ISSN 0100-7203 printed version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• General information
• Manuscript Preparation
• Manuscript submission
• Manuscript checking items

The Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia (Rev Bras Ginecol Obstet. ISSN 0100 7203), a monthly publishing of scientific diffusion by Federação das Sociedades de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia (Febrasgo), is directed to obstetricians, gynaecologists and kindred professionals, with the purpose of publishing original contributions on relevant themes about Gynaecology, Obstetrics and related areas. It is open to national and international contributions.

The material sent to analysis cannot be concurrently submitted for publication to other journals, or been previously published. Originality, theme relevance and quality of methodology, besides the adequacy to editorial instructions adopted by the journal, are assessed in the selection of manuscripts. Material of declined articles will not be returned to the authors.

All the submitted articles are assessed by anonymous reviewers and confidentiality is maintained throughout the review process. Copies of the reviewers' assessment are sent to the authors. The accepted and conditionally accepted manuscripts are sent back to the authors, so that they get acquainted with the alterations that should be made; only then the paper will be accepted for publication. The authors must return the paper with the required changes as soon as possible, accompanied by a letter that justifies, when needed, the non-acceptance of the suggestions. If the paper is not returned within a period of three months, it is assumed that the authors have no longer interest in publishing it. If the answer is sent after this time limit, it will be considered a new submission and, therefore, the paper will be submitted to a new analysis.

The concepts and declarations stated in the articles are the authors' responsibility, and the submitted paper should be written in Portuguese.

This journal publishes contributions in the following categories:

1. Original Articles, complete prospective, experimental and retrospective studies. Manuscripts containing original results of clinical or experimental researches have priority in publication;

2. Previous Notes of studies in final phase of data collection, but with original and relevant results which justify the publication;

3. Case Reports of great interest and well documented from the clinical and laboratorial points of view. The text must be based on updated bibliographical review, and the number of references may be the same of complete studies;

4. Techniques and Equipment, which are presentations of innovations in diagnosis, surgery and treatment techniques, as long as they are not, clearly or subtly, merchandise of drugs or other products;

5. Review and Updating Articles, including critical and systemized literature assessment. The selection of themes is based on established planning of associated editors; the chosen authors must have previous publications about the referred theme. The number of review authors may vary from one to four, depending on the type of text and on the applied methodology. The methods and procedures adopted for the preparation of the paper must be described, and techniques to obtain updating, meta-analysis or systematic reviews can be employed. The text must be based on updated literature review. When the theme is still under investigation, the review must discuss all current tendencies and lines of investigation and present, besides the review text itself, abstract in Portuguese and in English, and conclusions. See the section "Preparing the manuscript" for more information on the text, cover page and abstracts. Spontaneous contributions may be accepted. In this case, a summary or draft of the paper must be sent primarily, as well as the list of authors and respective publications on the theme. If the journal is interested, the authors are invited to write and submit the final text. In the case of spontaneous contributions, the abovementioned requirements are applied to the invited authors;

6. Editorial Comments, when invited by the editor;

7. Thesis Abstracts presented and approved in the last 12 months, counting from the submission date. It must contain approximately 250 words, following the requirements of the journal concerning structure and content. Titles in Portuguese and English should be included and, at least, three keywords. The abstract must be sent in CD or DVD with a printed copy. In a separated file, it should be informed the complete name of the author and advisor, members of the assessment table, date of presentation and identification of the service or department where the research was carried out and presented;

8. Letters to the editor about editorial material or not, but with information that is relevant to the reader. The letters can be summarized by the editors, being highlighted the mains passages. When the letters are critical to publish articles, they are sent to the authors so that their answers are published together.

1.  This journal does not accept editorial material with commercial objectives.

2.  Conflict of interest: situations that may interfere inadequately in the development and conclusions of the study must be mentioned. Among these situations, it is emphasized the participation in companies that produce drugs or equipment cited or used in the study, as well as in contestant companies. Financial supports, subordination relations at work, consultancy, among others, are also considered as conflict sources.

3.  In the text, the submission and approval by the Ethics Committee of the institution where the study was carried out must be mentioned.

4.  Articles that cover clinical researches on human beings must include a declaration that assures the signature of informed consent by the participants.

5.  From August 2007, the journals indexed in the database Lilacs and SciELO started to demand that randomized controlled and clinical trials submitted to publication have a registration in a database of clinical trials. This decision was due to the orientations of International Clinical Trial Registry Platform (ICTRP) from World Health Organization (WHO), of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The instructions for the registration are available at the electronic address of ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/clin_trialup.htm), and can be made through the baseline of clinical trials of National Library of Medicine, available at http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/gui.

