Manuscript
Submission
Requirements 

All material to be considered for publication in THE Heart Matrix should be submitted electronically via the journal's online submission system.

 

Cover letter

 

All new manuscripts should be accompanied by a cover letter (to be filled in online) and include the following statements:

 

The manuscript has not previously been published in print or electronic form and is not under consideration by any other publication. 

All authors have contributed significantly to the content of the article - see authorship criteria below.

All authors have read and approve the submission of the manuscript to EJCTS.

Subject to acceptance, authors will sign an exclusive licence to publish.

There are no ethical problems or undeclared conflicts of interest (see below). For publication ethics, experimental ethics on human subjects and animals, etc. see our policies page and ensure that the article adheres to the journal requirements.

Revised manuscripts

 

When submitting revised manuscripts, label the files accordingly (2nd version, 3rd version, etc.). Respond to all points raised by the Editors, Reviewers and Statistician in the ‘Respond to reviewers’ field in the Metadata, outlining any changes that have been made. All changes should be marked in red in the revised manuscript to facilitate editorial reassessment.

 

Authorship

 

To be listed as an author the journal expects each author to meet the following criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE):

 

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

Final approval of the version to be published; AND

Agreement to be accountable for his/her contributions of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved (modified from the original ICMJE criteria).

It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all administrative requirements such as providing author roles, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration information, conflict of interest declaration and funding sources are accurate and properly completed both in the submission system and in the manuscript. It is also the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors meet the criteria for authorship and that their names and affiliations are formatted and spelled correctly.

 

All authors will be requested to confirm that the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT from CASRAI) selected by the corresponding author are accurate. The CRediT roles will be published within the article.

 

Contributors who do not meet the above criteria should be listed in the acknowledgement section.

 

No authors can be removed after submission of the revised version without the written authorization from all authors and approval by the Editorial Office.

 

Redundant (Duplicate) Submission

 

It is recommended that Authors read the updated version of the statement on redundant submissions, jointly published with other journals in 2015.

 

Statistical and Data Reporting Guidelines

 

It is highly recommended that Authors consult the guidelines on Statistical and data reporting; see also the corrigendum.

 

Raw Data

 

The full set of raw data must be made readily available upon the request of reviewers or editors during the review process and/or after publication.

 

Availability of Data and Materials

 

Where ethically feasible, we strongly encourage authors to make all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. Information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, are available on the Research Data Policy page.

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Data Availability Statement

 

Authors are required to include a Data Availability Statement to their manuscript file. The statement will be included in the published article. 

 

More information and example Data Availability statements.

 

Data Citation

 

We support the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and require that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI).

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According to the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles, data can be cited in the same way as article, book, and web citations, and authors are required to include data citations as part of their reference list.

 

Data citation is applicable for data held within institutional, subject-focused, or more general data repositories. When citing or making claims based on data, authors should refer to the data at the relevant place in the main text of the manuscript and include a formal citation in the reference list. We recommend the format proposed in the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles. 

 

 

Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite:

 

[dataset]* Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier (e.g. DOI).

*The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list.

 

“[dataset]” should be included immediately before the reference so it can be properly identified as a data reference.

 

 

Clinical Trials

 

Registering clinical trials

 

In accordance with the Clinical Trial Registration Statement from the ICMJE all clinical trials published in the journal must be registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the onset of participant enrolment. For any clinical trials commencing prior to 1st July 2005, retrospective registration will be accepted.

 

The registry must be accessible to the public at no charge, searchable, open to all prospective registrants, managed by a not-for-profit organization, and include all the necessary information as specified by the ICMJE. Results posted in the same clinical trials registry in which the primary registration resides will not be considered as prior publication if they are presented in the form of a brief abstract (<500 words) or a table.

 

Authors are requested to provide the exact URL and unique identification number for the trial registration at the time of submission on the manuscript’s title page. This information will be included in the published article.

 

Reporting clinical trials

 

Clinical trials should comply with the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials Statement (CONSORT), which is available on the webpage. Authors reporting on randomized clinical trials (RCT) should consult the CONSORT checklist when preparing their manuscripts. All RCT data will be evaluated in accordance with the rules and checklist of the CONSORT statement.

 

Other types of studies should follow guidelines where available. These include:

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For further information on good reporting of health research studies please go to the EQUATOR network.

