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All content of the journal, except where identified, is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type BY-NC.

MedicalExpress is free from the unilateral influence of any professional society or research institution. MedicalExpress will be under the direction of an independent Board of Governors, with international representation.

• Mauricio Rocha e Silva - Univ. São Paulo, Brazil
• Michael A. Dubick - US Army Institute of Surgical Research, San Antonio, TX, USA, Editor, North America
• Michelle Correale - Univ. Foggia, Foggia, Italy, Editor, Europe
• Quiaobing Huang - Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, Editor, Asia

• Ashok Agarwal - Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA
• Cristina Maria Areias - Univ. Porto, Porto, Portugal
• Aline Barbosa - Univ. Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil
• Rubens Belfort - Univ. Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Mohammad Hossein Boskabady - Mashhad Univ, Mashhad, Iran
• Marco Antonio Botelho - Instituto Federal de Ciência e Tecnologia do Ceará, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil
• Eliete Bouskela - Univ. Estadual Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• Geraldo Busatto - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Sérgio Bydlowski - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Abhijit Chandra - King George’s Medical College, Lucknow, India
• Irshad Chaudry - Univ. Alabama, Birmingham, AL, USA
• Raul Coimbra - Univ. California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
• Ruy Jorge Cruz Junior - Univ. Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
• Jose Renan Cunha-Melo - Univ. Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
• YiDu - Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Guangzhou, China
• Sandro Esteves - Androfert, Campinas, SP, Brazil
• Mauricio Etchebehere - Univ. Estadual Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil
• Teresa Ferrari - Univ. Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
• Luiz Garcez-Leme - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Ruth Guinsburg - Univ. Federal São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Jian-Feng He - Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China
• Eisuke Hiruma - Teikyo University, Tokyo, Japan
• Marcos Intaglietta - University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
• Yong Jiang - Southern Medical Univ, Guangzhou, China
• Leonard Joseph - Univ. Kebangsaan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Pinar Kadioglu - Univ. Instanbul Cerrahpasa, Istanbul, Turkey
• Guldeniz Karadeniz - Bilent Ecevit Univ., Zonguldak, Turkey
• Ivo Ilvan Kerppers - Univ. Est. Oeste Paranaense, Guarapuava, PR, Brazil
• Beat Knechtle - Univ. Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
• George C. Kramer - Univ. Texas Medical Center, Galveston, Texas, USA
• Jair Carneiro-Leão - Univ. Federal Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil
• AnnaSara ShaffermanLevin - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Anibal Gil Lopes - Univ. Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• Silvia Lourenço - Univ. Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• Sérgio Machado - Univ. Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Psiquiatria, Rio de janeiro, Brasil
• Maneesh Mailankot - College of Medicine, Manipal, India
• Osvaldo Malafaia - Univ. Federal do Parana, Curitiba, PR, Brazil
• Alex Christian Manhães - Univ. Est. Rio Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• SuelyKazue NagahashiMarie - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
• Pedro Lopes de Melo - Univ. Estadual Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• Anuar Ibrahim Mitre - Univ. São Paulo, Sãp Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Egberto Gaspar Moura - Univ. Estadual Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• Antonio Egidio Nardi - Univ. Federal Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• George Nascimento - Univ. Federal de Campina Grande, Campina Grande, PB, Brazil
• Thelma Suely Okay - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
• Gian Maria Pacifici - Univ. Pisa, Pisa, Italy
• Marcia Pradella-Hallinan - Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Ivete Bedin Prado - Hospital do Cancer, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Patricia Rieken Macedo Rocco - Univ. Federal Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• Francisco Sampaio - Univ. Estadual Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
• Robson Santos - Univ. Federal Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
• Maria Jose Compagnole Santos - Univ. Federal Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
• Beatriz Schaan - Univ. Federal Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
• Fulvio Alexandre Scorza - Univ. Federal São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Carlos Serrano - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
• Dong Shang - Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China
• Charles Wade - Univ. Texas Health Sciences, Houston, TX, USA
• Nelson Wolosker - Univ. São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
• Emre Yalcinkaya - Aksaz Military Hospital, Mugla, Turkey
• Bicheng Zhang - Wuhan General Hospital, Wuhan, China
• Shui-Bo Zhu - Wuhan General Hospital, Wuhan, China

