Instructions for authors The Netherlands Heart Journal is an English language, peer-reviewed journal and is published 11 times a year. The journal aims to publish high-quality papers on a wide spectrum of cardiovascular medicine, with a focus on both clinical and experimental observations. This includes Original Papers, Review Articles, Heart Beats and unique cardiovascular images. Each issue contains educational information such as an e-learning article and a rhythm puzzle. Once or twice a year a special issue is published with the main focus on a particular subject in cardiovascular medicine. Online submission The Netherlands Heart Journal uses a web-based submission and review system, http://nhj.edmgr.com/. Online submission facilitates the submission of manuscripts from authors and streamlines the reviewing and publication process. Authors should submit their manuscript online. Electronic submission substantially reduces the editorial processing and reviewing times and shortens overall publication times. Upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen: http://nhj.edmgr.com. First-time users must click Register on the navigation menu at the top of the screen. The system will send an automatic e-mail with your user name and password. Detailed guidelines for authors are available on the submission site. Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities tacitly or explicitly at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation. All accepted original and review articles may be selected as an e- learning article. On submitting an article to the journal, you potentially commit yourself to providing questions and answers for an e-learning article if you are requested to do so. Permission Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors. Article categories As of July 2014, The Netherlands Heart Journal accepts only the following categories of articles: Original Article: maximum of 2200 words, 30 references, four figures and three tables. Review Article: maximum of 3000 words, 50 references, five figures and four tables. Heart Beat*: maximum of 250 words, five references, two figures. Editorial comment: maximum of 1000 words, five references, one figure, no tables. Rhythm puzzle: Please submit as two submissions: - Question: maximum of 150 words, three references and two figures - Answer: maximum of 250 words, three references and two figures Letter to the Editor: maximum of 500 words, three references, no figures, no tables. Editor s comment: maximum of 1000 words, 10 references, no figures, no tables. * Figures for this category should not be larger then 100 (height) x 110 (width. Authors are encouraged to include videos with the submissions which can be published as supplementary files online. Preparation of manuscripts The title page should includes A concise and informative title; complete names of the authors with their affiliations and addresses,
and the email addresses and telephone numbers of corresponding authors; word count; and number of tables and figures. Abstract Please provide an abstract with a maximum of 200 words for Original Papers, Review Articles and Heart Beats. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations and no references or tables. Keywords Please provide 3 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes (preferably use MeSH terms, see: www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html). Text formatting Manuscripts should be submitted in Word; save your file in doc format Use British English spelling (not American). We will not accept articles with a poor standard of English. Use normal, plain font (Times Roman pt 10) for text Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages Do not use any field functions Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables Use the equation editor or Math Type for equations References must be in Vancouver style Please use SI units for all scientific and laboratory data Headings Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings. Abbreviations Please keep abbreviations to a minimum, define them at first mention and use consistently thereafter. Non-standard abbreviations should not be used unless they appear very regularly in the text. Acknowledgements Important contributions of individuals should be noted in the Acknowledgement section, placed after the main text. Sources of funding Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear after the 'Acknowledgements' section. The sentence should begin: This work was supported by. Conflict of interests All authors must make a formal statement at the time of submission indicating any potential conflict of interests that might constitute an embarrassment to any of the authors if it were not to be declared and were to emerge after publication. Such conflicts might include, but are not limited to, shareholding in or receipt of a grant or consultancy fee from a company whose product features in the submitted manuscript or which manufactures a competing product. Netherlands Heart Journal follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.icmje.org) and an ICMJE disclosure of potential conflict of interest form must be submitted for each author at the time of manuscript submission. A conflict of interest statement must also be included in the
manuscript after any Acknowledgements and Funding sections and should summarise any conflicts of interest included on the ICMJE form. If there is no conflict of interest, authors must include a statement Conflict of Interest: none declared. PLEASE NOTE: This is an integral part of the online submission process. If the corresponding author is unable to confirm this information on behalf of all co-authors, the authors in question will be required to complete individual conflict of interest forms. It is the corresponding author's responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy. Language-editing If English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript you may wish to have it edited for language. This is by no means a mandatory step, but may help to ensure that the academic content of your paper is more fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Use British English spelling (not American). References All references should be listed at the end of the article in Vancouver style Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references. Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets, in order of citation. For example: This effect has been widely studied [1-3,7]. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. Personal communications and unpublished work should only be mentioned in the text. All references should be listed at the end of the article in Vancouver style. The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively. 1. Svilaas T, Vlaar PJ, van der Horst IC, et al. Thrombus aspiration during primary percutaneous coronary intervention. N Engl J Med. 2008;358:557-67. 2. Weinstein L. Infective endocarditis. In: Braundwald E, editor. A textbook of cardiovascular medicine. Philadelphia: Saunders; 2003: 1093-4. 3. Noyez L, Biemans I, Verkroost M, van Swieten H. Is a sedentary lifestyle an independent predictor for hospital and early mortality after elective cardiac surgery? Neth Heart J. 2003;21:439-45. Tables All tables should be laid out in Word, using the table function. Other tables (e.g. in pdf format or PowerPoint) will not be accepted. Tables should always be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order. Do not use internal horizontal or vertical lines Do not use spaces, tabs or hard returns in tables Each piece of data must be contained in its own cell Numbers and percentages are presented in the same cell For each table, please supply a table title explaining the components of the table Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript Tables should not exceed the printed area of the page (174x234 mm) Illustrations or artwork For the best quality final product, it is essential that you submit all of your artwork photographs, line drawings, etc. in electronic format. The published work will directly reflect the quality of the artwork provided. All electronic supplementary material will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing or reformatting!
