1.1  Aims and Scope

Journal of Geriatric Cardiology (JGC, ISSN 1671-5141/CN 11-5329/R) is a monthly, open-access (OA), international, and peer-reviewed journal sponsored and published by Institute of Geriatric Cardiology affiliated to Chinese PLA General Hospital.

JGC focuses on both basic research and clinical practice to the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in the aged people, especially those with concomitant disease of other major organ-systems, such as the lungs, the kidneys, liver, central nervous system, gastrointestinal tract or endocrinology, etc.

1.2  Content types

The content types published by JGC are: (1) Editorial: To introduce and comment on the substantial advance and its importance in cardiology; (2) Research Articles: To originally report the innovative and valuable finding in cardiology research; (3) Perspective: To update the development of old and new questions, highlight unsolved problems, and provide strategies on how to solve the questions; (4) Symposium: A group of review articles or research articles focusing on a specific topic; (5) Review: To systemically review the most representative progress and unsolved problems in the major scientific disciplines, comment on the current research status, and make suggestions on the future work; (6) Case Report: To report a rare or typical case; (7) Guidelines: To introduce Consensuses and Guidelines reached by international academic authorities worldwide; and (8) Letters to the Editor: To discuss and make reply to the contributions published in JGC, or to introduce and comment on a controversial issue of general interest. 

1.3  OA Publishing Model

The biggest advantage of the OA model is that it provides free, full-text articles in PDF and other formats for experts and the public without registration. We believes that OA publishing can foster the exchange of research results amongst scientists from different disciplines, thus facilitating interdisciplinary research, whilst providing access to research results to researchers world-wide. We consider OA is an enriching part of the scholarly communication process that should and could co-exist with other forms of communication and publication, such as society-based publishing and conferencing activities.

2.1  Editorial policy

A manuscript will be considered for publication on the understanding that all named authors have agreed to its submission and that if accepted it will not be later published in the same or similar form without the consent of JGC. 

The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts without review. Such rejections must be approved by the editor-in-chief, and are intended to alleviate unnecessary workload for the editorial board, as well as provide authors the opportunity to seek other publishing options as soon as possible. Articles that are selected for peer review will be reviewed by two or more referees.

Manuscripts that are not concise or do not conform to the conventions and standards of JGC will be returned to the authors for revision.

2.2  Exclusive submission

The manuscripts are considered for review only under the conditions that they are not under consideration elsewhere and that the data presented have not appeared on the internet or have not been previously published (including symposia, proceedings, transactions, books, articles published by invitation, and preliminary publications of any kind except abstracts not exceeding 400 words). 

If a submission re-uses a figure that is published elsewhere or that is copyrighted, the author must provide documentation that the previous publisher or copyright holder has given permission for the figure to be re-published. The JGC Editors consider all material in good faith, and assume that the journal has full permission to publish every part of the submitted material, including illustrations.

2.3  Conflicts of interest

In the interests of transparency and to help reviewers assess any potential bias, JGC requires authors of original research papers to declare any competing commercial interests in relation to the submitted work. 

2.4  Ethics 

Studies should be in compliance with human studies committees and animal welfare regulations of the authors' institutions and State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) guidelines. Human studies must be performed with the subjects' written informed consent. Authors must provide the details of this procedure and indicate that the institutional committee on human research has approved the study protocol. If radiation is used in a research procedure, the radiation exposure must be specified in the Methods section. 

Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in submitted paper. Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore, identifying information, including patients’ images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian, or next of kin where applicable) have been obtained. If such consent is made subject to any conditions, the editorial office must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to the editorial office on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission. 

Animal investigation must conform to the "Position of the American Heart Association (AHA) on Research Animal Use". If equivalent guidelines are used, they should be indicated. The AHA position includes: (1) animal care and use by qualified individuals, supervised by veterinarians, and all facilities and transportation must comply with current legal requirements and guidelines; (2) research involving animals should be done only when alternative methods to yield needed information are not possible; (3) anesthesia must be used in all surgical interventions, all unnecessary suffering should be avoided and research must be terminated if unnecessary pain or fear results; and (4) animal facilities must meet the standards of the American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC). 