• Mauricio da Rocha e Silva (Universidade de São Paulo USP, São Paulo, SP, Brasil)
• Michael A. Dubick - US Army Institute of Surgical Research, San Antonio, TX, USA, Editor, North America
• Michelle Correale - Univ. Foggia, Foggia, Italy, Editor, Europe
• Quiaobing Huang - Southern Medical University, SMU, Guangzhou, China, Editor, Asia

• Revisão
  Nome Editorial Office, MedicalExpress
• Composição
  GN1 Sistemas e Publicações LTDA
• Arte Final
  GN1 Sistemas e Publicações LTDA

PLAGIARISM AND DUPLICATION: All submissions are checked as follows:

• Abstracts are checked through  http://jane.biosemantics.org/
• Keywords are checked through http://www.pubmed.gov
• Titles are checked through http://www.pubmed.gov and http://www.scholar.google.com/

Unusual levels of similarity are hand checked by the Editorial Office.

PEER REVIEW: Original Research and Review Articles will be submitted to peer review. At least two experts in the field of the submitted article will be consulted. Whenever possible, reviewers from different countries with respect to authors will be invited. Editorials and Reader’s Opinions will be reviewed by the Editor or by an Area Editor.

AGILITY: MedicalExpress will run as a continuous flow journal, a characteristic shared by no other Brazilian periodical. Accepted articles will be submitted to language polishing, composition, and submitted to authors for final approval. As soon as this is completed, articles will be made public. It is expected that accepted articles would be published approximately 45 days after acceptance.

ETHICAL STAND: MedicalExpress adopts ethical standards prescribed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ uniform requirements for manuscripts, as described in http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/.

MEDICALEXPRESS has formally applied for membership of COPE Committee on Publication Ethics http://publicationethics.org/ and is committed to act according to its Code of Conduct http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf

GENERAL
MedicalExpress welcomes submissions in the following classes:

1. Original Research
2. Brief Communications
3. Critical Reviews
4. Editorials
5. Reader’s opinions

MedicalExpress only publishes articles in English. A Portuguese language title, abstract and keywords will also be published. If you are fluent in Portuguese, please provide this as indicated below. If not, we will translate your original text into Portuguese.

I. ORIGINAL RESEARCH

MedicalExpress accepts manuscripts in the ORIGINAL RESEARCH class on themes of direct or indirect interest to the furtherance of knowledge in the field of medicine. An ORIGINAL RESEARCH manuscript must fully describe a project in which a gap in biomedical knowledge is contemplated and clarified. This definition includes confirmatory repeats of hitherto controversial reports, as well negative results that are not obvious to experts. Articles describing Clinical Trials, Human Research and Animal Model Research are subject to the following restrictions:
Clinical Trials are only acceptable if duly registered before the start of data collection with www.clinicaltrials.gov or equivalent international repository of such trials.
Human research projects must conform to the Helsinki Declaration
(http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/)
Research on animal models must conform to the ethical rules applying to such procedures as specified by the Basel Declaration (www.basel-declaration.org)

Manuscript should be divided into the following parts

1. Full Title and Running Title
2. Authors and Affiliations
3. Abstract.
4. Keywords Insert 3 - 5 keywords.
5. Introduction
6. Materials and Methods
7. Results
8. Discussion
9. Conclusions
10. Acknowledgements
11. References

• Full title
  (maximum 250 characters, including spaces, no abbreviations): This is the first thing the reader will see. If it does not clearly state something interesting the reader will prefer to read another article. This should be as short as possible. Ideally use a single affirmative sentence informative of result, not of method. Make it understandable to readers outside your field of expertise. If possible, avoid punctuation marks.

• Example:

• Running title

(maximum 50 characters): indicate the topic of your article.