On submission, please indicate which graphics program was used to create the artwork. Name your figure files with Fig and the figure number, e.g. Fig1.eps. Please remove all the patient information (especially names of patients). Figures should be saved in TIFF of JPG format at a resolution of at least 300 pixels per inch at the final printed size for colour figures and photographs, and 1200 pixels per inch for black and white line drawings. We do not accept figures in Word or PowerPoint. Figures are usually printed in black and white. In special circumstances colour illustrations can be included. Please first contact the editorial office before submitting colour figures. ECG s must be submitted in black/white. Line art Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines are legible at final size (your figure will be published exactly as you have made it!) All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide Scanned line drawings in bmp format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi Halftone art Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading If any magnification is used in the figures, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves Do not use a background colour (even white is not possible) Halftone art should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi Combination art Definition: a combination of halftone and line art Combination art should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi Figure lettering Use British English for all text in the figure To add lettering it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts) Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2-3 mm, 8 pt. Variance of type size with an illustration should be minimal! Do not use shading Do not include titles within your illustrations Figure titles Each figure should have a concise title describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the title in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file. Figure titles begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the title Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure title; use boxes, circles, etc. as coordinate points in graphs. Figure placement and size Figures should be prepared to fit one column (84 mm width) or the whole page (174 mm width)
PLEASE NOTE: Papers submitted to the journal which do not adhere to the instructions for authors will be returned for appropriate revision to be in line with the instructions and then may be resubmitted. Copyright information When manuscripts are submitted for publication the author will be asked to return a signed letter stating that all authors have seen and approved the paper and that it has not been published elsewhere. If illustrations/figures are to be duplicated from previously published work, the author is responsible for obtaining written permission from the publisher. The letter containing the permission should be sent with the manuscript. Review of manuscripts All manuscripts correctly submitted to the Netherlands Heart Journal will first be reviewed by the Editors. Some manuscripts will be returned to authors at this stage if the paper is deemed inappropriate for publication in the Netherlands Heart Journal, if the paper does not meet submission requirements, or if the paper is not deemed to have a sufficiently high priority. All papers considered suitable by the Editors to progress further in the review process will undergo appropriate peer review and all papers provisionally accepted for publication will undergo a detailed statistical review. Additional information upon acceptance Electronic proofs When proofs are ready, corresponding authors will receive email notification that proofs need to be checked and accepted. Information on the procedure will be given in that email; the corresponding author will be asked to log on to the editorial manager. The page proof is the near-final version of the text for checking purposes only. As it is very expensive to make changes at this stage, we will only accept corrections that are truly essential. We will amend errors in word division, in figures and any errors resulting from the layout process. However, we will not accept corrections regarding, for example, matters of style. All authors will receive a Word document as a copy proof. We ask you to read this carefully and use this opportunity to amend the text as required. To avoid delays in publication, corrections to proofs must be returned within 48 hours, on-line. Offprints and reprints As there is free (electronic) access to the Netherlands Heart Journal there will be no reprints available of articles published in the Journal. Contacting the Editorial Office For further clarification on any of the above, please contact Lieda Meester: l.meester@bsl.nl
http://www.springer.com/journal/12471