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Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology

The Official International Journal of the Japanese Ophthalmological Society

Publishing model:

Submission guidelines

Contents

Instructions for Authors

The Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology (JJO) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes manuscripts describing both clinical and basic science research in ophthalmology and vision science. Manuscripts must describe original data that have not been previously published in print or any format, and are not being simultaneously submitted for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts that adhere to the JJO Instructions for Authors and are deemed appropriate for the scope of the journal are sent to reviewers who are specialists in the field. Reviewer comments are then used to determine the suitability of the submission by the JJO Executive Editorial Board. The final decision for all submitted manuscripts rests with the Editor-in-Chief.

GENERAL INFORMATION

(1) Conflicts of interest

All authors are required to disclose conflicts of interest that may have influenced their research, or the preparation and writing of their manuscript, using the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form downloadable as a PDF file from http://www.icmje.org/coi_instructions.html. The corresponding author is responsible for collecting the ICMJE Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form file from each author, and uploading them at the time of online manuscript submission. If a submitted manuscript is accepted, all information on the conflict of interest disclosure forms will be made public at the time of publication, with the exception of information that the JJO Editorial Board deems irrelevant to the submitted work. Note that research support (e.g. JSPS KAKENHI) should be denoted in the Fund Ref. separately and acknowledged separately in the Acknowledgment section (see “Acknowledgements”).

(2) Institutional review board (IRB)/ethics committee approval for human studies

When a study involves human subjects and/or human-derived materials, authors must adhere to the following and include appropriate statements in the Patients and Methods (or Materials and Methods) section.

• Informed consent must be obtained from each patient after full explanation of the nature and possible consequences of the study and a statement explaining that informed consent was obtained must be included.

• The study must be filed with the appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB)/Ethics Committee, and a statement explaining either that IRB/Ethics Committee approval has been obtained, or that the IRB/Ethics Committee has ruled that approval was not required for the study must be included. The JJO Editorial Board may request evidence for IRB/Ethics Committee approval (or waiver of such approval) at any time during the submission process, and therefore authors should retain written evidence of such.

• The tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki must be followed where applicable, and a statement that this was done must be included.

(3) Animal studies

If the research involves experimental animals, authors must adhere to the following and include appropriate statements in the Materials and Methods section.

• The study must adhere to the ARVO Statement for the Use of Animals in Ophthalmic and Vision Research, and a statement that this was done must be included.

• The study must be approved by the appropriate institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and a statement explaining that such approval was obtained must be included.

(4) Copyright transfer

The Japanese Ophthalmological Society retains the copyright to all material published in the Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology.

(5) Authorship

All authors should have been directly involved in the work described in the manuscript. Other contributors to a manuscript, such as professors or others who gave helpful advice or companies that donated materials, may be thanked in an Acknowledgments section at the end of the main text. The JJO does not permit two or more authors to be "equal contributors" to a manuscript and, once a manuscript has been submitted, changes or additions of authors are not permitted.

(6) Content responsibility

All authors must take full responsibility for the content and scientific accuracy of their manuscript as well as of any electronic supplementary materials. No responsibility will be assumed by the Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology, the Japanese Ophthalmological Society, or Springer Japan for any legal claim arising from injury and/or damage to persons or property due to a matter of product liability, negligence, or other circumstances; nor from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the published material. No test or procedure should be carried out unless the reader judges it to be safe. Independent verification of all diagnoses, drug dosages and treatment should be performed. Discussions, views, and recommendations regarding medical procedures, choice of drugs, and drug dosages are the sole responsibility of the authors.

(7) Multicenter clinical trials

The JJO welcomes the submission of manuscripts reporting results of multicenter clinical trials. These manuscripts may be submitted with authorship in one of the following styles:

• The name of a study group only (collective authorship)

• The names of individuals of a writing committee and the name of a study group

In each case, one individual must serve as the corresponding author and individuals named as authors must have been specifically involved in the preparation of the manuscript. The ICMJE Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form, the Copyright Transfer Agreement, and the Authorship Form must be completed, signed and submitted for each author. All individuals and institutions involved in the clinical trial may be acknowledged as a list of investigators under a separate heading of Study Group Investigators.

