and subheadings. If in doubt, refer to 'uniform requirements' – www.icmje.org.

  Manuscripts must be provided in UK English. Qualification, affiliation and contact details of ALL authors must be provided in the manuscript and in the online submission process.

  Abbreviations should be spelt out when first used and thereafter used consistently, e.g. 'intravenous (IV)' or 'Department of Health (DoH)'. Scientific measurements must be expressed in SI units except: blood pressure (mmHg) and haemoglobin (g/dl). Litres is denoted with a lowercase 'l' e.g. 'ml' for millilitres). Units should be preceded by a space (except for %), e.g. '40 kg' and '20 cm' but '50%'. Greater/smaller than signs (> and <) should be placed immediately preceding the relevant number, i.e. 'women >40 years of age'. The same applies to ± and °, i.e. '35±6' and '19°C'.

  Numbers should be written as grouped per thousand–units, i.e. 4 000, 22 160... Quotes should be placed in single quotation marks: i.e. The respondent stated: '...' Round brackets (parentheses) should be used, as opposed to square brackets, which are reserved for denoting concentrations or insertions in direct quotes.

  General formatting: The manuscript must be in Microsoft Word or RTF document format. Text must be single–spaced, in 12–point Times New Roman font, and contain no unnecessary formatting (such as text in boxes, with the exception of Tables).

• ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES
  If tables or illustrations submitted have been published elsewhere, the author(s) should provide consent to republication obtained from the copyright holder.

  Tables may be embedded in the manuscript file or provided as 'supplementary files'. They must be numbered in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3...) and referred to consecutively in the text (e.g. 'Table 1'). Tables should be constructed carefully and simply for intelligible data representation. Unnecessarily complicated tables are strongly discouraged. Tables must be cell–based (i.e. not constructed with text boxes or tabs), and accompanied by a concise title and column headings. Footnotes must be indicated with consecutive use of the following symbols: * † ‡ § ¶ || then ** †† ‡‡ etc.

  Figures must be numbered in Arabic numerals and referred to in the text e.g. '(Fig. 1)'. Figure legends: Fig. 1. 'Title...'

  All illustrations/figures/graphs must be of high resolution/quality: 300 dpi or more is preferable but images must not be resized to increase resolution. Unformatted and uncompressed images must be attached as 'supplementary files' upon submission (not embedded in the accompanying manuscript). TIFF and PNG formats are preferable; JPEG and PDF formats are accepted, but authors must be wary of image compression. Illustrations and graphs prepared in Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel must be accompanied by the original workbook.

• REFERENCES
  Authors must verify references from the original sources. Only complete, correctly formatted reference lists will be accepted. Reference lists must be generated manually and not with the use of reference manager software.

  Citations should be inserted in the text as superscript numbers between square brackets, e.g. These regulations are endorsed by the World Health Organization,[2] and others.[3,4–6]

  All references should be listed at the end of the article in numerical order of appearance in the Vancouver style (not alphabetical order). Approved abbreviations of journal titles must be used; see the List of Journals in Index Medicus.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
2. The text complies with the stylistic and bibliographic requirements in Author Guidelines.
3. The manuscript is in Microsoft Word or RTF document format. The text is single–spaced, in 12–point Times New Roman font, and contains no unnecessary formatting.
4. Illustrations/figures are high resolution/quality (not compressed) and in an acceptable format (preferably TIFF or PNG). These must be submitted as 'supplementary files' (not in the manuscript).
5. For illustrations/figures or tables that have been published elsewhere, the author has obtained written consent to republication from the copyright holder.
6. Where possible, references are accompanied by a digital object identifier (DOI) and PubMed ID (PMID)/PubMed Central ID (PMCID).
7. An abstract has been included where applicable.
8. The research was approved by a Research Ethics Committee (if applicable).
9. Any conflict of interest (or competing interests) is indicated by the author(s).

Submission

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