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The relevant checklist should be duly filled in and uploaded as ‘Prisma or Consort checklist’.

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Language Editing Pre-Submission

 

If your first language is not English, we recommend that you consult an English language editing service to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. For further information on this service, please see our Language Services page: The ScimedPro Berlin 

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MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION Guidelines

 

Manuscripts should be prepared using a word-processing package. 

 

Font type:      Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, Verdana

Font size:      11 or 12 points

                     Double-spacing for the main text

Pages and lines should be numbered consecutively

 

The length of manuscripts must adhere to the specifications under the section MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES. 

 

Order of the manuscript contents

 

Manuscripts should be presented as follows: (i) Title page (title, running title, authors, institutions and affiliations); (ii) Abstract and Keywords; (iii) the main text divided into  sections - Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Patients and Methods), Results, Discussion, Conclusion ; (iv) Acknowledgments (optional) (v) Funding statement, Conflict of interest statement; Author contribution statement (vi) References; (vii) Supplementary material; (viii) Figure (and Video) legends; (ix) Tables (titled and with footnotes); (x) Figures (it is recommended that figures, tables and videos are provided in separate files).

 

Please note that changes to author information (except for the correction of grammatical errors) are not permitted after the manuscript has been accepted, nor can the manuscript be withdrawn after this point unless sufficient reasons are given.

 

Title page 

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The title page should include: 

• Title - should be brief and descriptive (100 characters) - no abbreviations are allowed, even if well-known 

• List all authors by full first name, initial of or full middle name and family name. Qualifications are not required. Ensure the author names correspond (in spelling and order of appearance) with the metadata of the system. Remember that all authors must have substantially contributed to the article - see criteria in the authorship section above.      

• Institution(s)

  • Include the name of all institutions with the location (department, institution, city, country) to which the work should be attributed (in English). Use superscript numbers to connect authors and their department or institution.

• Corresponding author

  • Full name, postal address, telephone and effective e-mail address (extremely important for subsequent timely communication) should be typed at the bottom of the title page.

• A running/short title of no more than 60 characters (including spaces)

• Meeting presentation

  • If the manuscript was (or will be) presented at a meeting, include the meeting name, venue, and the date on which it was (or will be) read; also indicate if you have submitted an Abstract of this manuscript for the EACTS or ESTS annual meeting and whether it has been accepted (if known).

• Word count

  • The total number of words of the whole article (including title page, abstract, main text, legends, tables and references) must be specified on the title page

• Disclaimers (if applicable)

• Conflicts of interest.

 

Abstract and keywords 

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The abstract must adhere to the specifications under the section Manuscript Categories. An abstract should be a concise summary of the manuscript. Reference citations are not allowed. The abstract should be factual and free of abbreviations, except for SI units of measurement, and must not contain acronyms, citations, figures, or tables.

 

The abstract of an original article, as well as those of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, should be structured into four paragraphs with the following subheadings: Background , Methods, Results, and Conclusions. 

 

The abstracts for all the other manuscript types should be unstructured. General statements (e.g., “the significance of the results is discussed’’) should be avoided. 

Following the abstract, 3-5 keywords should be provided.

 

Where relevant, the clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract. For studies that have a registration number, this number should be included initially when a trial acronym is used to refer to the trial in the report or to other trials discussed in the paper. For data that have been deposited in a public repository and/or are the subject of analysis elsewhere, the distinctive, persistent data set identifier, the repository name, and the number should be included at the end of the abstract.

 

Main Text 

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Format: Text should be double-spaced throughout. The pages and lines should be numbered. 

Font: A clearly readable font (e.g., Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, or Verdana) with 11 or 12 pt. font size. 

Language: English - British or American spelling is acceptable but must be consistent throughout.

 

Abbreviations and acronyms

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For Original Articles, Meta-Analyses and Reviews, abbreviations and acronyms used in the text should be gathered in a list and included at the beginning of the article before the introduction.

 

Use of abbreviations renders the text difficult to read so they should be limited to SI units of measurement and to those widely used in the text of the article. Full definitions should be given at first mention in the text, and in the tables and figures. Abbreviations should not be included in headings.

 

Introduction 

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Should state the purpose of the investigation and give a short review of pertinent literature.

