Submissions

Author Guidelines

Aims and scope

Interciencia médica is a journal of Clínica Internacional (Peru), it has the mission of disseminating biomedical research, publishes rigorously selected research articles from both the clinical and experimental areas; but articles aimed at continuing education are also published, written by professionals or researchers of high prestige, where topics of outstanding clinical or conceptual interest in current medicine are exhaustively discussed.

Interciencia médica publishes original and unpublished research articles, reviewed based on international standards and peer review processes that allow manuscripts to be evaluated in terms of scientific accuracy, novelty and importance. It receives manuscripts written by national and international researchers and professionals, not limited to the authors of our institution. The articles are aimed at the entire national and international scientific and professional community, and are immediately free access, and published in an annual volume and four issues a year (January, April, July, October).

Themes:

• Basic and clinical medicine
• Public health
• Occupational health
• Environmental Health Nutrition
• Odontology
• Nursing
• Physiotherapy
• Medical technology
• Pharmacology
• Neurosciences
• Immunology
• Epidemiology
• Bioethics
• Forensic Science

Open access

Interciencia médica publishes its contents in Open Access, with the aim that anyone with an Internet connection can freely access scientific, academic, and cultural information without any economic, technical, or legal restrictions. Our open access purpose is based on Budapest (BOAI, 2002) definitions  that defines open access as: "free availability on the public Internet, so that any user can read, download, copy, distribute, print, with the possibility to search or link all the texts of these articles, collect them for exhaustive indexing, use them as data for software, or use them for any other legal purpose, without financial, legal or technical barriers, other than the fundamental one of gaining access to the Internet itself", that of Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) which also states that authors must guarantee all users equally, the free, irrevocable and worldwide right to access a scholarly work; the same as the license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and publicly display it; and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium, for any responsible purpose, provided that proper attribution of authorship is given and The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) that defines scientific research and its objectives as: "an interdependent process where each experiment is informed by the results of others. Scientists who do research and the professional societies that represent them have a vested interest in ensuring that research results are disseminated as immediately, widely, and effectively as possible".

Copyright

The authors who publish in Interciencia Médica retain all their rights and may copy, distribute, or reuse these articles, if the author and the original source are correctly cited.

License

The articles published in Interciencia Médica are licensed by Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
for any purpose, even commercially.
This license is acceptable for Free Cultural Works.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.es].

Authorship

Interciencia médica adopts the definition of author from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which indicates that an author must meet the following four criteria:

1. Substantive contributions to the concept or design of the work, or to data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation; and
2. writing of the work or critical review of the most relevant intellectual content; and
3. final approval of the version for publication; and
4. agree to take responsibility for all aspects of the work by ensuring that questions regarding the accuracy or completeness of any part of the work are properly investigated and resolved.

Corresponding Author

It is the author who take primary responsibility for communication with the editorial team during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author ensures that all journal administrative requirements, such as providing authorship details, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities, are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated. to one or more authors.

Other Contributors

Collaborators who no meet the four authorship criteria above mentioned should not be listed as authors but should be acknowledged in Acknowledgments section.

Author roles

To give transparency to author activities, Interciencia médica uses the Credit taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy, https://casrai.org/credit/) which considers 14 categories, which will be informed to the editorial team with the presentation of the article manuscript.

Author commitments

• Authors assure that the work is original, and that it does not contain plagiarism fragments or illustrations of works already published or by other authors or by the authors of the submitted manuscript.
• Authors assume full responsibility for the veracity and traceability of the data and information, that is, that they have not been altered to bias statements or hypotheses and that readers can have access to the aforementioned information and reproduce it.
• If editors deem it appropriate, authors should also make available the sources or data on which the research is based.
• Authors should not publish articles in which the same results already published in a scientific journal are repeated. Likewise, the simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to multiple journals is considered ethically incorrect and bad behavior.
• The authors must always provide the correct indication of the sources and contributions mentioned in the article.
• The authors also undertake to have reviewed the most current and relevant scientific literature on the topic presented in the manuscript.
• Conflict of interest and disclosure: all authors are required to explicitly declare that there are no conflicts of interest that may have influenced the results obtained or the proposed interpretations. Authors must also indicate any funding from agencies and/or projects from which the research article arises.
• Errors in published articles: when an author identifies an important error or inaccuracy in his article, he must immediately inform the editors of the journal and provide them with all the information necessary to list the pertinent corrections at the bottom of the same article.

