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NEW INSTRUCTIONSTOAUTHORS 2017
Revista Argentina de Microbiología (RAM, http://ees.elsevier.com/ram/) is published by the Asociación Argentina de Microbiología (AAM) on a quarterly basis. The aim of this journal is to publish current scientific works in the different areas of Microbiology and Parasitology. Some of the topics considered of special interest are: infections caused by bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses; mechanisms of pathogenicity, and virulence factors; resistance to antimicrobial agents; taxonomy; epidemiology and phenotypic, immunologic and molecular diagnostic methods. RAM also publishes articles on microbial ecology and diversity, zoo- and phytopathogens and microorganisms of value for food, agronomic, industrial and environmental applications. With the purpose of covering basic aspects of research in the area, the journal is also interested in the publication of manuscripts on microorganism genomics, proteomics and enzymology, as well as in those articles dealing with regional impact.
RAM features original articles, brief reports, editorials, microbiological images, letters to the editor, updates and consensuses on the different areas of Microbiology under the following sections:
• Editorial
• General microbiology
• Clinical microbiology and infectious diseases
• Antimicrobial agents
• Food microbiology
• Agricultural, environmental and industrial microbiology
• Special articles
• Letters to the editor
• Microbiological images
The Asociación Argentina de Microbiología reserves the right to use, reproduce and publish the accepted material.The license type used by RAM is Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial- No Derivatives (BY-NC-ND). Published articles at RAM are free of access, and can be downloaded from the international public databases.
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS
Manuscripts submitted for publication in RAM should be original research articles. Submitting a manuscript for publication implies that the authors have been authorized by the corresponding institutions to publish relevant data and that neither the manuscript nor one with substantially similar content has been previously published,-except in the case of partial presentations at scientific meetings-,nor is being considered for publication by another journal.
EDITORIAL POLICY
Revista Argentina de Microbiología subscribes to the editorial policy shown in „„Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication, ‟‟available at: http://www. ICMJE.org.
Authorship. The list of authors must only include those persons who fulfil all the following requirements: 1) To have taken part in the planning and performance of the work which has resulted in the article in question. 2) To have taken part in the writing of the text and in its possible reviews. 3) To have approved the version of the text which is finally to be published.
Conflict of interest. The authors must indicate any financial relationship which might give rise to a conflict of interest in relation to the published article. Even if the authors consider there to be no such conflict, they must still indicate said relationships.
Ethical disclosures. When studies which have been carried out on human beings are described, it is essential to indicate whether the procedures followed comply with the ethical standards of the human experimentation committee responsible (institutional or regional), and in accordance with the World Medical Association and the Declaration of Helsinki (http://www.wma.net/s/ethicsunit/helsinki.htm). Hospital names, initials, or numbers must not be used in any section of the manuscript. When animal experiments are described, it is essential to indicate whether these have been carried out in accordance with the standards of an international research institution or council, or with a national law regulating the care and use of laboratory animals(CICUAE). Moreover, a written declaration to this effect must be included.
Informed consent. The authors must mention in the section “Materials and Methods” and in the “Right to Privacy and Informed Consent” form during the submission process that the procedures used in patients and controls have been carried out after obtaining informed consent (Habeas Data law). If patient photographs or data are reproduced, the authors are responsible for obtaining written consent, authorizing their publication, reproduction, and dissemination in printed media and on the Internet.
COPYRIGHT
Revista Argentina de Microbiología is distributed under a Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND). BY: The beneficiary must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. NC: The beneficiary may not use the material for commercial purposes. ND: The beneficiary can distribute modified material.
SUBMISSION OF ORIGINALS
Manuscripts should be addressed to the Editorial Board of Revista Argentina de Microbiología accompanied by a cover letter according to the following model:
“Dear Editors of Revista Argentina de Microbiología,
As corresponding author (to whom correspondence should be addressed), hereby declare that the coauthors have accepted to be represented by myself before RAM with regard to the submission of the manuscript “…Title…”, and they are jointly responsible with me for the contents of this work. Neither this manuscript (nor any other with similar contents) has been previously published or is being considered for publication by another journal. I also agree to transfer the copyright to Revista Argentina de Microbiología once published”.