2.5  Authorship

Each author must have contributed significantly to the submitted work. If there are more than 2 authors, the contribution of each must be substantiated in the cover letter. If authorship is attributed to a group (either solely or in addition to one or more individual authors), all members of the group must meet the full criteria and requirements for authorship. The Editors consider authorship to include the following: (1) conception and design or analysis and interpretation of data, or both; (2) performance of experiments or therapy; (3) drafting of the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (4) final approval of the manuscript submitted. Participation solely in the collection of data does not justify authorship but may be appropriately acknowledged in the Acknowledgment section. 

All papers should be written in concise English. Manuscript should be prepared in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication”, as presented at http://www.ICMJE.org. 

3.1  Paper Format

A4 paper format, the printing area is 17.5 cm x 26.2 cm. The margins should be 1.75 cm on each side of the paper (top, bottom, left, and right sides).

Basic style points are as follows:

3.2  Article sections

In general, research articles should be divided into the following sections: Title Page, Abstract, Keywords, Text (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) Acknowledgements, References, Tables and Figure Legends. Please number all pages consecutively from the title page, and start each of the sections on a new page. 

3.2.1  Title page

Include the title, authors’ names (including full first name, middle initial and last name), and a brief title of no more than 45 characters. List the departments and institutions with which the authors are affiliated, and indicate the specific affiliations if the work is generated from more than one institution (use the footnote symbols 1, 2, 3, et al). Also provide information on grants, contracts, and other forms of financial support, and list the cities and states of all foundations, funds and institutions involved in the work. Under the heading corresponding author, give the full name and complete communication address including telephone numbers, fax numbers and an e-mail address. At the end of the title page, please provide the number of figures and tables in the manuscript.

3.3.2  Abstract

Provide a structured abstract of no less than 250 words for research articles, presenting essential data in 4 paragraphs introduced by separate headings in the following order: Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. All data in the abstract must also appear in the manuscript text or tables. For Editorial, Review, Perspective, Case Report, and Guidelines manuscripts, non-structured abstracts are appropriate, and it should be no less than 200 words. 

3.2.3  Keywords

Please list 4-6 key words, selected mainly from Index Medicus, which reflect the content of the study.

3.2.4  Text 

Text includes the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion section. Use headings and subheadings in the Methods, Results, and Discussion when necessary, Every reference, figure and table should be cited in the text in numerical order according to order of mention. To save space in the Journal, abbreviations of common terms (e.g., ECG, PTCA, CABG) or acronyms (GUSTO, SOLVD, TIMI) may be used throughout the manuscript. On a separate page following the structured abstract, list the selected abbreviations and their definitions (e.g., TEE = trans-esophageal echocardiography). The Editors will determine which lesser known terms should not be abbreviated. 

3.2.5  Statistics

All publishable manuscripts will be reviewed for appropriateness and accuracy of statistical methods and statistical interpretation of results. In the Methods section, provide a subsection detailing the statistical methods, including specific methods used to summarize the data, methods used for hypothesis testing (if any), and the level of significance used for hypothesis testing. When using more sophisticated statistical methods (beyond t tests, chi-square, simple linear regression), specify the statistical package, version number, and non-default options used. 

3.2.6  Acknowledgements

Any other contributions to this work could be mentioned here. Letters of permission from all individuals listed in the acknowledgments are the responsibility of the corresponding author. 

3.2.7  References

References in the text must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are mentioned. References cited in figures or tables (or in their legends and footnotes) should be numbered according to the place in the text where that table or figure is first cited. 

Reference numbers in the text must be given in superscript square brackets immediately after punctuation (with no word spacing) - for example, .^[6] not ^[6]. 

Please do not cite personal communications, manuscripts in preparation or other unpublished data in the references; these may be cited in the text in parentheses. Please do not cite abstracts that are older than two years. Identify abstracts by the abbreviation "abstr" in parentheses. 

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references cited: these should be checked against the original documents before the paper is submitted. It is vital that the references are styled correctly so that they may be hyperlinked. 

Please use the following style and punctuation for references in the reference list: 

♦ Journal

Koziol-Mclain J, Brand D, Morgan D, et al. Measuring injury risk factors: question reliability in a statewide sample. Inj Prev 2000; 6: 148-150.

♦ Books without editors

Desiraju GR, Steiner T. The Weak Hydrogen Bond in Structural Chemistry and Biology, 2^nd Edition; Oxford University Press: New York, USA, 1999; 10-25.

