Signa Vitae® Journal publishes papers covering adult, pediatric and neonatal intensive care as well as emergency medicine.
Manuscripts sent to Signa Vitae® should conform to the "Uniformm Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/index.htm).
Signa Vitae® publishes papers covering adult, pediatric and neonatal intensive care as well as emergency medicine. Signa Vitae® accepts for publication:
- Review articles
- Original articles
- Short reports
- Case reports
- Letters to the editor
Short reports and Case reports should contain up to 1000 words, 10 references and 1 to 2 tables or figures. Letters to the editor that discuss a recent SIGNA VITAE article should contain up to 500 words and 5 references.
The manuscript submitted for publication should be accompanied by a letter to the Editor-in-Chief, signed by all authors. The letter should contain the statement that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere for publication, and that the authors have contributed significantly in executing the study and/or preparing the manuscript. If the article is accepted for publication, a copyright transfer form signed by all authors will be requested. Manuscripts should be written in English.
Statement of Human Rights
Manuscripts describing human research must contain the statement that the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IRB approval of the study protocols, as well as consent procedures required by the IRB should appear at the beginning of the Methods section. The procedures of the research should be in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.
Conflict-of-interest statement
At the time of submitting a manuscript each author is required to write a statement of potential financial disclosure related to him or herself. The disclosure pertains to financial relationships with manufacturers that have an interest in the subject matter of their manuscript. Conflict of interest refers to both personal fees received from manufacturers, not only by authors, but as well as well as grants received by departments.
Statement of Informed Consent
The patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, and every illustration should be omitted, unless they are considered essential. The patient (or parent or guardian) should give written informed consent for publishing any material.
Peer review policy
All articles submitted to SIGNA VITAE are reviewed immediately by the Editorial Board. Articles that do not meet the standards of the journal will be declined without further review, while the remaining articles will be sent to usually two external experts in the field. The decision of the external reviewers can be expected within 5 weeks of submission. Authors are not given the names of the reviewers of their article. Editorial Board members and reviewers need to declare any conflict of interest they may have in reviewing a manuscript. The Editors make the final decision on the manuscript. The authors who have any objection to the decision of the Editors are welcome to approach the Editorial Board with their appeal. Specialist statistical reviewers are involved whenever the content of the manuscript requires their collaboration.
Statistical Methods
List the test used and relate them with specific data analysis. For parametrics methods must be tested normality, shape of distribution and appropriate sample or number of cases in each group for example in t-test or ANOVA analysis. Nonparametric methods should be used to compare groups with small number of cases and when the distribution of the dependent variable is not normal. Exact methods should be used as extensively as possible in the analysis of categorical data. Results should be presented with only as much precision as is of scientific value. Descriptive statistics such as measures of central tendency could be presented with only one decimal places but standard deviations with two decimal places. Measures of association, such as odds ratios and other statistical values such as t-value or F-value should ordinarily be reported to two decimal places whereas P value must be presented with three decimal places. P values smaller than 0.001 should be reported as P<0.001. Each table and figure should be put on a separate sheet of paper. Each table in the paper should be self-explanatory, with an adequate title, legend, and logical presentation of data. Please, do not present the same data in more than one way: present them in a table OR a figure.
The manuscript can be sent by e-mail to:
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. The electronic submission should contain 4 attached files (see bellow the structure of the manuscript):
- The statement of the authors
- The first page of the manuscript
- The text of the manuscript
- Tables, legends, and illustrations
If the manuscript is sent by regular mail, all data files should be submitted on CD or DVD . Four (4) printed copies of the manuscript, including 4 copies of tables and/or illustrations, and one CD or DVD with the identical manuscript should be sent to: Julije Mestrovic, Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Department of Pediatrics, Split University Hospital, Spinciceva 1, 21000 Split, Croatia. Use standard-sized paper (A4), and number pages beginning with the title page. Use double spacing with font size of 12 pt. Use only ‘enters’ for beginning a new paragraph. Do not use paragraph indentation and other marks in the text. Manuscripts will not be returned to the authors, unless specifically requested at the time of submission. The International System of Units (SI units) should be used. Drugs should be indicated by their generic name. Abbreviations are as they appear in the text. A reasonable number of black and white illustrations will be printed without charge, printing of color illustrations should be arranged in advance. The CD or DVD should be properly labeled with the authors' names and title of the article. The manuscript on the CD or DVD should be written in recent versions of MS Word (Word 2000/XP/2003).
Short reports and Case reports should contain up to 1000 words, 10 references and 1 to 2 tables or figures. Letters to the editor that discuss a recent Signa Vitae article should contain up to 500 words and 5 references.
Each part of the manuscript should start on a new page. The first page should contain a) the concise title of the paper, b) the authors' names, highest academic degrees and institutional affiliations, c) the name, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address of the corresponding author, d) three to ten key words taken from Medical Subject Headings of Index Medicus. The second page should contain the abstract, with no more than 250 words, ending with one or two concluding sentences, summarizing the significance of the article. The text of the manuscript should be organized under the following sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion. References, Acknowledgments, each Figure Legend, and each Table should be printed on separate pages. The references should be numbered consecutively in the order they first appear in the text. They should be identified by Arabic numerals in parentheses in the text, tables and legends. Titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the International List of Periodical Title World Abbreviations used by the Index Medicus, and references should be given according to the Vancouver declaration.
Sample References:
Journal articles
Sprung J, Flick RP, Gleich SJ, Weingarten TN. Perioperative cardiac arrests. Signa vitae 2008;3:8-12.
In Press
van Saene HKF, Kalenic, S, Peric, M. The Addition of enteral to parenteral antimicrobials may Prolong the antibiotic era. Signa vitae. (in press)
Books
Lang TA, Secic M. How to report statistics in medicine. Philadelphia: American College of Physicians; 1997.
Articles in Books
Kolacek S, Mestrovic J. Vascular access, including complications. In: Langnas AN, Goulet O, Quigley EMM, Tappenden KA, editors. Intestinal failure, 1st ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing; 2008. p. 142-150.
Journal Article in Electronic Format
Strahovnik I, Podbregar M. Measurement of skeletal muscle tissue oxygenation in the critically ill. Signa Vitae® (serial online) 2008 April (cited 2009 January 8); vol3. Available here.