A change of the corresponding author or the order of the list of authors shall only be considered by a note signed by all the authors to that effect. The authors shall also disclose any existing conflict of interests that might affect the manuscript assessment on an attached letter. The Editorial Boards shall treat all received manuscripts in strict confidence.
Funding sources for research work described in the manuscript, either from public or private institutions, commercial affiliations
or consultancies, as well as co-ownership of patents for business purposes by one or more authors shall be indicated under the Acknowledgements Section.
Contributions will be assessed by the Editorial Board and submitted to the consideration of at least two scientific referees appointed for each case. Authors should recommend at least three reviewers for evaluation of their manuscript. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject those manuscripts whose contents partially or totally overlap with works already published or whose topics are irrelevant to those of RAM. Furthermore, reasons for rejection are non-compliance of editorial requirements, ethical violations, low scientific quality and poor use of language, either English or Spanish. The Editorial Board reserves the right to make all necessary grammatical and style modifications.
ORGANIZATION AND FORMAT
RAM accepts original articles, brief reports, special articles, microbiological images, letters to the editor, editorials and supplements. Careful reading of the specifications for each special format is recommended in order to choose the most adequate one and therefore, to expedite the evaluation proceedings.
Manuscripts shall be written in Spanish or English.The Editorial Board encourages authors to use English as their language of choice so that their work reaches wider international scope and readership.
Manuscripts should be uploaded in the RAM website (http://ees.elsevier.com/ram/) and they should include the following separate files: Cover letter, Manuscript, Tables and Figures.
Original articles. They are full research paper, which must be submitted in accordance to the following sections: Title (in Spanish
and English) and Short Title, Abstract and Keywords (in Spanish and English), Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References. Manuscripts shall not exceed 8,000 words including all the sections and shall include a maximum of 6 tables or figures. In order to support and improve the presentation of the research article, RAM accepts additional electronic data which will be published in the RAM website as Supplementary data.
Brief reports. They are less extensive works. They include case reports, descriptions of new techniques or equipment based on conclusive experimental work. Manuscripts should not be divided into sections and shall not exceed 3,000 words. References should be limited to 15 citations and a maximum of 3 tables and figures. Careful analysis of data presented should be observed so as to avoid their repetition in the text, tables and figures, in order to maintain the typical concision in style that characterizes this type of articles.
Special articles. They are up dates or workshop results on topics of regional and international weight. Their authors must be
specialists in their field of study. Texts must include updated and comprehensive bibliography. Updates may include up to10,000 words,8 tables or figures. References should be limited to100 bibliographic citations.
Microbiological images. They may include high quality pictures of bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses, from direct observation or staining under optical, electronic or fluorescent microscopy. They may also include other photographic images of microorganisms in culture media, lesions in humans or laboratory animals, x-ray and ultrasound images, computed tomography scans, nuclear magnetic resonance, etc. These images having great instructional value though not necessarily ground-breaking, should be accompanied by an explanatory text and indicating arrows when necessary. The text should not exceed 300 words. Quality requirements for images are described under the “Figures” section below.
Letters to the Editor. Letters can include either comments or new data. The comments consist in observations made on the articles published in the journal; the latter are aimed at communicating short pieces of work, which do not have the appropriate length to be published as a complete work or brief report. Both contributions must not exceed 500 words, they should include the title in Spanish and English, they must not have an abstract, and may contain only one figure or table. The authors‟ affiliations should be placed at the bottom of the letter. Only the primary affiliation of each author should be indicated. The comments should mention the volume and issue number where the article was published, as well as the complete title and the first author‟s last name. Furthermore, the sender should mention the bibliographical references that support the letter contents. In order to publish a comment, the corresponding author of the published article will be first consulted the final decision and publication will remain at the editor„s discretion.
Contributions of new facts will be submitted to a specialist editor with knowledge in the subject matter, who along with external reviewers will assess the information. It should be noted that some journal indexing services do not include Letters to the Editor in their databases.
Editorials. They focus on current scientific topics of special relevance to the scientific community specialized in Microbiology, or are opinion works on scientific policies. This section is the sole domain of the Editorial Board, who will determine editorial policy and authorship, as well as the general guidelines.
