Information for Authors including editorial standards for the preparation of manuscripts

The Evidence-based Psychiatric Care, the Official Journal of the Italian Society of Psychiatry (SIP), publishes contributions in the form of regular articles, reviews, short articles, case reports, letters to the editors and commentaries.

Authors are requested to submit their manuscripts to:mdistefano@pacinieditore.it

The material submitted should not have been previously published, and should not be under consideration (in whole or in part) elsewhere and must conform to the current regulations regarding research ethics.

If an experiment on humans is described, a statement must be included that the work has been performed in accordance with the principles of the 1983 Declaration of Helsinki.

The Authors are solely responsible for the statements made in their paper, and must specify that consent has been obtained from patients taking part in the investigations and for the reproduction of any photographs, and report the approval of local ethic committee or institutional review board.

For studies performed on laboratory animals, the authors must state that the relevant national laws or institutional guidelines have been adhered to.

 

Conflicts of interest

Authors must fully disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interest of a financial, personal or any other nature that could affect or bias their research. If applicable, authors are also requested to describe the role of the finding source(s) in the study design, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation, and writing of the manuscript. No potential conflicts of interest must also be explicitly stated.

 

Manuscript organization

The article must be written in English.

Software text: please save files in .DOC, .RTF or .DOCX format.

The paper must include:

  • A concise and informative title not exceeding 100 characters including spaces (subtitles should be avoided).
  • Running title not exceeding 100 characters including spaces.
  • The authors’ full first names and surnames.
  • Name and address of the Institute or Institutes where the work was carried out; if the authors are affiliated with different Institutes, the first author and any others from the same Institute should be indicated with 1 (in superscript), the names of the authors from another Institute with 2, and so on.
  • Name (written in full), surname and address of the corresponding author, including telephone, fax numbers and e-mail address, to whom galley proofs are to be addressed.
  • Type of article: categorise the article in one of the following types: Original articles, Reviews, Case Reports and Editorials.
  • Summary: should be about 2000 characters (including spaces). It should be divided into 4 sections: Objectives, Methods, Results, Conclusions.
  • Key words (max. 5 using Mesh terms for indexing purposes).
  • Mathematical terms and formulae, abbreviations, and units of measure should conform to the standards set out in www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf. Use only standard abbreviations. The spelled-out abbreviation followed by the abbreviation in parenthesis should be used on first mention unless the abbreviation is a standard unit of measurement. Drugs should be referred to by their chemical name; the commercial name should be used only when absolutely unavoidable (capitalising the first letter of the product name and giving the name of the pharmaceutical firm manufacturing the drug, town and country).
  • Acknowledgements, authors’ contributions and mention of any financial/conflict of interest and/or source of funding (grants or other forms of support) should appear at the end of the paper, before the list of references. Even in case of no financial/conflict of interest or source of funding, please specify it in this section.
  • References should be limited to the most essential and relevant (see specific instructions for article categories for number of references requested), published allegedly in the last decade, identified in the text with consecutive numerals (with numbers in superscript) and listed at the end of the manuscript in the order in which they are cited. The format of the references listed should conform with the examples indicated below. For papers with more than three authors only the first three authors must be indicated, followed by “et al.”. Abbreviate journal names as in Index Medicus.
  • DOI name must be included with each reference (when available).

Examples of the correct format for citation of references:

  • Shapiro AMJ, Lakey JRT, Ryan EA, et al. Islet transplantation in seven patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus using a glucocorticoid-free immunosuppressive regimen. N Engl J Med 2000;343:230-238. https://doi.org/10.1421.234.1
  • Books: Smith DW. Recognizable patterns of human malformation. 3rd Philadelphia: WB Saunders Co. 1982.
  • Chapters from books or material from conference proceedings: Krmpotic-Nemanic J, Kostovis I, Rudan P. Aging changes of the form and infrastructure of the external nose and its importance in rhinoplasty. In: Conly J, Dickinson JT, Eds. Plastic and reconstructive surgery of the face and neck. New York, NY: Grune and Stratton 1972, p. 84.
  • Tables should be typewritten and numbered consecutively with Roman numerals at the end of the text after the references. The same data should not be presented twice, both in the text and tables. Each table should have above a brief title and be self-explanatory and be cited in the text (Tab. I, Tab. II, etc.). The table should be supplement the material in the text rather than duplicate. Insert any notes at the end of the table. Explain all the abbreviations. Deduct from the text 1,250 characters including spaces for tables a quarter of a page in size, 2,500 characters including spaces half a page in size and 5,000 characters including spaces entire page in size.
  • Figures should be uploaded in separate files. Do not include the figures in the text file but cite them only, numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.). Figure legends should be indicated at the end of the text file and allow the reader to understand the figures without reference to the text. All symbols used in figures should be explained. Remove any information that can identify a patient. Deduct from the text 1,250 characters including spaces for figures a quarter of a page in size, 2,500 characters including spaces half a page in size and 5,000 characters including spaces entire page in size. Software and format: preferably send images in .TIFF, .JPEG or .PDF format, resolution at least 300 dpi. Composed figures must be saved as a single file in .JPEG or .TIFF format with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. The individual images within a compound figure must all have the same size (IMPORTANT: dimension for each single file/image is from minimum 800 KB to maximum 2 MB).

Specific instructions for the various categories of papers

Manuscripts will be organized in five main categories. Namely:

  1. Original articles. Text length: 18.000 characters, with spaces, excluding summary, tables and/or figures and references. The text of regular articles should be subdivided into the following sections: Summary, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, and Discussion and Conclusions.
  2. Reviews. Text length: 20.000 characters, with spaces, excluding summary, tables and/or figures and references.
  3. Short articles: this space is dedicated to brief communications of clinical and experimental data and to preliminary data of ongoing research of particular interest. Text length: no more than 12.000 characters, with spaces, including summary, figures and/or tables (no more than 4), and references (max 15).
  4. Meet-the-expert: in which a well-reputed clinician and/or researcher will provide a short evidence-based review related to an explicit issue.

Reviews, articles (both regular and short), and meet-the-expert should contain a window reporting the main implications for psychiatric care that derive from the data presented in the publication.

  1. Case reports: in which original experiences related to individual or few subjects are described. Text length: about 4.000-5000 characters, with spaces. Max 1 figure or table and no more than 5 references.
  2. Letters to Editors and Comments concerning articles or reviews published in the Journal: text length: about 2.000-3.000 characters, with spaces. Max 1 figure and/or table and no more than 5 references.

After acceptance

Galley proofs will be sent via e-mail to the corresponding author for final approval. The authors are required to carefully check the proofs and return them within 3 days of receipt.  If the proofs are not received in time, the authors will have to rely on the Editor’s corrections only. The authors are responsible for mistakes that have been overlooked. A pdf of all articles published is available in open access at https://www.evidence-based-psychiatric-care.org/.

The Publisher remains at the complete disposal of those with rights whom it was impossible to contact, and for any omissions.