Guide to author

AUTHORS' GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

 

Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically through the Journal website submission system to the Editorial Office. (ACMM )  

Website:https://mmed.uomosul.edu.iq

Author Guidelines

Annals of the College of Medicine Mosul (ACMM) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in all parts of medicine, public health, epidemiology, and statistical health studies. The journal prioritises research with high societal impact, particularly studies related to medical discoveries, innovations, and groundbreaking findings.

Open Access Policy

All published articles are freely accessible to the public, ensuring global reach and maximum visibility for authors.

Publication Fees for Authors in Iraq: 125,000 IQD.

International Authors: Submission, peer review, and publication are free of charge.

Submission Process

A peer-review process that is rigorous in terms of scientific quality and integrity is conducted in front of each published manuscript. When the manuscript is submitted, it follows the following procedures:

Editorial Screening (3–5 days)

The Editor-in-Chief reviews the submission for relevance, originality, and adherence to journal guidelines.

The manuscript is either sent for peer review or declined if it does not meet the basic criteria.

Peer Review (4–6 weeks)

Manuscripts are evaluated by expert double-blind reviewers from diverse academic backgrounds.

Authors receive detailed feedback and revision requests if necessary.

Acceptance decisions are based on originality, methodology, and contribution to the field.

Final Decision & Publication

Once approved, the manuscript is formatted and published online.

Manuscript Preparation

Recommendations for Authors Prior to Manuscript Submission

Manuscript submission to Annals of the College of Medicine, Mosul (ACMM) implies that:

  • The manuscript has not been published in another journal before.
  • The manuscript is not being considered by a different journal for publication.;
  • All coauthors agree with the publication of the present version of the article.
  • The author is recommended to upload 2 files (title page and blinded manuscript). The title page contains the article title, full authors’ names, affiliation of each author, ORCID ID, full address including country, and email of each author. Blinded manuscript file contains the full text without mention of any names of authors or institutions related to the work. Tables and figures are inserted in their usual position within the text file, not as a separate file.
  • A cover letter is required with each submission and includes a brief statement of the significance of the work and a declaration that the work is not under consideration by another journal.

Online Submission

To submit your manuscript, please use the hyperlink, Submit manuscript and upload all your manuscript files according to the instructions on the screen.

Formatting

The paper must be written in Microsoft Word (doc., docx.). The font should be Times New Roman, 12 point size, 1.5 space. There should be a margin of at least 2.5 cm around the page. All pages must be numbered.

The content of original articles must not go past 20 pages (including figures, tables, the abstract, and references); case reports, 4-5 pages; reviews, 22 pages, and book/media reviews and informative articles, 3 pages.

General

Any submitted manuscript is expected to be original and therefore has not been published in the past or is not undergoing publication in other journals. Any article must be accepted in the English language only. In their cover note to the Editor, authors must explicitly indicate whether the submission should be treated as a Research article, Case report or Review article. ACMM welcomes systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which are to be submitted in the section of Review article.

Title page

The following is the information you have to provide on the title page:

Article title: The titles of articles must be brief and informative. Abbr. and formulae (where possible) should be avoided, unless they are standard and sufficiently known e.g. DNA). A running title must be uploaded into the system to be indexed and page headings.

Author names: Give the first name(s) and last name(s) of every author. The sequence of the authors must be the same as in the submission system. Look thoroughly to be sure the names are correctly spelled. Where necessary, you may include your name in parentheses in your own writing at the end of the English transliteration.

Affiliations: Below the names of the authors, place the address of the place of work. A lower-case superscript letter should appear at the end of the name of an author and at the beginning of the address to which the author is attached. Make sure to give the entire postal address of each affiliation, along with a country name and email address of each writer. The ORCID ID is much promoted.

Corresponding author: The corresponding author who should do correspondence of the article throughout the refereeing and publication process, and even after it has been published. This is in addition to the responsibility of responding to any subsequent questions regarding your findings, data, procedure and materials. Your contact information and email address associated with the author of the submission and publication must be updated. ORCID ID of the respective author is obligatory.

When the author has moved away since the action covered in your article was carried out, or the author visited during the time covered, you may place a footnote on the name of the author containing the word present address (or permanent address). The speech where the writer introduced the work must be preserved as his main affiliation speech. This is because such footnotes are supposed to be written in superscript Arabic numerals.

Abstract

The author must present a short (less than 300 words) and factually structured abstract. The Abstract must be in the form of summarizing the Background, Purpose of your work (Aim), Methods, key Results and main Conclusions.

Some guidelines:

Abstracts should be self-sufficient because abstracts are usually given alone without the article. Use no non-standard or unusual short forms. Should one be necessary to include, make sure you specify them in your abstract the first time you reference them.

