Submissions

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• COVER Letter and TITLE page have been attached, including two suggestions for a referee for your paper with full names, institution and email addresses
• An ABSTRACT and KEYWORDS have been included as part of the main manuscript
• The BLINDED manuscript includes line numbers, and all figures and tables are referenced in the text.
• The submission file is Microsoft Word document file format.
• Manuscripts must include a statement that an institutional ethics review committee approved the study. If approval was not required, please mention proof of this.
• Publication has been approved by all authors, and all persons designated as authors qualify for authorship. Each author has no financial interest in the material or, if so, there is an attached statement noting potential or real conflict of interest
• The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• If applicable, a reporting checklist has been appended (e.g. PRISMA checklist for systematic review, CARE checklist for case reports, etc. See Author Guidelines for details.
• Where available, URLs for the references have been provided, and references appear in numerical order in the text.
• If submitting a REVISION, you have included the response to reviewers document, and highlighted all changes in the blinded revised manuscript.