AJRCCM Instructions for Contributors
Introduction
The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine publishes original papers on human biology and disease, as well as animal and in vitro studies, which contribute to the understanding of pathophysiology and treatment of diseases that affect the respiratory system and critically ill patients. Only papers written in English can be considered. Manuscripts should conform to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. The Journal is published in both print and electronic formats and may be viewed online at www.atsjournals.org/journal/ajrccm. Articles in Press (articles posted on the Journal's website before the print version) may be viewed online here
COVID Manuscripts
The AJRCCM is extremely interested in receiving original research manuscripts on COVID-19, especially clinical trials and novel content that may change practice in treating patients with the virus. All COVID-19 content will be reviewed expeditiously. There is no need to contact the Editor-in-Chief or Publications Office in advance. All submissions must be evaluated by the editors and we cannot guarantee publication.
Criteria for Authorship
Submission of Manuscripts
To submit your manuscript, go to the ATS Journals ScholarOne portal. Complete instructions for online submission are located on this website. Technical support is available from Monday through Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, EST by e-mail. Manuscripts that do not conform to guidelines will be delayed in processing.
For authors interested in a manuscript-editing service, we recommend contacting the American Journal Experts (AJE).
All correspondence related to manuscripts should be addressed to:
Dr. Jadwiga A. Wedzicha, Editor
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
ATS Peer Review Office
25 Broadway
New York, NY 10004
Tel: (212) 315-8626/8625
FAX: (212) 315-8613
Manuscripts are acknowledged by ScholarOne upon receipt. Submission, Copyright, and Disclosure of Financial Interest Forms are not acknowledged by the Peer Review Office, but you will be queried if they are not received. When inquiring about a manuscript, please refer to the assigned manuscript number. Inquiries will be accepted from the designated Corresponding Author only. Manuscripts accepted for publication will immediately (within 48 hours of acceptance) be published online in the Articles in Press section of the AJRCCM website. Articles in Press establish publication priority and are citable and searchable. The official publication date appears below the title, followed by the manuscript's Digital Object Identified (DOI), an automatically generated unique identifier for intellectual property purposes in the digital environment. Please note that manuscripts published under this section have not been copy edited, proofed, or typeset.
ONLINE SUBMISSION FORM
The Corresponding Author should complete the online Manuscript Submission Form. The Corresponding Author can be a different individual from the contact author on the Title Page of the manuscript.
By virtue of submitting a manuscript to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the authors certify that (a) the material is original, has not been published except in abstract form, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere, including publicly accessible websites or e-print servers, (b) no part of the research presented has been funded by tobacco industry sources or from cannabis industry sources that market recreational cannabis products consumable by inhalation (c) all authors have read the manuscript and approve its submission, and (d) all clinical trials have been registered in a public trial registry. For further detail view the ATS tobacco industry and cannabis industry policies and the ICMJE page on clinical trial registration. Any change in authorship following the original submission must be justified and agreed to in writing by the affected author(s). The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine allows the designation of more than a single first author when two authors have made equal contributions to a study.
If any data are derived from subjects or animals of a previous report, this must be stated explicitly in a cover letter in the "Author Comments" area on the ScholarOne website as well as in the manuscript. When some or all of the dataset for a submitted manuscript were also used for the results in another manuscript, this point must be stated explicitly in the "Author Comments" area even when the results presented in the submitted manuscript do not overlap with the results presented in the other manuscript.
Authors may list three to five reviewers (include e-mail address, FAX number, and telephone number) they believe are qualified to review the paper. Suggested reviewers should not have been collaborators or coauthors within the previous three years, nor should they have provided substantial advice or critique of the submitted manuscript. Authors may also request disqualification of up to two reviewers with potential conflict of interest.
COPYRIGHT FORM
Please note that copyright forms are not required for initial submissions. Copyright forms are only required when revised manuscripts are submitted.
Upon submitting any revised version of a manuscript that has been approved for submission, all Authors must complete the Assignment of Copyright Form and email to forms@thoracic.org. The Assignment of Copyright Form in PDF is available here. When the work is the product of more than one author, each author must complete and send a form.
