KLINIKA OCZNA - INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE AUTHORS: GUIDE TO PAPER PUBLISHING

Aim and scope
KLINIKA OCZNA/ACTA OPHTHALMOLOGICA POLONICA is an international, peer-reviewed scientific journal directed to ophthalmologists and visual science specialists. It publishes original papers, clinical studies, comprehensive reviews, and case reports.

KLINIKA OCZNA/ACTA OPHTHALMOLOGICA POLONICA is the official publication of the Polish Ophthalmological Society.

Number of issues: 4 issues per year.

Open access journal without publication fees


Categories of articles accepted:
clinical research
experimental research
review articles and special reports - papers may be accepted on the basis that they provide a systematic, critical, and up-to-date overview of literature pertaining to research or clinical topics. Meta-analyses are considered as reviews. Special attention will be paid to the teaching value of a review paper.
case reports should present well-documented cases, particularly interesting from the clinical point of view
chronicles, obituary notices, reports from the activities by the Polish Ophthalmological Society and professional meetings abroad, letters to the editor and are acceptable.

The Editorial Board accepts manuscripts for publication written in English (preferably American English) and Polish. Scientific manuscripts prepared in Polish will be translated into English by the publisher.

Ethical requirements
When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (concerning the ethical principles for the medical community and forbidding releasing the name of the patient, initials or the hospital evidence number) and with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). The authors presenting case studies are obligated not to disclose patients’ personal data. Regarding photographs, in case of any doubt that the picture inadequately protects the patient’ s anonymity his consent is required for publication.

Declaration of interest
All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations 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. Authors must disclose any interests in Journal Publishing Agreement available during the submission of the article.

Submission declaration and verification
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder. To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection service CrossCheck.

Contributors
Each author is required to declare his or her individual contribution to the article: all authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should be described. The statement that all authors have approved the final article should be true and included in the disclosure.

Copyright
The Authors of the article are asked to complete a ‘Journal Publishing Agreement’.
Klinika Oczna/Acta Ophthalmologica Polonica is an open access journal all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.

Role of the funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.

Language
Please write your text in English (preferably American English) or Polish. Scientific manuscripts prepared in Polish will be translated into English by the publisher.

Submission
Please submit your article via https://www.editorialsystem.com/ko

Review process
Manuscripts are evaluated on the basis that they present new insights to the investigated topic, are likely to contribute to a research progress. It is understood that all authors listed on a manuscript have agreed to its submission. The signature of the corresponding author on the letter of submission signifies that these conditions have been fulfilled. Received manuscripts are first examined by the Editors of Klinika Oczna. Manuscripts with insufficient priority for publication are rejected promptly. Incomplete packages or manuscripts not prepared in the advised style will be sent back to authors without scientific review. The authors are notified with the reference number upon manuscript registration at the Editorial Office. This journal operates a single-blind review process. All contributions will be initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor’s decision is final.

Permissions
Materials taken from other sources must be accompanied by a written statement from both author and publisher giving permission to Klinika Oczna for reproduction. Obtain permission in writing from at least one author of papers still in press, unpublished data, and personal communications.

Disclaimer
Every effort is made by the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board of Klinika Oczna to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement appear in Klinika Oczna. However, they wish to make it clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements herein are the responsibility of the contributor, sponsor or advertiser concerned. Accordingly, the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board accept no liability whatsoever for the consequences of any such inaccurate of misleading data, opinion or statement. Every effort is made to ensure that drug doses and other quantities are presented accurately. Nevertheless, readers are advised that methods and techniques involving drug usage and other treatments described in Klinika Oczna, should only be followed in conjunction with the drug or treatment manufacturer’s own published literature in the readers own country.

Use of word processing software
It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the word processor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use the word processor’ s options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts. Note that source files of figures, tables and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the ‘ spell-check’ and ‘ grammar-check’ functions of your word processor.

Preferred volume of works submitted for publication

Title page

The title page should contain full names of author (authors), title, affiliation, with the full name and title of the head of department, address for correspondence (also the e-mail address), the full degree of the addressee, and 3-6 key words.

All pages, along with bibliography, figures, captions and tables should be numbered.

Abstract

The paper should carry a structured abstract not exceeding 250 words. For original article it should consist of four paragraphs labeled: Aim, Material and Methods, Results, Conclusions. Each of them should briefly describe, the purpose of the study, how the investigation was performed, the most important results and the principal conclusion that authors draw from the results. For case reports and review articles the abstract should provide a background for the described subject as well as the main teaching points. Only standard abbreviations should be used. However, the abstract and the paper's title should not contain any abbreviations. When using an abbreviated term for the first time, the full name should be given followed by the abbreviation in parentheses (this requirement does not apply to units of measurements).