♦ Books with editors

Dodd JS, Solla L, Bérard PM. References. In The ACS Style Guide, 3^rd Edition; Coghill A, Garson L, Eds.; American Chemical Society: Washington, USA, 2006; 292-325.

♦ Conferences or Meetings (Published Proceedings)

Zhang Z, Chen H, Zhong J. ZnO Nanotip-based QCM Biosensors. Proceedings of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium and Exposition, Miami, FL, USA, June 2006; 545-549.

♦ Oral presentations without published material

Zhang Z, Chen H, Zhong J, et al. ZnO Nanotip-based QCM Biosensors. Presented at the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium and Exposition, Miami, FL, USA, June 2006.

♦ Abstract/supplement

Roxburgh J, Cooke RA, Deverall P, et al. Haemodynamic function of the carbomedics bileaflet prosthesis [abstract]. Br Heart J 1995; 73 (suppl 2): P37. 

♦ Web sites citations

For general web sites resources, please use the citation format:

ACS Publications Division Home Page. http://pubs.acs.org (accessed Nov 7, 2004).

For documents retrieved from web sites, please use the citation format:

Chou, L, McClintock R, Moretti F, et al. Technology and education: New wine in new bottles: Choosing pasts and imagining educational futures, 1993. Columbia University Institute for Learning Technologies Web site. http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/papers/newwine1.html (accessed Aug 24, 2000).

♦ Online First Article

Each Online First article has a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI). This should be included in all citations.

Before the article has appeared in an issue, please use the citation format:

Sabin MA, Ford AL, Holly JMP. Characterisation of morbidity in a UK, hospital based, obesity clinic. Arch Dis Child. Published Online First: 24 October 2005. DOI: 10.1136/adc.2005.083485.

After the article has appeared in an issue, please use the citation format: 

Sabin MA, Ford AL, Holly JMP, et al. Characterisation of morbidity in a UK, hospital based, obesity clinic. Arch Dis Child 2006; 91: 126-130.

♦ Patents

Lenssen KC, Jantscheff P, Kiedrowski G, et al. Cationic Lipids with Serine Backbone for Transfecting Biological Molecules. Eur Pat Appl 1457483, 2004.

♦ Theses

Mäckel H. Capturing the Spectra of Silicon Solar Cells. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, December 2004.

EndNote users should select the Journal of Geriatric Cardiology output style for the correct reference style.

3.2.8  Tables 

Three-line tables should be provided on separate sheets, with the table number and title centered above the table. Table numbers must correspond with the order cited in the text. Columns should always have headings. Tables should not duplicate the content of the text and should have a brief footnote that identifies all abbreviations used. Footnote symbols should appear in the following order: *, **, ||, ¶, #, etc. Tables should be self-explanatory and the data in the tables should be consistent with those cited in the relevant places in the text. Tables could be provided in Word or Excel file formats at the end of the manuscript. 

3.2.9  Figure Legends 

Figure legends should be typed double-spaced on pages separate from the text; figure numbers must correspond with the order in which they are mentioned in the text. 

All figures must have a title as well as a caption. For example, Figure 1: Title - Caption, etc. All abbreviations used in the figure should be identified either after their first mention in the legend or in alphabetical order at the end of each legend. 

All symbols used (arrows, circles, etc.) must be explained. 

3.2.10  Figures

Please submit Figures in a separate file and the format should be provided in EPS, JPG, TIF, Excel or Word format. Graphics software such as Photoshop and Illustrator should be used to create a bitmap. The images must be at least 300 DPI. Vectors are generally generated by graphics editing software such as CorelDRAW, Excel, etc.. Each figures in a separate file, and no smaller than 86 mm × 50 mm. Scale bars should be provided on photographs if any. 

Decimals, lines and other details must be strong enough for reproduction. Use only black and white, not gray, in charts and graphs. Do not use 3-D presentations for bar graphs. Place crop marks on photomicrographs to show only the essential field. 

Digital image enhancement is acceptable practice, although it can result in the presentation of unrepresentative data as well as in the loss of meaningful signals. During manipulation of images a positive relationship between the original data and the resulting electronic image must be maintained. If a figure has been subjected to significant electronic manipulation, the specific nature of the enhancements must be noted in the figure legend or in the 'Materials and methods' section. The editors reserve the right to request original versions of figures from the authors of a paper under consideration.