• Authors and Affiliation

• Names of Authors: Given Name, Family Name (do not abbreviate). Middle names may be spelt in full or abbreviated.
• Professional Address of all authors: Department, Institution, City State or Province), Country
• Use superscripted Roman Numerals (I,II,III) to indicate different addresses of each author.
• Who qualifies as author? Authors are all persons who had a significant part in planning, executing and writing an article. All others, very especially persons who only read the manuscript, or only provided financial or technical support should be recognized in the acknowledgements

• Abstract (maximum 250 words) and Keywords

This is the second thing your reader will see (if he does not like it, he will not read your paper). Keep it short and attractive.
Structure the abstract into:

• Background information: only insert this if absolutely necessary
• Objective: Short affirmative sentences.
• Method: Absolute minimum to allow reader to understand how you got the results
• Results. Clearly state what you found. Avoid inserting means ± std, or p<, p>. State what is/what is not significant and relevant.
• Conclusion: : ideally, one sentence from the summary of the main text: the take home message.
• Discussion. Do not insert a discussion
• Abbreviations: only weights and measures, mathematical, physical, chemical symbols.
• No References. If Article describes a Clinical Trial, insert name and number of the respective registry.
• Keywords: Insert 3 – 5 keywords. MedicalExpress strongly encourages authors to use keywords from a controlled vocabulary system. Visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html for the system favored by this journal.

• Introduction

• Keep it as short as possible
• Clearly indicate the gap in scientific knowledge that you are going to correct
• Your references should indicate what is known and what is not known regarding your new findings. You may cite review articles in this section
• Do not indulge in an extensive learned literature review.
• Finish your introduction with one sentence in which you preview what your results are going to show

• Materials and methods

• Only describe methods that apply to the results you are showing
• Describe all methods that apply to the results you are showing
• Only write enough to allow an expert to repeat your experiments
• Avoid obvious or excessive detail
• Previously published simple methods: cite source
• Previously published complex methods: cite source and briefly describe them.

• Results

• If you ran pilot studies, begin “Results” explaining why and what results were found
• If preliminary results have been previously published (e.g. poster at congress), cite them here.
• Write your main results after your have all your figures and tables ready. See separate instructions for Figures and Tables.
• Use them to support the description of your results.
• Never write: “Figure 1 shows “X”; Figure 2 shows “W”; Figure 3 shows “Y”; Table 1 shows “Z”.
• Explain what each figure and Table shows. For example:
• “Figure 1 shows that “STIMULUS” induces a significant increase in “EFFECT A”, a transient increase in “EFFECT B”, but no action on “EFFECT C”.
• Describe any findings not shown in Figures or Tables.
• Do not arrive at conclusions

• Figures

• The maximum number of Figures plus Tables is six.
• Always prefer Figures to Tables, if possible
• Figures should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals in order of appearance. All illustrations (graphs, flowcharts, drawings, photos, etc.) are identified as Figures. Upload each figure as an individual file.
• Graphs and flowcharts must be uploaded as PowerPoint files. The file must included the excel file containing the original data used to mount the graph.
• Pictures, drawings and photos must be uploaded as “.tif” files.
• Never paste a figure to a word.doc or word.docx file.
• At the end of the manuscript (after the reference list) insert a section named “Legends for illustrations”. Start each legend by identifying the figure (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc) Describe each figure as synthetically as possible but with enough information for the figure to be understandable without resource to the main text. If there are any abbreviations, or formulae in the Figure, add a footnote defining all such abbreviations or formulae.

• Tables

• The maximum number of Figures plus Tables is six
• Always prefer Figures to Tables, if possible
• Tables should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals in order of appearance. Copy each Table into the body of your text, at the approximate spot where it should appear.
• Each table must have a title. Start the title identifying each table (Table 1, Table 2, etc)
• Describe each Table in the tile as synthetically as possible but with enough information for the figure to be understandable without resource to the main text.
• If there are any abbreviations, or formulae in the table, add a footnote defining all such abbreviations or formulae.

