Instructions for authors
About the journal
Acta Clinica Belgica is an international, peer reviewed journal, publishing high-quality, original research. Please see the journal’s Aims & Scope for information about its focus and peer-review policy.
Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English.
Peer review
Taylor & Francis is committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review. Once your paper has been assessed for suitability by the editor, it will then be single blind peer-reviewed by independent, anonymous expert referees. Find out more about what to expect during peer review and read our guidance on publishing ethics.
Preparing your paper
All authors submitting to medicine, biomedicine, health sciences, allied and public health journals should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, prepared by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Style guidelines
Please refer to these quick style guidelines when preparing your paper, rather than any published articles or a sample copy.
Please use American or British spelling consistently throughout your manuscript.
Please use single quotation marks, except where ‘a quotation is “within” a quotation’. Please note that long quotations should be indented without quotation marks.
Original papers: the body of the text should be limited to 3500 words and the number of references should not exceed 40. Each table or figure should be numbered separately. The sum of tables and figures should not exceed 5 pages. Submission of review papers in the fields as decribed in the aims and scope are encouraged.
Editorial commentaries are on invitation only.
Correspondence dealing with recent ACB publications is welcome and should not exceed 700 words and 10 references.
Case reports have a lower priority for publication in the journal unless they present new insights.
Short communications and Images in Medicine are no longer accepted for publication. Images submitted as Case reports will be subject to desktop rejection.
References
Please use this reference style guide when preparing your paper. An EndNote output style is also available to assist you.
Formatting and templates
Papers may be submitted in any standard format, including Word and LaTeX. Figures should be saved separately from the text. To assist you in preparing your paper, we provide formatting template(s).
Word templates are available for this journal. Please save the template to your hard drive, ready for use.
If you are not able to use the template via the links (or if you have any other template queries) please contact us here.
Checklist: what to include
Author details. All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript. Where available, please also include ORCiDs and social media handles (Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn). One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article PDF (depending on the journal) and the online article. Authors’ affiliations are the affiliations where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer-review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after your paper is accepted. Read more on authorship.
A structured abstract of 250 words. A structured abstract should cover (in the following order) Objectives; Methods; Results; Conclusion.
Read tips on writing your abstract.
Graphical abstract. This is an image to give readers a clear idea of the content of your article. It should be a maximum width of 525 pixels. If your image is narrower than 525 pixels, please place it on a white background 525 pixels wide to ensure the dimensions are maintained. Save the graphical abstract as a .jpg, .png, or .gif. Please do not embed it in the manuscript file but save it as a separate file, labelled GraphicalAbstract1.
You can opt to include a video abstract with your article. Find out how these can help your work reach a wider audience, and what to think about when filming.
5 keywords. Read making your article more discoverable, including information on choosing a title and search engine optimization.
Funding details. Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies as follows:
For single agency grants
This work was supported by the under Grant .
For multiple agency grants
This work was supported by the under Grant ; under Grant ; and under Grant .
Disclosure statement. This is to acknowledge any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of your research. Further guidance on what is a conflict of interest and how to disclose it.
Biographical note. Please supply a short biographical note for each author. This could be adapted from your departmental website or academic networking profile and should be relatively brief (e.g. no more than 100 words).
Geolocation information. Submitting a geolocation information section, as a separate paragraph before your acknowledgements, means we can index your paper’s study area accurately in JournalMap’s geographic literature database and make your article more discoverable to others. More information.
Supplemental online material. Supplemental material can be a video, dataset, fileset, sound file or anything which supports (and is pertinent to) your paper. We publish supplemental material online via Figshare. Find out more about supplemental material and how to submit it with your article.
Figures. Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour). Figures should be saved as TIFF, PostScript or EPS files.
Tables. Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable files.
Equations. If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word document, please ensure that equations are editable. More information about mathematical symbols and equations.
Units. Please use SI units (non-italicized).
Using third-party material in your paper
If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission. More information on requesting permission to reproduce work(s) under copyright.
Declaration of interest
Please include a declaration of interest statement, using the subheading "Declaration of interest." If you have no interests to declare, please state this (suggested wording: The authors report no declarations of interest). For all NIH/Wellcome-funded papers, the grant number(s) must be included in the declaration of interest statement. Read more on declaring conflicts of interest.
Clinical Trials Registry
In order to be published in a Taylor & Francis journal, all clinical trials must have been registered in a public repository at the beginning of the research process (prior to patient enrollment). Trial registration numbers should be included in the abstract, with full details in the methods section. The registry should be publicly accessible (at no charge), open to all prospective registrants, and managed by a not-for-profit organisation. For a list of registries that meet these requirements, please visit the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). The registration of all clinical trials facilitates the sharing of information among clinicians, researchers and patients, enhances public confidence in research, and is in accordance with the ICMJE guidelines.