 

Materials and methods (or Patients and methods)

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Should be described in detail with appropriate information about patients or experimental animals.

 

For all articles reporting on human subjects and animals, the first paragraph should comprise a short statement confirming approval of the study by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Committee (EC) of the institution(s) where the work was carried out. The name of the institution, the date and ID number of the IRB approval must be included. Whether written patients informed consent was obtained or waived by the IRB or EC should also be disclosed.

The Editorial Office may request copies of the informed consent documentation at any time. While the Editorial Board recognizes that it might not always be possible or appropriate to seek such consent, the authors to demonstrate that this exception applies in their case.

 

Generic names of drugs and equipment should be used throughout the manuscript, with brand names (proprietary name) and the name and location (city, state, country) of the manufacturer in brackets when first mentioned in the text.

 

Results

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Results should be reported concisely and regarded as an important part of the manuscript. They should be presented either in tables and figures, and briefly commented on in the text, or in the text alone. Repetition of results should be avoided! For statistical analysis, follow the Statistical and data reporting guidelines. The full set of raw data must be available at any time should reviewers or editors request these for more in-depth review during the review process and/or after publication.

 

Discussion

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The discussion is an interpretation of the results and their significance with reference to pertinent work by other authors. It should be clear and concise. The importance of the study and its limitations should be discussed.

 

Acknowledgement

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This section can be used to acknowledge contributions from other individuals who do not meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship (e.g. those who provided administrative support, writing assistance, language editing)

 

Textual material that names the parties that the author wishes to thank or recognize for their assistance (e.g. individual who provided purely technical help, writing or language editing assistance, or a department chairperson who provided only general support. If a part of the manuscript has been presented elsewhere (e.g. meeting presentation/poster history), a corresponding statement should be provided in the acknowledgment section. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged. 

 

The ‘Acknowledgments’ section should also detail all funding sources for the work in question. There must be a section “Funding” within the “Acknowledgments” section. If the research was carried out without funding, "None" should be stated in this section.

 

In providing details of funding, authors should adhere to the following guidance: 

 

The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’

The full official funding agency name should be given, (i.e., National Institute of Health, not ‘NIH’). Grant numbers should be given in brackets (e.g., [grant number xxxx]).

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma (e.g. [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]).

Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (with ‘and’ before the last funding agency)

Where certain sources of funding were received by a specific author, the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number: ‘to [author initials]’.

 

Author contributions statement

Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT from CASRAI) roles of authors will be published for all accepted articles hence it is paramount that these are selected carefully and accurately upon submission of the revised manuscript.

 

This section is only required for original articles, review articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. It describes the contribution each author made to the manuscript. Authorship credit should be based on: 1) substantial contributions to the conception and design of the study, acquisition of the data, or analysis and interpretation of the data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) the final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet all three of these conditions. 

Note: acquisition of funding, collection of data, language editing, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. 

 

The ‘Author contributions’ section should be presented as follows: 

(I) Conception and design: 

(II) Administrative support: 

(III) Provision of study materials or patients:

(IV) Collection and assembly of data: 

(V) Data analysis and interpretation: 

(VI) Manuscript writing: All authors 

(VII) Final approval of manuscript: All authors

 

Note: 1. With VI and VII, “All authors” is obligatory, while the other credits are case-based; 2. The ‘Author contributions’ section is not required when there is only one author. 

 

 

Funding statement

See Funding and conflict of interest section below.

 

Conflicts of Interest

All authors will be asked to fill in the ICMJE’s unified disclosure form.

 

Each author should submit a separate form and is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the submitted information. The corresponding author should use the information in the form completed by each author to create the COI statement for the manuscript. The statement (but not the forms) must be included along with the submission. The statement should include the initials of the author along with the conflicts of interest. The following examples show the format in which the Conflicts of Interest statement   should appear in the manuscript:

 

Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.”

 

Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form. The other authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.”

 

If the paper is accepted, the completed ICMJE’s unified disclosure forms will be required and will be published alongside the article. 

 

 

Figures and legends 

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A list with legends for each figure (and each video) must be included.

Figures should be cited in the order in which they appear in the text. Magnifications should be indicated using a scale bar on the illustration. Please refer to the specification (file types, resolution, image size, file size etc.) for more detailed requirements.