Key words
Please provide a 3-6 key words (MeSH), using American spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, ‘ and’ , ‘ of’ ). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These key words will be used for indexing purposes.

Article structure
1. Introduction should contain scientific rationale and the aim of the study or (in the case of a review) the purpose of the article.

2. Material and methods should clearly describe the selection of observational or experimental subjects, including controls, such as age, sex, inclusion and exclusion criteria, (the circumstances for rejection from the study should be clearly defined), and the randomization and masking (blinding) methods. The protocol for data acquisition, procedures, investigated parameters, methods of measurements, and apparatus used should be described in sufficient detail to allow other scientists to reproduce the results. Name and references for the established methods should be given. References and brief description should be provided for methods that have been published but are not well known, whereas new or substantially modified methods should be described in detail. The reasons for using them should be provided, along with the evaluation of their limitations. Drugs and other chemicals should be precisely identified, including generic name, dose, and route of administration. The statistical methods should be described in detail to enable verification of the reported results. Provide information on patient informed consent. Studies on patients and volunteers require informed consent documented in the text of the manuscript. Where there is any unavoidable risk of breach of privacy (eg, in a clinical photograph or in case details), the patient's written consent to publication must be obtained and a copy provided to the journal. Information on approval by a Local Ethics Committee should also be provided.

3 Results should concisely and reasonably summarize the findings. Restrict tables and figures to the number needed to explain the argument of the paper and assess its support. Do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Give numbers of observation and report exclusions or losses to observation such as dropouts from a clinical trial. Report treatment complications. The results should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations. Do not repeat in the text all the data from the tables or graphs. Emphasize only the important observations.

4. Discussion should deal only with new and/or important aspects of the study. Do not repeat in detail data or other material from the Background or the Results section. Include in the Discussion the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research. The discussion should address the results of other investigations, especially those quoted in the text.

5. Conclusions should be linked with the goals of the study. State new hypotheses when warranted. Include recommendations when appropriate. Unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by the obtained data should be avoided.

6. Acknowledgements. List all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship, such as technical assistants, writing assistants, or department head, who provided only general support. Financial and other material support should be disclosed and acknowledged.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations that are unavoidable must be defined twice: (1) at their first mention in the Abstract and (2) at their first mention in the remaining part of the article. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.

Units

Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI). If other units are mentioned, please give their equivalent in SI.

Footnotes
Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article. Many word processors can build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Otherwise, please indicate the position of footnotes in the text and list the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.

Illustrations

Figures should be of the resolution of at least 300 dpi and should be sumbited in .tif, .jpg, .ppt or .xls format. All figures, whether photographs, graphs or diagrams, should be numbered consecutively throughout the text. Only good drawings and original photographs can be accepted. If a figure (image) has been published previously, the original source must be acknowledged and written permission to reproduce the material from the copyright holder must be submitted.

Tables

Tables should be submit as editable text and not as images. Tables should be submit on separate files. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Please avoid using vertical rules and shading in table cells.

References
Citation in text

Every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either ‘ Unpublished results’ or ‘ Personal communication’ . Citation of a reference as ‘ in press’ implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

Reference links

Increased discoverability of research and high quality peer review are ensured by online links to the sources cited. In order to allow us to create links to abstracting and indexing services, such as Scopus, CrossRef and PubMed, please ensure that data provided in the references are correct. Please note that incorrect surnames, journal/book titles, publication year and pagination may prevent link creation. When copying references, please be careful as they may already contain errors. Use of the DOI is encouraged.

A DOI can be used to cite and link to electronic articles where an article is in-press and full citation details are not yet known, but the article is available online. A DOI is guaranteed never to change, so you can use it as a permanent link to any electronic article. An example of a citation using DOI for an article not yet in an issue is: VanDecar JC, Russo RM, James DE, Ambeh WB, Franke M (2003). Aseismic continuation of the Lesser Antilles slab beneath northeastern Venezuela. Journal of Geophysical Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JB000884. Please note the format of such citations should be in the same style as all other references in the paper.

Reference style

References must be up-to-date and must be numbered consecutively as they are cited. References selected for publication should be chosen for their importance, accessibility, and for the further reading opportunities they provide. References first cited in tables or figure legends must be numbered so that they will be in sequence with references cited in the text. The style of references is that of Index Medicus. References should contain names and initials of the first three authors, then "et al.”.

