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CEN Case Reports

Official Publication of the Japanese Society of Nephrology

Publishing model:

Submission guidelines

Contents

Instructions for Authors

General

CEN Case Reports, the official journal of the Japanese Society of Nephrology, is an English-language journal publishing case reports. Contributions from all parts of the world are welcomed.

Manuscripts should be submitted online to:

http://www.editorialmanager.com/cenc

Authorship:

Only those who have made a substantial contribution to the work should be designated as authors.

Prerequisites for publication:

A copy of the certification form must be submitted to the journal's editorial office at the same time you submit your manuscripts via Editorial Manager.

IMPORTANT: Upon receipt of a Certificate of Exclusive Submission, manuscripts are officially recognized as submissions.

Certification & COI Form (Download pdf, 263 kB)

Posting of preprints is not considered prior publication and will not jeopardize consideration. Authors are encouraged to disclose details of preprint posting, including DOI, upon submission of the manuscript in the cover letter.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” before the References when submitting a paper:

- Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

- Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals

- Informed consent

Conflict of interest:

When submitting a manuscript to CEN Case Reports, authors are required to disclose any financial relationship with a biotechnology manufacturer, a pharmaceutical company, or other commercial entity that has an interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. Please disclose any potential Conflicts of interest by using the following example between the text and references:

Potential financial Conflicts of interest

Employment: Author name (entity name), Consultancies: Author name (entity name), Honoraria: Author name (entity name), Stock ownership or options: Author name (entity name), Grants received: Author name (entity name).

Authors who have no Conflicts of interest to declare, please insert the following statement between the text and references.

Disclosure: All the authors have declared no competing interest.

or

Conflict of interest: The authors have declared that no Conflict of interest exists.

Human and Animal Rights

CEN Case Reports has adopted the following editorial policy regarding ethical approval of studies.

When reporting research dealing with any types of data from human subjects (both observational studies and interventional studies) or animal subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee such as the Institutional Review Board (IRB)/Ethics Committee/Animal Welfare Committee, along with the IRB approval number.

The following statement should be included in the text before the References section:

- Ethical approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee at which the studies were conducted (IRB approval number XXXXX) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

If authors did not obtain an IRB approval number, the IRB approval form should be submitted and a statement should be inserted in the text before the References section affirming that IRB/Ethics Committee/Animal Welfare Committee approval has been obtained.

In addition, for research dealing the renal transplant, authors should ensure that the studies have been carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Istanbul, and a statement that “the studies were in accordance with the Declaration of Istanbul” must be added to the ethical approval statement. The source of the donor’s kidneys should also be described in the Materials and methods section of the paper.

For studies with animals, the following statement should be included in the text before the References section:

- Ethical approval: All procedures performed in studies involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted (IRB approval number XXXXX).

If articles do not contain studies with human participants or animals by any of the authors, please select one of the following statements:

- This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

- This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

- This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

It is imperative that all participants give their informed consent in writing prior to inclusion in the report.

All participants have individual rights that are not to be infringed on. Individual participants in studies have, for example, the right to decide what happens to the (identifiable) personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, and to any photographs that were taken. Participants’identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers and other information) should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or legal guardian if the participant is incapable or in the case of children under 20) has given written informed consent for publication. If the person has died, consent for publication must be obtained from their next of kin. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve in some cases, and additional informed consent should be obtained if there are any doubts.

For example, blacking out participants’ eyes in photographs is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, e.g. in genetic profiles, the author should provide assurances that these alterations do not distort the scientific accuracy.

The following statement should be included:

Informed consent: “Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.”

If it is impossible to obtain informed consent from all participants, the author should provide the reason in the cover letter.

If the article contains participants’identifying information, the following statement should be included:

“Additional informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for whom identifying information is included in this article.”

Types of article

  • Case reports: A case report should not exceed 3000 words and should be arranged as follows: Abstract (which should be a brief summary of the contents without any subheadings); Introduction; Case report; Discussion: References (which should be kept to a minimum). Manuscripts that exceed the maximum number of words may be returned to the authors without peer-review. Case reports should be relevant to practical and scientific aspects of nephrology and be presented as concisely as possible.
  • Letters to the editor:Letters to the editor: Letters to the editor will be published at the discretion of the editor. Length must not exceed 500 words, only one table or figure is permitted, and there should be no more than five references. No more than five authors can be included.

Manuscript submission

Covering letter:

Resubmissions must be accompanied by a letter stating how the text has been revised in accordance with the referees' comments.

Suggested referees:

In the covering letter, authors may suggest referees with appropriate expertise. Authors may provide names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses, of up to three potential referees. These individuals should not be recent collaborators or coauthors (within the last three years), nor should they have provided substantial advice or critique of the submitted manuscript. Authors should note any referees they may wish to exclude and reason(s) for exclusion. The associate editor will make every effort to take these suggestions into account when assigning referees; however, the editor’s decision in this matter in final.