Complying with ethics of experimentation
Please ensure that all research reported in submitted papers has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and is in full compliance with all relevant codes of experimentation and legislation. All papers which report in vivo experiments or clinical trials on humans or animals must include a written statement in the Methods section. This should explain that all work was conducted with the formal approval of the local human subject or animal care committees (institutional and national), and that clinical trials have been registered as legislation requires. Authors who do not have formal ethics review committees should include a statement that their study follows the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Consent
All authors are required to follow the ICMJE requirements on privacy and informed consent from patients and study participants. Please confirm that any patient, service user or participant (or that person’s parent or legal guardian) in any research, experiment, or clinical trial described in your paper has given written consent to the inclusion of material pertaining to themselves, that they acknowledge that they cannot be identified via the paper; and that you have fully anonymised them. Where someone is deceased, please ensure you have written consent from the family or estate.
Health and safety
Please confirm that all mandatory laboratory health and safety procedures have been complied with in the course of conducting any experimental work reported in your paper. Please ensure your paper contains all appropriate warnings on any hazards that may be involved in carrying out the experiments or procedures you have described, or that may be involved in instructions, materials, or formulae.
Please include all relevant safety precautions; and cite any accepted standard or code of practice. Authors working in animal science may find it useful to consult the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare and Guidelines for the Treatment of Animals in Behavioural Research and Teaching. When a product has not yet been approved by an appropriate regulatory body for the use described in your paper, please specify this, or that the product is still investigational.
Submitting your paper
This journal uses Editorial Manager to manage the peer-review process. If you haven't submitted a paper to this journal before, you will need to create an account in Editorial Manager. Please read the guidelines above and then submit your paper in the relevant Author Centre, where you will find user guides and a helpdesk.
If you are submitting in LaTeX, please convert the files to PDF beforehand (you will also need to upload your LaTeX source files with the PDF).
Please note that Acta Clinica Belgica uses CrossCheck™ to screen papers for unoriginal material. By submitting your paper to Acta Clinica Belgica you are agreeing to originality checks during the peer-review and production processes.
On acceptance, we recommend that you keep a copy of your Accepted Manuscript. Find out more about sharing your work.
Publication charges
There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this journal.
Colour figures will be reproduced in colour in your online article free of charge. If it is necessary for the figures to be reproduced in colour in the print version, a charge will apply. Charges for colour figures in print are £300 per figure ($400 US Dollars; $500 Australian Dollars; 350 Euros). For more than 4 colour figures, figures 5 and above will be charged at £50 per figure ($75 US Dollars; $100 Australian Dollars; 65 Euros). Depending on your location, these charges may be subject to local taxes.
Copyright options
Copyright allows you to protect your original material, and stop others from using your work without your permission. Taylor & Francis offers a number of different license and reuse options, including Creative Commons licenses when publishing open access. Read more on publishing agreements.
Complying with funding agencies
We will deposit all National Institutes of Health or Wellcome Trust-funded papers into PubMedCentral on behalf of authors, meeting the requirements of their respective open access (OA) policies. If this applies to you, please tell our production team when you receive your article proofs, so we can do this for you. Check funders’ OA policy mandates here. Find out more about sharing your work.
Open Access
You have the option to publish open access in this journal via our Open Select publishing program. Publishing open access means that your article will be free to access online immediately on publication, increasing the visibility, readership and impact of your research. Articles published Open Select with Taylor & Francis typically receive 32% more citations* and over 6 times as many downloads** compared to those that are not published Open Select.
Your research funder or your institution may require you to publish your article open access. Visit our Author Services website to find out more about open access policies and how you can comply with these.
You will be asked to pay an article publishing charge (APC) to make your article open access and this cost can often be covered by your institution or funder. Use our APC finder to view the APC for this journal.
Please visit our Author Services website or contact openaccess@tandf.co.uk if you would like more information about our Open Select Program.
*Citations received up to Jan 31st 2020 for articles published in 2015-2019 in journals listed in Web of Science®.
**Usage in 2017-2019 for articles published in 2015-2019.
My Authored Works
On publication, you will be able to view, download and check your article’s metrics (downloads, citations and Altmetric data) via My Authored Works on Taylor & Francis Online. This is where you can access every article you have published with us, as well as your free eprints link, so you can quickly and easily share your work with friends and colleagues.
We are committed to promoting and increasing the visibility of your article. Here are some tips and ideas on how you can work with us to promote your research.
Article reprints
For enquiries about reprints, please contact the Taylor & Francis Author Services team at reprints@tandf.co.uk. To order a copy of the issue containing your article, please contact our Customer Services team at OrderSupport@TandF.co.uk.
Updated 27 April 2020
