ISSN 1809-2950 printed version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and Policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts
• Send of the manuscripts

Manuscript assessment
Every manuscript submitted to Fisioterapia e Pesquisa is appreciated by the specialized editors, for consideration on its accordance to the editorial policies and norms of the journal. Manuscripts that do not meet publication requirements will be returned to the authors for adjustment before they are peer-reviewed. Following, the manuscript is assessed by two or three reviewers of recognized expertise on the particular subject matter, on a double-blind basis. Authors may be asked to make adjustments for acceptance, depending on reviewers’ assessment. Once it is accepted, the manuscript is revised by the copy editor, who may require further adjustments. If the adjustments deadlines are not met, it will be considered that the authors have given up and the manuscript will be removed of the agenda. The approved manuscripts are published according to the chronological order of final acceptance by the journal office.
Liability and ethics
The authors are fully responsible for contents and opinions expressed in the articles. Studies involving human subjects must explicitly state that the procedures were in accordance with ethical standards and with subjects’ informed consent in the Methodology section (according to the Resolution 196/96 of National Health Council, which establishes the Ethics Code for Research in Human Beings). The researches with human beings must present in the cover sheet the approval number of the responsible Research Ethics Committee, which must be registered in the National Health Council. Studies with animals must explicitly state their accordance to national and international guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals (Law 6638/79, 9605/98, decree 24665/34).
If trademarked or patented products (such as tools, materials, substances) are mentioned in the article, the authors must indicate their manufacturers. The reproduction of images or other elements that have already been published must be accompanied by a permission statement by copyright holder; without such statement, the elements will be considered a property of the manuscript authors.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION:
1 Presentation –The manuscript must be prepared in a text processor compatible with Microsoft Word, on A4 paper size, using font size and line spacing that afford full legibility. The complete manuscript, including cover sheet, references, tables and figure titles, must not exceed 25 thousand characters with spaces.
2 The cover sheet should contain:
a) article title (precise and concise) in Portuguese and English;
b) running title (50 characters at the most)
c) authors’ full names with superscript numbers indicating the institutional insertion;
d) institution where the study was executed (course, laboratory, department, hospital, clinic etc.), college, university, city, state and country;
e) institutional insertion of the authors (with the correspondent superscript numbers); in case of teaching, title must be informed; if the institution is different from the one where the study was held, full information as in “d)” must be provided; if there is currently no institutional affiliation, graduation and title, if it is the case, must be indicated (the journal does not inform what the title is or where it was obtained);
f) correspondence address and email of the first author;
g) indication of partial or full financial support received, if it is the case;
h) indication of previous presentation at scientific meeting;
i) in case of study with human beings, the Ethics Committee must be indicated; in case of clinical trial, the international registry number must be informed.
3 Abstract and key words – The second page must contain abstracts in Portuguese and English (maximum 250 words). The abstract must be written in a single precise and concise paragraph; its content must follow the formal structure of the text, that is, objective, basic procedures, most important findings and conclusion. Abstracts must be followed by up to five key words. It is suggested the consultation to MeSH - Medical Subject Headings - of Medline (www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/ meshhome.html) and to the DeCS – Descritores em Ciências da Saúde – of the health virtual library of LILACS (http://decs.bvs.br).
4 Structure – It is suggested to organize the texts according to the following formal structure: a) Introduction, state the purpose of the article, justifying the relevance of the study in view of pertinent literature findings; b) Methodology, detail sample selection, procedures and materials applied, in such a way that allow other researchers to reproduce the results, as well as the statistical methods used in data analysis (avoid sole reliance on statistical hypothesis testing, such as the use of P values, which fail to convey important quantitative information); c) Results, make a concise factual exposition of the observation, in logical sequence, with the support of graphs and tables as it is fit, taking the double care not to refer readers solely to the latter neither to repeat in the text every datum on the tables; d) Discussion, comment most important findings, discussing the results achieved and comparing them to previous studies results; e) Conclusion, summarize logic inferences grounded on the Results and Discussion sections.
5 Tables, graphs, figures, diagrams – are considered graphic elements. Only manuscripts containing up to five graphic elements will be considered for review. Authors should carefully select them for their relevance. Graphs are justifiable only to allow quick apprehension of complex variable behavior, and not to illustrate, for instance, differences between two variables. The text must present indications of the ideal insertion of the graphic elements, which should only be present in full at the end of the text. Tables (title in the upper part) must be typed in the text processor and numbered (in Arabic numerals) in the order of citation in the text; in Portuguese, decimals are separated by comma; full extent of abbreviations must be given in footnotes.
Figures, graphs, photographs and diagrams (title at the bottom) must be equally numbered (in Arabic numerals) in the order of citation. Abbreviations and further information are given in footnotes following the title.
6 References – References must be organized in numerical sequence, according to the order in which they were cited in the text for the first time, following the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors – ICMJE http://www.icmje.org/index.html.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the site http://submission.scielo.br/index.php/fp/user/register. To submit a manuscript for publication authors should attach:

• Statement of responsibility, conflict of interests and authorship of the article content. Authors should declare the existence of possible conflict of interests (professional, financial, direct and indirect benefit) that may influence the results of research and the responsibility of the author(s) for the content of the manuscript.
• Declaration of transfer of copyright for Fisioterapia e Pesquisa, signed by all authors, with their social security numbers, if the article is accepted for publication.
• If it is a clinical trial, report  the number of records validated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), whose addresses are available at the ICMJE website: www.icmje.org/faq.html