Sections

Editorial

The editorial communicates news and analysis of editorial policies journal or relevant aspects of journal topics. It is written by the editorial team or guest editors, the text is freely structured and must be approximately 2,500 words, it may contain figures and tables.

Original article

They are primary publications that communicate research results. The experimental works should be guided by CONSORT (https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/consort/), while the observational studies by STROBE (https://www.equator-network. org/reporting-guidelines/strobe/). Clinical trials require that “any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome” must be registered before the start of patient enrollment. In addition, these trials must be registered in the Peruvian clinical trials registry (REPEC, https://essayosclinicos-repec.ins.gob.pe/), in the case of a study conducted abroad they must be registered in the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP, https://trialsearch.who.int/). They should be approximately 4500 words and may contain figures and tables. They are peer reviewed.

Systematic reviews

They are primary publications that communicate the results of systematic reviews that are guided by PRISMA (https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma/). They should be approximately 4500 words and may contain figures and tables. They are peer reviewed.

Clinical cases

They are primary publications that make an orderly description of the symptoms and events that occur to a patient in the course of a disease. In addition to providing complementary data, such as diagnostic procedures, clinical reasoning, diagnostic conclusion, treatment used and the patient's evolution. A clinical case will be published when it constitutes a novelty or a rarity. They should be approximately 2,000 words and may contain figures and tables. They are peer reviewed.

Narrative review article

It is a secondary publication, based on a careful review of excellent quality information on a current and pertinent topic, it presents a free structure and an approximate of 5000 words with illustrations. They are peer reviewed.

Letters to the editor

They briefly discuss the results of an article published in the journal. They should be approximately 1000 words and may contain figures and tables.

Publication ethics and scientific misconduct

General

Interciencia médica adheres to the purposes and suggestions of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), as well as supports the declaration of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) on the Policy Statement on Geopolitical Intrusion on Editorial Decisions. Interciencia médica also follows the indications of the Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) given in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Sending a manuscript to Interciencia médica implies that all the authors have read and accepted its content and that the manuscript complies with the journal's policies.

Author Integrity

Interciencia médica adheres to the Responsible research publication: international standards for authors [Kleinert S & Wager E (2011) Responsible research publication: international standards for authors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 51 in: Mayer T & Steneck N (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press/World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (pp 317-28). (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7)]

In summary:

• The research that gives rise to the work must have been carried out in an ethical and responsible manner and must comply with all relevant legislation.
• Authors must present their research results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or improper manipulation of data.
• The authors must strive to describe the methods used in the research clearly and unequivocally so that others can confirm their findings, that is, the works must have the necessary information so that they can be repeatable, reproducible, and traceable.
• The work submitted for publication must be original, not plagiarized and must not have been previously published elsewhere.
• Authors must assume collective responsibility for the work presented and published.
• The authorship of research publications must accurately reflect the contributions of individuals to the work and its reports.
• Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest must be disclosed.

Plagiarism

Interciencia médica considers plagiarism as publication fraud and dishonest behaviour, and this is defined as the appropriation of the ideas, processes, results, or texts of another person without giving the corresponding credit. Interciencia médica recognizes as fraud and misconduct: fabrication (invention of data or results), and falsification (manipulation of research materials, equipment, processes to alter data or results, as well as the change or omission of data or results) among others. Interciencia médica does not tolerate plagiarism, fraud, or misconduct, for which it establishes mechanisms to avoid and remedy it:

• During the editorial process, Interciencia médica prevents the publication of plagiarism, fraud, and misconduct by using the opinion of peer reviewers and the review of texts using the Ithenticate anti-plagiarism software as computer tools to detect it. Interciencia médica is a participant of Similarity Check that uses Ithenticate.
• If Interciencia médica detects or is alerted and confirms cases of plagiarism, fraud or misconduct in a published article, the Editorial Team will proceed according to the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics, actions that could lead to the retraction of the article (COPE - http://publicationethics.org/).

Human research

All manuscripts that refer to research involving human participants, material or human data must have been carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by a bioethics committee. The manuscript must present (in material and methods) a statement detailing the name of the bioethics committee, the reference number when applicable, of said research. If the study was granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Documentation as well as additional information to support this must be made available upon request by the editorial team. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an adequate ethical framework. In exceptional cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee for more information.

Clinical trial studies must be registered in the database accessible to the public, in the case of clinical trials conducted in Peru, these must be registered in the Peruvian Registry of Clinical Trials in Peru (REPEC), in case of study of another nationality, must be registered in the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). If the clinical trial was not registered or was registered later, the Editor will evaluate the conditions or its rejection.

