gms | German Medical Science

Information for authors

• Authors’ Guidelines
• Authors’ Contract
• Go to Manuscript Submission

Authors' Guidelines 

1. General information

GMS Journal of Arts Therapies is an open access e-journal, which publishes articles in English and German on an interdisciplinary level for the entire range of the medical sciences and the public health politics. All articles go through a peer review procedure before publication. The authors’ guidelines principally follow the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals.

Costs per article (only for articles accepted for publication):

• 400 € for non-members
• 250 € for members
• 100 € for students without connection to an academic institution

2. Publication requirements

The submitted manuscripts or substantial parts of them should not have been previously published or submitted for publication somewhere else. The abbreviated version of the contents for presentation at a meeting is not regarded as a publication.

2.1 Authorship and copyright

All authors insure that they have furnished a substantial contribution to the article and that they are in agreement with form and contents of the manuscript. The author conducting the negotiations confirms in the Author's Contract that he or she holds the copyrights on the works as well as on the text and illustrations attached therein. If material (e.g. illustrations or tables) is used from other sources, the author must submit a written statement from the holder of the copyrights indicating agreement with publication in GMS Journal of Arts Therapies. In cases of publication, the author grants GMS Journal of Arts Therapies the right to store the work in databases for an unlimited period of time, as well as to distribute and to reproduce the article in electronic form. All remaining usage rights of the author are not restricted. However, all further publications should make reference to the original publication (originally published in e.g.: GMS J Art Ther. 2019;3:Doc).

2.2 Conflicts of interest, funding

Financial or other support of institutes or companies, as well as promotion funds, is to be stated in the acknowledgments or conflict of interests section. All financial or other connections, which the author has to a company, whose products or competition products play an important role in represented facts of the matter, should be described and enclosed in the cover letter. This notification is handled confidentially and only when the manuscript is accepted for publication it will be published together with the manuscript after due consultation with the author.

An important aspect of scientific publication is the indication of funding support. You must ensure that the full, correct details of your funder(s) and any relevant grant numbers are included. A funding statement may be worded as follows: 'This work was supported by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]'.

2.3 Protection of subjects and patients

When using records of patients it must be guaranteed that the person is not identifiable on the basis of the portrayal. Otherwise, the author must seek explicit consent from the person concerned (or their representative) that he or she agrees with the publication in the present form. The existence of such a consent is to be confirmed by the author in writing.

2.4 Informed consent

All manuscripts on clinical research performed in humans or with materials obtained from humans must include a section declaring that the research project has been approved by an institutional review board or ethics committee and that patients or probands have granted informed consent prior to inclusion.

2.5 Ethical treatment of animals

All manuscripts on animal research must report procedures by which ethical treatment of animals has been guaranteed.

3. Manuscript Preparation

3.1 General information

Manuscripts can be submitted in English or German. Articles in German must also contain an English abstract, English keywords and an English title translation. A bilingual (English/German) publication of the article is also possible. The manuscripts may contain tables, graphics and images as well as audio or video sequences.

3.1.1 Title Page

On the first page of the manuscript the English and German title of the article is stated, followed by the surnames and first names of all authors, their email addresses and the facilities where they are active. Then give separately the name, mail and email address of the author conducting the correspondence.

3.1.2 Abstract and keywords

All original contributions, case descriptions and review articles are to be preceded by an English and a German abstract. The summary is to be drawn up in such a way that it represents a condensed extract of the work. All abstracts should be submitted in outline format, using the bolded headings of Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. The author should indicate adequate keywords which, as far as possible, are taken from the  Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). With original papers and case descriptions you should also indicate the trade names and names of the producer of the drugs applied and medical devices, as well as the chemical substances and their CAS number in order to make this information indexable in appropriate databases. Further structural recommendations are given with the individual article types.

3.1.3 References

The literature cited in the text is listed at the end of the article in the reference list and in accordance with the Vancouver Style of References, which is also used in MEDLINE. References should be numbered in the order in which they were listed in the reference list. The reference list can be arranged according to the citation in the text or alphabetically according to the surnames of the first author. The references list is to be numbered consecutively in any case. The numbers from the references list are used for the citations in text, tables and legends, whereby the Arabic numerals are placed within square brackets. Please do not use footnotes!

