Guide for authors: how to submit your manuscript

SCOPE AND POLICY

The SLEEP SCIENCE journal (ISSN 1984-0659 print version) published every three months, is the official organization of Associação Brasileira de Sono (ABS) and Federação Latino-Americana de Sociedades de Sono (FLASS) for publication of scientific papers concerning sleep, chronobiology, and related topics.

After being approved by the Editorial Board, all articles will be evaluated by two or three qualified reviewers, and confidentiality will be preserved throughout the review process. Articles that fail to present merit, have significant errors in methodology or are not in accordance with the editorial policy of the journal will be directly rejected by the Editorial Board, with no recourse. Original manuscripts, those that have not been published elsewhere except in abstract form, on any aspect of sleep will be considered. The accuracy of all concepts presented in the manuscript is the exclusive responsibility of the authors. The journal reserves the right to make stylistic, grammatical and other alterations to the manuscript. Manuscripts must not be concurrently submitted to any other publication, print or electronic. Articles may be written in Portuguese, Spanish or English.

Papers should state that the protocol has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Institution where the research was carried out. All studies involving human subjects should inform that written consent has been obtained from all subjects (individually).

PRESENTATION AND SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

It is requested that the authors strictly follow the editorial guidelines of the journal, particularly those regarding the maximum number of words, tables and figures permitted, as well as the rules for producing the bibliography. Failure to comply with the author instructions will result in the manuscript being returned to the authors so that the pertinent corrections can be made before it is submitted to the reviewers. Special instructions apply to the preparation of Special Supplements and Guidelines, and authors should consult the instructions in advance by visiting the homepage of the journal.

Abbreviations should be used sparingly and should be limited only to those that are widely accepted. All abbreviations should be defined at first use.

The following rules were based on the standard proposed by the International Committe of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and published in the article Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, updated in October 2009, and available from: http://www.icmje.org/

MANUSCRIPT FORMAT

This journal publishes contributions in the following categories:

Original Articles: each manuscript should clearly state its objective or hypothesis; the design and methods used (including the study setting and time period, patients or participants with inclusion and exclusion criteria, or data sources and how these were selected for the study; the essential features of any interventions; the main outcome measures; the main results of the study, and a section placing the results in the context of published literature.The text should be divided into separate sections (Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion), without a separate for conclusions. The text (excluding the title page, abstracts, references, tables, figures and figure legends) should consist of 2,000 to 3,000 words; table and figures should be limited to a total of 5 and 40 references.
Authors should state in the cover letter that the manuscript is intended to be a full-length paper.

Short Communication: a short communication is a report on a single subject which should be concise but definitive. This scope of this section is intended to be wide and to encompass methodology and experimental data on subjects of interest to the readers of the journal. The text should not exceed 12 pages double-spaced, typed in 23 line each, have a maximum of two figures or tables (or one of each) and 20 references. Authors should state in the cover letter that the manuscript is intended to be a Short-Communication.

Review article: a review article should provide a synthetic and critical analysis of a relevant area and should not be merely a chronological description of the literature. The text may be divided into sections with appropriate titles and subtitles. The text should not exceed 5,000 words, excluding references and illustrations (figures or tables). The number of illustrations should not exceed 8 and 60 references.
The authors should state in the cover letter that the manuscript is intended to be a Review Article.

Case report: a case report should have at least one of the following characteristics to be published in the journal: of special interest to the clinical research community; a rare case that is particularly useful to demonstrate a mechanism or a difficulty in diagnosis; new diagnostic method; new or modified treatment; a text that demonstrates relevant findings and is well documented and without ambiguity.
Case Reports should not exceed 1,500 words, excluding title page, abstract, references and illustrations. The number of references should not exceed 20.

Overview: an Overview does not contain unpublished data. It presents the point of view of the author(s) in a less rigorous form than in a regular review or mini-review and is of interest to the general reader. The text should not exceed 5,000 words, excluding references and illustrations (figures or tables). The number of illustrations should not exceed 8 and 60 references.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The title page should include the title in English and in Portuguese; a running title to be used as a page heading, which should not exceed 60 letters and spaces; the full names and institutional affiliations of all authors; complete address, including telephone number, fax number and e-mail address, of the principal author; and a declaration of any and all sources of funding.

Abstract: The abstract should present the information in such a way that the reader can easily understand without referring to the main text. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. Abstracts should be structured as follows: Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusion.
Abstracts for review articles and case reports may be unstructured. Abstracts for Short Communications and Case Reports should not exceed 100 words and should not be structured.

