Editorial Policies and Instructions for Authors

1.  Editorial Policies
2.  Manuscripts
   2.1  Conflict of interest
   2.2  Registration of clinical trials
   2.3  Legal considerations
   2.4  Ethical standards
   2.5  Preparation of manuscripts
   2.6  Formatting
   2.7  Tables
   2.8  Figures
   2.9  References
3.  Letters to the Editor/Correspondence
4.  Abbreviations
5.  Proofs
6.  Reprints

Anaesthesia and Intensive Care is the journal of the Australian Society of Anaesthetists, the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society, and the New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists. The Journal is published by the Australian Society of Anaesthetists. Anaesthesia and Intensive Care is an educational journal for those associated with anaesthesia, intensive care medicine, and pain medicine, and a means by which individuals may inform their colleagues of their research and experience.

Anaesthesia and Intensive Care is abstracted/indexed in: MEDLINE/PubMed, Australian Medical Index, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Scopus, EMCare and the Sociedad Iberoamericana de Informacion Cientifica (SIIC) DataBases.

Communications should be addressed to: Chief Editor, Dr N. M. Gibbs, PO Box 600, Edgecliff, NSW 2027, Australia. Phone: (02) 9327 4022. Fax: (02) 9327 7666. (From outside Australia the prefix +612 should replace the 02). Email: aic@asa.org.au

Anaesthesia and Intensive Care recognises and conforms to the International Standards for Authors and Editors as defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics. These Standards, including recommendations to authors, are available here.

1.  Editorial Policies

The overriding mission of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care is to publish papers that have educational value and scientific merit for clinicians and researchers associated with anaesthesia, intensive care medicine, and pain medicine. The educational value must apply to a wide range of readers and not be limited to a particular region or country, with the exceptions of Australia and New Zealand. The scientific merit will be judged on the novelty of the work, the validity of the methodology and the soundness of the interpretation of the findings.

Papers must have sufficient clinical relevance to be of interest to practising clinicians or clinical researchers. Animal studies of a basic science nature will rarely be accepted.

In relation to specific paper types:

• Randomised clinical trials should comply with the recommendations of the CONSORT statement and utilise its associated checklist and flow diagram.
• Clinical studies, including case-controlled and cohort studies, should include appropriate statistical analysis to support their conclusions.
• Review articles, whether systematic or narrative, should through critical analysis ‘add value’ to our knowledge in relation to any specific topic and not merely summarise current knowledge.
• Audits will be published only if their findings are likely to apply well outside the institution or institutions in which they were conducted.
• Surveys must have a response rate that ensures the findings are representative of the population under study.
• Case reports must describe a novel technique, a novel application of a conventional technique or an unexpected finding, and must have educational value. Case reports of unusual conditions or combinations of unusual conditions managed conventionally will not be considered.
• Case reports that do not require extensive patient detail should be submitted as correspondence.

The Journal also publishes special articles, point of view articles and articles on equipment.

Submissions will be assessed either by the Chief Editor or an Editor assigned by the Chief Editor. Those submissions (other than correspondence) considered potentially suitable for publication will be sent out for external review.

All papers must represent original work. The Journal reserves the right to use plagiarism detection software and to inform the authors’ institution if plagiarism is detected. As plagiarism has implications for all authors included on a paper, all authors should ensure that plagiarism has not been committed.

The Journal aims to provide a decision (accept, request a revision, decline) within eight weeks.

2.  Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication.

Papers are accepted on the understanding that no substantial part has been, or will be, published elsewhere. This does not refer to the publication of abstracts of presentations at scientific meetings, as long as these are clearly identified as abstracts and do not include data that were not presented at the meeting. Papers accepted for publication remain the copyright of the Journal. The Editor reserves the right to style and shorten material accepted for publication and to determine the priority and time of publication.

Online submission

All papers are to be submitted to Anaesthesia and Intensive Care through the submissions website. When authors enter a new submission the “Terms and Conditions for Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Submissions” will appear as the first step of the process. All authors must read and accept these before they can progress any further in the submission process.