Some examples:

Standard journal article:
[1] Seeber B, Baumann U, Fastl H. Localization ability with bimodal hearing aids and bilateral cochlear implants. J Acoust Soc Am. 2004;116:1698-1709. DOI:10.1121/1.1776192

Listing with more than 6 authors: use of et al. possible:
[1] Helms J, Müller J, Schön F, Arnold W, Janssen T, Ramsden R, et al. Evaluation of Performance with the COMBI 40 Cochlear Implant in Adults: A Multicentric Clinical Study. ORL J Otorhinolaryngol Relat Spec. 1997 Jan-Feb;59(1):23-35. DOI: 10.1159/000276901

Monograph:
[2] Kießling J, Kollmeier B, Baumann U. Versorgung mit Hörgeräten und Hörimplantaten. 3. Aufl. Stuttgart: Thieme; 2017.

Chapter/contribution from monograph:
[3] Weinstein L, Schwartz MN. Pathological properties of invading organisms. In: Sodeman WA Jr, Sodeman WA, editors. Pathological physiology: mechanisms of disease. Philadelphia: Saunders; 1974. p. 457-72

[3] Döring W, Hamacher V. Neue Sprachverständlichkeitsmessungen in der Klinik: Aachener Logatomtest und Dreinsilber im Störschall. In: Kollmeier B, Hrsg. Moderne Verfahren der Sprachaudiometrie. Heidelberg: Median; 1992. S. 137-168.

Conference proceedings/conference contribution with abstract/proceedings in the Internet:
[4] Kroth M, Gabrielpillai J, Leinung M, Syed A, Baumann U, Stöver T, Diensthuber M. Methoden zur kontinuierlichen Verbesserung der Lehre für Medizinstudenten im Fach Hals-Nasen-Ohrenheilkunde. In: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde, Kopf- und Hals-Chirurgie, Hrsg. 88. Jahresversammlung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde, Kopf- und Hals-Chirurgie. Erfurt, 24.-27.05.2017. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2017. Doc17hno076. DOI: 10.3205/17hno076

[4] Harley, Naomi H. Comparing radon daughter dosimetric and risk models. In: Gammage RB, Kaye SV, editors. Indoor air and human health. Proceedings of the 7th Life Sciences Symposium; 1984 Oct 29-31; Knoxville, TN. Chelsea (MN): Lewis Publishers; 1985. p. 69-78.

CD-ROM:
[5] Anderson SC, Poulsen KB. Anderson's electronic atlas of hematology [CD-ROM]. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia; 2002.

Journal articles on the Internet:
[6] Eysenbach G. SARS and population health technology. J Med Internet Res. 2003; 5(2):e14. Available from: http://www.jmir.org/2003/2/e14/

Website:
[7] Robert Koch Institut (RKI). Infektionsschutz. [last updated 2012 Mar 07, cited 2018 Jul 9]. Available from: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Infekt/infekt_node.html

Dissertation:
[8] Müller C. Perzeptive Analyse und Weiterentwicklung eines Reimtestverfahrens für die Sprachaudiometrie [Dissertation]. Göttingen: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen; 1992.

DIN/standards:
[9] DIN EN 60645-2 Audiometer Teil 2: Geräte für die Sprachaudiometrie. Beuth Verlag, Berlin; 1997.

For further detailed sample references, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.

Personal messages and unpublished works should not be located in the reference list.

3.2 Article types

Research articles
deal with current problems, with adequate empirical or experimental methodology. It should be evident from the papers that they make a substantial contribution in clarifying the formulated problem. They are to be subdivided into: Abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion.

Case reports
represent a case relevant for the scientific interest. They are to be subdivided into: Abstract, introduction, case description, discussion, and conclusion.

Review articles
are to show the state of research in detail, summarize and clarify open research questions. Review articles should include abstract and introduction, furthermore, they may be subdivided sectionwise according to the requirements of the topic. Book and software reviews refer to important monographs and electronic programs from the area of medicine.