Keywords: Three to six keywords in English defining the subject of the study should be included.

Whenever possible, also provide abstract and keywords in portuguese.

Tables and Figures: All tables and figures should be in black and white, on separate pages, with legends and captions appearing at the foot of each. All tables and figures should be submitted as files in their original format. Tables should be submitted as Microsoft Word files, whereas figures should be submitted as Microsoft Excel, .tiff or .jpg files. Photographs depicting surgical procedures, as well as those showing the results of exams or biopsies, in which dying and special techniques were used will be considered for publication in color, at no additional cost to the authors. Dimensions, units and symbols should be based on the corresponding guidelines set forth by the Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT, Brazilian Association for the Establishment of Technical Norms), available from: http://www.abnt.org.br.

Legends: Legends should accompany the respective figures (graphs, photographs and illustrations) and tables. Each legend should be numbered with an Arabic numeral corresponding to its citation in the text. In addition, all abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols should be defined below each table or figure in which they appear.

References: References should be listed in order of their appearance in the text and should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. The presentation should follow the Vancouver Style, updated in October of 2004, according to the examples below. The titles of the journals listed should be abbreviated according to the style presented by the List of Journals Indexed in the Index Medicus of the National Library of Medicine, available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/journals/loftext.noprov.html.
A total of six authors may be listed. For works with more than six authors, list the first six, followed by 'et al.'

Examples:

Journal articles
1. Tufik S, Lindsey CJ, Carlini EA. Does REM sleep deprivation induce a supersensitivity of dopaminergic receptors in the rat brain? Pharmacology. 1978;16(2):98-105.
2. Andersen ML, Poyares D, Alves RS, Skomro R, Tufik S. Sexsomnia: abnormal sexual behavior during sleep. Brain Res Rev. 2007;56:271-82.

Abstracts
3. Moreno CRC, Carvalho FA, Matuzaki LA, Louzada FM. Effects of irregular working hours on sleep and alertness in Brazilian truck drivers [abstract]. Sleep. 2002;25:399.

Chapter in a book
4. Andersen ML, Bittencourt LR. Fisiologia do sono. In: Tufik S, editor. Medicina e biologia do sono. São Paulo: Manole; 2007. P. 48-58.

Official publications
5. World Health Organization. Guidelines for surveillance of drug resistance in tuberculosis. 2nd ed. Geneva: WHO; 2003. p. 1-24.

Thesis
6. Bittencourt L. Avaliação davariabilidade do Índice de apnéia e hipopnéia em pacientes portadores da síndrome da apnéia e hipopnéia do sono obstrutiva [tese]. São Paulo: Universidade Federal de São Paulo; 1999.

Electronic publications
7. Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [Internet]. 2002 [cited 2002 Aug 12];102(6):[about 3 p.]. Available from: http://www.nursingworld.org/ AJN/2002/june/Wawatch.htm

Homepages/URLs
8. Cancer-Pain.org [Internet]. New York: Association of Cancer Online Resources, Inc., c2000-01 [updated 2002 May 16; cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: http://www.cancer-pain.org/

Other situations:
In other situations not mentioned in these author instructions, the recommendations given by the ICMJE should be followed, specifically those in the article Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication (Updated October 200 9), available from: http://www.icmje.org/. Additional examples for special situations involving references can be obtained at: www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The manuscript must be accompanied by a letter signed by all authors, with permission for publication and a statement that is unprecedented and has not been submitted for publication in another journal or book. That letter must include: a) conflicts of interest; b) certificate of approval by the ethics committee of the institution where the research was carried out when the investigation involves experiments on humans or animals; c) documentation of the possible sources of funding work; d) a statement that participants provided signed consent forms, in the case of medical research on humans; e) letter of transfer of copyright to the Journal Sleep Science.

Important note: the journal Sleep Science in support of policies for the registration of clinical trials of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the ICMJE, recognizing the importance of such initiatives for recording and promoting international information on clinical studies, open access, will only accept for publication from August 2009 articles of clinical research that have received an identification number to one of the Clinical Trial Registry validated by the criteria established by WHO and ICMJE, available from: http://clinicaltrials.gov or the Pubmed website.

All manuscripts submissions for the Sleep Science must be submitted via e-mail, to sleepscience@sleepscience.com.br

Associação Brasileira de Sono - Sleep Science
Rua Marselhesa, 500 - 13° andar - Vl. Clementino
São Paulo, SP - Brazil
CEP 04020-060
Fax no.: +55 11 5908 7111