I. EDITORIAL POLICIES
HSD’s Publications Policy Committee follows the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for guidance on policies and procedures related to publication ethics. The policies for HSD have been adapted from those three advisory bodies and, where necessary, modified and tailored to meet the specific content, audiences, and aims of HSD.
Manuscripts are initially checked by the editor in chief or section editor for identification of gross deficiencies. At this stage, the proposal may be rejected. After this initial screening, articles are sent to two-reviewers. The review process may take days to weeks to reach a decision. The duration from submission to publication may take one to six months (average: 2 months). So, the authors should avoid contacting the editorial office less than 6 weeks after the initial submission.
A. Plagiarism, Scientific Misconduct
Manuscripts proven of plagiarism will be returned to the authors without peer review. The editors reserve the right to request that the authors provide additional data collected during their investigations. The editors also reserve the right to send a copy of the manuscript and data in question to the author’s dean, university, or supervisor or, in the case of an investigation being funded by an agency, to that funding agency for appreciation.
B. Conflict of Interest
At the time of submission, authors are asked to disclose whether they have any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that may influence directly or indirectly the work submitted for consideration.
C. Human and Animal Studies
Manuscripts reporting results of prospective or retrospective studies involving human subjects must document that appropriate institutional review board (IRB) approval and informed consent were obtained (or waived by the IRB) after the nature of the procedure(s) had been fully explained.
D. Authorship
To be listed as an author, an individual must have made substantial contributions to all three categories established by the ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org): (a) “conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data,” (b) “drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content,” and (c) “final approval of the version to be published.” Individuals who have not made substantial contributions in all three categories but who have made substantial contributions either to some of them or in other areas should be listed in acknowledgments.
Please limit the number of authors to ten when this is feasible.
E. Content licensing
Articles published in HSD are Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
F. Language
HSD is bilingual and accepts publications in French and English. All the publications should have an abstract in both languages. Whenever possible, picture captions and table titles should be in both languages. All accepted manuscripts are copy-edited.
Particularly if English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript, HSD advises the work to have it edited for language.
G. Artificial Intelligence (AI)–Assisted Technology
At submission, the authors should disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted technologies in the production of the publication and how AI was used. However, authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author.
II. TYPES OF ARTICLES
The main sections are original articles, clinical cases, brief reports, review articles, letters to the editor, pictures and disease, medicine and society or book reviews
III. CHECK LISTS
1. For studies dealing with diagnostic accuracy, use the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/stard/
2. For randomized controlled trials, use the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement (BMJ 2010; 340).
3. For systemic reviews and meta-analyses of diagnostic test accuracy studies, follow the PRISMA-DTA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews-Diagnostic Test Accuracy) guidelines) http://www.prisma-statement.org/Extensions/DTA.
4. For observational studies, such as cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional studies, use the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines. https://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=strobe-home
V. SEARCH OPTIMIZATION
Please, follow these advices to improve your article's discoverability and search results. 1) Avoid long article titles (>20 words); 2) Include keywords in the title; 3) Pick 5-8 keywords using a mix of generic and more specific terms on the article subject(s); 4) Use the maximum amount of keywords in the first two sentences of the abstracts and also try to use some keywords in level major subheadings headings.
VI. CORRECTIONS
Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, we accept corrections for grammatical and orthographic errors as well as corrections in the spelling of author names or affiliation. But, we do not accept to change the order of authors, add new authors or remove authors. Moreover, significant changes anywhere in the text are not accepted after publication.
VII. ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES (APC)
Article submission is free of charges, but if your paper is accepted for publication, you will be asked to pay article processing charges to cover publications costs, depending on the type, complexity and length of the work, and on the number of authors. To guarantee HSD independence, APC cover publication charges such as electronic archiving, plagiarism checking, editing, peer review process, site maintenance and web-hosting, proofreading, quality check, PDF designing and article maintenance. The minimum amount of APC is about 200 euros or 220 dollars. If you do not have enough funds to pay such fees, you will have an opportunity to partially waive each fee.
VIII. FAST TRACK
Please, contact the editor in chief. Special article processing charges may apply.