Accepted Article Types

• Original Research
• Systematic Review
• Meta-analysis
• Narrative Review
• Mini-Review*
• Methods Paper
• Protocol
• Comment*
• Case Report and Case Series

*Please contact the editor-in-chief prior to submission

Description of Article Types and Special Requirements

Suggested article length is provided for each article type below. Please note that, unless otherwise stated, these are suggested word limits and do not include abstract, section titles, figure and table captions, declarations, or references.

Original Research

Original research articles should follow the general guidelines outlined in the following sections. Max words: approx. 3500 not including figures, tables, or references. Limit of 5 figures and 5 tables. Additional figures and tables may be included as supplemental material. All studies involving human subjects must include an IRB approval or exemption. Studies including animals should include IACUC approval or exemption. 

Systematic Review

Systematic reviews should adhere to PRISMA guidelines for reporting and should follow the same general structure as original research articles and contain "Systematic Review" in the title. Please include a copy of the PRISMA checklist with submission. Max words: approx. 4500 not including figures, tables, or references. Limit of 5 figures and 5 tables. Additional figures and tables may be included as supplemental material. Other structured review types including but not limited to scoping reviews, rapid reviews, umbrella reviews, etc. should follow the guidelines for systematic reviews.

Meta-analysis

Meta-analyses are considered original research articles and thus should follow the guidelines for Original Research articles. Meta-analysis should adhere to PRISMA guidelines for reporting and should include "Meta-analysis" in the title. Please include a copy of the PRISMA checklist with submission. Please contact the editor if you feel your meta-analysis requires a significantly higher word count.

Narrative Review

Narrative reviews are welcome. In addition to summarizing current literature, narrative reviews should provide new insights into the topic. There are no word, figure, or table limits on narrative reviews. All narrative reviews must be comprehensive. Narrative reviews do not need to include Results and Discussion sections. Instead you may present your findings in a dedicated "Review" section - though this is not required. 

Mini-Reviews

Mini-reviews are concise narrative reviews that summarize recent literature on a narrow topic. They should provide new insights into the topic and/or explore current trends. Mini-Reviews should be limited to <1500 words. Limit of 1 figure and 1 table. Mini-reviews are generally invitation only. Please contact the editor-in-chief if you would like to submit a proposal for a mini-review. Mini-reviews do not need to include Results and Discussion sections. Instead you may present your findings in a dedicated "Review" section. Mini-Reviews may choose to omit the Methods section as well, although inclusion of a brief description of search methodology is prefered. 

Methods Paper

Methods papers should comprehensively describe a novel methodology or the methodology of a previously completed study in greater detail than normally allowed in the Methods section of an article. Methods papers describing existing methods without new contribution will be rejected. Methods papers should not describe hypothetical methods that have not been tested, validated, or otherwise employed by the authors. There is no word, figure, or table limit. There are no structure requirements.

Protocol

Protocol papers should concisely describe a planned study. Protocol papers may be submitted for all study types i.e., clinical trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, laboratory studies, etc. Max words: approx. 2000 not including figures, tables, or references. Limit of 5 figures and 5 tables. Additional figures and tables may be included as supplemental material. Protocol papers must include the following:

• Project Summary
• Rational and Background
• Study Goals
• Study Design
• Detailed Methods
• Statistical Analysis
• Expected Outcomes
• Anticipated Duration
• Anticipated Problems
• Ethical Considerations

References should be included at the end as usual.

Comment

Comments include a variety of article types that range from letters to the editor, editorial pieces, responses, and other opinion pieces. Comments must be <1000 words and no more that 10 citations. Figures and tables are discouraged but may be included if the authors feel they are necessary. There are no structural requirements for comments. These articles will be assessed by the editor for content, clarity, and general accuracy and will be denoted as having undergone “Editorial Review” only.

Case Reports and Case Series

Case reports and case series (≤3 cases) should describe interesting or rare cases and should be structured similarly to original research articles. Max words: approx. 1500 not including figures, tables, or references. Limit of 5 figures and 5 tables. Author lists for case reports should, in most cases, be limited to 5 or fewer authors. Case reports with excessively long author lists may be rejected or may require additional explanation during the editorial process. It is recommended that every case report/case series include the following sections:

• Introduction
• Methods (where applicable)
• Case Description (including treatment and follow-up)
• Discussion
• Clinical Recommendations
• Conclusion

Case reports and case series do not need IRB approval or exemption.  Note that any case series with more than 3 cases should be submitted as an original research article, following those guidelines, and requires IRB approval or exemption. Patient consent is required for all case reports and case series. If you are unable to provide a consent form, please include a detailed explanation of why consent was not obtained. 

Templates

MS Word: Download .doct file

LaTeX: Download .zip folder

Both MS Word and LaTeX templates are available. Submissions not formatted properly may be delayed during the editorial process or outright rejected.

Language

All articles must be submitted in American English. Please consult the Chicago Manual of Style for questions regarding styling. Articles that require extensive editing and proof reading may be rejected.