6.  The number of authors in each manuscript is limited to seven. Papers of collective authorship (institutional researches) must have the responsible authors indicated. Multicentric works and studies may have the number of authors compatible with the number of participant institutions (each case is assessed by the editors and reviewers). The investigators that are responsible for the applied protocols must be indicated at the end of the article. The co-authorship concept is based on substantial contribution for the outset and planning of the research, analysis and interpretation of data, or for the production and critical review of the text. The inclusion of names whose contribution does not comply with the cited criteria is not justifiable. All the authors should approve the final version of the paper for publication.

7.  The authors are informed, by letter, of the receiving of the papers and the protocol number of the journal. The articles that are in concordance with the Instructions to the Authors and comply with the editorial politics of the journal are submitted to analysis by reviewers indicated by the authors.

8.  The manuscripts that do not respond to the requirements are returned to the authors for the necessary adaptations before the assessment of the Editorial Counseling.

9.  Together with the original, the submission letter, signed by all the authors on separate letters, must be sent by each author. In this letter, the authors should explicit the agreement with the editorial requirements, the process of review and the conveyance of copyright to the journal. The published material will be property of Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia and of Febrasgo, and its total or partial reproduction will only be made with acquiescence of such entities.

10.  The original manuscripts should not exceed 25 pages. The number of tables and figures should be limited to what is necessary for presenting and discussing the results (as a general pattern, it should be limited to five). Case Reports, Equipment and Techniques should not exceed 15 pages with reduced number of tables and images. Previous Notes should be short texts with up to 800 words, five references and two illustrations (see "Preparation of the manuscripts", section "Results").

11.  The author must send a disk, CD or DVD properly identified with files containing text, tables, graphics and the legends of images (photographs). Three printed copies should accompany the files. The paper can also be submitted to the journal by the on-line submission system at SciELO. The e-mail of contact with the journal is: rbgo@fmrp.usp.br.

The following rules were based on the standard proposed by ICMJE and published in the article Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, updated in October 2008, and available from: http://www.icmje.org/.

Presentation of text

1. The papers must be typed with double space between lines in every section, from the identification page to the references, tables and subtitles. Each page must contain approximately 25 lines in one column. The Microsoft^® Word text editor is preferred, as well as the font Times New Roman, size 12. Do not highlight passages of the text, do not underline or apply bold. All pages should be numbered, starting with the identification page.

2. Do not use capital letter in names (except for the initial one), in the text or in the references. Do not make use of period in acronyms (DPP instead of D.P.P.). Acronyms or abbreviations should be fully written at the first time they appear in the text.

3. For printing, white paper should be used, with a minimum of 2.5 cm margins in each side. Each section should be initiated in a new page: presentation page, abstracts and keywords, text, acknowledgments, references, individual tables and images' subtitles not typed.

Identification page

It should present the title of the paper in Portuguese and English, the complete name of the authors without abbreviations, the name of the institution where the study was carried out, titles and institutional affiliations of the authors, information about support received by means of financing, equipment or drugs catering. Indicate the name, address, telephone and fax number, and e-mail of the author that is responsible for the correspondence. The address of the institution where the study was carried out should be preferred. The author must indicate what personal information cannot be published.

Abstract

The abstract must appear in the second page. For complete papers, a structured abstract should be written and divided into identified sections: objective, methods, results and conclusions. It should comprise approximately 300 words stating relevant information that allows the reader to have a general idea of the article. A summarized description of all employed methods and of the statistical analysis should be included, as well as the most relevant numeric results, and not only the statistical significance. Conclusions must be based on the result of the study and not on the literature. Abbreviations, symbols and references should be avoided. Right after the abstract, the registry number or the identifications for randomized controlled trials and clinical trial should be indicated.

In the same page, at least five keywords or expressions must be cited for composing the annual index of the journal. They should be based on the Health Science Descriptors (DeCS, acronym in Portuguese), published by Bireme, which is a translation of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of National Library of Medicine, and is available at http://decs.bvs.br.

In another page, the abstract in Portuguese should be printed as a faithful version of the structured abstract in English (Objetivo, Métodos, Resultados e Conclusões). It must also be accompanied by the Portuguese version of the keywords (palavras-chave). The abstracts of Case Reports and Review article do not have to be structured and are limited to 150 words. For Previous Notes, there is no need for an abstract.

