Author Guidelines
RESPIRATORY CARE welcomes original manuscripts related to the science of respiratory care. The Journal is published in both print and electronic formats. RESPIRATORY CARE does not currently charge authors any submission or publication fees.
Manuscripts must be submitted electronically using Manuscript Central. Prepare your manuscript according to these instructions. For consultation regarding manuscript style or queries about the submission process, contact the Editorial Office at rcjournal@aarc.org.
Use the links below to jump directly to a specific section.
GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS
GENERAL GUIDELINES
Ethics of Publication
Manuscripts must conform to the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and to these instructions.
All authors must:
Give consent to submission and publication of the work
Have participated in the research and in the shaping of the manuscript
Have read and approved the manuscript
Be able to publicly discuss and defend the manuscript’s content
Authorship is not based on obtaining funding, offering advice, or similar. Persons who contribute such may be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. Authors must take responsibility for at least one component of the work, be able to identify who is responsible for each other component, and be confident in their co-authors’ integrity.
The contributions of each author must be listed on the Title Page (literature search, data collection, study design, data analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript review).
Any editorial contributions made by outside organizations, persons, funding bodies, or persons employed by funding sources must be acknowledged on the Title Page.
Duplicate Publication and Plagiarism
The manuscript must not have been previously published elsewhere and must not be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere, including online. If any part of the material (other than a brief abstract submitted to a national or international meeting) has been published or is currently under consideration for publication elsewhere, you must provide copies of all related material at the time of submission.
Conflict of Interest
The conflict of interest policy of Respiratory Care is consistent with that of JAMA,1 ICMJE,2 CSE,3 and WAME.4 Disclosures must be made at the time of submission and must be indicated on the title page. The Editor will decide whether the presence of conflicts of interest affects the suitability of the manuscript for publication.
The Journal’s conflict of interest policy is as follows:
A conflict of interest may exist whenever an author (or the author’s institution, employer, or immediate family member) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence or bias the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript.
All authors are required to disclose all potential conflicts of interest, including specific financial interests and relationships and affiliations
Disclosures of potential conflicts of interest should be for the previous 2-year period. Authors must fully disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest, whether or not related to the content of the paper. The type of relationship (eg, consultant, speaker, employee) and monetary amount need not be specified. If no financial or other potential conflicts of interest exist, a statement to this effect must be included on the Title Page.
The following examples are considered conflicts of interest and require disclosure:
Being an employee of a company that designs, manufactures, or sells respiratory care equipment
Serving on an advisory board or as a consultant to such a company
Having received a research grant or other grant-in-aid from such a company
Having received honoraria for lectures, writing, or other educational activities from such a company
Holding a patent or having other financial interest in a respiratory care product
Material support for research, including grants, donation of equipment and supplies, and other paid contributions
These examples are intended to illustrate the types of relationships that constitute conflicts of interest in the field of respiratory care, and are not meant to be all-inclusive.
The conflict of interest policy also applies to the Journal’s Editors, Editorial Board members, and all manuscript reviewers.
Disclosure of relationships will not necessarily affect the decision to publish a manuscript. Having such relationships is not considered unethical. However, not disclosing such relationships is unethical.
Flanagin A, Fontanarosa PB, DeAngelis CD. Update on JAMA’s conflict of interest policy. JAMA 2006;296(2):220-221. doi: 10.1001/jama.296.2.220
International Committee of Medical Journal editors. Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. Updated December 2014. Accessed January 27, 2015
Council of Science Editors. Editorial policy statements approved by the CSE Board of Directors. http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3332 Accessed January 27, 2015
World Association of Medical Editors. Recommendations on publication ethics policies for medical journals. http://www.wame.org/about/recommendations-on-publication-ethics-policie Accessed January 27, 2015
Industry Relationships
Respiratory Care requires authors to indicate the role of funding organizations or sponsors in the design of the study, data collection, data analysis, and interpretation of the data. Authors must also disclose the role of funding organizations in the preparation, review, and approval of the manuscript. The setting where the study was conducted must be indicated. Full disclosure of the role of funding sources must be included at the beginning of the Methods section.
Individuals who provided paid contributions to the paper (including writers, statisticians, epidemiologists, and any others involved with data management and analyses) may meet the criteria for authorship. If they do not, they should be listed in the Acknowledgment section.
Respiratory Care will not consider submissions that are ghost written by industry employees or hired writers. Nor will the Journal consider submissions of industry-sponsored studies in which the data were collected and analyzed solely by employees of the company. Such studies are considered only if there is independent analysis of the methods and data by someone at an academic institution, who has research and publishing experience (eg, medical school, academic medical center, or government research institute).
For additional information related to relationships between authors and industry, refer to: Fontanarosa PB, Flanagin A, DeAngelis CD. Reporting conflicts of interest, financial aspects of research, and role of sponsors in funded studies. JAMA 2005;294(1):110-111 doi: 10.1001/jama.294.1.110.
