Autoriaus gairės

The Editorial Board of Acta medica Lituanica has accepted the “Editorial Policy Statements” and “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts (URM) Submitted to Biomedical Journals” produced and updated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) as a basis of the journal’s editorial policy.

Acta medica Lituanica requires disclosure of all conflicts of interests by everyone involved in the publication process: editors, reviewers, editorial board members, editorial staff, and authors.

1. Acta medica Lituanica publishes original papers, review articles, preliminary notes, short communications and case reports in various fields of medicine and biomedical sciences. Papers offered for publication should be not submitted for publication or published elsewhere.
2. All papers are published in English, with a summary in Li­thu­anian. The English summary should correspond to the Lithuanian one.
3. Authors should fill in the author‘s form. Financial and other material support should be disclosed and acknowledged.
4. Methods of all biomedical studies should meet the requirements of bioethics.
5. Manuscripts submitted for publication are evaluated as to whether they present new insights into the announced research topic. The submitted manuscripts are first examined by the editors. Manuscripts with the insufficient priority for publication are rejected immediately. Incomplete submissions or manuscripts not prepared in the required style will not be considered. In order to make the submission process transparent, editors will recuse themselves from being responsible for manuscripts submitted by associates with whom they may have a conflict of interests. Accepted manuscripts are sent to two independent experts for scientific evaluation. Double-blinded review is practised in our journal. In case of controversial reviews, the third reviewer’s opinion may become critical for the Editorial Board’s decision.
6. The manuscript should include:
   Title page containing the following information:
   • full names of all authors
   • name of the department and institution in which the work was done
   • institutional affiliations of authors
   • full title of the manuscript
   • running title (no more than 5 words)
   • full name, address, telephone and/or fax number and e-mail address of the author responsible for manuscript preparation.
   Summary page. The summary (200–250 words) should be in structured form and consist of four paragraphs labelled Background, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusions. Summary in Lithua­nian must be typed on a separate sheet with the names of authors, title and keywords.
   Key words (3 to 6) or short phrases should be written at the bottom of the page that contains summary. The use of items included in the Index Medicus (Medical Subject Headings, the MeSH system) is advised.
   The text of the article should be divided into paragraphs labelled as follows: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, References.
   Introduction – the scientific rationale for and the purpose of the study, or (in case of a review) the purpose of the article. Materials and Methods should present a clear description of the selected observational or experimental subjects and methods. The protocol for data acquisition, procedures, study parameters, methods of measurements and apparatus should be described in sufficient detail to allow other scientists to reproduce the results.
   Results should present a concise and reasonable summary of the findings. Tables and figures should be restricted to the number actually needed to justify the arguments advanced in the paper and allow for the evaluation of its supporting evidence. Data provided in graphs and tables should not be duplicated.
   Discussion should be limited to novel and/or important aspects of the study and should deal with the results reported by other investigators, especially those quoted in the text.
   Conclusions must be linked to the goals of the study. New hypotheses should be advanced only when warranted. Recommendations may be included when appropriate.
   References should be numbered consecutively as they are cited. References selected for publication should be chosen for their importance, accessibility, and for the “further reading” opportunities they provide. References should be written in Roman alphabet. Uniform requirements for references and sample references can be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html
7. The paper should be submitted by e-mail, in two hard copies and a CD version. Manuscripts should be typed in Times New Roman font 12-point only, double-spaced on white paper. The size of figures should be suitable for direct reproduction. For charts, graphs and diagrams MS Word (*.doc), MS PowerPoint (*.ppt) or MS Excel (*.xls) are suitable; photographs can be made using image-editing programs. Legends (captions) should be typed in sequence on a separate page or pages and should be understandable without reference to the text.