• Discussion

• Begin with a one-sentence summary of your results
• Do not re-describe your results.
• Clearly indicate how your findings fill the announced gap in scientific knowledge: compare your data with what is known.
• Cite all work which contradict your claim and discuss it.
• You must cite original research articles, not reviews in this section articles in this section.
• You must discuss limitations to your project, because every research project has limitations.

• Summary

• Keep it very short.: only include what you hope the reader must remember: the take-home message.

• Acknowledgements

• Funding Agents
• All players and participants who do not qualify for authorship
• Persons who read your manuscript and made useful suggestions

• Author contribution

• The contribution of each author to the project must be stated. It is not enough to make generic statements such as “All authors contributed to the project”

• Conflict of interest

• A statement must be inserted preceding the reference list. Every author of submitted articles must clearly declare any conflict of interest with respect to the content of submitted manuscripts. Conflicts of interests include employment, sponsorship or funding from any person or institution, public or private, with vested interest in the content of submitted material.

• Abstract in Portuguese.
• If you are fluent in Portuguese, please include a Portuguese version of your title, abstract and keywords. This should be inserted at the end of you manuscript, immediately before the reference list.
• References. Suggestion: Use endnote or any similar system

• References in text.
• Number references consecutively according to the order of appearance
• References in text: superscripted, no space after last word or after punctuation mark, no brackets, no parenthesis.
• Reference list.
• Your reference list should be as concise as possible. However, no maximum number of references is prescribed.
• MedicalExpress uses the Vancouver convention style. Check your reference list against the information contained in http://www.ukessays.co.uk/tool/vancouver-referencing-generator/.

II. RAPID COMMUNICATIONS
Rapid Communications should be used for incomplete results that do not decisively demonstrate a new fact, but are important enough to be published to guarantee title to discovery. These manuscripts should be prepared as indicated for Original Research, with the following restrictions

• Total length of text, excluding figures, tables and references should not exceed 2,000 words
• Total number of Figures + Tables should not exceed four.

III. REVIEWS
REVIEW manuscripts are welcome and will be submitted to peer review. Medical Express only considers REVIEWS authored by experts in the field being reviewed. Authors are expected to have previously published articles on the reviewed subject and such articles must be cited and discussed in the review.
Otherwise, REVIEWS should be prepared as indicated for Original Research, with the following exceptions:
Title. Clearly indicate in the title that this is a review article.
Abstract. The abstract does not necessarily follow the style of Original Research manuscripts. It should be composed freely to convey the ideas contained in the reviewed articles..
Method and Results. Describe the technique used to procure and obtain articles to be reviewed, and the nature of the review. As results, inform the reader about what and how many articles were detected and shall be included in the review.
Discussion. The remainder of the article is a critical discussion on the reviewed articles and should be freely composed as dictated by the authors.
References. As described above for original research.

IV. EDITORIALS
Editorials should be composed as brief texts on topically important issues, No research results should be described.
No abstract, method or result section should be included.
References should be kept to a minimum, usually less than 6, unless exceptional circumstances dictate otherwise.

V. READER’S OPINIONS
Reader’s opinions usually refer to previously published articles in MedicalExpress. They should not be structured into sections but merely cite the discussed articles and no more than 5 different items.

AUTHOR RESPONSABILITIES:
All authors are jointly responsible for the entire content of submissions.

COPYRIGHT TRANSFER:
Authors will be required to transfer all copyright ownership of the manuscript to MedicalExpress. The copyright transfer form will be provided at any time, on request and made available to authors as soon as a manuscript is accepted.

COMPLAINTS:
MedicalExpress will examine any complaints or appeals lodged by authors or other interested parties concerning any material published by the journal. All complaints and appeals against decisions of the editorial board should be addressed to the journal through the link specified below. All such complaints and appeals shall be referred to members of the editorial not connected with the decision under scrutiny. Please use the link http://www.medicalexpress.net.br/contact-us. IN the subject box clearly state that this is a complaint or an appeal.

  Submission and peer review of articles is handled through Scholarone, at http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/medicalexpress.

There are no fees for submission and evaluation of articles.