Diagnostics
Instructions for Authors
Submission Checklist
Please:
read the Aims & Scope to gain an overview and assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal;
use the Microsoft Word template or LaTeX template to prepare your manuscript;
make sure that issues about publication ethics, research ethics, copyright, authorship, figure formats, data and references format have been appropriately considered;
Ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript.
Authors are encouraged to add a biography (optional) to the submission and publish it.
Manuscript Submission Overview
Types of Publications
Diagnostics has no restrictions on the length of manuscripts, provided that the text is concise and comprehensive. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Diagnostics requires that authors publish all experimental controls and make full datasets available where possible (see the guidelines on Supplementary Materials and references to unpublished data).
Manuscripts submitted to Diagnostics should neither be published previously nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are as follows:
Articles: Original research manuscripts. The journal considers all original research manuscripts provided that the work reports scientifically sound experiments and provides a substantial amount of new information. Authors should not unnecessarily divide their work into several related manuscripts, although Short Communications of preliminary, but significant, results will be considered. The quality and impact of the study will be considered during peer review.
Reviews: These provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in a given area of research. Systematic reviews should follow the PRISMA guidelines.
Case reports: Case reports present detailed information on the symptoms, signs, diagnosis, treatment (including all types of interventions), and outcomes of an individual patient. Case reports usually describe new or uncommon conditions that serve to enhance medical care or highlight diagnostic approaches.
Guidelines: These papers cover step-by-step systematical procedural instructions to clinicians for the care of patients with specific conditions. They can be consensus-based or clinical practice guidelines.
Protocols: Protocol articles present a detailed introduction for proposed or ongoing clinical research, outlining the hypothesis, related rationale and methodology.
Interesting Images: Diagnostics encourages the submission of Interesting Images.
Submission Process
Manuscripts for Diagnostics should be submitted online at susy.mdpi.com. The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list (read the criteria to qualify for authorship) and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. To submit your manuscript, register and log in to the submission website. Once you have registered, click here to go to the submission form for Diagnostics. All co-authors can see the manuscript details in the submission system, if they register and log in using the e-mail address provided during manuscript submission.
Accepted File Formats
Authors must use the Microsoft Word template or LaTeX template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. The total amount of data for all files must not exceed 120 MB. If this is a problem, please contact the Editorial Office diagnostics@mdpi.com. Accepted file formats are:
Microsoft Word: Manuscripts prepared in Microsoft Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word, the Diagnostics Microsoft Word template file must be used. Please insert your graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) in the main text after the paragraph of its first citation.
LaTeX: Manuscripts prepared in LaTeX must be collated into one ZIP folder (including all source files and images, so that the Editorial Office can recompile the submitted PDF). When preparing manuscripts in LaTeX, please use the Diagnostics LaTeX template files. You can now also use the online application writeLaTeX to submit articles directly to Diagnostics. The MDPI LaTeX template file should be selected from the writeLaTeX template gallery.
Supplementary files: May be any format, but it is recommended that you use common, non-proprietary formats where possible (see below for further details).
Disclaimer: Usage of these templates is exclusively intended for submission to the journal for peer-review, and strictly limited to this purpose and it cannot be used for posting online on preprint servers or other websites.
Free Format Submission
Diagnostics now accepts free format submission:
We do not have strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts must contain the required sections: Author Information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Conclusions, Figures and Tables with Captions, Funding Information, Author Contributions, Conflict of Interest and other Ethics Statements. Check the Journal Instructions for Authors for more details.
Your references may be in any style, provided that you use the consistent formatting throughout. It is essential to include author(s) name(s), journal or book title, article or chapter title (where required), year of publication, volume and issue (where appropriate) and pagination. DOI numbers (Digital Object Identifier) are not mandatory but highly encouraged. The bibliography software package EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, Reference Manager are recommended.
When your manuscript reaches the revision stage, you will be requested to format the manuscript according to the journal guidelines.
Cover Letter
A cover letter must be included with each manuscript submission. It should be concise and explain why the content of the paper is significant, placing the findings in the context of existing work and why it fits the scope of the journal. Confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal. Any prior submissions of the manuscript to MDPI journals must be acknowledged. The names of proposed and excluded reviewers should be provided in the submission system, not in the cover letter.
Author Biography
Authors are encouraged to add a biography (maximum 150 words) to the submission and publish it. This should be a single paragraph and should contain the following points:
Authors’ full names followed by current positions;
Education background including institution information and year of graduation (type and level of degree received);
Work experience;
Current and previous research interests;
Memberships of professional societies and awards received.
Note for Authors Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
This journal automatically deposits papers to PubMed Central after publication of an issue. Authors do not need to separately submit their papers through the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS, http://nihms.nih.gov/).
