Author Guidelines

Starting 1st of January 2018 the Romanian Journal of Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases accepts exclusively on-line submission of the articles.

The Romanian Journal of Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases publishes open-acces articles without any publishing fees for the authors. 

 General considerations

The Romanian Journal of Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases does not accept materials that have been previously published or are considered for publication in other journals. Only papers exclusively sent to RJDNMD will be taken into consideration for publication. Thus, authors are required to submit a statement that their material is original and not previously published or submitted for publication. Authors should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support and disclose any conflicts of interest that might bias their work. Manuscripts must be written in English. RJDNMD is a Peer Reviewed journal, therefore the articles will be revised by two peer-reviewers, recognized experts in the field of the manuscript

The Romanian Journal of Diabetes Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases strictly requires for all the scientific work published to be 100% compliant with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA).

The types of Published Articles:

-Editorials
-Original research articles (including both fundamental and clinical research)
-Literature reviews
-Meta-analysis
-Case reports

Originality statement

To be able to initiate the publishing process, the corresponding author should upload during the submission process a statement of originality in which he/she declares that the proposed paper is original and not previously published or submitted for publication. A proposed template may be downloaded here. It should be printed, signed, scanned and uploaded during the submission process. 

Manuscript requirements

All manuscripts should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents (*.docx file format)

The manuscripts should be written in English, with Times New Roman fonts, size: 12 points and spacing at 1.5 lines

The manuscript should be no longer than 13 pages

We strongly recommend the authors to use the proposed template when preparing their manuscript for submission. 

All the manuscripts should begin with the title of the paper, author's names and affiliations.
The title of the paper will be written in capital leters and in bold. (e.g. THIS IS HOW THE TITLE SHOULD LOOK LIKE)
The names of the authors will be written in lowercase, bold and italic, followed by the affiliation number in superscript. The affiliations should be numbered according to the author's position. 
Author's affiliations should be written in lowercase letters and should contain (in the following order): department, institution, city, country.
The authorship for articles published in RJDNMD should be based on the ICMJE recommendations for defining the roles of authors and contributors !

Abstract
All articles should be preceded by an abstract, no longer than 200 words. For original research articles and meta-analysis the abstract should be organized in the following sections: Background and aims; Material and methods; Results; Conclusions. The abstract should not contain any unexplained abbreviations.

Keywords
After the abstract, the authors should provide between 3-6 keywords, separated by commas (,). It is strongly recommended that the words chosen as keywords are not repeating words from the manuscript's title. It is also recommended that the chosen keywords are terms which can be found in the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) database organized by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. 

Recommended structure (original research articles)
The original research articles should be divided in the following sections: Background and aims; Material and methods; Results; Discussions; Conclusions.
Background and aims
Should include the background information regarding the subject addressed in the paper and the rationale for the study. It may contain three major parts: what is known, what is unknown and what is the aim of the proposed study. This part should be short, concise and readable for general audience. The authors are recommended to emphasize on how the study fills possible knowledge gaps. The authors should leave details, descriptions, speculations and criticism for the Discussion section.
Material and Method
Should provide all the information that would allow reproducing the experimental work. Equipment producer, including city and country of origin, must be given. Chemical substances must be properly identified and the supplier must be reported. In case of clinical studies, drugs must be identified by their generic name whenever possible. For all studies on human subjects, a statement regarding the approval of the ethics committee is mandatory. The material and method section should contain information about the study design, study patients (including inclusion/exclusion criteria) and baseline characteristics of the studied group.
In case of original research articles, it is necessary to include a Statistical Analysis section, in which the authors should include information regarding statistical software used for analysis, sample size estimation and all the statistical methods used (both descriptive and inferential). For inferential statistics, the journal requires presenting both the p-values and the confidence intervals. 
Results
In this section, the authors should provide the results of the study without discussing them. The same data should not be presented in duplicate in a figure and a table (chose either one as appropriate). Results that are given in tables or figures should not be repeated in extenso in the text. Only the most important observations will be emphasized in the text if previously given in extenso in Tables/Figures. Each Table and Figure will be numbered in Arabic numbers (in the order of their appearance in the manuscript) and it is compulsory that they are previously quoted in the text. They will have a title and each one will be accompanied by a legend. Figures can be in color and should be given in high resolution (150 dpi), in a tiff or jpeg format. Figures will be sent both inserted in the text and also as separate files.
The Discussions section should provide an interpretation of the results and not simply reporting again the results. Key points that should be addressed include reporting of: main findings; comparisons with results of similar studies, strengths and weaknesses of the study; unsolved questions/issues; future research that is required. Anticipate your readers' questions, and explain why your results are of interest, then compare your results with other people's results. This is where that literature review you did comes in handy. Discuss how your findings support or challenge other studies.

