Submit your manuscript online
Receipt of your paper will be acknowledged by an email containing a reference number, which should be used in all future communications. During the review process, authors can check the status of their submitted manuscript via the online manuscript submission and review system.
Information for authors
Founded in 1998, Cardiovascular Medicine is the official journal of the Swiss Society of Angiology, the Swiss Society of Hypertension, and the Swiss Pediatric Cardiology Society.
Both solicited articles and spontaneous submissions are considered for publication, those that are accepted benefitting from a broad readership in Switzerland, owing to the journal’s wide distribution.
Submission of a paper to Cardiovascular Medicine is understood to imply that the data contained there in has not previously been published (except in abstract form) or is being considered for publication elsewhere.
All submissions to Cardiovascular Medicine should conform to the «Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals».
There are no "article processing charges" (APCs) or "page charges"associated with this journal.
Prior to publication, all manuscripts, with the exception of Editorials and Letters to the Editors, undergo a single blind peer review, conducted by independent experts in the field.
The language of original articles is English. Other contributions should preferably be in English, otherwise they can be in German or French.
Editorial policies
Authorship
Authorship credit should be based only on (1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; (2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.
Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group do not, by themselves, justify authorship, nor does the fact of being in sole charge of the clinic or organisational unit in which the article was prepared. Such contributions should be listed as acknowledgements, as well as those of colleagues who provided reagents, discussions and critical input, editorial help, technical services, etc.
Disclosure of financial and non-financial relationships and activities, and conflicts of Interest
When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all relationships and activities that might bias or be seen to bias their work. All authors are requested to sign the disclosure form. Disclosure information for each author needs to be part of a disclosure section in the manuscript.
Duplicate submissions
By their signature, the authors also certify that neither this manuscript, nor any other with substantially similar content by one or more of the same authors, has been published or accepted, or is currently being assessed by another journal with a view to publication. Previously published data can be reproduced in exceptional cases, provided that a full disclosure is made and a plausible reason for republication is given.
Plagiarism detection / scientific misconduct
EMH Swiss Medical Publishers Ltd. is a member of CrossCheck, a service offered by CrossRef and powered by iThenticate software. In our online editorial system, all newly submitted manuscripts are automatically compared with the CrossCheck database. Submissions with overlaps to already published articles are carefully checked for plagiarism by the editorial team.
Scientific misconduct includes but is not necessarily limited to data fabrication, data falsification, purposeful failure to disclose relationships and activities, and plagiarism. We take allegations of misconduct very seriously. Problems concerning scientific misconduct are dealed following the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Obligation to register clinical trials
We require registration of interventional trials in a primary register that participates in WHO’s International Clinical Trial Registry Platform or in ClinicalTrials.gov at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication, in accord with ICMJE recommendations.
Ethics approval of research
We require every article reporting results of prospective research using human subjects or samples, or results of animal research, to include a statement that the study obtained ethical approval, including the name of the ethics committee(s) or institutional review board(s) and the number/ID of the approval(s). Where ethical approval is not required, the manuscript should include a clear statement of this and the reason why.
When reporting research involving human data, authors should indicate in the methods section whether the procedures followed were assessed and approved by a legally qualified ethics review committee (institutional or national) or, if no formal ethics committee is available, were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the study. Approval by a responsible review committee does not preclude editors from forming their own judgement whether the conduct of the research was appropriate.
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate in the methods section whether the institutional and national guides for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
Protection of patients’ rights to privacy
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should disclose to these patients that the material will be available via the Internet after publication. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, andinformed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity.
Patient consent should be written and archived by the authors and not submitted to the journal. The authors should provide the journal with a written statement that they have received and archived written patient consent. A standard informed consent form may be obtained from the publisher.
Data sharing
Manuscripts that report the results of clinical trials must contain a data sharing statement as described here.
Review process
Prior to publication, all manuscripts, with the exception of Editorials, Official communications, News and Letters to the editor, undergo a single blind peer review, conducted by independent experts in the field. During the review process, authors can check the status of their submitted manuscript via the online manuscript submission and review system.
The Editorial Board may decline a paper on the basis of internal review. They will then rapidly return the manuscript, usually within two weeks.
Authors who believe that their article has been rejected unfairly may submit an appeal via our online submission system or by sending an e-mail to the editorial office.
Editors and reviewers are explicitly requested to report conflicts of interest that could influence their opinion of the manuscript in question, in which case they will be excluded from the reviewing process of this manuscript. When an editor is author or co-author of a manuscript, she or he is excluded from publication decisions and has no insight into the reviewing process of the article in the manuscript management system.
Post-publication discussions
We welcome debate post publication either through letters to the editor or the comment function at the bottom of every article.
If a correction of a published article is needed it is dealed following the ICMJE guidelines.
Article types
Editorials / Viewpoint
Editorials present topics of current interest, special issues of the journal or particular viewpoints. Maximum length 8500 characters.
Review articles/Reviews
Review articles are primarily intended for further education of the medical profession and should be drafted in readily accessible language, include 4–6 illustrations and/or tables, and be adequately illustrated and documented by 20–40 literature references. The text itself should not exceed 10–12 manuscript pages in length (total approx. 25 000 characters, all data including spaces but excluding illustrations and references). Articles should include a summary in English with key words. If the article was a congress presentation this is mentioned in a footnote.
