Editorial Standards

Updated on: 17/09/2024

The manuscripts for the Revista Argentina de Salud Pública must be sent to: rasp@msal.gov.ar

NOTE: Before sending the manuscript, download and fill in the Submission Checklist and send it together with the Letter to the Editor, the front page, the body of the article and the graphics. Also, refer to the sections of both publications to check characteristics.

1. Format

- The text must be submitted in Word format, without spacing, in Times New Roman font size 12, page A4 size, margins set at 1 inch (2.5 cm), and consecutively numbered pages.

- Do not use bold, underlining, bullets or justified margin: italics must be used only for words in a foreign language or verbatims. Bullets should be shown as dashes.

- The body of the article (including abstract, keywords and bibliographic references) must be submitted with line numbering.

- In order to help preserve the identity of the author during peer review, all documents sent when submitting an article should be anonymized. Refer to our Procedures for Anonymization of Documents (only for Original Articles, Reviews, Research Protocols and Case Report/Case Series).

2. Front Page

 The front page must be sent as a separate document with the following information:

- Title: The titles of all manuscripts must be written in Spanish and English and the maximum extension must be 135 characters, including spaces.

- Author and affiliation: Authors must be identified in order of preference – for the purpose of this publication, the first author will be considered the main one – as follows: complete name/s and last name/s. The author must indicate their last graduate and/or post-graduate degree, including specialization and his/her/their institutional affiliation/s either at present or at the time of the research. In the case of manuscripts submitted for the Original Articles section, only the institutions related to the research or the research project that originated the submitted manuscript must be mentioned; for the remaining sections of the journal, the criterion will be to select the institutional affiliation/s related to the manuscript submission, including, in each case, only the main one (for example University of Buenos Aires, rather than Pharmacovigilance chair, School of Pharmacy, University of Buenos Aires; or Gino Germani Research Institute, University of Buenos Aires, rather than Gino Germani Research Institute, School of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires).

- Corresponding author: include email address.

- Participation of each author: (it does not apply to Milestones and Key Players or to articles of a single author) the participation of each author in the study must be detailed, as required by the  International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, updated in December 2016 and available in English at http://www.icmje.org/icmjerecommendations.pdf and in Spanish at http:// www.icmje.org/recommendations/translations/spanish2016.pdf. In order to attribute study authorship, each of the authors should meet all the following conditions:

• Having made substantial contributions to the conception and the design of the study, collection or analysis and interpretation of data for the work.
• Having drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content.
• Having approved the final version of the manuscript.
• Being accountable for all aspects of the manuscript ensuring that questions related to accuracy or integrity of any part of the manuscript have been properly researched and resolved.
• The RASP adheres to the ICMJE guidelines on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology for the writing of scientific articles as well as to the principles established in the Heredia Declaration. Authors who have used such technology for the writing of any sections or parts of their article should disclose it in both the Letter to the Editor and the appropriate section/s. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are required for authorship.

Therefore, in order to respond to this aspect, the following formula should be included in the body of the article and placed below the Declaration of conflicts of interest:

"All authors have made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the study or to the collection, analysis or interpretation of the data; have participated in the drafting of the article or in the critical review of its intellectual content; have approved the final version of the manuscript; and are capable of responding with respect to all aspects of the manuscript with a view to ensuring that issues related to the veracity or integrity of all its contents have been adequately investigated and resolved."

Persons who participated in the study, but do not meet the four above mentioned authorship criteria, can be listed as collaborators in the Acknowledgements section (refer to point 6).

- Funding sources: scholarships, laboratories, no funding has been received, none, etc.

- Conflict of interests: The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE,), in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, also known as Vancouver Standards [http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/translations/spanish2016.pdf], indicate that when the authors “submit a manuscript of any type, they should disclose all financial or personal relationships that might bias or suggest a bias to their work”. In this sense, the editor expresses that conflicts of interests interfere with the presentation, review or publication and may have an inappropriate and unscientific influence on the interpretation of results. They may be related with the attributes of the professionals in contact with the patient (such as using a particular procedure, medication or instrument), or affected by secondary (financial, non-financial, professional, personal) gains, or be related with property, paid consultancy, patents, subsidies, fees and presents. Non-financial conflicts may be related to memberships, relationships, or appearance as expert witness. Occasionally, the conflict of interest emerges from the relationship of the author with an organization or person. Although conflicts cannot be completely eliminated, if the author is certain or even suspects they exist, he/she should declare them in the Letter to the Editor and in the body of the article, before the bibliographic references.