Supplements. They will consist of detailed reviews of a specific subject conducted by one or several scientific organizations or universities, as well as abstracts of contributions presented at scientific meetings or universities organized by the Asociación Argentina de Microbiología or any of its divisions or branches (oral communications, boards, lectures, round tables, etc.), and chaired by guest editors. Topics to be considered in the supplements and general outlines should be approved by the Editorial Board.
Revision of manuscripts under the Supplements section will be in charge of reviewers appointed by the Editorial Board in the case of extensive reviewing, and of guest editors in the case of abstracts of meetings. Supplements will be wholly financed by the body organizing the scientific meeting, which will bear in mind that supplements should be distributed among participants to the meetings and all members of the Asociación Argentina de Microbiología either by subscription or on-line. As regards style and format, supplements shall strictly conform to the standards of Revista Argentina de Microbiología in all respects (cover, paper quality, printing, tables and figures, illustrations, etc.), as described in the “Instructions to Authors” section. Supplements corresponding to abstracts of meetings shall include the following information in this order: names of members of the Editorial Board of Revista Argentina de Microbiología, data about the event (complete title, venue and date), content list of meetings (in Spanish and English), acknowledgements, names of organizing officers and message delivered by the Chair/s. Abstracts consecutively numbered in Arabic numerals as from 1 (one) should subsequently follow. An alphabetical index of authors and the English and Spanish versions of the instructions to authors of Revista
Argentina de Microbiología should be printed next. The meeting schedule will only be included in the Supplement as a separate leaflet.
All manuscript should include the respecitve ethics statements, when necessary.
PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts should be written in A4 paper format with 3 cm margins on each side, using Times New Roman font, regular, 12, and double-spaced. Bold and italics printing types should be used when necessary. Counting from the abstract section of the manuscript onwards, all pages should be consecutively numbered in the lower right margin, as well as the manuscript lines indicated. This shall also apply to text, tables, figures, legends and references. Pages including tables, figures and legends shall be included after the References section.
Front or title page. The first page shall include the manuscript title using capitals only for the first letter and lowercase for the rest of the title, the author‟s names (complete first name, initials of other names and surname of all authors); place of work (institution name and mailing address), and a short title of the work with a maximum of 50 characters as running head. If authors have different working places, the institutional affiliation of each author shall be indicated with superscript letters added to their names. The name of the corresponding author shall be marked by an asterisk in superscript position next to his/her name. The corresponding author‟s e-mail shall also be included. If one or several authors have changed his/her/their affiliation, the current affiliation where work was performed should be indicated and the current place of work in a footer.
Acknowledgments. This section should be written in a single paragraph including all funding sources and the names of individuals or institutions that participated in data discussion or collaborated in the provision of reagents and biological samples.
Abstracts. They will only be included in original articles, brief reports and special articles and shall have a maximum of 250 words for original and special articles, and 150 words for brief reports. The first abstract will be written in the language used in the work and the second in the other language. It shall be headed by the complete title of the work. Abstracts shall be followed by a list of three to six key words in the corresponding language. Abbreviations and bibliographic citations should be avoided. The abstract should be written in a clear and concise manner that will reflect the aim, results and conclusions of the work since it may be published separately in bibliographic sources.
Introduction. It should provide sufficient and relevant information on the topic to be analyzed or allow the understanding of non-specialized readers. It should also include the hypothesis or scientific background that guided the experimental lay out of the work as well as its clearly defined objectives. References mentioned in this section should be the most relevant ones with respect to the topic and must be carefully chosen.
Materials and Methods. This section should include an accurate and detailed description of the methods, equipment, reagents
and procedures used, so that the experiments could be replicated. Frequently used or routine procedures and techniques may be mentioned by specific reference (eg. MIC determination by the CLSI methods, 2013).New methods or those especially developed for the study should be described in detail, as well as infrequent drug sources or biological materials (bacterial, viral, fungal strains and plasmids, etc.).Trademarks and origin of reagents, culture means and equipment should be indicated in the text the first time they are mentioned, identifying the commercial brand name, state and country of origin.
Results. It should include the experimental layout and its scientific background as well as the results obtained presented in a concise way preferably as text, or as table/s or figure/s). Unnecessary use of tables and figures to mention data should be avoided when they could be included in the text. Do not repeat the same information in the text and in the tables or figures. Limit the number of photographs to the minimum necessary to support experimental results. Number the tables and figures in the order they are mentioned in the text. Avoid repetitions and include only most relevant data. In-depth interpretation will be included in the Discussion section.