Rapid publications/short communications and letters to the editor
contain comments or announcements and communications with news character and are principally welcome as a central element in the discussion of research results. They go through a peer review like the other articles. In comparison, rapid responses are commentaries that cannot be cited, are limited in length and linked directly to an article to make discussions possible. The editorial staff reserves the right at any time to select, as well as to abridge and revise them. This feature will be implemented shortly.

Rapid responses
are commentaries that cannot be cited, are limited in length and linked directly to an article to make discussions possible. The editorial staff reserves the right at any time to select, as well as to abridge and revise them. This feature will be implemented shortly.

3.3 Technical requirements

3.3.1 Typography and technical terms

Do not use block style or hyphenation when drawing up your manuscripts. Line breaks are only to be inserted in paragraphs.

Literature references are to be numbered in the text as described in 3.1.3 and and listed at the end of the document as text, under no circumstances by means of the automatic footnote function. All illustrations and tables are to be provided with legends and numbered consecutively.
The publication system of GMS does not allow for annotations in the form of footnotes or endnotes. Textual explications must be integrated in the plain text (e.g. in brackets, italic).

The basic units of the International System for Measures and Weights (SI) and the units derived from them are to be used for all units of measurement. For the indication of blood pressure values the unit “mmHg” is permissible, for the indication of temperatures the unit °C. When using other units in illustrations and tables the conversion factors are to be indicated in the legend.

The nomenclature of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) resp. the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) is to be used for the designation of chemical substances. The additional indication of the register number of the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) is recommended.
Generally, the generic name is to be used when mentioning drugs. If certain commercial products were used in the research, then these trade names and the names of the producer should be quoted in the method part. In addition, this data will be indexable via the recording in special data fields (see 3.1.2). The spelling in the “Red List” applies. Abbreviations without solutions should be only used, if they are generally common (DNA, WHO). All remaining abbreviations are to be identified when first used. If necessary, an abbreviation list should be added.

3.3.2 Text formats

Each author has the possibility to submit new papers into the Manuscript Operating System (MOPS) of GMS. Acceptable text formats are MS-Word (*.doc) and Rich Text Format (*.rtf).

3.3.3 Graphic formats

The following graphic formats may be used: the formats TIFF and BMP (loss-free bitmap-formats); GIF and PNG (bitmap-formats compressed) for charts, JPG (compressable bitmap-format) for photos. The graphics should be integrated in the text, if possible, and additionally be provided as separate files with clear file names. The upload of your files takes place in the Manuscript Operating System (MOPS).

3.3.4 Research Data / Primary Data (Supplementary Material)

We expect our authors to submit relevant underlying data in addition to the manuscripts for peer review and publication. This complies with demands of funding organizations like Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and European Research Council in terms of "Good scientific practice". By co-operation with the Dryad repository, German Medical Science offers an easy way to achieve that. Dryad is both an international repository of data underlying peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature, and a membership organization, governed by journals, publishers, scientific societies, and other stakeholders. Benefits of publishing research data/primary data include:

For authors:

• Citeability: via persistent identifiers (DOI)
• Long-term archiving
• Independent quality assurance through peer review
• Legal security: Like the article, data are published under a Creative Commons licence. Dryad is using the Creative Commons Zero.
• Special advantage: The German National Library of Medicine currently takes over the costs for a data upload related to GMS manuscripts.

For the scientific community:

• Subsequent use: enables further interpretation of data, utilization for follow-up research projects, creation of interconnections between data sets, data/text mining
• Transparency: through traceability and reproducibility (if applicable) of research results
• Efficiency: through limitation of work and financial expenses

Please submit a descriptive caption together with your data. Use of platform-independent file formats is required, such as:

• For additional documentation (e.g. detailed case reports): PDF
• For image data: GIF, TIFF, PNG, JPG
• For audio-visual material: MPG
• For text or tabular data: TXT, CSV

If you have further questions about the data submission, please send an e-mail to help@datadryad.org.

Contact

For general questions concerning the manuscript submission, please address the GMS Editorial Office.