- Date of submission for publication.

- Research registration number: (only requested for the submission of Original Articles or Research Protocols). It must be obtained at the National Registry of Health Research [Registro Nacional de Investigaciones en Salud].

3. Body of the article

 The body of the article (excluding the front page and the graphics) should be submitted with line numbers and will include the following elements:

 3.1 Abstract

- The articles of all sections must include an abstract in Spanish and in English with a maximum extension of 1500 characters, including spaces, in each language.

- The structure of the abstract should include the following sections: Introduction (study setting or background); Objective/s; Methods (basic procedures, patient screening, observation or measurement methods, etc.); Results (those considered relevant with their statistical measurements – if applicable – and type of analysis) and Discussion, except for Milestones and Key Players, narrative or descriptive reviews, and Editorial, the format of which is specified in the information for each section.

- The past tense should be used, especially when referring to the results of the work.

3.2 Keywords

- After the abstract, 3 to 5 keywords should be specified, in Spanish and in English, separated by a semi colon and a space, summarizing the main topics of the manuscript.

- With the purpose of facilitating the retrieval of articles published on Internet searches, it is advisable to use the terms specified in the list of descriptors of the Virtual Health Library in Spanish, English and Portuguese. Available at: http://decs.bvs.br/E/homepagee.htm

3.3 Bibliographic references

The RASP adopts the style and format of bibliographic references established in the Vancouver Standards. For examples, refer to:

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html

The references should be specified in superscript Arabic numerals manually rather than as an endnote at the end of the document, in consecutive order as they appear in the article. Citations should be included at the end of the manuscript, observing the order and the numbers assigned in the text.

Reference to articles accepted but unpublished should be referred as “in press”. The information of manuscripts under evaluation but not accepted, should be cited in the text as “unpublished observations” with the written permission of the source. Avoid citing “a personal communication”, unless it provides essential information not available from a public source; in this case, the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text. For scientific articles, written permission and confirmation of the accuracy of the source of a personal communication should be obtained.

The titles of journals should be abbreviated following the Index Medicus published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine through Medline: [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/journals]. If not indexed, the complete name of the journal must be cited.

4. Tables, graphs, figures and photographs

- Graphics, that is, tables, graphs, figures and photographs should be submitted as a separate document, with consecutive numbers, indicating the reference in the text.

- They should include title and caption. The caption will include the references to symbols or abbreviations with specific signs in the following order: *, †, ‡, §, ||, ¶, **, ††, ‡‡, and the sources of data used.

- The letters, numbers and symbols should be clear and in an appropriate size (Times New Roman 8-12 is recommended) that allows reading them after being downsized.

- Tables should be submitted in the form of editable cells, in Word or Excel format; tables inserted as an image within a Word document will not be accepted.

- The body of the table must not include vertical lines. The title must be presented outside the table and the (short) titles of each column must be on the first row. The quantitative results must include the statistical measures obtained.

- The source of graph production of any type should be included below the graph only in the case of secondary sources or in the case of use of Artificial Intelligence tools, indicating their name and version.

- Graphs must be self-explanatory and will be presented in an Excel document, with its coordinates identified with the name of the variable represented and indicating the “n”, if applicable.

- For the publication of already published graphics, the corresponding authorization of the author and publisher of the magazine where they were first published must be presented.

Dimensions of graphics

Section	Width	Height
Original Articles and Reviews	2.9 in (7.5 cm) or 6.2 in (16 cm)	8.6 in (22 cm) (max.)
Other sections	4.1 in (10.5 cm) or 6.2 in (16 cm)	8.6 in (22 cm) (max.)

- The minimal resolution of images (photographs, maps, etc.) must be 300 dpi and be submitted as a separate file in jpeg, tiff or png format. Images inserted in Word, Power Point or other equivalent files will not be admitted.

- The photographs that include people must respect the principles of privacy and have a written authorization for publication.

5. Abbreviations and symbols

In order to avoid confusions, only standard abbreviations must be used. Abbreviations should we written out in full on first use, followed by the abbreviated form in parentheses.

6. Acknowledgements

The collaboration of people, research groups and/or institutions not directly involved in the elaboration of the work, but who performed an important activity in its development, can appear in this section, identified by their first and last name/s or the name of the institution. In all cases, the contribution to the research work must be mentioned.