PLAGIARISM, SELF-PLAGIARISM, DUPLICATE, AND OVERLAPPING PUBLICATIONS POLICY
The Journal does not publish articles that plagiarize, substantially overlap, or duplicate other articles previously published or submitted for publication elsewhere. However, Original Research articles and Brief Communications may contain material previously published in an abstract containing no more than 400 words. It may also be reasonable for some Methods sections to overlap substantially if the same methods were used by the same authors in previous publications. Additionally, by prior agreement and with full disclosure, collaborating professional societies sometimes simultaneously publish reports, summaries or comments about jointly sponsored projects in more than one journal to reach a broad audience.
After publication of original material in the Journal, it is unacceptable to subsequently publish any part of the same material in another journal without the written permission of the ATS. Please contact permissions@thoracic.org for more information. For general guidelines, see the section on Overlapping Publications in the "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals".
During manuscript submission, authors must disclose any potential overlap in a cover letter, and must append any relevant manuscripts or data to the online submission. The cover letter should list the appended article or articles, and explain the nature of any possible overlap. In these cases, the manuscript itself should include a statement about the overlap at the end of the Introduction or in the Methods section, and all potentially overlapping work should be referenced. Authors should inform the journal if any of the cases or control data in a manuscript are also included in another manuscript, even when the results do not overlap. When authors submit a Focused Review or Perspective, they should inform the Journal about other review articles that they have published on related topics. No matter how small the overlap between two or more manuscripts, authors need to inform the Journal. If authors develop doubts about possible duplication of publications after a manuscript has been submitted or has already been published, the author should inform the Journal.
If some or all of the work in the manuscript has been previously published or submitted in abstract form, the abstract(s) must be cited in the last sentence of the Introduction. The recommended format is: "Some of the results of these studies have been previously reported in the form of an abstract(s) (References)." The citations must be included in the list of References. If the length of any previous abstract exceeds 400 words, a copy should be included with the submission and the overlap should be explained in the cover letter.
Articles may contain previously published material, such as illustrations or tables, provided it is appropriately referenced in the legend, as well as in the reference list. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to submit appropriate written permission for any such use.
Before submission, authors should review their manuscripts to ensure that there is no major repetition of language or illustrative content from previously published papers. All reviewed and revised original contributions and review articles will be analyzed by a program called iThenticate in ScholarOne, which checks manuscripts against a database of published articles to find duplicated text. This is intended not only as a way to detect plagiarism, but also as a way to provide feedback to authors in order to avoid significant content overlap with their own previously published work.
Authors who fail to follow the Journal's duplicate publication disclosure requirements may be banned from submitting manuscripts to ATS Journals for a period of time. Please contact Diane Gern, Publisher, at dgern@thoracic.org or call 212-315-6441 for more information. If concerns exist, the Editor of the Journal reserves the right to determine what constitutes significant duplicate publication.
Public Access Policies
If any of the authors have been supported financially by the NIH to conduct the research that is reported in the article, they should indicate this on the copyright form and provide the grant number and contact name on the title page of the manuscript. The ATS will submit an electronic copy of the final published version on the authors' behalf to the NIH National Library of Medicine (NLM) and PubMed Central (PMC) at a time in compliance with NIH requirements. NIH-funded articles will have free access online after one year.
If any of the authors of a manuscript have been supported by the Wellcome Trust or other member of the United Kingdom PMC Funders Group, then the ATS will submit an electronic copy of the final published version to PubMed Central in compliance with requirements. Wellcome-funded articles will be made freely available on the ATS journals site and on PubMed Central without an embargo. However, please note that the ATS journals open access fee must be paid. Authors may post the accepted manuscript of their article on the author’s personal or university website (as long as they link back to the article on the ATS Journals site), but may not in general post their articles on the internet (articles funded by Wellcome and other funders who mandate the use of the CC BY license may be posted without restrictions).
For more details on ATS Journals access policies and permitted author uses, click here.
REVISIONS
If authors choose to revise their manuscript, they should resubmit the revised version marked R1. Authors need to submit a clean version and a "marked-up" version of their revised manuscript. To create the "marked-up" version, please use a red font instead of a black font to indicate the portions of the manuscript that have been changed.
If supplementary material was initially submitted for consideration for posting in the Online Supplement, the material needs to be included again when a revised manuscript is being submitted.