Discussion. Emphasis should be placed on important cutting-edge findings; experimental data should be examined in the light
of previously published works. Conclusions should be presented avoiding unnecessary repetition of data and concepts already included in preceding sections. Results and Discussion can be presented as a joint section.
References. It is convenient that 70% whenever possible of bibliographic citations in all manuscripts correspond to the last 10 years and the remaining 30% be distributed in key references from previous years. Names of authors cited shall be listed in alphabetical order and numbered in sequence with Arabic numerals on a separate page. Citations in the text should appear as superscript numbers, to coincide with the number they have in the References section. Reference to personal comments and un-published works should be presented as personal communication, written between parentheses.
References should include the name of all the authors and conform to the following models:
a.Periodical publications
Héritier C, Poirel L, Lambert T, Nordmann P. Contribution of acquired carbapenem-hydrolyzing oxacillinases to carbapenem resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2005;49:3198-202.
Abbreviations of journal´s titles must be in accordance the Index Medicus (the complete list can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=journals).
b.Chapters of books/modules
Martins Teixeira L, Siqueira Carvalho M da G, Facklam RR. Enterococcus. En: Murray PR, Baron EJ, Jorgensen JH, Landry ML, Pfaller MA, editors. Manual of Clinical Microbiology, 9th edition. Washington DC, ASM Press, 2007, p. 430-42.
c.Presentations in scientific meetings or other events
Aguilar M, Punschke K, Touati D, Pianzzola MJ. Estudios fisiológicos y genéticos en la bacteria sulfato reductora Desulfoarculus baarsii. Terceras Jornadas Rioplatenses de Microbiología, 1997, Resumen J2, p. 102, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
d.Presentations in congresses or other scientific meetings in a supplement published by a periodic academic journal
Fellner MD, Correa RM, Durand K, Teyssié AR, Picconi MA. Análisis del ADN circulante de virus Epstein-Barr (EBV) en pacientes inmunosuprimidos con y sin linfomas asociados. VIII Congreso Argentino de Virología, Resumen 10416. Rev Argent Microbiol. 2005;37 Supl 1:95.
e.Institutional publications
Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Disk diffusion.Performance Standards for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing; 15th Informational Supplement, 2005; M100-S15.Wayne, PA, EE.UU.
f.Theses
Brizzio A. Aplicación de una PCR múltiple para la identificación de cepas de Staphylococcus aureus toxigénicas. Tesis de Maestría en Microbiología Molecular 2009. ANLIS “Dr. Carlos G. Malbrán” y Universidad Nacional de San Martín.
g.On-line references
1. For on-line Books
Sullivan CJ, editor. 1999-2001. Fungi: an evolving electronic resource for the microbiological community. ASM Press. [On-line]
http://link.asmusa.de/link/service/books/91090. Last checked September 7th, 2001.
2. For on-line versions of printed journals
van der Zeiss L, Danziger VB. History of clinical microbiology. Clin Microbiol. 1999;100:123-234. [On-line]
3. For journals only available on-line
Zellnitz F, Foley PM. October 1998, posting {or revision} date. History of virology. Am Virol J. 1998;1:30-50. [Online] http://www.avj.html.
4. For manuscripts published on line in advance of their publication
Zheng Z, Zou J. 5 September 2001. The initial step of the glycerolipid pathway: identification of glycerol-3-phosphate/dihydroxy-acetone phosphate dual substrate acyltransferases in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. J Biol Chem. 10.1074/jbc.M104749200.
5. For databases and websites not published in journals
Orpha.net [Internet]. Paris: Orphanet; 2000 [updated February14 2013; cited April 4 2013]. Available from: http://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-bin/index.php
h. References to other data or to unpublished abstracts of meetings, data in the publishing process or under revision; personal communications; patents already applied for or pending; or information obtained from websites must be cited in the main text between parentheses, as indicated below:
… similar results (Gómez H, unpublished results)
… new protocol used for detection (González JL, sent for publication).
