Journal of Cystic Fibrosis publishes original scientific articles, editorials, case reports, short communications and other information
relevant to cystic fibrosis and is published four times a year. Accepted papers become the copyright of the Journal and are accepted
on the understanding that they have not been published, and are not being considered for publication elsewhere and are subject to editorial
revision.
Online Submission of Manuscripts to the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis:
Submission and peer review of
all papers is now conducted entirely online, increasing efficiency for editors, authors, and reviewers, and enhancing publication speed.
Submit online at: 
http://ees.elsevier.com/jcf/
Authors are guided stepwise through the entire process, and are kept
abreast of the progress of their paper at each stage.
The system creates PDF version of the submitted manuscript for peer review,
revision and proofing. All correspondence, including the Editor's decision and request for revisions, is conducted by e-mail.
Authors
requesting further information on online submission are strongly encouraged to view the system, including a tutorial, at http://ees.elsevier.com/jcf.
A comprehensive Author Support service is also available to answer additional enquiries at authorsupport@elsevier.com.
Transparent peer review
The Journal of Cystic Fibrosis has a policy of transparent peer-review for accepted manuscripts.
The journal will publish a file of the peer-review process on ScienceDirect as supplementary data including correspondence between authors
and the editorial office relevant to the decision process. This will include all referee comments directed to the authors, as well as
the authors' responses. Internal communications and informal consultations between editors, editorial advisors or referees will remain
excluded from these documents. Referee anonymity will be strictly maintained. Authors and referees will be given the opportunity to opt
out of the transparent peer-review process.
Cover letter
Corresponding authors must provide a cover letter which includes
statements answering the following questions:
- Has the work been seen and approved by all co-authors?
- How is the work clinically relevant, and how does it add to existing research?
- Have papers closely related to the submitted manuscript been published or submitted for publication elsewhere? If so please provide details.
Title
Your title page, numbered as 1, should give the title in capital letters (not exceeding 100 letters), a running title (not exceeding 50 letters) and the authors' names (as they are to appear), affiliations and complete addresses, including postal (zip) codes. The author and address to whom correspondence should be sent must be clearly indicated. Please supply telephone, fax and e-mail numbers for the corresponding author. Avoid use of extraneous words such as "study", "investigation", etc. If data from the manuscript have been presented at a meeting, list the full name, date and location of the meeting and reference any previously abstracts in the bibliography.
Abstracts
An abstract of your manuscript, summarizing the content, should be provided. A maximum of 150 words, should be written in a structured manner (for original articles only) since this will be the only part of the article studied by some readers. In original articles, the Abstract should consist of 4 paragraphs, labelled Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. They should briefly describe the problem being addressed in the study, how the study was performed and which measurements were carried out, the most relevant results, and what the authors conclude from the results.
Reference Format
Manuscripts should use the 'Vancouver' style for references, which should be numbered consecutively (in parentheses) in the order in which they are first cited in the text and listed at the end of the paper. For journal references, all authors should be included when there are six or less (first three only when seven or more), followed by the title of article, name of journal abbreviated according to British Standard 4148: 1975 (or left in full), year, volume, and first and last pages. For example:
1. Tockman MS, Anthonisen MD, Wright EC et al. Airways obstruction and the risk of lung cancer. Ann Intern Med 1987; 106:512-518.
For book references, the author(s) should be followed by the chapter title (if appropriate), editor(s) (if applicable), book title, place of publication, publisher, year and page numbers.
For example:
2. Colby VT, Carrington CB. Infiltrative lung disease. In: Thurlbeck WM, ed. Pathology of the Lung. New York: Thieme Medical Publishers, 1988.
Figures
Figures of good quality should be submitted online as a separate file. For detailed instructions on the preparation of electronic artwork, consult:
http://www.elsevier.com/authors. Permission to
reproduce illustrations should always be obtained before submission and details included with the captions. Tables
Tables should be typed with double spacing each on a separate file, numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals, and contain only horizontal lines. Provide a short descriptive heading above each table with footnotes and/or explanations underneath.
Keywords
A list of three to six keywords should be supplied: full instructions are provided when submitting the article online.
Types of submission
Letters
Headings should not be used in a letter; no abstract or keywords are required. The text should be no more than 800 words; there should be a maximum of 5 references and one table or figure may be included.
Case Reports
These must be carefully documented and must be of importance because they illustrate or describe unusual features or have important therapeutic implications. Maximum length 1200 words, no more than a page and a half in length and a maximum of 1 table or figure. Case reports do not require a structured abstract and should include no more than 5 references.