If a revision of an Original Article is not received within 6 months from the last decision letter of an Associate Editor, the Journal will assume that the authors have withdrawn the manuscript from further consideration. In cases where substantial new data are required, extensions may be granted at the Editors' discretion. The time limit for receipt of revisions of a Featured Article, such as a Clinical Commentary, Pulmonary Perspective, or Critical Care Perspective, is 3 months.
HANDLING OF MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts are accepted for publication on the basis of scientific merit, significance, and suitability for publication devoted to clinical and laboratory studies of respiratory and critical care medicine. Decisions on manuscripts will not be discussed over the phone. On publication, each report indicates the dates that the original manuscript was received at the Peer Review Office and the date that the manuscript was finally accepted.
HUMAN AND ANIMAL STUDIES
The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine endorses the recommendations concerning human research that are contained in the Declaration of Helsinki. The Editors reserve the right to reject any manuscript containing studies that do not conform to these recommendations. All manuscripts reporting human research must contain a statement in the text that the institutional review board for human studies approved the protocols and written consent was obtained from the subjects or their surrogates if required by the institutional review board.
Use of animals in research should be compliant with all subsequent revisions of the Health Research Extension Act (public law 99-158, 1985 "Animals in Research"). Animal experiments are to be undertaken only with the goal of advancing scientific knowledge and with the explicit approval of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee before initiation. In the absence of a global policy on the care and use of laboratory animals, U.S. guidelines must be followed. All animal experiments must conform to the revised Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 1996. These documents can be obtained at the NIH's Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare page.
Any deviation from the Guide, Public Health Service policy, or the United States Animal Welfare Act must be scientifically justified and approved by the investigators' Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Animals used in research and education should receive every consideration for their comfort and care, and discomfort and pain must be minimized. Descriptions of surgical procedures and experiments on animals must include the name, dose, and route of administration of the anesthetic agent. Paralyzing agents are not acceptable alternatives to anesthesia, and should be used only in conjunction with appropriate anesthetic agents. Studies that require the death of an animal must employ the most humane euthanasia method that is consistent with the goal of the study and the recommendations of the "Report of the American Veterinary Medicine Association Panel on Euthanasia" (Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, Vol 218, No. 5, March 1, 2001). The Editors reserve the right to reject any manuscript containing studies that does not conform to these recommendations for the use of animals in research.
DATA SHARING STATEMENTS: NEW REQUIREMENTS
In accordance with the recent ICMJE manuscript submission recommendations, all papers submitted from July 1, 2018 onward that report the results of clinical trials require data sharing statements that must indicate:
Whether individual, de-identified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared;
What data in particular will be shared;
Whether additional, related documents will be made available;
When and for how long the data will become/be available; and
The criteria to access the data (including who can request access and for what types of analyses, and the name of the data repository).
Full details of the ICMJE requirements regarding data sharing statements are available here. Please note that clinical trials that begin enrolling subjects on or after January 1, 2019 must include a data sharing plan in the trial’s registration.
POSTING OF MANUSCRIPTS ON PREPRINT SERVERS
AJRCCM accepts the submission of manuscripts that have been posted on a nonprofit preprint server prior to submission to AJRCCM. Please mention this in your cover letter and provide a link to the preprint version
If your article is subsequently published in AJRCCM, it is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that the preprint version links to the published version. You may not upload the accepted manuscript (or final published version) on the preprint server. Preprints should not be posted to more than one preprint server.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Statistical analysis should be performed on experimental data reported in AJRCCM articles. A minimum of three independent biological replicate experiments should be performed for each study group, and for corresponding controls. Repeated determinations of the same experimental variable (i.e., technical replicates) are permitted for the purpose of enhancing the precision of a single measurement. However, technical replicates should be combined to provide a single data point for each independent experiment, and must not be used as a substitute for biological replicates. When performing descriptive statistics, or when testing for differences between groups, the sample size must equal the number of independent experiments and must not reflect the number of technical replicates.
BIOMARKER STUDIES
AJRCCM articles that associate new biomarkers with the diagnosis, staging, severity or prognosis of a disease should provide methodological details regarding the regression analysis used to identify the association. These details can be included in the body of the manuscript, or within an online supplement. Authors should be aware that the association identified in the initial exploratory regression analysis is only suggestive that a similar relationship would be observed in an independent cohort. Accordingly, biomarker studies should include at least a second prospective, independent validation cohort analysis to determine the extent to which the initial regression applies to new patients who were not part of the initial analysis. In some cases, a third confirmatory cohort may be required. In general, statistical bootstrapping methods do not provide an adequate substitute for an independent validation cohort.