Submission requirements

Prior to submission, please ensure that you have the following ready:

• A cover letter briefly summarizing your manuscript, including its importance and contribution to the field
• A Word Document or PDF (if submitting in LaTeX) of your manuscript. If you are using LaTeX, you will be required to submit the source files as well
• An anonymized version of your manuscript. 
• Figures saved in an acceptable format
• Any supplementary material
• IRB approval or exemption if necessary

Manuscript Format

Title

Titles should be concise and, where possible, describe the main results or conclusion of the manuscript. Please follow the individual article guidelines for exceptions and special rules. Titles should be in title case. Avoid vague titles or titles which posit a question without an answer.

Authors and Affiliation

Author names are listed together and separated by comma. Please ensure that author names are correct. Affiliations should be indicated with superscript numbers. Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine follows ICMJE guidelines on author criteria. Please see our Editorial Policies for further details.

First Middle Initial Last¹

1. Department, Organization, City, State, Country

Please mark equal contributions with an “*” and a corresponding note after the affiliations.

Example: John B Researcher^1*, Jane D Scientist^1,2*, Richard P Senior¹

1 Department of Science, University of America, New York, New York, United States

2 Department of Research, Imaginary University, Queensland, Australia

* These authors have contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

The abstract should be no longer than a paragraph (≤350 words) and may be either structured or unstructured. Do not cite references, figures, or tables in the abstract. Any abbreviations should be defined. For any study that has been pre-registered (i.e., systematic reviews or clinical trials) please include the unique identifier and URL of the registration.

Keywords

Please include 3-5 keywords describing your article.

Text

The entire document should be single-spaced with 2 columns. The required font is Palatino. Body text should be 10pt. The manuscript should be written using either Word or LaTeX. We recommend using one of the above templates to ensure rapid copyediting post acceptance. 

Nomenclature and Abbreviations

All abbreviations should be defined at first use in text. Please be aware that even standard abbreviations should be defined for clarity.

Standard International Units should be used in all manuscripts. Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the editor.

Equations should be inserted in an editable format using the equation editor in Word (or appropriate formatting in LaTeX).

Sections

The manuscript should be organized by headings and subheadings. You may insert up to 4 heading levels (i.e., 3.1.2.2 Subheading Title). We require the following main section headings for most articles; any exceptions are described in the individual article requirements:

• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• Abbreviations*
• Declarations**

* A list of defined abbreviations should be included at the end of the manuscript, in addition to defining all abbreviations at first use.

**All manuscripts must include a declarations section. The declarations section should include the following subsections. If a section is not applicable, please include it and state “Not applicable.” If the authors have no conflicts of interest, please include the statement “The authors declare that they have no competing interests” or similar.

• Ethics approval and consent to participate
• Consent for publication
• Data Availability
• Conflicts of Interest
• Funding
• Authors Contributions
• Acknowledgements

 

Author Contributions

Please include a detailed explanation of each authors’ contribution to the manuscript following CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) guidelines.

Acknowledgements

This is a short text to acknowledge the contributions of specific colleagues, institutions, or agencies that aided the efforts of the authors. Should the content of the manuscript have previously appeared online, such as in a thesis or preprint, this should be mentioned here, in addition to listing the source within the reference list.

Figures and Tables

Figures

All figures, tables, and images will be published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license, and permission must be obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including re-published/adapted/modified/partial figures and images from the internet). It is the responsibility of the authors to acquire the licenses, follow any citation instructions requested by third-party rights holders, and cover any supplementary charges.

Figures should be submitted individually as well as included at the end of the manuscript in the order in which they appear. Ensure that each figure is mentioned in the text and in numerical order.

For figures with more than one panel, panels should be clearly indicated using labels. Axis must be labeled. All figures should include a caption at bottom of the figure. Captions should be preceded by the appropriate label, for example “Figure 1.” and include a title. Do not include a title in the table. These captions should be editable and not embedded in the figure file.

Image size and resolution

Figures should be reasonably sized to fit within a single page. Images must have a resolution of at least 300 dpi at final size. Text should be clear and easily readable at final size. Accepted file formats include:

• TIFF
• JPEG
• PNG
• EPS
• SVG

Whenever possible, we suggest submission of figures in a scalable format such as EPS or SVG to avoid loss of resolution with resizing.

Tables

Tables should be inserted at the end of the manuscript, in the order in which they appear, and in an editable format. If you use a word processor, build your table in Word. If you use a LaTeX processor, build your table in LaTeX.

Table captions must be placed immediately before the table. Captions should be preceded by the appropriate label, for example “Table 1.” and include a title. Do not include a title in the table. Please use only a single paragraph for the caption.

Ensure that each table is mentioned in the text and in numerical order.

Supplementary Material

Data, figures, and other materials that are too long/large or not of primary importance to the text may be uploaded as supplementary material and will be displayed alongside the published article. Supplemental files are uploaded to and stored in Zenodo. Supplementary material is not typeset and is uploaded as-is.

References

Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine uses the Vancouver reference style. In text citations should be number consecutively in order of appearance using Arabic numerals in square brackets. See Citing Medicine 2^nd Edition for detailed examples of citing documents as well as general style questions.