Registration of Clinical Studies
Respiratory Care will only consider clinical trials that are registered, as appropriate, at ClinicalTrials.gov or equivalent.
Ethics of Investigation
All studies that include human subjects must indicate in the Methods section that approval was received from the appropriate local institutional review board (IRB) or Ethics Committee. This requirement applies to retrospective studies, prospective studies, quality improvement projects, and surveys. Human research subjects may be hospital patients, healthy volunteers, clinicians, or students. It is important to note that the IRB, not the investigator, determines whether a study is exempt from full review.
Authors must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) . This applies to any information (eg, text, photo, or radiograph) that could potentially identify a patient or subject. Authors must provide written consent from the individual, next of kin, or guardian.
All studies involving animals must indicate in the Methods section that approval was received from the local IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) or that the research was conducted in accordance with a national guideline (eg, Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals ).
MANUSCRIPT TYPES
Original Research
Original research is a report of an original investigation. It must include: Title Page, Structured Abstract, Key Words, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References, and Quick Look. It may also include Tables, Figures, and Acknowledgments. Supplementary Material, such as a survey instrument or details related to the methods, may be provided for online publication only. Authors of randomized clinical trials must follow the CONSORT guidelines. One of the figures must be a CONSORT flow diagram.
Quality Improvement Projects
A well-done quality improvement project might be suitable for publication as original research. This type of research is commonly performed in the healthcare setting to understand and improve practice. Several considerations are important for a quality improvement project to be suitable for publication. It must have generalizable interest among the readers of the Journal and it must follow the scientific method. This means that the study must have an identified question or hypothesis, approval from the Institutional Review Committee, and statistical analysis of the data is necessary. Quality improvement projects are submitted in the category “Original Research.”
Reviews
Narrative Reviews
A narrative review is a comprehensive review of the literature that does not follow the rigor of a systematic review. It must include: Title Page, Outline, Unstructured Narrative Abstract, Key Words, Introduction, Review of the Literature, Summary, and References. The review of literature is typically divided into headings and sub-heading specific to the subject matter. The Outline consists of the headings and subheading of the paper. The review may also include Tables, Figures, Acknowledgments, and Supplementary Material for online publication only. Narrative reviews are usually written by persons with established expertise in the subject area.
A newer form of review is the scoping review. This has aspects of both narrative and systematic reviews. A scoping review will typically include a detailed search for relevant studies, and will include reports of various evidence levels (eg, randomized clinical studies, observational studies, bench studies, case series). In a scoping review, there is no critique of the individual studies included. The span of a scoping review tends to be much broader than systematic reviews. A scoping review is submitted in the category “Narrative Review.”
Systematic Reviews
Because of their methodological rigor, systematic reviews have become the standard for synthesizing evidence in health care. A systematic review organizes relevant evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question. It uses explicit, systematic methods to minimize bias in the identification, selection, synthesis, and summary of studies. Some, but not all, systematic reviews contain a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis uses statistical techniques to combine and summarize the results of multiple studies. The systematic review must follow the PRISMA guidelines. A systematic review must include: Structured Abstract, Key Words, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, and References. It may also include Tables, Figures, Acknowledgments, and Supplementary Material for online publication only. One of the Figures must be a PRISMA flow diagram. Other figures might be the results of a meta-analysis (forest plots). Systematic reviews are generally written by persons with established expertise in the subject area.
Editorial
An invited manuscript related to another paper published in the same issue. Must include: Title Page, Text, and References. May also include Tables and Figures.
Correspondence
A brief communication responding to previously published material in Respiratory Care. Must include: Title Page, Text, and References. May include Tables and Figures. Correspondence is published online only.
PREPARING THE MANUSCRIPT
Title Page
For each author include:
First name, middle initial, last name
Academic degrees (eg, MSc, PhD, EdD)
Credentials (eg, RRT, MD, RN)
FAARC (Fellow of the American Association for Respiratory Care). The Journal does not publish any other honorary titles
Institutional affiliation and location (division, department, hospital, university, city, state/province, country)
Indicate the specific contributions of each author to the paper:
Literature search
Data collection
Study design
Analysis of data
Manuscript preparation
Review of manuscript
Title Page must also include:
Name and location of the institution where the study was performed
Name, date, and location of any meeting or forum where research data were previously presented, and who presented
Sources of financial support
Conflict of interest statement. If no potential conflicts of interest exist, a statement to this effect must be included
Identify corresponding author and provide contact information
Abstract
A structured abstract for an original research study and a systematic review includes these sections: Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Abstracts must not contain any facts or conclusions that do not also appear in the text.
An unstructured Abstract for a Narrative Review is written as a paragraph of fewer than 300 words that provides a general overview of the paper.
Include the Abstract in the main manuscript text file.
Key Words
List 6–10 key words or phrases that reflect the content of your manuscript. Key words may be selected from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH terms) used by MEDLINE.