Clinical tools and procedures

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, should provide a clear rationale in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was considered more appropriate. than usual clinical practice to meet the clinical need of the patient. The authors are expected to have obtained ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a new procedure or tool where there is no clear clinical advantage based on clinical need prior to treatment.

Consent to Participate

All research involving human participants must have informed consent to participate in the study (or their parents or legal guardians in the case of minors). This procedure must be declared and, depending on the case, detailed, if necessary, in the manuscript. For manuscripts reporting studies involving vulnerable groups (e.g., unconscious patients) where the possibility of coercion exists (e.g., prisoners) or where consent has not been fully informed, manuscripts will be considered at the editor's discretion and may be referred to an internal editorial oversight group for further scrutiny. Consent must be obtained for all forms of personally identifiable data, including biomedical, clinical, and biometric data.

Sex and Gender in Research (SAGER)

The guidelines indicated Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines (SAGER) should be considered and include considerations of sex and gender when relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) with care to avoid confusing the two terms. Titles of articles and/or abstracts should clearly indicate to which gender(s) the study applies. Authors should also describe in the background, if sex and/or gender differences can be expected; report how sex and/or gender were considered in the study design; provide data disaggregated by sex and/or gender, when applicable; and discuss the respective results. If a sex and/or gender analysis was not performed, the justification must be given in the Discussion.

Animal research

Experimental animal research must comply with national or international guidelines and where appropriate, the research must have been approved by an ethics committee. Interciencia médica adheres to the fundamental principles that must be followed when conducting research on animals according to the guidelines of the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS), as well as Peruvian regulations (Animal Welfare and Protection Law No. 30407). The manuscript must detail compliance with the relevant guidelines and/or approval by a bioethics committee (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where applicable). If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption). The Editor will consider animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject the manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with the commonly accepted standards of animal research. In exceptional cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee for more information.

Manuscripts that present studies that have employed methods of anaesthesia or euthanasia that are not in accordance with accepted standards for best veterinary practice (e.g., chloral hydrate, ether, and chloroform) will not be considered. Decisions not to consider manuscripts that present such methods of anaesthesia or euthanasia are independent of the bioethics committee that approves it and of any previously published work. We recommend that the authors consult the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals, as a resource for guidance on best veterinary practices for anaesthesia and euthanasia of animals.

Research involving biodiversity

A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or appropriate permits or licenses should be included in the manuscript when organisms, genetic biodiversity or traditional knowledge (e.g. animals, plants, bacteria) are used under national laws (Law No. 26839 Law on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity, Law No. 28216 Law on the protection of access to Peruvian biological diversity and the collective knowledge of indigenous peoples, Supreme Decree No. 001-2008-MINAM on the implementation of the CITES Convention in Peru; Law No. 27811 Law that establishes the protection regime for the collective knowledge of indigenous peoples linked to biological resources).

Deposit in scientific collections

To support reproducibility, test specimens of all wild plants and animals described in a manuscript should be deposited in a herbarium or other recognized scientific collection that provides maintenance and access to the deposited material. Information about the voucher specimen and who identified it should be included in the manuscript.

Research in complementary and alternative medicine

Interciencia médica is committed to evidence-based research. Research in complementary and alternative medicine must be carried out under the same standards and threshold of evidence as any other medical research. Therefore, in addition to adhering to journal policies, studies in complementary and alternative medicine are expected to be adequately controlled (whether compared to placebo or conventional medication), blinded (where appropriate), randomized, and with sufficient statistical power to interpret the results with statistical confidence and precision. Studies reporting one complementary and alternative medicine treatment/technique compared with only another complementary and alternative medicine treatment/technique are not sufficient to prove the efficacy of the treatment in question. Studies in which a conventional treatment is complemented with a complementary and alternative medicine technique are only valid if they are compared with the same conventional treatment complemented with a placebo. It is unethical that complementary and alternative medicine treatments/techniques in humans or animals have been carried out without adequate prior evidence that the treatment/technique shows some therapeutic potential. Manuscripts must include evidence that takes the form of objective and measurable data from previously published and peer-reviewed literature that adheres to scientific principles (e.g., in vitro or cell work). Other forms of evidence are not valid. Manuscripts describing works that lack this evidence will not be considered for ethical reasons.