Legal requirements:

Submission of a manuscript implies: that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions:

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online submission:

Authors should submit their manuscripts online. Electronic submission substantially reduces the editorial processing and reviewing times and shortens overall publication times. Please follow the hyperlink "Submit online" on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Title Page:

The title page should include:

- The name(s) of the author(s)

- A concise and informative title

- The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s)

- The e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers of the corresponding author

- The number of words in the manuscript

Abstract:

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords:

Please provide 3 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Text

Text formatting:

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.

• Use italics for emphasis.

• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.

• Do not use field functions.

• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.

• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.

Headings:

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Units, terminology, and abbreviations

Abbreviations should be spelled out at first usage and the abbreviated form used thereafter. The nomenclature and abbreviations of the structures of the kidney should be followed according to the recommendations of the Renal Commission of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (Am J Physiol 1988;254:F1-F8, Kidney Int 1988;33:1-7, Pflugers Arch 1988;411;113-129).Generic names should be used for drugs.

Footnotes:

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables. Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols. Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

References

Citation:

Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].

3. This effect has been widely studied [1-3, 7].

Reference list:

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.

The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.

• Journal article

Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999; 36:234–5.

• Article by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. 2000; doi:10.1007/s001090000086

• Book

Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

• Book chapter

Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. pp. 251–306.

• Online document

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999.

http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal's name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php

For authors using EndNote, Springer provides an output style that supports the formatting of in-text citations and the reference list.

Endnote style (Download zip, 4 kB)

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.

• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.

• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.

• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Figures

Electronic Figure Submission:

• Supply all figures electronically.

• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.

• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MS Office files are also acceptable.

• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line art:

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.

• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.

• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.

• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone art:

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.

• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.

• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination art:

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.

• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color art:

• Color art is free of charge for online publication.

• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure lettering:

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).

• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).

• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.

• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.

• Do not include titles or captions into your illustrations.

Figure numbering:

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

• Figures should always be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order.

• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).

• If an appendix appears in your article/chapter and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures, "A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices (Electronic supplementary Material) should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure captions:

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.

• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.

• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.

• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.

• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure placement and size:

• Figure should be submitted separately from the text, if possible.

• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.

• Figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm wide and not higher than 234 mm.

The publisher reserves the right to reduce or enlarge figures.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that

• All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-tospeech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)

• Patterns are used instead or in addition to colors for conveying information (color-blind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)

• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.

Electronic supplementary material

Electronic supplementary material will be published in the online version only. It may consist of

• Information that cannot be printed: animations, video clips, sound recordings

• Information that is more convenient in electronic form: sequences, spectral data, etc.

• Large original data, e.g., additional tables, illustrations, etc.

Submission:

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.

• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.

• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.

Audio, video, and animations:

• Resolution: 16:9 or 4:3

• Maximum file size: 25 GB

• Minimum video duration: 1 sec

• Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp

Text and presentations:

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.

• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets:

• Spreadsheets should be converted to PDF if no interaction with the data is intended.

• If the readers should be encouraged to make their own calculations, spreadsheets should be submitted as .xls files (MS Excel).

Specialized formats:

• Specialized formats such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting multiple files:

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

Numbering:

• If any supplementary material is supplied, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.

• Refer to the supplementary files as "Online Resource", e.g., "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)", "... additional data are given in Online Resource 4".

• Name the files consecutively, e.g. "ESM_3.mpg", "ESM_4.pdf".

Captions:

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files:

• Electronic supplementary material will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Accessibility:

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material

• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

Permissions:

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

After acceptance

Upon acceptance, your article will be exported to Production to undergo typesetting. Once typesetting is complete, you will receive a link asking you to confirm your affiliation, choose the publishing model for your article as well as arrange rights and payment of any associated publication cost.

Once you have completed this, your article will be processed and you will receive the proofs.

Open Choice

In addition to the normal publication process (whereby an article is submitted to the journal and access to that article is granted to customers who have purchased a subscription), Springer provides an alternative publishing option: Springer Open Choice. A Springer Open Choice article receives all the benefits of a regular subscription-based article, but in addition is made available publicly through Springer’s online platform SpringerLink.

Open Choice

Copyright and license term – CC BY-NC

Open Choice articles do not require transfer of copyright as the copyright remains with the author. In opting for open access, the author(s) agree to publish the article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Find more about the license agreement

Article publishing agreement:

Depending on the ownership of the journal and its policies, you will either grant the Japanese Society of Nephrology an exclusive licence to publish the article or will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Japanese Society of Nephrology.

Offprints:

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Color illustrations:

Publication of color illustrations is free of charge.

Proof reading:

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Online First:

The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After release of the online issue, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.

Open access publishing

To find out more about publishing your work Open Access in CEN Case Reports, including information on fees, funding and licenses, visit our Open access publishing page.

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