Keywords

The author must submit 3 to 5 indexing keywords. The keywords must be in English. Use commas between words.

Conflicts of Interest and Informed Consent Declarations

There should be a declaration of any competing interests, circumstances or relationships. Personal relationships can be considered in conflicts of interest (i.e. friend, spouse, family member; current or former mentor, adversary, etc.). Provided that the authors feel they have nothing to reveal they still need to include a statement.

In performing their research, authors should consider the need to provide an informed consent statement in their article if the research involves human subjects. It does so according to the guidelines given by (Declaration of Helsinki) to publishers.

Ethical Guidelines

Ethical policy of (ACMM) journal rests on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles and does not violate (ACMM) Editorial Board codes of conduct. These are the ethical policies that readers, authors, reviewers and editors must adhere to after working with (ACMM). Experimental, clinical and drug studies should be approved by the Ethics Committee following the international agreements (World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles of Medical Research Involving Human Subjects”), which was amended in October 2013. The name and approval number of the ethics committee as well as information regarding patient consent must be provided in the manuscript. Ethical approval will also be determined after the editorial review, and submissions without ethical approval will be rejected.

With respect to experimental studies conducted on animals, research protocols must be approved by the Ethics Committee in compliance with international agreements. An assertion on the prevention of pain and suffering should also be stated in the manuscript. A statement must be included on manuscripts concerning experimental research on human subjects that informed consent was given to patients and volunteers, in writing, upon a thorough explanation of the procedures to which the subjects can be subjected. It is the responsibility of the authors to make sure that the patients remain anonymous. The signed releases of the patient or his/her legal representative should be collected with the photographs that might disclose the identity of the patients, and the permission to publish the photographs should be stated in the manuscript.

MAIN TEXT

INTRODUCTION is a brief explanation of the problem outlined in the manuscript and aim of the study. One should state only the references that are directly related to a problem introduced in the manuscript. Keep the chain of reasoning and end the part with a brief statement of the purpose of the research.

MATERIAL/PATIENTS AND METHODS (three subheadings): Basic procedures and selection of study subjects or laboratory animals, observation and analysis methods should be succinctly and methodically stated (Patients/Materials and study design, Methods, Statistical analysis). Do not list common/irrelevant methods (use a reference instead). The key information on the patient traits should be presented here and not under the result section.

Statistical Analysis

Statistical analysis details and its correctness are the integral component of Material and Methods section. Authors should list all applied statistical methods and all used statistical tests. They are encouraged to report all statistical methods clearly, including effect sizes with confidence intervals, the name and version of the software used.

Statistical significance (Р-value) accepted in research should be specified. For example, it could be stated as follows: The significance level was set at 0.05. The Р value should be specified in each case (e.g, not simply P < 0.05 or P > 0.05 but P = 0.015 or P = 0.271).

RESULTS section must reflect a list of your simple results without any introduction. In brackets, only the necessary statistical significances must be included. Conclusions not yet to be drawn: they fall into the next.

DISCUSSION involves the interpretation of the findings and results of the study in the context of results in other studies that were reported in the literature.

CONCLUSIONS: The conclusion must be clear, brief and simple and based directly on results presented in the paper. Draw a conclusion out of them, not a summary.

Figures and tables

Tables and figures must be placed within the text. Number all figures and tables consecutively. Tables and figures should be mentioned in the text. Titles of figures and tables should be given in both English.

TIFF or JPG files of colour line drawings are accepted; the resolution of the image must be 300 dpi. Compression can be LZW or other. Each figure should be of high quality with a title and a caption. In figures, the meaning of abbreviations must be explained in the caption. The words on the figures must be clear.

The table should be spelled out, and the number of the table positioned above the table title just below the left side of the page. Table numbers must match table numbers in the text and should be statistically processed. The tables are not to be put on separate pages.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Please be sure to add a note of credits to people or institutions who assisted in the work but do not qualify to be considered as authors.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Author should report a conflict of interest with a company or an organization in the manuscript.

FUNDING

Articles should have Funding section. This section must follow the section of Acknowledgement. Authors have to state any source of funds, i.e. information about funding of work, or authors, or professional assistance to write a work, as follows: ''This work was supported.....' with complete full official name of funding agency and its reference number.

When no particular funding has been obtained then this should also should be made clear: Funding: no particular funding was obtained to conduct this study.

REFERENCES

Depending on the article type, we recommend citing no more than 40 sources (original articles), no more than 70 sources (systematic or literary review), or up to 15 sources (case report). The reference style is Vancouver. Use of DOI is highly encouraged. We recommend using a reference manager (e.g., EndNote, Mendeley) to ensure accuracy. Please keep self-citations to a minimum and cite only when directly relevant.