Introduction

In the first page of introduction, the titles should be repeated. In this section, the authors must show the current knowledge situation about the studied topic, divergences and lack of information that may eventually justify the development of the paper, but without an extended literature review. In Case Reports, a summary of the already presented cases, epidemiology of the reported condition and a justification for the presentation as an isolated case must be stated. The objective of the study should be clearly exposed.

Methods

This section should be initiated with the indication of the study setting up: if it is a prospective or retrospective, clinical or experimental trial, if the distribution of cases was randomized or not, etc. Describe the criteria for patients or experimental group selection, including controls, and identify the equipment and reagent used. If the applied methodology has been already employed before, the references and a short description of the method must be indicated. Statistical methods employed and comparisons, to which each test was indicated, should also be described.

The papers that have the purpose of evaluating the efficacy or toleration of a treatment or drug must necessarily include an adequate control group. For additional information on the design of this kind of papers, consult ICH Harmonized Tripartite Guideline - Choice of Control Group and Related Issues in Clinical Trials (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hpfb-dgpsa/tpd-dpt/e10_e.html) and the item 4 of "General information".

Results

The results must be presented in logical sequence: text, tables and figures. The results that are relevant for the purpose of the study should be exposed and discussed. Do not repeat, in this section, all the data presented in the tables and figures, but describe and emphasize the most important ones, without interpreting them (see tables). In Case Reports, the sections "methods" and "results" are replaced by "description of the case", with maintenance of the others.

Discussion

The new and original information obtained during the investigation must be highlighted in this section. Do not repeat information already mentioned in the items "introduction" and "results" and avoid citing tables and figures. Bounce the adequacy of the employed methods during investigation, compare and relate the authors' observations to those of other researchers, commenting and explaining the differences. Give details of the implications of the findings, as well as their limitations, and make referable recommendations. In Case Reports, the discussion must be based on extended and updated literature review. Information of already published cases should be presented for comparisons to be made.

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgments must be directed to those who have intellectually contributed to the study, but whose contribution does not justify co-authorship, and to those who have given material support.

References

All the authors and papers cited in the text must be listed in this section and vice versa. The references must be numbered in the list by order of appearance in the text, and should be referred to by their respective numbers when cited. Excessive number of references should be avoided, being selected only those with relevance for each statement; also, the most recent ones should be preferred. Do not cite references of difficult access, like abstracts of studies presented in congresses or publications of restrict circulation. Also, "non-published observations" and "personal communication" references should not be referred to. For texts written originally in Portuguese, the reference must be made also in Portuguese. Articles that were submitted and accepted for publication should be referred to as "in press" being indicated the journal, its volume and year of publication. Papers accepted by on-line journals that have no indication of volume and year must be referred to as "ahead of print".

When citing other publications of the same authors (auto-citation), only original references that have been published in regular and theme-related journals should be included (do not cite chapters or reviews).

The number of references must be near 30. For Previous Notes, the limit number is ten. By all means, the authors are responsible for the exactitude of data presented in the bibliographical list.

For all references, the authors' names should be cited till the sixth. When the number of authors exceeds it, the sixth one should be followed by the expression "et al.", as follows:

Printed papers:

• Journal articles

Moran CA, Suster S, Silva EG. Low-grade serous carcinoma of the ovary metastatic to the anterior mediastinum simulating multilocular thymic cysts: a clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical study of 3 cases. Am J Surg Pathol. 2005;29(4):496-9.

Parpinelli MA, Faúndes A, Cecatti JG, Surita FG, Pereira BG, Passini Junior R, et al. Subnotificação da mortalidade materna em Campinas: 1992 a 1994. Rev Bras Ginecol Obstet. 2000;22(1):27-32.

Miyatake T, Ueda Y, Yoshino K, Shroyer KR, Kanao H, Sun H, et al. Clonality analysis and human papillomavirus infection in squamous metaplasia andatypical immature metaplasia of uterine cervix: is atypical immature metaplasia a precursor to cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 3? Int J Gynecol Pathol. 2007;26(2):180-7.

• Book

Baggish MS, Karram MM. Atlas of pelvic anatomy and gynecologic surgery. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: WB Saunders; 2006.

• Book chapter

Daher S, Mattar R, Sass N. Doença hipertensiva específica da gravidez: aspectos imunológicos. In: Sass N, Camano L, Moron AF, editores. Hipertensão arterial e nefropatias na gravidez. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara Koogan; 2006. p. 45-56.