Papers involving more than one author must be accompanied by a statement signed by all authors that they have read and accept the “Terms and Conditions for Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Submissions” as outlined in the submission process. This statement should be scanned and submitted as part of the manuscript, or uploaded to the website separately. The role of each author in the study must also be described briefly.   

The terms and conditions are written in line with the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 (Cth).

2.1  Conflict of interest

Authors must declare in their manuscript whether or not they have a conflict of interest, i.e. personal, professional or business affiliation relevant to the paper, as described by the ICMJE. If any of the authors has a conflict of interest, the ICMJE Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form must be completed and submitted with the manuscript. Sources of funding, equipment or other support must be given. 

2.2  Registration of clinical trials

Clinical trials must be registered with a Public Trials Registry as recommended by the ICMJE. In Australia and New Zealand it is recommended that trials are registered with the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry. For trials commenced between January 2009 and December 2011, retrospective registration of the trials will be accepted. For trials commenced after December 2011, prospective registration will be required. The trial registration number must be stated on the manuscript.

2.3  Legal considerations

A statement of permission for reproduction from the copyright holder, author or publisher must be provided when any table or figure that has been published elsewhere is included.

2.4  Ethical standards

Studies on human subjects must comply with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 and its subsequent revisions, and with the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Guidelines or other national guidelines of an equivalent standard. A statement affirming ethics committee (Institutional Review Board, Research Ethics Committee) approval must be included in the text and must include the name of the approving body and the approval number for the work undertaken. A copy of the approval must be available on request.

Audits and other quality improvement activities submitted for publication must have either institutional ethics committee approval or be registered as a quality assurance/improvement activity within the institution. Registration as a quality assurance/improvement activity does not exempt studies from compliance with appropriate ethical guidelines as indicated above, and the registration number must be provided. Authors uncertain as to whether their quality assurance/improvement activity requires ethics committee approval should check the NHMRC statement "When does quality assurance in health care require independent ethical review?", and if necessary, obtain written confirmation from their ethics committee that no ethics committee approval is required. 

Studies on animals must comply with the Australian NHMRC Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes or other national guidelines or codes of an equivalent standard.

2.5  Preparation of manuscripts

All papers must be written in English. Standards are the Oxford English Dictionary and British English is preferred for spelling scientific terminology.

Original papers should be divided clearly into the following sections: Summary, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements (where appropriate) and References.

The summary should not exceed 250 words. All summaries are entered in the National Library of Medicine’s Abstracting Service MEDLINE. Any excess of words over 250 will result in the summary being curtailed at the end of the previous sentence.

Review articles should not exceed 10,000 words.

Critically appraised topics should be formatted to conform with the Journal's house style. Contact the Journal office for a template.

Survey questionnaires will not be included in the printed copy but may be included in the website publication.

Case reports should have a short summary not exceeding 100 words. The case history should be followed by the discussion, and the entire case report should preferably not exceed 1500 words in length. Similar considerations apply to case series, although a greater length may be accepted. Patients must be completely de-identified. Patients’ consent or the consent of next of kin must be obtained before publication and this must be noted in the text.

Online submission of manuscripts

When submitting a paper online, all relevant fields should be filled out on each page of the process (submission details, author details and the upload files page), . (Note: References do not need to be entered until a paper is accepted for publication but must be included in the main body of the manuscript.) If any required field is left empty, an author will not be able to progress to the next step in the process. The corresponding author may receive an email requesting more information and will need to respond to this email before the paper proceeds to the Editor for assessment.

The uploaded manuscript must be in Microsoft Word 2000 or later. Image files for figures or graphs must be uploaded separately.

There is an “Inquiry / message” link on the left hand side of the screen that an author can click on to send an email to the Journal office.

2.6  Formatting

Formatting of title, sub-title, running heads etc. will be applied by the Journal production team in the style of the Journal. Bold type, multiple fonts and different point sizes should be avoided.

2.7  Tables

Tables and appendices should follow after the text. The preferred position of these in the main body of text should be marked with an entry “Insert Table 1 here” etc. Use Arabic numerals to number the tables. Supply a brief title for each table and place explanatory matter in the table legend, not in the heading. Give each column a short or abbreviated heading. Explain all nonstandard abbreviations used in the table legend. Standard deviation (SD) is the accepted measure of variation in text and tables.