Informed consent to publish

All manuscripts that include details, images or related videos of a particular person must have the informed written consent for the publication of these details of that person (or their parents or legal guardians in the case of minors). The consent must be explicitly for the publication of your data under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (so that they will be freely available on the Internet). If the person is deceased, consent for publication should be obtained from the next of kin of the person. The manuscript must include a statement that informed written consent was obtained for publication.

Data availability

Within the framework of open science, Interciencia médica strongly recommends that all datasets on which the conclusions of the article are based be made available to readers in open access repositories or presented as tables in the article or in additional appendices, at machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets), and when there is a standard established by the community to share data, Interciencia médica requires the deposit of data (for example, genomic data, nucleic acids or protein sequences), said data must be available for review by editors and reviewers during peer review and must be released without restriction to the public at the time of publication.

Statements of availability of data and materials

All authors should include a "Data and Materials Availability" section in their manuscript, detailing where data supporting their findings can be found. If your data cannot be shared openly, please include a statement to that effect and provide the reason why the data cannot be shared openly. Publishers may reject the manuscript if the restrictions are determined to be unduly prohibitive. The data set must be cited in the article with the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow the style of the journal. Dataset identifiers, including DOIs, must be expressed as full URLs.

PRESENTATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Cover letter

It is the document addressed to the Editor in Chief of the journal and that accompanies the manuscript and where the authors declare:

Authors have read the editorial policies of the journal and the guidelines mentioned in this document.

Authors also declare that they agree with the open access policy and the commitments of the authors.

Authors declare that everything stated in the manuscript is true and that all authors are responsible.

Authors must indicate why the work should be published. They can optionally suggest three reviewers.

SUBMISSION OF THE MANUSCRIPT

It is done through the platform, for which you must register as a reader, author and reviewer user, then fill out the form properly and send the manuscript and documents according to the following guidelines.

SAMPLE COVER LETTER

HELP FOR REGISTRATION IN THE SYSTEM

HELP FOR SENDING INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTS

STRUCTURE OF THE MANUSCRIPTS

Manuscript information and declarations

This information describes the manuscript and will be used as metadata. It must be the same one indicated in the system during shipment.

TITLE (English and Spanish)

AUTHORS (names and surnames). The names can be complete (Juan José) or the following with an initial (Juan J.). Surnames can be paternal and maternal, recommended together by a hyphen (Pérez-Moreno) or only the paternal (Pérez), other forms are not accepted (Pérez M.).

ORCID of each author.

EMAIL of each author.

INSTITUTION. It refers to the institution where the research work was carried out or where the author works. Only one academic institution (university) is accepted. Up to three levels of institution are accepted, ordered by hierarchies (University X, Faculty A, Department N).

INSTITUTIONAL ADRESS. Optional, institutional address of corresponding author.

SUMMARY (Spanish and English). Structured: Objective, methodology, relevant results, discussion, and conclusions, 250 words maximum.

KEYWORDS (Spanish and English). Five keywords. [Decs vocabulary]

CREDIT. Role of each author. See Contributor Roles Taxonomy, https://casrai.org/credit/.

DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTERESTS POLICY. In case of not having what to declare, it must be made explicit in the following way: "The authors declare that they had no conflict of interest during the research process and the preparation of this work."

FUNDING SOURCE DECLARATION. Indicate the institution that financed the research and the code of the project or financing. If there is nothing to declare, it must be made explicit in the following way: “The authors declare that they did not receive any specific funds to carry out the research or the preparation of this document”.

ETHICAL AND LEGAL ASPECTS. On the approval of the research project by a bioethics committee (which must also be mentioned in material and methods), on legal permissions to carry out the research (laws on work with genetic resources, protection of the collective knowledge of indigenous peoples, indigenous people linked to biological resources, etc.). In case of not having needed, you must declare: "The authors declare that we have not violated any ethical aspect, nor omitted any legal norm when carried out the investigation and the elaboration of this manuscript."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. It must be explicitly to the people who collaborated in the execution of the research or who gave some significant intellectual contribution to the elaboration of the manuscript.

Body of work

Structure of the articles according to the sections:

• Original article: Introduction, Materials and methods, Results and Discussion.
• Systematic review article: Introduction, Objectives, Materials and methods, Results and Discussion.
• Clinical cases: Introduction, Case presentation, Discussion, Conclusions.
• Narrative review article [synthesis]: Introduction [with the research questions and/or objectives], followed by the narrative and reflective development (State of the art), and the Discussion/conclusions.