TYPES OF ARTICLES

(1) Clinical or laboratory investigations

The article should be no more than 6000 words in length (including references and tables), and should be arranged as follows; Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Subjects and Methods), Results, and Discussion. The JJO has discontinued the category of Case Reports. However, provided a manuscript describes a single case that involves a novel finding or treatment, and includes significant details for that case (e.g., pathological analysis), the manuscript can be considered a full-length article. In such cases, the articles should be arranged as follows; Introduction, Case report(s), and Comments or Discussion.

(2) Review articles

Review articles are published generally by invitation of the Editor-in-Chief. However, unsolicited manuscripts will be considered, and interested authors should first contact the JJO Editorial Office regarding the possibility of a submission.

(3) Readers’ comments

In addition to full-length articles on original research, The JJO will also consider Readers’ Comments specifically pertaining to articles published in the JJO, subject to editorial review and space availability.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION

All manuscripts must conform to the language and writing style of the JJO. This includes submission of the manuscript in correct medical English as well as submission of any figures and tables in the formats specified. Use the checklist downloaded at http://www.springer.com/10384 to ensure that your submission is complete and in compliance with the JJO Instructions for Authors.

Definition of Prior Publication

Prior publication includes information that has been released into the public domain, via either print or electronic media.

At the time of manuscript submission, authors must submit to the editor-in-chief copies of any papers, reports, or other articles containing the same or substantially similar content or data to those of the manuscript, and must include information on the medium—print or electronic—through which the materials were released to the public. The editor-in-chief will then determine whether the work constitutes a prior publication.

Each author has the responsibility and duty to submit to the editor-in-chief copies of all research content and data that have previously been released into the public domain (for example, those posted on a preprint server). After manuscript submission, any material containing the same or substantially similar content to the manuscript that is found to have been disseminated, in ANY manner, without prior notice will be immediately rejected.

(1) Permission for previously published items

All figures, tables, and text passages that have been previously published require permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online editions of the JJO. All expenses related to obtaining such permission must be borne by the authors. By signing the Copyright Transfer Agreement, you attest that you own the copyright to the original material in your article and that appropriate permission has been obtained for previously published materials. Permission must be obtained for any material to which the authors do not own full copyright. Materials such as clinical images, photos, graphs or images of devices obtained from companies cannot be published without such permission.

If the copyright owner replies that permission has been granted, include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting your manuscript. A copy of the permission must be sent to the JJO Editorial Office with your manuscript number and a description of the materials in question. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors. In the manuscript, the copyright owner should be correctly credited in figure legends or table explanations (see “Tables” and “Figures”).

(2) Professional medical English editing

Authors may choose to utilize professional medical English editors in the preparation of their manuscript. The name of the professional editor or editing company employed should be noted in an Acknowledgments section at the end of the main text (see “Acknowledgements”).

(3) Online submission

Authors should submit their manuscript and accompanying material to the JJO via the online Editorial Manager system by logging on to http://jjoo.edmgr.com and uploading all manuscript files. Once you have entered Editorial Manager, assistance can be found by clicking on “Help” in the upper left corner.

(4) Title page

The first page of the manuscript should be a title page containing information in the following order:

• Manuscript title (sentences and abbreviations are not allowed)

• Full names of all authors

• Institutional affiliations of all authors

• Postal address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the corresponding author (only 1 author can serve as the corresponding author)

• Word counts for the abstract and the main text (body of the manuscript)

• Number of references, number of figures, and number of tables

(5) Abstract

Provide a structured abstract of no more than 250 words. For clinical or laboratory investigations, the abstract should be divided into Purpose, Study Design (e.g. retrospective, prospective, clinical and experimental), Methods, Results, and Conclusion. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or references.

(6) Keywords

Keywords are required for indexing and abstracting services. Up to five words should be listed on a separate page.