Original articles
These papers should be based on scientific standards as published in the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Publishers and be submitted in English. They include a summary (1⁄2–1 A4 page or 1250–2500 characters) with key words, an introduction (not more than 1 A4 page, 2500 characters), information on the methods and results and a discussion. The introduction and the discussion should refer to other publications in the literature and as a rule not exceed 20–30 references. The total length should not exceed 25000 characters.
Case reports
This section is intended for the publication of unusual or surprising and significant observations (individual cases, also recurrent findings if any). Length: not more than 10 000 characters (3–4 A4 pages); short, precise title; not more than 5 literature references. Structure: summary and key words in English and in the original language; description of case; test results and course should be incorporated into the text or – exceptionally – presented in tabular form. Case description and diagnosis are followed by brief targeted comments (clinical, epidemiological significance if any; special problems if any; current state of knowledge; new findings; therapeutic aspects).
The interesting ECG
This section is devoted to ECG findings of special interest. The ECG itself should be accompanied by a presentation of the clinical findings (2 questions, 1⁄2–1 A4 page, not more than 2500 characters) plus a caption for the ECG, the solution (not more than 1⁄2 A4 page, 1250 characters) and 2–3 literature references.
The new compound
In this section newly developed active substances, recently introduced drugs or new findings on existing active substances are described and their effects, side effects and interactions discussed. The text itself should not exceed 8–10 manuscript pages in length (total approx. 20000 characters, all data including spaces but excluding illustrations and references). It includes a summary in the original language, an English summary (each 1⁄2–1 A4 page, 1250–2500 characters) with key words, an introduction (not more than 1 A4 page, 2500 characters), a discussion and data on interactions, and should be documented with 20–30 literature references.
New devices
This section is devoted to newly developed tools in interventional cardiology and rhythmology, or new findings concerning existing tools. The text itself should not exceed 8–10 manuscript pages in length (total approx. 20000 characters, all data including spaces but excluding illustrations and references). It includes an English summary (each 1⁄2–1 A4 page, 1250–2500 characters) with key words, an introduction (not more than 1 A4 page, 2500 characters), a discussion and data on advantages and drawbacks, handling and a comparison with conventional procedures. Not more than 20–30 literature references.
Images in cardiovascular medicine
This section publishes interesting findings from clinical investigations using echocardiograhy, MRI, angiography or other imaging techniques. In addition to the actual imaging material (usually 2–3 illustrations), the clinical background should be described (1⁄2–1 A4 page, maximum 2500 characters) and the diagnosis and findings explained (not more than 1⁄2 A4 page of text; captions to the illustrations). These contributions may also include a short list of literature references (maximum 3).
News from associations and working groups
The main purpose of the section “News from associations” is to inform members on questions of general interest to the profession. It consists primarily of contributions to further education, position papers, reports from working groups, recommendations and consensus documents on clinical work. As a rule these texts should not exceed 2–4 manuscript pages in length (total approx. 5000–10000 characters, all data including spaces but excluding illustrations and references [maximum 10]).
Letters to the Editor
The editorial board reserves the right to select, abridge and edit letters to the editor. The shorter the letter, the greater the chance of publication. The text should not exceed 500 words in length, including references if any. This represents approx. 11⁄2 typescript pages (3500 characters).
Preparation of manuscript
Use only standard abbreviations. Avoid abbreviations in the title of the manuscript. The spelled-out abbreviation followed by the abbreviation in parentheses should be used on first mention unless the abbreviation is a standard unit of measurement. Use abbreviations only for items that are used repeatedly in your manuscript.
Always use SI units. Results in other units may be added in parentheses.
Tables and figures should be commented upon in the text and their position marked at the appropriate point.
Tables should be provided with captions, numbered consecutively and each reproduced on a separate page of the manuscript. The editor, on accepting a paper, may recommend that additional tables containing important backup data too extensive to publish be published on the CVM website. In that event an appropriate statement will be added to the text. Submit such tables for consideration with the paper. Lengthy tables should be included only if absolutely necessary; extensive tables and datasets (e.g. sequencing results) may be archived by CVM as supplementary materials and will be linked to the respective article.
Figures should each be submitted with a legend. Captions should be formulated so as to allow the figure to be understood without reference to the text. All abbreviations employed should be explained in the caption if not already included in the list of abbreviations.
If you have included in your article figures or tables from other publications, you must obtain permission from the publisher to use them before submission of the manuscript: an image that has been published before can be used in "Cardiovascular Medicine" only if the copyright holder has given permission (cf. our awareness sheet). If you are including figures or tables that have been adapted from published papers, then you are also responsible for obtaining the publisher’s permission to adapt them. Please submit a copy of this permission with your article.
References should follow the standards summarised in the NLM’s International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals: Sample References webpage.
Copyright
The open access publication of the articles requires that the copyright in the accepted article is transferred to Swiss Medical Publishers Ltd., Basel, for the duration of the statutory copyright term. The Publishers thereby acquire the right to use the article an unlimited number of times, to adapt it (e.g. for the purpose of abstracts), to translate it, duplicate it, communicate it, make further use of it, publish or distribute it, in any form and via any medium (including the Internet) and to grant free of charge to the author himself, to third parties and to the general public the corresponding rights of use, adaptation etc. (open access publication).
Supplements
For publication of congress abstracts or other scientific contents the CVM supplements offer many advantages. As official special issues of an established journal they are appreciated in the scientific community. Archiving in the publishing house and in libraries ensures long-lasting conservation and availability of publications.
CVM Supplements are available in full text via the journal’s online archive.
If you are planning a supplement we shall be very happy to assist you.
