Instructions to authors
The Memórias' content is freely accessible to readers and no publication fees are charged to authors. The Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz has decided to simplify the requirements regarding the format of submitted manuscripts. From now on, all manuscripts may be submitted in any text format as long as the common subdivision of scientific articles are followed, e.g. introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion and references. For Reviews, Perspectives and similar articles, authors may use the sections that best suit the structure and content of the proposed manuscript. All manuscripts should contain, besides the title and abstract, full details of authors and institutions, acknowledgements of any technical or financial assistance as well as state any conflicts of interest. This flexible text format will be used for the initial analysis and peer review. If the manuscript is accepted, authors will be requested to edit the text in accordance with the publication style of the Memorias."
Upon acceptance, the manuscript should be arranged in the following format:
The manuscript should be prepared using standard word processing software and should be printed (font size 12) double-spaced throughout the text, figure captions, and references (must be up to 30 references), with margins of at least 3 cm. The figures should come in the extension tiff, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Tables and legends to figures must be submitted all together in a single file. Figures, must be uploaded separately as supplementary file.
Running title: with up to 40 characters (letters and spaces)
Title: with up to 250 characters
Author's names: without titles or graduations
Institutional affiliations: full address of the corresponding author only
Abstracts: Provide an abstract of between 250- 300 words (100 words in case of short communications, technical notes, genome announcements or reviews). Abstracts of original articles should be structured into 5 sections as follows: BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVES, METHODS, FINDINGS and MAIN CONCLUSIONS, each section addressing respectively the problem, the aim of the study, the main methodological approach, the most important findings and the conclusions of the study.
Key words: 3-6 items must be provided. Terms from the Medical Subject Headings (Mesh) list of Index Medicus should be used.
Sponsorships: indicating the sources of financial support and change of address.
Introduction: should set the purpose of the study, give a brief summary (not a review) of previous relevant works, and state what new advance has been made in the investigation. It should not include data or conclusions from the work being reported.
Materials and Methods: should briefly give clear and sufficient information to permit the study to be repeated by others. Standard techniques need only be referenced.
Ethics: when reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
Results: should be a concise account of the new information discovered, with the least personal judgement. Do not repeat in text all the data in the tables and illustrations.
In case of describing New Species, should follow:
Name of the new species, authors (when it is the case), sp. nov., (Figs x-y)
[Ex: An. (Nyssorhynchus) atacamensis González and Sallum, sp. nov. (Figs 1-4)]
Previous reference to the new species (when it is the case)
[Ex: An. pictipennis of Rueda et al. (2008): 448.]
Diagnosis (or Description; all stages are described);
Type host (when it is the case);
Site of Infection (when it is the case);
Type-locality;
Type data and depository;
Other material examined (when it is the case);
Distribution;
Host-parasite data (such prevalence and other important data, when it is the same case);
Bionomics;
Etymology;
Taxonomic discussion (or simply DISCUSSION as internal title).
Discussion: should be limited to the significance of the new information and relate the new findings to existing knowledge. Only unavoidable citations should be included.
Acknowledgements: should be short and concise, and restricted to those absolutely necessary.
Author's contribution: state each author's contribution to the work.
Figures: presented in tiff format with a minimum of 300 dpi and photographs must be sharply focused, well contrasted, and if mounted onto a plate, the figures should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numbers. Magnification must be indicated by a line or bar in the figure, and referenced, if necessary in the caption (e.g., bar = 1 mm). Plates and line figures should either fit one column (8 cm) or the full width (16.5 cm) of the page and should be shorter than the page length to allow inclusion of the legend. Letters and numbers on figures should be of a legible size upon reduction or printing. A colour photograph illustrates the cover of each issue of the Journal and authors are invited to submit illustrations with legends from their manuscript for consideration for the cover.
Tables: should supplement, not duplicate, the text and should be numbered with Roman numerals. A short descriptive title should appear above each table, with any explanations or footnotes (identified with a, b, c, etc.) below.
Review: Papers in “review” format are accepted only by means of invitations made by the editor or associated editors.
Technical Notes: Technical Notes should communicate rapidly single novel techniques or original technical advances. The entire note should occupy no more than three printed pages including figures and/or tables (it means around 10 double-spaced typed Word file maximum). The text must not be not divided into sections. Therefore, the state of art must be very briefly presented; results must be rapidly presented and discussed at a time. Complementary tables and figures may be published as supplementary data. References must be limited to few essential ones and cited at the end of the note, using the same format as in full papers. A brief summary and three key words must be provided.
Short communications: should communicate rapidly single results or techniques. They should occupy no more than three printed pages including figures and/or tables. They should not contain excessive references. References should be cited at the end of the paper using the same format as in full papers. A brief summary and three key words must be provided.
Genome Announcement and Highlights: this section is dedicated to publish new genome information from eukaryote parasites, virus, bacteria and their respective vectors. Authors who wants a fast peer review and publication cycle for their research results covering new genome sequences, re-sequencing and comparative genome analysis as well as the expression pattern of genomes are invited to submitted papers under the short communication format.
Alternative format: manuscripts may be submitted following the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors also known as the Vancouver Style. In this case, authors should follow the guidelines in the fifth edition (Annals of Internal Medicine 1997; 126: 36-47, or at the website http://www.acponline.org/journals/resource/unifreqr/htm) and will be responsible for modifying the manuscript where it differs from the instructions given here, if the manuscript is accepted for publication.
Authors should also follow the Uniform Requirements for any guidelines that are omitted in these Instructions.
In case of clinical trials it’s mandatory to inform the registration number of the REBEC platform.
A statement that the data/results of the manuscript are not plagiarism and have not been published elsewhere.
Page charges: there will be no page charges.
Proofs: one set of page proofs will be supplied for the author to check for typesetting accuracy, to be returned by the stipulated date. No changes to the original manuscript will be allowed at this stage.