Besides the basic works, the publications of the recent past, i.e. within the past 5 years, mostly, journal articles should be included in the reference list.

Cite sources by placing a number in square brackets within the text.  e.g. as illustrated [3, 6]. The references will be referred to at the end of the manuscript in the order in which they have been used in the text. The case of having more than 6 authors to any reference should only be mentioned by stating the name of the first 6 authors and then et al. The references to journal articles, books, chapters in books, etc. should be referred to as follows as they are mentioned: 

Example:

Journal: Smith J, Brown K. The role of AI in microbial diagnostics. J Clin Microbiol. 2024;58(3):215–22. doi:10.1093/jcm/aqae107.

Tian T, Zhang X, Zhang F, Huang X, Li M, Quan Z, et al. Harnessing AI for advancing pathogenic microbiology: a bibliometric and topic modeling approach. Front Microbiol. 2024;15:1510139. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1510139.

Book: Johnson M. Microbial Genomics and AI Applications. 2nd ed. New York: Springer; 2023.

Thesis: Ahmed S. The impact of AI on antimicrobial resistance prediction [PhD thesis]. London: University College London; 2023.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations must not be used unless they are referred to 3 or more times throughout the text and they must be written in full form the first time they are referred to. This is true, individually, of the Abstract, and of the remainder of the text.C

Copyright and Licensing

ACMM is an Open Access journal. Authors preserve their copyright to their articles and license the journal to publish the article on a non-exclusive basis. The published work receives a Creative Commons license (e.g. CC BY 4.0), thereby permitting others to re-use and reference the work.

Plagiarism and Ethical Misconduct

ACMM is plagiarism sensitive. At any stage of the peer-review and/or production process, all submissions are checked with a similarity detection program (iThenticate or Turnitin). It is highly discouraged that authors plagiarize and engage in any other type of ethical misconduct to prevent the chance of acceptance and/or publication. Findings that would suggest plagiarism could lead to manuscripts being submitted back to revision or rejection. The journal has the right to forward the manuscript to the supporting institutions or other authorities to investigate in the event of any suspicion or allegations of scientific inadequacy or ethical violation. ACMM is not answerable to commence action nor in any way liable to an actual investigation or power of action. The journal does not accept manuscript with a plagiarism rate exceeding 20%, or with AI-generated content exceeding 25% of the total submission.

Review Article

The reviews written by the authors who possessed a deep knowledge about a specific area and whose scientific experience is converted into the high number of publications with the high citation probabilities are welcome. The journal will invite these authors and subjects.  All reviews in the field of the journal will be considered by the editors; the editors may also seek a review in the field of the journal by any specialist and experienced authority in the field.

The text is not to be more than 25 pages (A4, in the form as given above).

The size of the review must not exceed 5000 words and cannot contain more than 6 tables and 10 or total 20 figures and 80 references. The word limit (abstract) should be 250.

Case Reports

Important and rare clinical experiences should be provided in case reports. It should bring new and/or infrequent clinical information or knowledge to the literature. Case report must include an unstructured abstract (a maximum of 150 words) summary of the case. They must be divided into the following sections: introduction, case report, discussion. The patient or the legal representative must provide informed consent or signed release and this must be mentioned in the manuscript.

Letters to the Editor

This section introduces manuscripts talking about significant sections, missing sections or ignored sections of an already published article on this journal. Moreover, articles on topics covered in the journal which may include educative cases, can also be forwarded as a Letter to the Editor. The texts in this section are to be written in unstructured text with reference. The editor can ask people to respond to the letters. The text does not have individual sections.

Letter to the editors must not exceed 700 words.

 

Authorship and Contributions

 

All authors must:

  • made a significant contribution to the research or writing,
  • reviewed and approved the final version, and
  • agreed to take responsibility for the work.

Please include a CRediT statement explaining each author’s role (e.g., Conceptualization, Data Analysis, Writing, Supervision).

Authorship Changes

Changes to authorship (adding, removing, or reordering authors) are not allowed after the galley proof is approved or the article is published, except in cases where the error originated from the journal’s side.

 

Reporting guidelines

Authors should adhere to the right rules of reporting, such as CONSORT (randomized trials), STROBE (observational studies), PRISMA (systematic reviews/meta-analyses), CARE (case reports) and other proper guidelines. The clinical trials are expected to be registered in an adequate registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov or ISRCTN).

Post-publication appeals & complaints

Authors may appeal editorial decisions by emailing the Editor-in-Chief. They have to explain the reason of appeal. Appeals will be reviewed by an independent editor.