GENOMICS DATA IN ATS JOURNALS
Authors are required to deposit their genomic datasets into publicly available databases on the date of publication. For the purposes of evaluating the manuscript, authors should provide the editors and reviewers with access to the datasets when the manuscript is submitted to the Journal; information about accessing the datasets can be included in the Materials and Methods section.
Microarray Data: It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that all data collected and analyzed in their experiments adhere to the Minimal Information About A Microarray Experiment (MIAME) guidelines. Click here to review the MIAME checklist. Appropriate public databases include, but are not limited to: ArrayExpress, GEO, or CIBEX
Nucleotide and Protein Sequences: DNA Sequences, RNA Sequences, and Protein Sequences Appropriate public databases include, but are not limited to: EMBL, GenBank, or DDBJ
AUTHOR DISCLOSURE
All authors are required to upload disclosure forms when their manuscript is submitted to the Journal. Please upload these forms along with your other manuscript files, choosing File Designation: "Disclosure of Financial Interest Form(S)." The ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest is preferred and is available for downloading from ATS Manuscript Central. Journal editors, deputy editors, associate editors, and peer reviewers also make disclosures to ATS, according to instructions they receive, at time of appointment.
The Journal assumes that all individuals have "competing interests" that may at times cause conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest depends on the situation, and not on the character or actions of the individual. The ATS defines conflict of interest as a "divergence between an individual's private interests and his or her professional obligations such that an independent observer might reasonably question whether the individual's professional actions or decisions are motivated by personal gain" and/or a "financial or intellectual relationship that may impact an individual's ability to approach a scientific question with an open mind."
After an article has been published, readers sometimes write to a journal because they have reason to believe that authors failed to disclose financial relationships with an entity that has an interest in the subject of the article. The Journal will handle these inquiries according to the recommendation of the American Medical Association. Queries will be forwarded to authors, and authors will be required to provide a written explanation. New disclosures will be published in the correspondence columns of the Journal.
The Journal strongly opposes contractual agreements that deny investigators the right to examine data independently or to submit a manuscript for publication without first obtaining the consent of the sponsor. Researchers should not enter into agreements that interfere with their access to data or their ability to analyze data independently, to prepare manuscripts, and to publish them. Authors should describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the report for publication. If the supporting source had no such involvement, the authors should so state. If a study is funded by an agency with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome of the study, the corresponding author must include the following statement in the cover letter and "Author Comments" section upon submission: "I had full access to all of the data in this study and I take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis."
Author disclosures will be considered in relation to the submitted manuscript by the reviewers as part of the review process. Authors are required to disclose relevant relationships with commercial entities as well as patents held or pending.
Additionally, as part of submitting an article, authors are required to disclose any relationship with the tobacco industry or cannabis industries or their affiliates and subsidiaries. The Journal does not accept contributions that are funded by tobacco industry sources or cannabis industry sources that market recreational cannabis products consumable by inhalation, and does not accept any contribution submitted by an author or co-author that has currently, or had within the 12 months prior to submission, a relationship with such entities. For further detail view the ATS tobacco industry and cannabis industry policies. The journal does not accept manuscripts that are supported by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, a tobacco industry-initiated and funded entity.
If you have any questions about submitting disclosures, please contact Marc Bendian, Peer Review Manager, at mbendian@thoracic.org.
COMPANION PAPERS
The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine strongly discourages the submission of more than one manuscript dealing with related aspects of a single study. In almost every case, a single study is best reported in a single paper.
EMBARGO POLICY
An article published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine may not be discussed by journalists or presented in other public media, such as websites, before the article is posted on the Journal's Articles in Press website. It is permissible to present the material contained in the article at a scientific meeting. The ATS may refuse to publish a manuscript, despite acceptance for publication by an editor, if the contained information has been disseminated prematurely in the media. Unless otherwise noted, Articles in Press are not under media embargo once they appear online. Please refer any questions to Dacia Morris, dmorris@thoracic.org (or call 212-315-8620).
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https://www.atsjournals.org/page/ajrccm/instructions