Manuscript Preparation
General Considerations
Research manuscripts should comprise:
Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords
Research manuscript sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional).
Back matter: Supplementary Materials, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.
Review manuscripts should comprise the front matter, literature review sections and the back matter. The template file can also be used to prepare the front and back matter of your review manuscript. It is not necessary to follow the remaining structure. Structured reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research articles and ensure they conform to the PRISMA guidelines.
Case reports should include a succinct introduction about the general medical condition or relevant symptoms that will be discussed in the case report; the case presentation including all of the relevant de-identified demographic and descriptive information about the patient(s), and a description of the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome; a discussion providing context and any necessary explanation of specific treatment decisions; a conclusion briefly outlining the take-home message and the lessons learned.
Interesting Images: Diagnostics encourages the submission of Interesting Images. The number of images are at the discretion of the author. No regular manuscript text (introduction/methods/results/discussion) should be included. Instead, images should be accompanied by detailed legends with no restriction in length. Reference citations should appear in the legends. Also, an unstructured abstract of no more than 200 words should be included as well as list of 3 to 10 keywords. Image files can be included either in the template or uploaded separately in high resolution. There are no restrictions on use of color or image size, however features should be sharp and not blurred. For readability, we recommend that any text in figures is at least 12 pt in size. Submitted images will be peer-reviewed under the same process as a regular research article.
Graphical Abstract:
A graphical abstract (GA) is an image that appears alongside the text abstract in the Table of Contents. In addition to summarizing the content, it should represent the topic of the article in an attention-grabbing way. Moreover, it should not be exactly the same as the Figure in the paper or just a simple superposition of several subfigures. Note that the GA must be original and unpublished artwork. Any postage stamps, currency from any country, or trademarked items should not be included in it.
The GA should be a high-quality illustration or diagram in any of the following formats: PNG, JPEG, TIFF, or SVG. Written text in a GA should be clear and easy to read, using one of the following fonts: Times, Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Ubuntu or Calibri.
The minimum required size for the GA is 560 × 1100 pixels (height × width). The size should be of high quality in order to reproduce well.
Acronyms/Abbreviations/Initialisms should be defined the first time they appear in each of three sections: the abstract; the main text; the first figure or table. When defined for the first time, the acronym/abbreviation/initialism should be added in parentheses after the written-out form.
SI Units (International System of Units) should be used. Imperial, US customary and other units should be converted to SI units whenever possible.
Accession numbers of RNA, DNA and protein sequences used in the manuscript should be provided in the Materials and Methods section. Also see the section on Deposition of Sequences and of Expression Data.
Equations: If you are using Word, please use either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Equations should be editable by the editorial office and not appear in a picture format.
Research Data and supplementary materials: Note that publication of your manuscript implies that you must make all materials, data, and protocols associated with the publication available to readers. Disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information. Read the information about Supplementary Materials and Data Deposit for additional guidelines.
Preregistration: Where authors have preregistered studies or analysis plans, links to the preregistration must be provided in the manuscript.
Guidelines and standards: MDPI follows standards and guidelines for certain types of research. See https://www.mdpi.com/editorial_process for further information.
Front Matter
These sections should appear in all manuscript types
Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific and relevant. It should identify if the study reports (human or animal) trial data, or is a systematic review, meta-analysis or replication study. When gene or protein names are included, the abbreviated name rather than full name should be used.
Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. The PubMed/MEDLINE standard format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, and country. At least one author should be designated as corresponding author, and his or her email address and other details should be included at the end of the affiliation section. Please read the criteria to qualify for authorship.
Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. The abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and species and strains of any animals used. 3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
Keywords: Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.
Research Manuscript Sections
Introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the main conclusions. Keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists working outside the topic of the paper.
Materials and Methods: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Give the name and version of any software used and make clear whether computer code used is available. Include any pre-registration codes.
Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
Conclusions: This section is not mandatory, but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.
Patents: This section is not mandatory, but may be added if there are patents resulting from the work reported in this manuscript.
Back Matter
Supplementary Materials: Describe any supplementary material published online alongside the manuscript (figure, tables, video, spreadsheets, etc.). Please indicate the name and title of each element as follows Figure S1: title, Table S1: title, etc.
Funding: All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Clearly indicate grants that you have received in support of your research work and if you received funds to cover publication costs. Note that some funders will not refund article processing charges (APC) if the funder and grant number are not clearly and correctly identified in the paper. Funding information can be entered separately into the submission system by the authors during submission of their manuscript. Such funding information, if available, will be deposited to FundRef if the manuscript is finally published.
Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]” and “The APC was funded by [XXX]” in this section. Check carefully that the details given are accurate and use the standard spelling of funding agency names at https://search.crossref.org/funding, any errors may affect your future funding.
Acknowledgments: In this section you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments).