Correspondence
Short articles relating to papers recently published in the Journal, or containing brief reports of unusual or preliminary findings. Maximum length 400 words, one table or figure and a maximum of 10 references.
Short Communication
1,200 words plus no more than 3 figures or tables in total 20 references.
Original articles
Original research papers should contain no more than 3,000 words plus no more than 5 figures or tables in total and 30 references. The abstract should consist of 4 paragraphs, labelled Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.
Review articles
Review papers should be authoritative, well referenced reviews of a relevant subject and should not contain more than 5,000 words, and 30 references with no more than six figures or tables.
Editorials
These tend to be invited papers but unsolicited editorials are welcome. There are no abstract, keywords or section headings.
Short Communication
1,200 words plus no more than 3 figures or tables in total 20 references
Original articles
Original research papers should contain no more than 3,000 words plus no more than 5 figures or tables in total and 30 references. The abstract should consist of 4 paragraphs, labelled Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.
Review articles
Review papers should be authoritative, well referenced reviews of a relevant subject and should not contain more than 5,000 words, and 30 references with no more than six figures or tables.
Units & Abbreviations
These should be given in SI units with the traditional equivalent in parentheses where appropriate. All other abbreviations or acronyms should be defined on first appearance in the text. Use a capital letter for proprietary names of substances and materials. At first mention of a chemical substance, use the correct chemical designation as well as the generic name.
Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of the data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.
Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.
Conflict of interest
The potential for conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer or editor has financial or personal relationships that may inappropriately influence his or her actions. Editors and reviewers for the journal are responsible for disclosing to the Chief Editor any personal or financial relationship that may bias their work during the peer review process.
Authors are specifically asked to reflect on financial conflicts of interest (such as employment, consultancy, stock ownership, honoraria and paid expert testimony) as well as other forms of conflict of interest, including personal, academic and intellectual issues.
At the end of the text, under a subheading "Conflict of interest statement" all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.
Role of the funding source
All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.
Randomised controlled trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at
http://www.consort-statement.org
for more information. Journal of Cystic Fibrosis has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
(ICMJE) which require, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry.
Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end
of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research study that prospectively assigns human
participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects of health outcomes. Health-related
interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (for example drugs, surgical procedures,
devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes). Health outcomes include any biomedical or health-related
measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (those
in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration. Further
information can be found at http://www.icmje.org
Disclosure of Clinical Trial Results
In line with the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors , the journal will not consider results posted in the same clinical trials registry in which primary registration resides to be prior publication if the results posted are presented in the form of a brief structured (less than 500 words) abstract or table. However, divulging results in other circumstances (eg, investors' meetings) is discouraged and may jeopardise consideration of the manuscript. Authors should fully disclose all posting in registries of results of the same or closely related work.
Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to Respiratory Medicine should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki; Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989. The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines. Patients' and volunteers' names, initials, and hospital numbers should not be used.
Copyright
Accepted papers become the copyright of the Journal and are accepted on the understanding that they have not been published, are not being considered for publication elsewhere and are subject to editorial revision. If papers closely related to the submitted manuscript have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere, the author must state this in their cover letter Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a "Journal Publishing Agreement" (for more information on this and copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/authors). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information.
An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing
Agreement' form.If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases : contact e-mail healthpermissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage (
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).Permissions Information
If illustrations are borrowed from published sources, written permission must be obtained from both publisher and author, and a credit line giving the source added to the legend. If text material totalling 250 to 300 words, or any tables, are borrowed verbatim from published sources, written permission is required from both publisher and author. With shorter quotations, it is sufficient to add a bibliographic credit. Permission letters for reproduced text or illustration must accompany the manuscript. If you have been unable to obtain permission, please point this out.
Proofs
Proofs will be sent to the authors to be carefully checked for printer's errors. Changes or additions to the edited manuscript cannot be allowed at this stage. Corrected proofs should be returned to the publisher within 2 days of receipt.
Reprints/Author Benefits
The Journal of Cystic Fibrosis has no page charges. Reprints. Twenty Five free reprints will be supplied per article. The publisher will send authors a form enabling further reprints to be ordered at prices listed on the form.
Accepted Articles
For the facility to track accepted articles and set email alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed visit
http://authors.elsevier.com/TrackPaper.html. There are
also details on artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising
after acceptance of an article, especially those related to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.