Instructions for Reviewers

COMMENTS FOR THE EDITOR

1 - Brief presentation of the study: objective, type (observational, diagnostic efficacy, retrospective, prospective, meta-analysis, etc.), sample size. Include the authors' main conclusions.

2 - Construction of the manuscript: length and general organization

3 - Strengths (e.g., originality, convincing results, clinical/scientific importance)

4 - Weaknesses (e.g., inappropriate language, methodological errors, irrelevant results, conclusions not supported by the results, lack of clinical impact, errors in the bibliography)

5 - Opinion: citation potential, impact on clinical practice, scientific impact. Recommendation (rejection, major revision, minor revision, acceptance).

COMMENTS FOR THE AUTHORS

The same comments to the editor 1-4 (or similar ones with strengths and weaknesses) should be included here, but not the Opinion.

ABSTRACT (structured)

1 - Objectives: is the objective of the study clear and explicit?

2 - Materials and Methods: basic information that allows understanding of the study methodology?

3 - Results: clear and concise?

4 - Conclusion: clear and short?

5 - Abbreviations: should be defined at the first occurrence, except for very common names (CT, MRI, US) and common ones.

6 - The word count of the Abstract should be 250 or less.

KEYWORDS

7 - Should be included in MESH: see the meshondemand website for suggestions: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/oet/ed/mesh/meshondemand.html.

ABBREVIATIONS

8 - Complete list of abbreviations used.

9 - Abbreviations should be defined at the first occurrence in the text, except for common abbreviations: for example CT, MRI, US.

TITLE

10 - Should be short, informative and catchy. Very common abbreviations may be included (CT, MRI, US, etc.).

INTRODUCTION

11 - This should usually consist of three paragraphs: the first is a general position on the topic, the second focuses on the specific question of the study, the third is a summary presentation and the objective of the study. At the end, the reader should have a clear idea of ​​the question that the study addresses, and the answer will be found in the first paragraph of the Discussion.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

12 - Clear description of everything that was done in the study, so that the reader can fully replicate the study, if they have the same conditions. In clinical studies, the selection of participants (inclusion and exclusion criteria), data collection methods and data processing methods should be very clear here. The description of the actual numbers should be in the Results section.

13 - At the beginning of this section, ethical considerations (Declaration of Helsinki and approval by the Ethics Committee) and use of informed consent should be mentioned.

RESULTS

13 - The final sample of the study should be found here. The results should be presented as simply as possible, with few numbers in text. Larger amounts of data should be presented in tables, which are immediately understandable without having to read the text. Figures should be included in this section.

14 - All results of the study should be in this section. No results should appear for the first time in the Discussion.

DISCUSSION

15 - The first paragraph answers the question raised in the Introduction, briefly summarizing and interpreting the results. The second paragraph should integrate the results into the literature, making comparisons and explaining the added value of the study. Potential discrepancies should also be interpreted. There may be more than one paragraph to integrate the literature, depending on the amount and variety of data to be discussed, but the Discussion should be kept to the point and short. The penultimate paragraph honestly addresses the limitations of the study and suggests solutions. The last paragraph - the conclusion - usually consists of one or two short sentences explaining the final value of the study.

FIGURES

16 - Figures should be of high quality, with clear annotations where necessary, and self-explanatory captions. Each figure conveys unique information; there should be no figures that repeat information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

17 - They should be current and reflect the state-of-the-art knowledge. Check whether ARP references that could potentially contribute to the study are included. Whenever possible, confirm that the references refer to the studies where the data are reported, and not to review articles.