REPORTING GUIDELINES AND CHECKLISTS

To present biomedical research with complete and transparent information, Interciencia médica requests the presentation and applies the use of checklists in editorial evaluation and peer review. Therefore, the authors, in the preparation of their manuscript, must review the guidelines for health research of the EQUATOR Network.

• Randomized controlled trials (CONSORT)
• Protocols for Randomized Controlled Protocols (SPIRIT)
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) and protocols (PRISMA-P)
• Observational studies (STROBE)
• Case reports (CARE)
• Qualitative research (COREQ)
• Diagnostic/prognostic studies (STARD and TRIPOD)
• Economic evaluations (CHEERS)
• Preclinical studies in animals (ARRIVAL)

Units of measure, other symbols, and abbreviations

For measurement units, the International System of Units is used.

Illustrations

Tables, figures, and boxes are considered, named in the text with consecutive Arabic numbers (eg: Figure 1, Table 1, Box 1, etc.).

The tables are used to provide quantitative information, but also for textual comparisons, they are always presented as Word or Excel tables, but never as images. The structure of the tables will be the name of the table (e.g.: Table 2), followed by the title of the table (e.g.: Demographic information of the patients) and the legend with the explanations of the case (e.g.: The number of individuals, by sex and age according to origin). Then the body of the table, which includes the header and rows with information. Additionally, table footnotes can be included that correspond to calls in the body of the table.

The figures include photos (in original formats), graphs and diagrams in editable formats (eg Excel, or vectors such as SVG, AI), maps and other images in natural sizes or with widths of 17 cm and a resolution of 300 dpi. All figures must have been created or owned by the authors. In any case, you must have permission to reproduce. The structure of a figure includes the figure followed in the lower part of the name (Figure 1) and the sufficiently explanatory legend of the figure, to understand it without resorting to the text.

Bibliography

Medical Interscience uses the citation system by Arabic numerals (superscript in parentheses) in the text. The referencing style according to Citing Medicine, 2nd edition [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/]. Examples:

 Examples of Frequently references:

2. Mendoza JA, Watson K, Baranowski T, Nicklas TA, Uscanga DK, Hanfling MJ. The walking school bus and children's physical activity: A pilot cluster randomized controlled trial. Pediatrics. 2011;128(3):537-544. doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-3486
3. Dirks KN, Wang JYT, Khan A, Rushton C. Air pollution exposure in relation to the commute to school: A Bradford UK case study. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2016;13(11):1-10. doi: 10.3390/ijerph13111064
4. Smith L, Norgate SH, Cherrett T, Davies N, Winstanley C, Harding M. Walking school buses as a form of active transportation for children: a review of the evidence. J Sch Health. 2015;85(3):197-210. doi: 10.1111/josh.12239

Direct quote:

 Reference:

5. Alcock P, May M. Social policy in Britain. 4th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; 2014.

More examples at: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html

REVIEW PROCESS

EDITORIAL REVIEW. In charge of the editorial team and consists of reviewing the requirements of the policies and quality of the manuscript. It lasts about a week. In case of rejection, in some cases it will be indicated if it is possible to resubmit the manuscript with the mentioned changes.

PEER REVIEW. This process is carried out by an Editor in charge, close to the specialty of the subject of the manuscript. The editor reviews the work and may ask for corrections. When it is ready, the manuscript is sent to at least two reviewers of the specialty to review the manuscript and report their evaluation and suggestions. Depending on the contents of the manuscript, the editors may also request technical, statistical, and pharmacological evaluations, when the works refer to clinical trials and the use of drugs. All revisions are based on the recommendations of the Equator Network (https://www.equator-network.org/). The editor in charge makes the decision to accept the work with modifications, or reject it based on the comments and suggestions of the reviewers, communicating the main deficiencies to the authors. The acceptance with corrections is conducted by the editor in charge, and the author has a maximum period of one month to correct the requirements. After this time, if a new version has not been received, the journal will consider the article withdrawn. The editor in charge will present the final approved manuscript to the editorial team. This stage could last between two to four months.

ARTICLE IN PRESS. The Editorial Committee establishes the decision to publish the work, being able to request other corrections or clarifications to the authors, considering it from this moment as an article in press. The Editorial Committee sends the final manuscript to production where the illustrations could be requested in their original formats for the galley test. This stage lasts two weeks.

GALLEY PROOF. The Editorial Committee will send a final galley proof to the corresponding author, who may request minor corrections and must give his consent for publication. Without the publication consent the article will not be published.