Text
Double-space all text (including Tables and References). Number the pages. Center and bold 1st level headings; flush-left and bold 2nd level headings; indent and bold 3rd level headings.
References
References must be listed and numbered in the sequence in which they are first cited in the text. Citations must conform to Journal style; see examples below. Authors are responsible for accuracy of their references.
EndNote contains the style for Respiratory Care: http://endnote.com/downloads/style/respiratory-care
Journal Article
Article. List the first 6 authors, then “et al”. Exception – in a paper with 7 total authors, list all 7:
Wallet F, Delannoy B, Haquin A, Debord S, Leray V, Bourdin G, et al. Evaluation of recruited lung volume at inspiratory plateau pressure with PEEP using bedside digital chest x-ray in patients with acute lung injury/ARDS. Respir Care 2013;58(3):416-423.
Corporate authors:
Chang SY, Dabbagh O, Gajic O, Patrawalla A, Elie MC, Talmor DS, et al; on behalf of the United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group: Lung Injury Prevention Study Investigators (USCIITG-LIPS). Contemporary ventilator management in patients with and at risk of ALI/ARDS. Respir Care 2013;58(4):578-588.
Article in a supplement:
del Giudice MM, Leonardi S, Ciprandi G, Galdo F, Gubitosi A, La Rosa M, et al. Probiotics in childhood: allergic illness and respiratory infections. J Clin Gastroenterol 2012;46(Suppl):S69-S72.
Corrected article:
Mireles-Cabodevila E, Hatipoğlu U, Chatburn RL. A rational framework for selecting modes of ventilation. Respir Care 2013;58(2):348-366. Erratum in: Respir Care 2013;58(4):e51.
Articles e-published online ahead of print:
Nozoe M, Mase K, Murakami S, Okada M, Ogino T, Matsushita K, et al. The relationship between spontaneous expiratory flow-volume curve configuration and airflow obstruction in elderly COPD patients. Respir Care 2013 [Epub ahead of print] doi: 10.4187/respcare.02296
Abstract. Citing abstracts is highly discouraged; those more than 3 years old should not be used:
Blakeman TC, Rodriquez D, Branson RD. Evaluation of five chemical oxygen generators (abstract). Respir Care 2012;57(10):1751.
Editorial:
Rouby JJ, Arbelot C, Brisson H, Lu Q, Bouhemad B. Measurement of alveolar recruitment at the bedside: the beginning of a new era in respiratory monitoring? (editorial). Respir Care 2013;58(3):539-542.
Editorial, no author given:
Asthma: not just for kids (editorial). Johns Hopkins Med Lett Health After 50 2012;24(8):6.
Letter:
Haynes JM. Expiratory reserve volume maneuver may be the preferred method for some patients during spirometry testing (letter). Respir Care 2013;58(2):e14-e15. author response: e15.
Books
Book. Corresponding pages should be cited whenever reference is made to specific statements or content:
Wilkins RL, Stoller JK, Kacmarek RM. Egan’s fundamentals of respiratory care, 9th edition. St Louis: Mosby|Elsevier; 2009:400-404, 917.
Corporate authors:
Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries; Committee on Population Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; National Research Council; Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. U.S. health in international perspective: shorter lives, poorer health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2013.
Chapter:
Heffner JE. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In: Hess DR, MacIntyre NR, Mishoe SC, Galvin WF, Adams AB. Respiratory care principles and practice, 2nd edition. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett; 2012:735-764.
Online Material
Static material must be listed in the References and include the digital object identifier (DOI). Use a DOI for content published online only. Because these items are static, there is no need to include an access date:
Ng S, King CS, Hang J, Clifford R, Lesho EP, Kuschner RA, et al. Severe cavitary pneumonia caused by a non-equi Rhodococcus species in an immunocompetent patient. Respir Care 2013;58(4):e47-e50. doi:10.4187/respcare.02017
Frequently changing material, such as an organization’s homepage, should be cited within the article text using the URL and access date. Do not include in the References:
“….as recommended by the American Association for Respiratory Care (http://www.aarc.org, Accessed January 27, 2015) …”
News sources:
Productivity at work improved for sleep apnea patients using CPAP. Medical News Today: April 15, 2013. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/259016.php Accessed January 27, 2015.
Unpublished Work
Manuscript accepted but not yet published. A copy of cited unpublished manuscripts should be provided upon request:
Strickland SL. Year in review: airway clearance. Respir Care 2015 (in press).
Research not yet accepted for publication should be cited in the text as personal communication. You must obtain written permission from the authors to cite unpublished data.
“Recently, Smith et al found this treatment effective in 45 of 83 patients (Smith R, personal communication, 2015).”
Your own unpublished work that has not been accepted for publication should be mentioned in the text: “We found this type of aerosol is no more effective than placebo (unpublished data).”
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更多详情：
http://rc.rcjournal.com/content/author-guidelines