… novel species of cellulolytic bacteria (Márquez W, personal communication)
… mentioned previously on different sources (http://fcen.uba.edu.ar)
Tables. They should be included on separate files, consecutively numbered with Arabic numerals, preceded by an explanatory title, with captions and/or the corresponding explanations below. Reference marks for explanations in the form of footnotes shall use superscript letter. Lines shall only be used in the external borders of the first and last row, and to separate the headings of the columns from the data. Rows and column borders shall not be inserted.
Figures. They will be included on separate files with the figure number in the upper left margin and in the order they are mentioned in the text. Drawings should be clear enough to ensure suitable reproduction. Numbers, letters and signs shall have the adequate size to be readable once reduced as needed. References to symbols used in the figures shall be included within the same figure and not in the text legend. Photographs may be in color or black and white, following Elsevier instructions. Minimum photo resolution requirements are 300 dpi for color and grayscale images and photo prints, 600 dpi for combined art images (letters and images) and 1200 dpi for images composed of lines (graphs and drawings). Note: It is very important to use the adequate file resolution. All individual images imported in a graphic file should be in the correct resolution before uploading them. Bear in mind that the higher the resolution, the larger the file and the longer it will take to send it electronically. Captions to the illustrations should be included on a separate page, in consecutive order using Arabic numerals. It is recommended to format the figures to the desired final size, taking into account a maximum width of 8 or 16 centimeters, for 1 or 2 columns respectively.
Aminoacid and nucleic acid sequences. New sequences informed by publication in this journal should be deposited in a
database and their accession number included in the manuscript, no later than revision stage. The mentioned accession numbers should be included in a separate paragraph at the end of the Materials and Methods section in the case of original works or at the end of the text in the case of brief reports.
Abbreviations.They must be made explicit when mentioned for the first time in the text. Units of measurements will be expressed according to the standards of Système International d´Unités. Abbreviations of antimicrobial agents names and taxonomic groups of microorganisms should be written according to the style guidelines (and annexes) for publishing from AAM.
Viral taxonomy can be consulted at “virus nomenclature” available at http://www.aam.org.ar/ram.php.
Supplementary data. For additional electronic data the following formats are recommended:
Format
Extension
Maximum size
PDF Documents
pdf
10 MB
JPG Image
jpg
10 MB
MP3 Audio
mp3
10 MB
MPG Video
mpg
50 MB
Supplementary data should be included on separate files with a concise and descriptive title.
This material must comply with all the requirements and ethical disclosures described in these instructions to authors. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the additional data that considers inappropriate.
SUBMITTANCE OF MANUSCRIPTS
Authors should revise the checklist file and verify that all requirements have been met. Manuscripts should be uploaded in the RAM website (http://ees.elsevier.com/ram/) including the following separate files: Cover letter, Ethical disclosures, Manuscript, Tables, Figures and when it is appropriate, Supplementary data.
EDITORIAL PROCESS
Once the processing has been completed and the manuscript is ready for publication, the authors will receive an e-mail containing a .pdf file with the galley proofs to proceed with the typographical corrections following Elsevier instructions.
Revista Argentina de Microbiología follows the policies for clinical trials registration of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), acknowledging the importance of those initiatives for the international dissemination of information on clinical research in open access format. Therefore, only articles referring to trials previously registered with an identifying number in one of the Clinical Trial Registers that meet WHO and ICMJE requirements will be accepted for publication. Their addresses are available in the ICJME site. The identifying registration number shall be published at the end of the abstract.
PROCESSING CHARGES
Articles submitted will be charged based on the type of publication; the extension and format of manuscripts will have to follow the instructions indicated above.
Proceesing charges:
Letter to editor
Images
Briefreports
Original research
Review
AAM member*
(black and white figures)
$500
$500
$1250
$1750
$3000
AAM member*
(color figures)
$750
$750
$1500
$2500
$4000
Non-members
(black and white figures)
$1000
$1000
$2500
$3500
$6000
Non-members
(color figures)
$1500
$1500
$3500
$5000
$8000
Other countries
(black and white figures)
USD 150
USD 150
USD 400
USD 600
USD 1000
Othercountries
(color figures)
USD 250
USD 250
USD 650
USD 850
USD 1400
*AAM members status are considered only for corresponding authors.
For further information regarding payment methods, please contact Asociación Argentina de Microbiología by mail at: info@aam.org.ar
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