References

The reference section will comprise a maximum of 50 references. References should be numbered in the order of their insertion in the text. They will be given in square brackets using Arabic numbers. For example [1]; [1,3,4]; [5-8]. References should be numbered in the same order at the end of the manuscript. Only one reference should be given for each number. All references from the list at the end of the manuscript have to be included in the text of the article but not in the Abstract, Results and Conclusions sections. References will be structured using the following format:

Full length papers from journals
Authors' Last Name followed by initials of the Given Names for the first six authors will be given in Bold font (for ≥ seven authors, the list should be abbreviated to et al. after the third author's name); (year); title of paper will be provided in full; Name of the Journal will given in its abbreviated form (according to NCBI-NLM catalogue: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog) in Italic font; Volume Number, Pages of the article, Year of publication.
For example: Ferranini E, Natali A, Bell P et al. Insulin resistance and hypertension in obesity. European group for the Study of Insulin Resistance (EGIR). J Clin Invest 100: 1166-1173, 1997.

Abstracts from Journals:
The same format as for full length papers should be used but followed by (abstract). For example: Williams-Herman D, Johnson J, Lunceford JK. Initial combination therapy with sitagliptin and metformin provides effective and durable glycemic control over 1 year in patients with Type 2 diabetes (T2DM): a pivotal Phase III clinical trial. Diabetes 56 [Suppl. 1]: 004-LB, 2007. (abstract)

Chapters from Textbooks or Monographs: 
Authors' Last Name followed by initials of the Given Names for all authors will be given in Bold font; Chapter Title; In: Title of the book in Italic font; Editors' names with initials (eds); Publishing House name, city of publishing, pp followed by the first and last page numbers of the quoted material; Publication Year. For example: Hueston JT. Dupuytren diathesis. In: Dupuytren's Disease. McFarlane RM (ed). Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh, pp 246-249, 1990.

The authors hold full responsibility for quoted texts and reproduced icons.

Correspondence Data

The corresponding author will send his/ her full correspondence data: full postal address including zip code and country of residence, email, telephone and fax, when submitting

Peer-review Process

The Romanian Journal of Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases (RJDNMD) uses a single-blinded review system. Thus, the authors of manuscripts are blinded to the identity of the reviewers that are performing the process of peer review of their manuscript. However, reviewers receive from the editor the full text of the manuscript, including authors and their affiliations. However, all correspondence related to the peer review of each manuscript is confidential.

 The Editor-in-Chief or the Managing Editor of RJDNMD first assess each submission to evaluate if the subject and the content of the manuscript is of interest for appropriate for the journal. In addition, the editors evaluate if the manuscripts comply with the editorial formatting requirements of RJDNMD. Only those manuscripts deemed of interest are selected for review.

 Subsequently, the editors will invite two independent experts in the field (peer reviewers) to review the manuscript. Based on their review, the editors will take the decision to accept the manuscript for publication, reject the manuscript, or ask the authors to revise and subsequently resubmit the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief has the final decision on all manuscripts

 The peer reviewers of RJDNMD are physicians/researchers with an expertise in the field of diabetes and metabolic diseases. They will provide an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of evaluated manuscripts. They will also provide recommendations to authors for improving the quality of their manuscript. All reviewers are required to provide a disclosure regarding the potential conflicts of interest related to the subject of the article or to the authors.

 RJDNMD use the guidelines of scientific peer review recommended by the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). Thus, the reviewers will be asked to provide their opinion on the following topics:

• major strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript (including that of study design, methodology, results reporting and interpretation of data),
• proper assessment of the quality of data, including acknowledgment of its limitations,
• provide useful suggestions for improvement of the manuscript if this is appropriate,
• comments on any ethical concerns raised by the study, or any possible evidence of scientific misconduct (e.g., possible duplicate submission, plagiarism, etc.). If reviewers suspect misconduct, they are asked to notify the editor in confidence,
• provide proper context and perspective for an editor to decide regarding the acceptance, rejection or revision/resubmission of the manuscript.

 Reviewers are required to treat each manuscript as confidential. Reviewers are not allowed to retain, copy, or share manuscripts. Reviewers and editors are not permitted to make any personal or professional use of the data, arguments, or interpretations (other than those directly involved in its peer review.

 The following may be used as a guideline for reviewers when drafting their evaluation of a manuscript:

1. Summary: Briefly summarize the key aspects and findings of the manuscript.
2. Strengths: Using bulleted points, identify 3–5 strengths of the work described in the manuscript; briefly discuss each in 1–2 sentences.
3. Weaknesses: Using bulleted points, identify 3–5 weaknesses of the work described in the manuscript; briefly discuss each in 1–2 sentences. Comments could include:
   a) indication of potential flaws in study design, sample size, or data analyses
   b) whether the background literature is complete
   c) suggestions for improving tables or figures
4. Overall value: Based on the above, provide your overall synthesis of the importance of the work described in the manuscript.
5. Additional comments: Using bulleted points, provide constructive notes to help to improve the manuscript. Comments could include suggestions for revising sections to make them shorter and more succinct or suggestions for revising or omitting figures and/or tables.

Reviewers can provide confidential comments to the editor as well as anonymous comments to the authors of the manuscript.

Other considerations include whether you, as a reviewer of the manuscript, feel that readers of the journal could benefit from additional information in the form of a commentary to accompany the manuscript, as well as whether you would be willing to author such a piece.