The following is a sample reference:
:: Standard journal article: Lahita R, Kluger J, Drayer DE, et al. Antibodies to nuclear antigens in patients treated with procainamide or acetylprocainamide. N Engl J Med 1979; 301: 1382-1385.

:: Article with published erratum: Koffler D, Reidenberg MM. Antibodies to nuclear antigens in patients treated with procainamide or acetylprocainamide [published erratum appears in N Engl J Med 1979; 302: 322-325]. N Engl J Med 1979; 301: 1382-1385.

:: Article in electronic form: Drayer DE, Koffler D. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 1995 Jan-Mar [cited 1996 Jun 5]; 1: [24 screens]. Available from: URL:http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/eid.htm.

:: Article, no author given: Cancer in South Africa [editorial]. S Afr Med J 1994; 84: 15.

:: Book, personal author(s): Ringsven MK, Bond D. Gerontology and leadership skills for nurses. 2nd ed. Delmar Publishers, Albany 1996.

:: Book, editor(s) as author: Norman IJ, Redfern SJ (ed.). Mental health care for elderly people. Churchill Livingstone, New York 1996.

:: Book, Organization as author and publisher: Institute of Medicine (US). Looking at the future of the Medicaid program. The Institute, Washington 1992.

:: Chapter in a book: Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM (ed.). Hypertension: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management. 2nd ed. Raven Press, New York 1995; 465-478.

:: Conference proceedings: Kimura J, Shibasaki H (eds.). Recent advances in clinical neurophysiology. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of EMG and Clinical Neurophysiology; 1995 Oct 15-19; Kyoto, Japan. Amsterdam: Elsevier; 1996.

:: Conference paper: Bengtsson S, Solheim BG. Enforcement of data protection, privacy and security in medical informatics. In: Lun KC, Degoulet P, Piemme TE, Rienhoff O, editors. MEDINFO 92. Proceedings of the 7th World Congress on Medical Informatics; 1992 Sep 6-10; Geneva, Switzerland.

Avoid using abstracts or review papers as references. Unpublished observations and personal communications cannot be used as references. If essential, such material may be incorporated in the appropriate place in the text.

Supplementary material
Supplementary material such as applications, images, video and sound clips, can be published with your article to enhance it. Submitted supplementary items are published exactly as they are received (Excel or PowerPoint files will appear as such online). Please submit your material together with the article and supply a concise, descriptive caption for each supplementary file. If you wish to make changes to supplementary material during any stage of the process, please make sure to provide an updated file. Do not annotate any corrections on a previous version. Please switch off the ‘Track Changes’ option in Microsoft Office files as these will appear in the published version.

Ethical Standards and Procedures
Termedia Publishing House is committed to upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements.

Proofs

Corrections to the proofs should be restricted to printer’s errors only; other alterations will be charged to the authors. In order to maintain rapid publication, proofs should be returned within 48 hours, preferably by e-mail, fax or courier mail. If the Publisher receives no response from the authors after 10 days, it will be assumed that there are no errors to correct and the article will be published.

Duties and responsibilities of Authors
The author is obliged to prepare and send the article in accordance with the requirements set out in the journal Editor. Moreover the author is obliged to submit editorial complemented by a statement which will be included: a statement about the originality of the content of the article (work not yet published anywhere), the integrity of the copyrights of others, no conflict of interest or its application, as well as the superior permission to publish an article in the journal. Authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work.

Authorship criteria and/or who should be listed as a contributor
Termedia Publishing House in the matter of authorship criteria and/or who should be listed as a contributor, respects standards recommended by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). Detailed information about those criteria you can find in COPE Report publicationethics.org/files/2003pdf12_0.pdf.

Duties and responsibilities of Reviewers
Articles are selected for publication in single-blind selection system and published in open access system na Articles are subjected to single-blind review process and published in open access system.Reviewer shall review by the electronic system on the basis of questions prepared for a specific title. Reviewer is also possible to send individual comments to be published in the article content.

Duties and responsibilities of Editors
Editors are responsible for deciding which of the articles accepted for publication. Editors act in a balanced, objective and fair way while carrying out their expected duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin of the authors.

As part of the editorial process, all the submitted manuscripts are screened for plagiarism.

Duplicate publication, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work, or another author, without providing the appropriate references.

The manuscripts in which the plagiarism is detected are subject to additional individual assessment based on a professional report from iThenticate.

Authors' declaration form KLINIKA OCZNA/ACTA OPHTHALMOLOGICA POLONICA Authors' declaration form