2.8  Figures

Figures should be computer-generated, photographed or professionally drawn. Freehand lettering is unacceptable.

All figures will be reproduced in greyscale. However, figures will appear in colour on the website if requested.

Letters, numbers and symbols should be clear and even throughout, and of sufficient size that when reduced for publication each item will still be legible. Titles and detailed explanations belong in the legends for illustrations, not on the illustrations themselves.

Figures depicting two dimensions of data should be presented with simple vertical and horizontal axes. Three-dimensional representations of such figures will be returned to authors for redrawing. Framing, shading, icons and the use of fanciful typefaces are unacceptable.The graph lines should be at least 0.25 pt in thickness. When symbols, arrows, numbers or letters are used to identify parts of the illustration, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend.

The preferred position of these in the main body of text should be marked with an entry “Insert Figure 1 here”. Use Arabic numerals to number the figures.

Standard error of the mean (SEM) is acceptable in figures for the sake of graphical clarity, provided that the numbers of observations are clearly stated.

Online submission of figures

Figures must be uploaded as separate files from the main body of the manuscript in the order an author wishes them to appear in the text. Figure legends should follow after the text in the Word document.

2.9  References

Number references consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript and inside the punctuation.

Authors are responsible for the correct citing of their references. A photocopy or scan of the title page of each reference must be available if requested by the Editor.

Examples of correct form of references

Journal:
Bain CR, Myles PS. Relationship between journal impact factor and levels of evidence in anaesthesia. Anaesth Intensive Care 2005; 33:116-120.

Monograph:
Gardner MJ, Altman DG. Statistics with Confidence. BMJ Publishing, London 1992; p. 61-62.

Chapter in a book:
Du Bose TD Jr, Cogan MD, Rector FC Jr. Acid Base Disorders. In: Brenner BM, ed. Brenner & Rector's The Kidney, 5th ed. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: WB Saunders Company 1996. p. 929-998.

Website:
Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. Recommendations on Monitoring During Anaesthesia. From http://www.anzca.edu.au/publications/profdocs/profstandards/ps18_2000.htm Accessed January 2004.

References to 'unpublished observations' and 'personal communications' should not be listed as references but should be noted in the text in parenthesis, e.g. (J. Jones, personal communication). References to papers which have been accepted for publication but not yet published should be included in the references, with the words “in press” included in place of the volume and page numbers.

Other examples are listed on the ICMJE website.

Online submission of references

An author can enter all references onto the references page. Journal references are validated against PubMed. (Note: References do not need to be entered until a paper is accepted for publication but must be included in the main body of the manuscript.)

3.  Letters to the Editor/Correspondence

Letters are welcomed, and will be considered for publication on their individual merit. The Editor reserves the right to change the style or to shorten any letter and to delete any material that is, in his or her opinion, discourteous or potentially defamatory. Any major revisions required will be referred back to authors for their approval. Letters critical of previously published material may be referred to the original authors for publishable reply. A maximum of six references is allowable.

4.  Abbreviations

Generally, abbreviations should not be used in the title or summary. Standard common abbreviations may be used in the text, but must appear in parenthesis after the first use of the expression written out in full. If the expression appears fewer than 10 times in the text, it is preferable not to use an abbreviation. Too many abbreviations make the text difficult to read and understand.

5.  Proofs

Authors of accepted original papers are provided with proofs to check for typesetting errors. The corresponding author will be sent an email alert when the proof is available on the submissions website for downloading. Authors can click on a link in the email and logon to download the proof. They will also be able to scan and upload the amended proof, email or fax the Journal office their amendments or accept the proof with no amendments. Authors are asked to return the proofs to the Journal office within five days of receiving the email alert.

Important corrections are allowed, but authors will be charged for extensive changes to text at this stage. Proofs are not provided for abstracts of scientific meetings, letters to the Editor or book reviews.

6.  Reprints

Reprints are supplied to authors at cost price. They must be ordered before the author’s proof is returned. Payment is accepted by credit card, bank transfer or cheque – details to be completed on the reprints order form and sent to the Journal office. Other orders for reprints will be filled at commercial rates.