Electronic papers:

Only official statistical information and citation of non printed journal are included here. For official statistics, the responsible entity, the electronic address and the name of the file or entrance should be cited. The numbers of screens, date and hour of access should be included. Terms like "serial", "periodic", "homepage" and "monograph" are no longer used. All documents must be indicated only as [Internet]. For electronic documents as DOI (Digital Object Identifier), it should be mentioned at the end of it, besides the following information:

Brasil. Ministério da Saúde. DATASUS [Internet]. Informações de Saúde. Estatísticas vitais. Mortalidade e nascidos vivos: nascidos vivos desde 1994. Brasília (DF): Ministério da Saúde; 2008. [citado 2007 Fev 7]. Disponível em: http://tabnet.datasus.gov.br/cgi/deftohtm.exe?sinasc/cnv/nvuf.def

• Monograph on the internet or e-book

Foley KM, Gelband H, editors. Improving palliative care for cancer [Internet]. Washington: National Academy Press; 2001 [cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: <http://www.nap.edu/books/0309074029/html/>

Tables

Tables should be printed in separated pages with double space and font Arial, size 8. They must be numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals and in order of citation in the text. All tables must have a title, as well as all of their columns. It should contain subtitles which allow the reader to understand the content of tables and figures, even without reading the paper integrally. Horizontal lines should be simple and limited to two in the top and one at the end of the table. Do not use vertical lines nor employ functions of table creation, justification commands, decimal or centralized tabulations. Tabulation command (Tab) should be used instead of the "space" key for separating the columns and, for a new line, the "enter" key. In the baseboard of the table, must be presented the subtitles for abbreviations and statistical tests that were employed.

Figures (graphics, photographs, illustrations)

Figures must be printed in separated pages and numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals, following their order of citation in the text. All images must have an adequate graphical quality (use only white background) and present title and subtitles typed with Arial font size 8. They should be sent separately from the text file in the disk, CD or DVD, for the image inserted in the text editor is not the same as an original copy. To avoid problems that compromise the journal pattern, scanning images must obey the following requirements: in graphics and schemes, 800 dpi/bitmap for lineament must be used; in illustrations and photos (black and white), 300 dpi/RGO or grayscale should be used. In all cases, the files must have the extension .tif or .jpg. If it is not possible to deliver the electronic file of the images, they should be printed by laser (graphics and schemes) or in photograph paper (black and white) so they can be properly digitalized. For curve illustrations, extension files such as .xls (Excel), .cdr (CorelDraw^®), .eps and .wmf are also accepted. Up to five images will be accepted. If any of them have been already published, they must be sent with a written authorization of the author/editors, including the source in the subtitles.

Subtitles

Subtitles must be printed with double space and accompanied by the respective figures and tables. Each subtitled must be numbered with Arabic numerals corresponding to each table and figure and in order of citation in the paper.

Abbreviations and acronyms

These must be preceded by their complete name when first cited in the text, as well as when they are presented in tables and figures' subtitles. Abbreviations or acronyms should not be used in the main title nor in the abstract.

The documents must be sent to:

Jurandyr Moreira de Andrade
Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia - Editoria
Avenida Bandeirantes, 3.900, 8º andar - Campus Universitário
CEP 14049-900 - Ribeirão Preto/SP
Phone: (16) 3602-2803/Fax: (16) 3633-0946
E-mail: rbgo@fmrp.usp.br

The submission may be made by on-line submission system of SciELO. For correspondence, use the e-mail rbgo@fmrp.usp.br.

Before sending the manuscript, check if the instructions to author were fully followed and the compliance with the following listed items. Items 1 and 7 are not necessary for manuscripts sent by the on-line system of SciELO.

1. Submission letter signed by all the authors;

2. Indication of approval by the Ethics Committee (in the section "methods") and the informed consent;

3. Conflict of interests: if mentioned and relevant, no information should be omitted;

4. Presentation page with all the required information;

5. Structured abstracts that match with the text;

6. Five or more keywords, in English and Portuguese, related to the content of the text;

7. Disk, CD or DVD containing a file with the full text, tables and graphics properly identified;

8. The authors should verify if all the tables and figures are correctly cited in the text and numbered, and if the subtitles allow their understanding;

9. Photographs should be identified and annexed to the correspondence;

10. The references need to be numbered in order of appearance and correctly typed. The authors should verify if all the cited papers are present in the bibliographical list and if all those present in the list are cited in the text.