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Information for Authors

All papers should be submitted to Haematologica/The Hematology Journal through the ad hoc Online Submission System.

Peer Review. All manuscript submitted to Haematologica are critically assessed by external and/or inhouse experts in accordance with the principles of Peer Review (http://www.icmje.org/#peer), which is fundamental to the scientific publication process and the dissemination of sound science. Each paper is first assigned by the Editors to an appropriate Associate Editor who has knowledge of the field discussed in the manuscript. The first step of manuscript selection takes place entirely inhouse and has two major objectives: a) to establish the article's appropriateness for Haematologica's readership; b) to define the manuscript's priority ranking relative to other manuscripts under consideration, since the number of papers that the journal receives is much greater than that it can publish. If a manuscript does not receive a sufficiently high priority score to warrant publication, the editors will proceed to a quick rejection. The remaining articles are reviewed by at least two different external referees (second step or classical peer-review).

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the Uniform Requirements established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org/#prepare).

Authorship. All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the ICMJE criteria (http://www.icmje.org/sponsor.htm) Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to (a) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to (b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on (c) final approval of the version to be published. These three conditions must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions.

Obligation to Register Clinical Trials (http://www.icmje.org/#clin_trials). The ICMJE believes that it is important to foster a comprehensive, publicly available database of clinical trials. The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or concurrent comparison or control groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Medical interventions include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, process-of-care changes, and the like. Haematologica requires, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration in a public trials registry. The journal considers a trial for publication only if it has been registered before the enrollment of the first patient. This policy applies to trials that started recruiting on or after July 1, 2005. As regards trials that started recruiting before July 1, 2005, Haematologica considers for publication those that have been registered before September 13, 2005. The journal does not advocate one particular registry, but requires authors to register their trial in a registry that meets several criteria. The registry must be accessible to the public at no charge. It must be open to all prospective registrants and managed by a not-for-profit organization. There must be a mechanism to ensure the validity of the registration data, and the registry should be electronically searchable. An acceptable registry must include a minimum of data elements (http://www.icmje.org/#clin_trials). For instance, ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov), sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine, meets these requirements.

Randomized Clinical Trials. When submitting manuscripts that report on randomized clinical trials, authors should provide - as a separate document - a flow diagram in CONSORT format and all of the information required by the CONSORT checklist (http://www.consort-statement.org).

Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research. When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. In particular, Haematologica adopts the WAME policy on Ethics in Research (http://www.wame.org). Documented review and approval from a formally constituted review board (Institutional Review Board - IRB - or Ethics committee) is required for all studies (prospective or retrospective) involving people, medical records, and human tissues. Haematologica requires that the authors provide this information on the manuscript's website, and also that they report it explicitly under Design and Methods. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

Conflict of Interest. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/#conflicts), public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion. All participants in the peer review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a potential conflict of interest. Before final acceptance of their manuscript, authors are required to return a declaration on potential conflicts of interest. This ad hoc form is sent to the corresponding author who is responsible for collecting the relevant information and providing a declaration on behalf of all the co-authors. Each author must disclose any of the following potential conflicts concerning the past two years and/or the known future: 1) ownership of stocks, stock options or shares in companies that may reasonably appear to be affected by publication of the paper; 2) employment by any organization that may reasonably appear to be affected by publication of the paper; 3) patents or patent applications whose value may reasonably appear to be affected by publication of the paper; 4) consultation fees, paid expert testimony or honoraria from companies that may reasonably appear to be affected by publication of the paper; 5) lecture fees from companies that may reasonably appear to be affected by publication of the paper; 6) institutional research support by commercial firms or private organizations with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome of the research; 7) any other relationship that could be viewed as creating a potential conflict of interest and/or embarrass the author were it to become publicly known after the paper is published.

Manuscripts must be written in English. The first page must contain: (a) title, name and surname of the authors; (b) names of the institution(s) where the research was carried out; (c) a running title of no more than 50 letters; (d) acknowledgments; (e) the name and full postal address of the author to whom correspondence regarding the manuscript as well as requests for abstracts should be sent; (f) three to five key words. To accelerate communication, phone, fax number and e-mail address of the corresponding author should also be included. The second page should contain: (a) authors' contributions, i.e., information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in the study (http://www.icmje.org/#author); (b) disclosures about potential conflict of interest.

Editorials and Perspectives are typically solicited by the Editors to accompany an accepted manuscript. These manuscript should be concise and should not exceed 3-4 printed pages.

Original Articles should normally be divided into an abstract, introduction, design and methods, results, discussion and references. The abstract should contain about 250 words and must be structured as follows: background, design and methods, results, conclusions. A maximum of 20 authors is permitted, and additional authors should be listed in an ad hoc appendix. A maximum of 6 relevant tables and/or figures (in total) are allowed. Original articles should not exceed 8 printed pages: should a paper exceed 8 printed pages, the authors will be invited to omit parts of the article, which might be published online exclusively as a supplementary appendix. Exceptions are granted on a case-by-case basis by the Editors.

Review Articles are typically solicited by the Editors, but the journal may also consider reviews submitted on authors' own initiative: pre-submission inquiries are welcome. No particular format is required for these articles. However, they should have an informative, unstructured abstract of about 250 words, and ideally should not exceed 8 printed pages.

Decision Making and Problem Solving papers typically include meta-analyses, guidelines and consensus papers by scientific societies or working groups. These studies must be conducted following proper, widely accepted ad hoc procedures. They should have an informative, unstructured abstract of about 250 words, and ideally should not exceed 8 printed pages.

Brief Reports must provide conclusive findings: preliminary observations or incomplete findings cannot be considered for publication. They should be signed by no more than 10 authors. Brief reports should have a short abstract of no more than 150 words, a text of about 1500-2000 words, a maximum of 3 tables and/or figures (total), and up to 24 references. In any case, they cannot exceed 4 printed pages: should a brief report exceed 4 printed pages, the authors will be invited to omit parts of the paper, which might be published online exclusively as a supplementary appendix. Case Reports are no longer considered for publication: authors are invited not to submit them as Brief Reports, unless they include peculiar studies such as those concerning molecular basis of disease.

Letters to the Editor should typically refer to a recent article, and the Editors may invite the article's authors to write a reply. Short letters not about a journal article may also be considered, but the journal can publish only a small minority of them. Letters should be signed by no more than 6 authors. These manuscripts should contain up to 750 words, can include one or two figures and/or tables, and up to 12 strictly relevant references. At the discretion of the Editors, letters may appear in the print version or in the online version of the Journal.

References should be prepared strictly according to the Vancouver style, which is present in EndNote); for details see the URL: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html. References must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first cited in the text, and they must be identified in the text by arabic numerals. References to personal communications and unpublished data should be incorporated in the text and not placed under the numbered References.

A Nonrefundable Fee of Euro 50 (fifty) is due on submission of Original Articles, Brief Reports, Decision Making & Problem Solving Articles, unsolicited Review Articles, unsolicited Editorials and unsolicited Perspective Articles. No submission fee is required for Letters to the Editor or Responses to a Letter to the Editor. If a submission fee is required, the authors will be asked to pay it online using a credit card in order to complete the submission process.

Galley Proofs should be corrected and returned by e-mail or fax within 48 hours.

Transfer of Copyright and Permission to Reproduce Parts of Published Papers. Authors will grant copyright of their articles to the Ferrata Storti Foundation. No formal permission will be required to reproduce parts (tables or illustrations) of published papers, provided the source is quoted appropriately and reproduction has no commercial intent. Reproductions with commercial intent will require written permission and payment of royalties.