Submissions

Author Guidelines

Aims & Scope

The journal,Advances in Precision Medicine (APM) bring stogether all aspects of the rapidly growing field of personalized/precision medicine.

Biomarkers are a key focus of APM’s scope. In particular, papers on stratification biomarkers and companion diagnostics enabling personalized medicine are highly welcome. Other categories of biomarkers accepted for consideration include pharmacodynamic biomarkers demonstrating target engagement which are potentially useful for dose finding, safety biomarkers to exclude patients with high risk for side effects or to detect induction of adverse effects early, and disease biomarkers which can be used for diagnosis, as surrogate endpoints, or to determine early response to therapy.

All stages in Biomarker Discovery (research and development) as well as its utilization, i.e. identification, validation and application will be covered. Apart from biomarkers and according assays, novel technologies, strategic and general aspects are of interest too. This includes approaches for marker/assay/device development strategies, collaborative approaches and regulatory aspects with impact on personalized medicine. Novel therapies, even if not guided by biomarkers, may be considered if they specifically target a particular molecule and/or a special patient subpopulation. Validation studies are highly encouraged. APM will also consider publishing negative data.

The target audiencesof APM are the scientific and healthcare communities of basic scientists and clinicians from academia, regulatory institutions, and industry. This includes pharma, diagnostic and device companies.

Articles include original articles, reviews, perspectives, editorials, commentaries, position papers, conference reports and letters tothe editor. The journal welcomes unsolicited article proposals in all categories except for “Editorials”. Authors are encouraged to refer to APM’s “Section Policies” for more information.

APM provides a vital forum for the exchange of important information in all areas of personalized medicine and biomarker research, development and application.

We are devoted to making APM a high-quality, frequently cited journal that publishes superior scholarly articles and disseminates the latest advances in the field.

Section categories

The types of articles accepted for consideration include original articles, reviews, perspectives, editorials, commentaries, position papers, conference reports and letters to the editor.

Original Articles

Scientific articles on original basic and applied research and/or analysis.
This manuscript type typically has 5 tables and figures in total, and approximately 40 references and 7,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract)

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review Articles

A summary highlighting recent developments and current/future trends of the field.
This manuscript type typically has 5 tables and figures in total, and approximately 70 references and 7,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract).

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Perspective Articles

These are author’s personal opinions on a subject/topic. Unlike Reviews, Perspective Articles may cover a more specific, narrow part of the field. However, these manuscripts are still required to uphold the spirit of academia to be objective as well as aim to initiate or further discussions and novel experimental procedures in the field. 
This manuscript type typically has 5 tables and figures in total, and approximately 40 references and 5,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract).

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Letters to the Editor-in-Chief

Comments from reader(s) about individual articles. These letters must be constructive and contribute to the development of individual articles published or the entire journal. Letters containing new ideas, supporting data or data criticizing any articles may be subjected to peerreview (determined on a case-by-case basis by the journal’s editorial team) and published in the online publication but not in the printed version. 
This manuscript type typically has 1,800 words (exclusive of reference list)

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Editorials

Solicited concise commentary highlighting prominent topics in the journal issue. These are the official opinions of the editors of the journal or special issue. Editorials will be published in both the online and printed versions of the journal.
This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words. Authors are welcome to propose ideas/themes to the Editor-in-Chief.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Commentaries

Unsolicited commentaries or analysis from reader(s) targeting specific published articles in the journal. Commentaries will be subjected to peerreview and may be published in both online and printed versions of the journal. 
This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Conference reports

Solicited reports from topic-related conferences, meetings, and congresses that are of interest to readers such as novel trendsand perspectives. Such reports will be subjected to peerreview and may be published in both online and printed versions of the journal. Authors are welcome to propose ideas for such articles to the Editor-in-Chief for consideration.

This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Position Papers

Submissions that reflect the official opinion of an organization (e.g. government bodies, funding agencies etc.)

This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Manuscript Format

Your manuscript should be in MS Word or LaTeX format. You are advised to download the document, Instructions for Typesetting Manuscript, as a template or for more details on preparing your submissions for consideration.

All manuscripts must be written in clear, comprehensible English. Usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum and all must be italicized, except for “e.g.” and “i.e.” If you have concerns about the level of English in your submission, please ensure that it is proofread before submission by a native English speaker or a scientific editing service.

Cover letter

All submissions should include a cover letter as a separate file. A cover letter should contain a brief explanation of what was previously known, the conceptual advancement with the findings and its significance to broad readership. The cover letter is confidential and will be read only by the editors. It will not be seen by reviewers.

Title

The title should capture the conceptual significance for a broad audience. The title should not be more than 50 words and should be able to give readers an overall view of the paper’s significance. Titles should avoid using uncommon jargons, abbreviations and punctuation.

List of Authors

The names of authors must be spelled out rather than set in initials (except for middle names) along with their affiliations in full. Authors should be listed according to the extent of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. All corresponding authors should be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. Only the email address of one corresponding author must be included within the manuscript. However, during the online submission process, submitters should provide a phone contact (office/personal) for urgent communication purposes between author and publisher only. Please note that all authors must see and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting.