(7) Main text

• Formatting

Manuscripts should be created using Microsoft Word and be double-spaced with 2.5-cm margins on all sides. Pages should be numbered consecutively, with consecutive line numbering from the first through the last page using the automatic numbering functions in the software. The recommended font is Times New Roman. Do not use field functions. For indenting use tab stops, not the space bar. For tables use the table function, not spreadsheets. For equations use either the equation editor or MathType.

• Headings and subheadings

Use no more than three levels of headings.

• American Medical Association's Manual of Style(AMA manual of Style)

Authors may consult American Medical Association's Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors (Iverson C, Christiansen S, Flanagin A, et al. 10th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

• Abbreviations

Abbreviations must be defined at first use in the Abstract and again in the main text, and in each figure or table. Only commonly accepted abbreviations should be used as stated in the American Medical Association's Manual of Style(AMA manual of Style). Drug and chemical names should be stated using generic or standard chemical nomenclature.

• Units of measurement

Units of measurement should conform to the International System (SI) with the exception of clinical data for which conventional units are deemed more appropriate.

• Reporting visual acuity

Visual acuity should be reported in the original units used for measurements, whether decimal, Snellen, or Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) units. However, means and medians should be calculated only after conversion to logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) units with a statement describing such calculations in the Methods section.

(8) Acknowledgments

The Acknowledgments section should follow the main text. If data from other published sources are used, the authors must obtain permission as explained above and state full acknowledgment as indicated by the copyright owners. Acknowledgments should also be made of research grants (e.g., JSPS KAKENHI), technicians and colleagues who assisted in the study, individuals or companies who provided materials, mentors who provided advice and encouragement, and professional medical English editing. For multicenter clinical trials, all individuals and institutions involved in the trials may be acknowledged as a list of investigators under a separate heading of Study Group Investigators (See “Multicenter clinical trials”). Conflicts of interest should not be stated in the Acknowledgements section (see “Conflicts of interest”).

(9) References

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

Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

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

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

Citation sources of all numbered references should be given in the References section following the Acknowledgments section, and should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been either published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should be stated as such in the text, without a reference citation. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. All authors of a reference should be listed, unless there are more than six authors in which case the names of only the first six authors should be given followed by "et al." Examples of citation formats:

• Journal article

Sawa M, Tsurimaki Y, Tsuru T, Shimizu H. New quantitative method to determine protein concentration and cell number in aqueous in vivo. Jpn J Ophthalmol. 1988;32:132-42.

Always use standard ISSN abbreviations for journals as listed at

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

• Article by digital object identifier (DOI)

Takamoto M, Araie M. Genetics of primary open angle glaucoma. Jpn J Ophthalmol, 2014. doi: 10.1007/s10384-013-0286-0.

• Book

Ezekiel EJ, Christine GC, Robert CA, Reidar LK, Franklin MG, David WD, editors. The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2008.

• 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.

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

Endnote Style (Download zip, 4 kB)

(10) Tables

Create tables using Microsoft Word so that any corrections or revisions can be tracked. Tables should be numbered using Arabic numerals and should follow the References section. Each table should have an appropriate title briefly explaining the contents of the table. Tables should always be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order. Be sure to identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption (See “Permission for previously published items”). 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. Guidelines for figures and tables are provided at https://www.nichigan.or.jp/member/journal/jjo/submission.html.

(11) Figures

When using a clinical photograph, any information that might identify the patient or hospital, including the date, should be removed.

  • Submission of figures

All figures should be uploaded online at the time of submission of the manuscript. The graphics program used to create the figures should be indicated. For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, TIFF is preferable. You may also use Microsoft Office files. Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files. Name your figure files with "Fig" followed by the figure number, for example "Fig1.eps." Guidelines for figures and tables are provided at https://www.nichigan.or.jp/member/journal/jjo/submission.html.

