Abstract submission
Contributors are invited to submit an abstract (500 words) for consideration for inclusion in the program by January 20, 2012, postponed now to 10th February, 2012. Abstracts should be organized in 4 sections: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion.
Submission should be done electronically at the following link: http://www.telepathology2012.com/openconf/
Short papers submission
Authors of accepted abstracts should submit their extended version by 18th May 2012, and should conform to the format and length requirements as specified in the following instructions. Please note that you may wish not to submit it as short paper (e.g., if you are already submitting a full paper elsewhere): in this case, please just provide a formatted abstract, revised according to reviewer comments, which will be printed on the informal proceedings distributed during the congress.
Extended abstracts: Author instructions
The Short Papers will be published as a supplement of Diagnostic Pathology, a well-known BiomedCentral journal indexed on PubMed, ISI, Scopus, with impact factor 1.39.
For anything not covered here, please refer to the general guidelines of the journal’s style and language for short reports. Please note that at least one Author should be registered at the Congress before final acceptance.
Submission procedure
Please use the same submission site as for abstracts: http://www.telepathology2012.com/openconf/. You will find now the option of submitting a file.
Please submit only .doc , .docx, .rtf , .zip files. If you have figures, please compress all files into a zip archive and submit it. You may use this Word or this RTF file as a guide for your extended abstract.
Length of article
Short papers should be between 1,000 and 1,500 words approximately, and have no more than 10 references.
Manuscript sections for Short reports
Manuscripts for Short reports submitted to Diagnostic Pathology should be divided into the following sections (in this order):
- Title page
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Background
- Methods
- Results and discussion
- Conclusions
- List of abbreviations used (if any)
- Competing interests
- Authors’ contributions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Illustrations and figures (if any)
- Tables and captions (if any)
Title page
This should list: the title of the article, which should include an accurate, clear and concise description of the reported work, avoiding abbreviations; and the full names, institutional addresses, and email addresses for all authors. The corresponding author should also be indicated.
Abstract
The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 250 words and may be structured into separate sections: Background, the context and purpose of the study; Findings, the main methods and results; Conclusions, brief summary and potential implications. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.
Keywords
Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.
Background, Material and methods, Results and discussion, Conclusions
These sections should contain the body of the article, including a brief statement of the research hypothesis, the methods used, and the results found.
List of abbreviations
If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations can be provided, which should precede the competing interests and authors’ contributions.
Competing interests
A competing interest exists when your interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by your personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors must disclose any financial competing interests; they should also reveal any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment were they to become public after the publication of the manuscript.
Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read ‘The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests’.
When completing your declaration, please consider the following questions:
Financial competing interests
- In the past five years have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? Is such an organization financing this manuscript (including the article-processing charge)? If so, please specify.
- Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? If so, please specify.
- Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the content of the manuscript? Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript? If so, please specify.
- Do you have any other financial competing interests? If so, please specify.
Non-financial competing interests
Are there any non-financial competing interests (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) to declare in relation to this manuscript? If so, please specify.
If you are unsure as to whether you, or one your co-authors, has a competing interest please discuss it with the editorial office.
Authors’ contributions
In order to give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section.
An ‘author’ is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.
We suggest the following kind of format (please use initials to refer to each author’s contribution): AB carried out the molecular genetic studies, participated in the sequence alignment and drafted the manuscript. JY carried out the immunoassays. MT participated in the sequence alignment. ES participated in the design of the study and performed the statistical analysis. FG conceived of the study, and participated in its design and coordination and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Acknowledgements
Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Please also include the source(s) of funding for each author, and for the manuscript preparation. Authors must describe the role of the funding body, if any, in design, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Please also acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study. If a language editor has made significant revision of the manuscript, we recommend that you acknowledge the editor by name, where possible.
The role of a scientific (medical) writer must be included in the acknowledgements section, including their source(s) of funding. We suggest wording such as ‘We thank Jane Doe who provided medical writing services on behalf of XYZ Pharmaceuticals Ltd.’
Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.
References
All references, including URLs, must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any in tables or legends. Each reference must have an individual reference number. Please avoid excessive referencing. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.
Only articles, datasets and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text and referred to as “unpublished observations” or “personal communications” giving the names of the involved researchers. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited colleagues is the responsibility of the author. Footnotes are not allowed, but endnotes are permitted. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Citations in the reference list should include all named authors, up to the first 30 before adding ‘et al.‘.
Examples of the Diagnostic Pathology reference style are shown on the journal site.
Figure legends
The legends should be included in the main manuscript text file at the end of the document, rather than being a part of the figure file. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals – i.e. Figure 1, 2, 3 etc); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 300 words.
Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.
Preparing illustrations and figures
A maximum number of two illustrations or figures is suggested.
Illustrations should be provided as separate files, not embedded in the text file. Each figure should include a single illustration and should fit on a single page in portrait format. If a figure consists of separate parts, it is important that a single composite illustration file be submitted which contains all parts of the figure. There is no charge for the use of color figures.
Please read the journal’s figure preparation guidelines for detailed instructions on maximising the quality of your figures.
Preparing tables
A maximum number of two tables is suggested.
Each table should be numbered and cited in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, 2, 3 etc.). Tables should also have a title (above the table) that summarizes the whole table; it should be no longer than 15 words. Detailed legends may then follow, but they should be concise. Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
Smaller tables considered to be integral to the manuscript can be pasted into the end of the document text file, in A4 portrait or landscape format. These will be typeset and displayed in the final published form of the article. Such tables should be formatted using the ‘Table object’ in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data are kept aligned when the file is sent electronically for review; this will not always be the case if columns are generated by simply using tabs to separate text. Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring that the borders of each cell display as black lines. Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values. Color and shading may not be used; parts of the table can be highlighted using symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend. Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files.