If previously published tables and figures are used, written permission from the original publisher is required. Cite the source of the table or figure in the footnote or legend. 

3.3  Supplementary information files

Conference slides, video sequences, or other supplementary information, can be included with the submission and published as supplementary material. Please submit them in a separate file via our online submission and review system at http://jgc301.com/. 

Authors should ensure that supplementary information is supplied in its final format because it is not subedited and will appear online exactly as originally submitted. It cannot be altered, nor new supplementary information added, after the paper has been accepted for publication. Please include a text summary (no more than 50 words) to describe the contents of each file.

Accepted file formats include: (1) Quick Time files (.mov); (2) Graphical image files (.gif); (3) MPEG movie files (.mpg); (4) Sound files (.wav); (5) MS Word documents (.doc); (6) Postscript files (.ps); (7) MS Excel spreadsheet documents; and (8) PowerPoint (.ppt). 

File sizes must be as small as possible, so that they can be downloaded quickly. Images should not exceed 640×480 pixels (9×6.8 inches at 72 pixels per inch) but we would recommend 480×360 pixels as the maximum frame size for movies. We would also recommend a frame rate of 15 frames per second. If applicable to the presentation of the supplementary information, use a 256-colour palette. Please consider the use of lower specification for all of these points if the supplementary information can still be represented clearly. Our recommended maximum data rate is 150 KB/s.

The number of files should be limited to eight, and the total file size should not exceed 8 MB. Individual files should not exceed 1 MB. Please seek advice from the editorial office before sending files larger than our maximum size to avoid delays in publication.

Further questions about the submission or preparation of supplementary information should be directed to the editorial office.

3.4  English corrections

Researchers who are not native speakers of English who submit manuscripts to international journals often receive negative comments from referees or editors about the English-language usage in their manuscripts, and these problems may contribute to a decision to reject a paper. For this reason we ask that non-native English speakers ensure their manuscripts are checked before submitting them for consideration. Authors can also use many English language editing services that are available. 

Authors should retain one copy of the text, tables, photographs, and illustrations because rejected manuscripts will not be returned to the author(s) and the editors will not be responsible for loss or damage to photographs and illustrations sustained during submission.

Manuscripts should be submitted online at http://www.jgc301.com/ch/index.aspx by registering and logging in to this website. Authors are highly recommended to consult the Instructions for Authors before attempting to submit online. Authors encountering problems with the Online Submission System may contact the editorial office via email: jgc@jgc301.com, lilaifu@jgc301.com or wuqiang@jgc301.com.

5.1  Cover letter

Submitted manuscripts should be accompanied by a covering letter giving details of: (1) the title of the manuscript and its main point; (2) a statement that the manuscript has not been published in part or whole (except in the form of abstract) or is under consideration for publication elsewhere in any language; (3) a statement that all authors have agreed to be so listed and have seen and approved the manuscript, its consent and its submission to JGC; (4) a full current postal address, telephone and fax numbers, and current e-mail address. We usually communicate with authors by e-mail. Authors must specify if they wish to exclude a method of communication. 

Authors may suggest 2-3 reviewers. Please provide the reviewers’ name, postal address, and e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, and fields of interest. Authors may also suggest that specific individuals not be involved as reviewers, but JGC reserves the right of final selection.

5.2  Manuscript Status

Upon receipt of the manuscript, the JGC Editorial Office will immediately assign a code number, which is strongly recommended for use in subsequent correspondence. A letter acknowledging receipt will be sent to the corresponding author. After being pre-reviewed by the editors, most of the submitted manuscripts will be sent to expert referees for peer-review. All manuscripts are subject to editorial modifications. JGC disclaims any liability for statements made by authors or advertisers.

Once the manuscript has been accepted, the corresponding author will receive PDF proofs and are responsible for proofreading and checking the entire article. Authors should correct only typesetting errors, no major alteration of the text will be accepted. Page proofs must be returned within 48 hours to avoid delays in publication along with the reprint order if required.

All articles that are published ahead of print through Advance Online Publication are the final version of the manuscript and will subsequently appear, unchanged, in print. 

IGC and Science Press hold the copyright of all the published articles. On acceptance, written transfer of copyright to Science Press^© signed by all authors will be required. 

At present, JGC charge no fees for the accepted manuscripts.