• Line figures

Line figures are black-and-white graphics with no shading. Do not use faint lines or lettering. All lines should have a width of at least 0.1 mm (0.3 point). Lines and lettering within figures must be legible in the final size. Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

• Halftone figures

These include photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading. Indicate any magnification used in the preparation of photographs by scale bars within the figures themselves. Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

• Combination figures

These refer to combinations of line and halftone figures, such as halftones containing line drawings, extensive lettering, and color diagrams. Combination figures should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

• Color figures

Publication of color figures is free of charge. To optimize visibility for individuals with reduced color discrimination, colors on the same isochromatic line should be avoided (see International Commission on Illumination chromaticity diagram).

• Lettering in figures

Use either Helvetica or Arial font for lettering in figures, and use the same font size (8 to 12 point) throughout the figures. Avoid special effects such as shading and outline letters. Do not include titles or legends in the figures; these should be in the figure legends at the end of the manuscript.

• Figure numbering

Number all figures consecutively. For figures with multiple parts, each part should be denoted by a lowercase letter (a, b, c, etc.) in the top left corner of that part. If you use an appendix in your manuscript containing one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of figures from the main text. Do not number the appendix figures "a1, a2, a3, etc." However, figures in electronic supplementary materials for online display should be numbered separately.

• Figure legends

Legends for all figures should be included at the end of the manuscript, beginning with the word “Fig.” followed by the figure number and title, all in bold type. Do not use any punctuation following the figure number, and do not place any punctuation at the end of the legend. The legend should define all elements included in the figure such as boxes, circles, and arrows. Be sure to identify previously published materials by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure legends (See Permission for previously published items).

• Figure placement and size

When preparing your figures, size the figures to fit within the width of either one or two columns. Thus, figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm in horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension should be no greater than 234 mm. The JJO Editorial Office reserves the right to reduce or enlarge figures.

SUPPLEMENTARY ELECTRONIC MATERIALS

Supplementary electronic material will be published in the online version only. Such supplementary material may consist of information that cannot be printed (for example, animations, video clips, or sound recordings), information that is more conveniently displayed in an electronic form (for example, DNA sequences or spectral data), or data that would occupy a large space in the print form of the journal (for example, additional tables or figures). The submission of such supplementary material should be in standard file formats, and the heading for each file should include information regarding the article title and/or first author’s name. Keep in mind that some users may experience difficulties with downloading very large files; therefore the size of electronic supplementary material should be as small as possible.

(1) 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

(2) Text and presentations

Submit your supplementary material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability. A collection of figures may also be combined into one PDF file.

(3) Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets should be converted to PDF if no interaction with the data is intended. If the readers are to make their own calculations, spreadsheets should be submitted as .xls files (Microsoft Excel).

(4) Specialized formats

Specialized formats such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica n otebook), and .tex may be used where appropriate.

(5) Collecting multiple files

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

(6) Numbering

Text for electronic supplementary material must be noted in the same way as figures and tables in the manuscript. In the manuscript, refer to supplementary files as "Online Resource." For example, "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)" or "... additional data are given in Online Resource 4." Name the files consecutively, for example, "ESM_3.mpg" and "ESM_4.pdf."

(7) Legends

Supply a concise legend describing the content of each supplementary file.

(8) Processing of supplementary files

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

AFTER MANUSCRIPT ACCEPTANCE

(1) Copyediting

After a manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author will receive a copyedited version for approval.

(2) Typeset proofs

Based on the copyedited manuscript, a typeset version will be sent to the corresponding authors for final confirmation. Any corrections at that stage must be received within 7 days, and must be limited to errors in typesetting or accuracy of numbers, figures and tables. Substantial changes such as in the title, authorship or content are not allowed. After online publication, further changes can be made only in the form of an Erratum hyperlinked to the article.

(3) Online First

Articles are published online with a citable digital object identifier (DOI) prior to print publication. After release of the printed version, articles may also be cited by issue and page numbers.

INQUIRIES

For any enquiries, contact the JJO Office at:

JJO Editorial Office

2-4-11-402 Kanda-Sarugakucho

Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-8346 Japan

Fax: +81-3-3293-9384

E-mail: jjo@po.nichigan.or.jp

Open access publishing

To find out more about publishing your work Open Access in Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology, including information on fees, funding and licenses, visit our Open access publishing page.

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