Abstract

Articles must include an abstract containing a maximum of 200 words. The purpose of abstract is to provide sufficient information for a reader to determine whether or not to proceed to the full text of the article. After the abstract, please give 5–8 key words; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title.

Section Headings

Please number the section headings (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) in boldface. Likewise, use boldface to identify subheadings too but please distinguish it from major headings using numbers (e.g. 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, etc.) Further subsections of subheadings should be differentiated by non-boldface font with the numbers in parenthesis: (1), (2), (3), etc.

Introduction

Introduction should provide a background that gives a broad readership an overall outlook of the field and the research performed. It tackles a problem and states its important regarding with the significance of the study. Introduction can conclude with a brief statement of the aim of the work and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Materials and Methods

This section provides the general experimental design and methodologies used. The aim is to provide enough detail to for other investigators to fully replicate your results. It is also required to facilitate better understanding of the results obtained. Protocols and procedures for new methods must be included in detail to reproduce the experiments.

Ethics

Ethics information, including Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) permit numbers and/or Institutional Review Board (IRB) name, if applicable. This information should be included in a subheading labeled "Ethics Statement" in the "Methods" section of your manuscript file, in as much detail as possible.

Results

This section can be divided into subheadings; please refer to the section above: Section headings. This section focuses on the results of the experiments performed.

Discussion

This section should provide the significance of the results and identify the impact of the research in a broader context. It should not be redundant or similar to the content of the results section.

Conclusion

Please use the conclusion section for interpretation only, and not to summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.

Author Contributions

This section describes the contribution of each author, designated by initials. For the case of co-first authors, description of each author’s contribution is required.

Conflict of Interest

All authors are required to declare all activities that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest in relations to their submitted manuscript. Examples of such activities could include personal or work-related relationships, events, etc. Authors who have nothing to declare are encouraged to add "No conflict of interest was reported by all authors" in this section.

Funding

Authors should declare all financial and non-financial support that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest in relations to their submitted manuscript in this section. Financial supports are generally in the form of grants, royalties, consulting fees and more. Examples of non-financial support could include the following: externally-supplied equipments/biological sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors etc. If there is no funding to declare, authors should indicate as such rather than erase this section from their manuscript.

Appendix

This section is optional and is for all materials (e.g. advanced technical details) that has been excluded from the main text but remain essential to readers in understanding the manuscripts. This section is not for supplementary figures/information. Authors are advised to refer to the section on ‘Supplementary information’ for such submissions.

Text

The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word or LaTeX. The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 50000 characters (inclusive of spaces) or approximately 7000 words.

Nomenclature for genes and proteins

This journal aims to reach researchers all over the globe. Hence, for both reviewers’ and readers’ ease in comprehension, authors are highly encourage to use the appropriate gene and protein nomenclature. Authors may prefer to utilize resources such as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene

Figures

Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as 1 file in the OJS system. Figures include photographs, scanned images, graphs, charts and schematic diagrams. Figures submitted should avoid unnecessary decorative effects (e.g. 3D graphs) as well as be minimally processed (e.g. changes in brightness and contrast applied uniformly for the entire figure). It should also be set against a white background. Please remember to label all figures (e.g. axis etc.) and add in captions (below the figure) as required. These captions should be numbered (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) in boldface. All figures must have a brief title (also known as caption) that describes the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a legend defined as descriptionof each panel. Please identify each panel with uppercase letters in parenthesis (e.g. (A), (B), (C), etc.)

The preferred file formats for any separately submitted figure(s) are TIFF or JPEG. All figures should be legible in print form and of optimal resolution. Optimal resolutions preferred are 300 dots per inch for RBG coloured, 600 dots per inch for greyscale and 1200 dots per inch for line art. Although there are no file size limitation imposed, authors are highly encouraged to compress their figures to an ideal size without unduly affecting legibility and resolution of figures. This will also speed up the process of uploading in the submission system.

The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher reserve the right to request from author(s) the high-resolution files and unprocessed data and metadata files should the need arise at any point after manuscript submission for reasons such as production, evaluation or other purposes. The file name should allow for ease in identifying the associated manuscript submitted.

Tables, lists and equations

Tables created using Microsoft word table function are preferred. The tables should include a title. Titles and footnotes/legends should be concise. These must be submitted together with the manuscript. Likewise, lists and equations should be properly aligned and its meaning clear to readers.

Supplementary information

This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the entire manuscript. These information are relevant to the manuscript but remains non-essential to readers’ understanding of the manuscript’s main content. All supplementary information should be submitted as a separate file in Step 4 during submission. Please ensure the names of such files contain ‘suppl. info’.

In-text citations

Reference citations in the text should be numbered consecutively in superscript square brackets. Some examples:

a) Negotiation research spans many disciplines^[3,4].

b) This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman^[5].

c) This effect has been widely studied^[1–3,7].

Personal communications and unpublished works can only be used in the main text of the submission and are not to be placed in the Reference section. Authors are advised to limit such usage to the minimum. They should also be easily identifiable by stating the authors and year of such unpublished works or personal communications and the word ‘Unpublished’ in parenthesis.