Author Contributions: Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND has approved the submitted version (and version substantially edited by journal staff that involves the author’s contribution to the study); AND agrees to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature.
For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used "Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; Methodology, X.X.; Software, X.X.; Validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; Formal Analysis, X.X.; Investigation, X.X.; Resources, X.X.; Data Curation, X.X.; Writing – Original Draft Preparation, X.X.; Writing – Review & Editing, X.X.; Visualization, X.X.; Supervision, X.X.; Project Administration, X.X.; Funding Acquisition, Y.Y.”, please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. For more background on CRediT, see here. "Authorship must include and be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work. Please read the section concerning the criteria to qualify for authorship carefully".
Institutional Review Board Statement: In this section, please add the Institutional Review Board Statement and approval number for studies involving humans or animals. Please note that the Editorial Office might ask you for further information. Please add “The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF INSTITUTE (protocol code XXX and date of approval).” OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans or animals. You might also choose to exclude this statement if the study did not involve humans or animals.
Informed Consent Statement: Any research article describing a study involving humans should contain this statement. Please add “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.” OR “Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans. You might also choose to exclude this statement if the study did not involve humans.
Written informed consent for publication must be obtained from participating patients who can be identified (including by the patients themselves). Please state “Written informed consent has been obtained from the patient(s) to publish this paper” if applicable.
Data Availability Statement: In this section, please provide details regarding where data supporting reported results can be found, including links to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Please refer to suggested Data Availability Statements in section “MDPI Research Data Policies”. You might choose to exclude this statement if the study did not report any data.
Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest." Any role of the funding sponsors in the choice of research project; design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. Diagnostics does not publish studies funded partially or fully by the tobacco industry. Any projects funded by industry must pay special attention to the full declaration of funder involvement. If there is no role, please state “The sponsors had no role in the design, execution, interpretation, or writing of the study”. For more details please see Conflict of Interest.
References: References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including table captions and figure legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. We encourage citations to data, computer code and other citable research material. If available online, you may use reference style 9. below.
Citations and References in Supplementary files are permitted provided that they also appear in the main text and in the reference list.
In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105).
The reference list should include the full title, as recommended by the ACS style guide. Style files for Endnote and Zotero are available.
References should be described as follows, depending on the type of work:
Journal Articles:
1. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range.
Books and Book Chapters:
2. Author 1, A.; Author 2, B. Book Title, 3rd ed.; Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Year; pp. 154–196.
3. Author 1, A.; Author 2, B. Title of the chapter. In Book Title, 2nd ed.; Editor 1, A., Editor 2, B., Eds.; Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Year; Volume 3, pp. 154–196.
Unpublished materials intended for publication:
4. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C. Title of Unpublished Work (optional). Correspondence Affiliation, City, State, Country. year, status (manuscript in preparation; to be submitted).
5. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C. Title of Unpublished Work. Abbreviated Journal Name year, phrase indicating stage of publication (submitted; accepted; in press).
Unpublished materials not intended for publication:
6. Author 1, A.B. (Affiliation, City, State, Country); Author 2, C. (Affiliation, City, State, Country). Phase describing the material, year. (phase: Personal communication; Private communication; Unpublished work; etc.)
Conference Proceedings:
7. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D.; Author 3, E.F. Title of Presentation. In Title of the Collected Work (if available), Proceedings of the Name of the Conference, Location of Conference, Country, Date of Conference; Editor 1, Editor 2, Eds. (if available); Publisher: City, Country, Year (if available); Abstract Number (optional), Pagination (optional).
Thesis:
8. Author 1, A.B. Title of Thesis. Level of Thesis, Degree-Granting University, Location of University, Date of Completion.
Websites:
9. Title of Site. Available online: URL (accessed on Day Month Year).
Unlike published works, websites may change over time or disappear, so we encourage you create an archive of the cited website using a service such as WebCite. Archived websites should be cited using the link provided as follows:
10. Title of Site. URL (archived on Day Month Year).
See the Reference List and Citations Guide for more detailed information.
Preparing Figures, Schemes and Tables
File for Figures and Schemes must be provided during submission in a single zip archive and at a sufficiently high resolution (minimum 1000 pixels width/height, or a resolution of 300 dpi or higher). Common formats are accepted, however, TIFF, JPEG, EPS and PDF are preferred.
Diagnostics can publish multimedia files in articles or as supplementary materials. Please contact the editorial office for further information.
All Figures, Schemes and Tables should be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, Table 1, etc.).
All Figures, Schemes and Tables should have a short explanatory title and caption.
All table columns should have an explanatory heading. To facilitate the copy-editing of larger tables, smaller fonts may be used, but no less than 8 pt. in size. Authors should use the Table option of Microsoft Word to create tables.
Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel). There is no additional cost for publishing full color graphics.
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