E.g. (Smith J, 2000, Unpublished)

References

This section is compulsory and should be placed at the end of all manuscripts. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should be excluded from this section.

For references in reference list, all authors must be stated. Authors referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. All references should be numbered (e.g. 1. 2. 3. etc.) and sequenced according to the order it appears as an in-text citation. References should follow the following pattern: Author(s) followed by year of publication, title of publication, standard full journal name in italics, volume number, issue number in parenthesis and lastly, page range. If the referred article has more than three authors, list only the first three authors and abbreviate the remaining authors to italicized ‘et al.’ (meaning: "and others").

Examples:

Journal

Journal article (print) with one to three authors

Younger P, 2004, Using the internet to conduct a literature search. Nursing Standard, vol.19(6): 45–51. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1222/j.1111-2648.2007.043435.

Journal article (print) with more than three authors

Gamelin F X, Baquet G, Berthoin S, et al. 2009, Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. European Journal of Applied Physiology, vol.105: 731–738. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1222/jhge-2648.2007.0434354.he.

Journal article (online) with one to three authors

Jackson D, Firtko A and Edenborough M, 2007, Personal resilience as a strategy for surviving and thriving in the face of workplace adversity: a literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol.60(1): 1–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04412.x.

Journal article (online) with more than three authors

Hargreave M, Jensen A, Nielsen T S S, et al. 2015, Maternal use of fertility drugs and risk of cancer in children-A nationwide population-based cohort study in Denmark. International Journal of Cancer, vol.136(8): 1931–1939. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijc.29235.

Journal article (in press/forthcoming) with one to three authors

Younger P, 2004, Using the internet to conduct a literature search. Nursing Standard, vol.19(6): 45–51. (In press)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1222/j.1111-2648.2007.043435.

Note: 'In press'in this section refers to articles published online and with a valid Digital Object Identifier (preferred) or url but have not yet been assigned to any issue nor has been printed; electronic-only journals and its articles are not counted as ‘in press’. Authors should refer to the format for online documents in cases of electronic-only resources.

Book

Book with one to three authors

Schneider Z, Whitehead D and Elliott D, 2007, Nursing and midwifery research: methods and appraisal for evidence-based practice. 3rd edn, Elsevier Australia, Marrickville, NSW

Book with more than three authors

Davis M, Charles L, Curry M J, et al. 2003, Challenging spatial norms. Routledge, London

Chapter or Article in Book

Knowles M S, 1986, Independent study, in Using learning contracts. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 89–96.

Book with one to three authors (in press/forthcoming)

Posner M I and Rothbart M K, 2007, Educating the human brain. American Psychological Association, Washington. (In press)

Chapter or Article in Book(in press/forthcoming)

Zimmermann S, Chai L and Wang X, 2015, Progress of electrospinning in organ manufacturing, in Organ Manufacturing. Nova Science Publishers Inc, New York.(In press)
Note: 'In press' in this sectionrefers tobooks/book chapters that havenot been printed but that the Publisher has plans to produce print copies; electronic-only books and its chapters are not counted as ‘in press’. Authors should refer to the format for online documents in cases of electronic-only resources.

Others

Proceedings of meetings and symposiums, conference papers

Chang S S, Liaw L and Ruppenhofer J (eds), 2000, Proceedings of the twenty-fifth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12–15, 1999: general session and parasession on loan word phenomena. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley.

Conference proceedings (from electronic database)

Bukowski R M, 2009, Prognostic factors for survival in metastatic renal cell carcinoma, Innovations and challenges in renal cancer: proceedings of the third Cambridge conference, Cancer, vol.115(10): 2273, viewed May19, 2009, Academic OneFile database.

Online Document with author names

Este J, Warren C, Connor L, et al. 2008, Life in the clickstream: the future of journalism, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, viewed May 27, 2009, http://www.alliance.org.au/documents/ foj_report_final.pdf

Online Document without author name

Developing an argument n.d., viewed March 30, 2009, http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writing/Writing_Center/WCWritingResources.htm

Thesis/Dissertation

Gale L, 2000, The relationship between leadership and employee empowerment for successful total quality management, thesis, Penrith, University of Western Sydney, viewed March 31, 2009, Australasian Digital Thesis database.

Standard

Standards Australia Online 2006, Glass in buildings: selection and installation, AS 1288–2006, amended 31 January 2008, viewed May19, 2009, SAI Global database.

Government Report

National Commission of Audit 1996, Report to the Commonwealth Government, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.

Government report (online)

Department of Health and Ageing 2008, Ageing and aged care in Australia, viewed November 10, 2008, http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing

Patent

Rencher W, 1995, Biocompatible drug delivery gel containing mixture of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, xanthan gum and/or alginates, diluent. US Patent 5192802 A.

No author

Guide to agricultural meteorological practices 1981, 2nd edn, Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization, Geneva.

Note: When referencing an entry from a dictionary or an encyclopedia with no author there is no requirement to include the source in the reference list. In these cases, only cite the title and year of the source in-text. For an authored dictionary/encyclopedia, treat the source as an authored book.