 

If the figures have been reproduced from another source, a letter from the copyright holder (usually the publisher) authorizing the reproduction of the material must be attached to the covering letter. 

 

Where illustrations include recognizable individuals, living or deceased, great care must be taken to ensure that consent for publication has been given. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects from being recognized and the eyes and eyebrows (at a minimum) must be masked using Coarse Pixilation to make the individual unrecognizable.

 

Videos and legends

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THM will accept digital files in mp4, flash video (flv.), MPEG (MPEG video file), DVD video, mov., avi., and mwv. formats or videos on CD / DVD. Contributors are asked to be succinct, and the editorial office reserves the right to request a shorter video if necessary. Video files can be submitted online at: http://cdt.amegroups.com/pages/view/submit-multimedia-files.

 

Duration: Video files should be limited to 20 minutes.

 

Quality: Please set the video aspect ratio as 4:3 or 16:9 (widescreen). The original video should be of high quality with the resolution > = 1280*720, the frame rate > = 24 frames per second and the bit rate > = 5 Mbps.

 

In-video text: All text notes, explanations, or descriptions, etc. in the video must be provided in English. The logo or watermark of the hospital / institution should not appear on screen. Any patient information should be erased from the video.

 

Video legends: Legends should be provided for the video files. The video files should be numbered consecutively in their order of reference in the text.

 

Abbreviations and symbols

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Use only standard abbreviations; All abbreviations should be defined when they are first used in the text unless the abbreviation is a standard unit of measurement and a list of full terms should be provided in the manuscript. 

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Tables 

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All tables must be included in the manuscript file, as part of the text, not as images. All tables should start on separate pages and be accompanied by a title, and footnotes (use superscript a,b,c….) where necessary. The tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals. Abbreviations and their full definitions should be listed in alphabetical order at the bottom of the table. Avoid overcrowding the tables and the excessive use of words. The format of tables should be in keeping with that normally used by the journal. Please ascertain that the data given in tables are correct. All tables must be cited in the text.

 

 

References

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Authors are responsible for checking the accuracy of all references. If you use EndNote or Reference Manager to facilitate referencing citations (not required for submission), this journal's style is available for use. 

 

References should be numbered (though a superscript) in order of appearance in the text (in Arabic numerals) and must be listed numerically in the reference list. Journal titles and author initials should be abbreviated and punctuated according to PubMed. If an automatic referencing system has been used in the preparation of the paper, the references must not be left embedded in the final text file submitted. The citation of journals, books, multi-author books and articles published online should conform to the following examples:

 

The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. 

 

Journals 

 

1. Dandel M, Javier MFDM, Javier Delmo EM, et al. Weaning from ventricular assist device support after recovery from left ventricular failure with or without secondary right ventricular failure. Cardiovasc Diagn Ther. 2021 Feb;11(1):226-242. doi: 10.21037/cdt-20-288.

2. Javier Delmo EM, Javier MFDM, Hetzer R. Consecutive surgical sequelae in children and adolescents with Marfan syndrome after primary cardiovascular surgical interventions. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg. 2020 Jan 1;57(1):54-62. doi: 10.1093/ejcts/ezz143.

 

 

For other styles of publication or Internet articles, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.

 

 

Books 

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3.  Cooley DA. Techniques in cardiac surgery. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1984:167-76.

 

Multi-author books 

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4.   Müller J, Wallukat G, Weng Y, Dandel S, Spiegelsberger S, Loebe M, hetzer R. . Weaning from mechanical circuatory support after complete recovery in patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy in Hetzer R, Hennig E, Loebe M (eds.) Mechanical Circulatory Support: In Children, towards Myocardial Recovery Permanent. Darmstadt: Steinkopf, 1997. 

 

​Online-only publications (please give the doi wherever possible)

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5.  Javier MFDM, Javier Delmo EM, Hetzer R. Evolution of heart transplantation since Barnard's first. Cardiovasc Diagn Ther. 2021 Feb;11(1):171-182. doi: 10.21037/cdt-20-289.

 

or 

 

6. National Comprehensive Cancer Network. NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology: Cancer-associated Venous Thromboembolic Disease; Version 2.2018. 2018 https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/vte.pdf (10 July 2019, date last accessed).

 

For references with more than six authors, the first 6 authors should be listed, followed by et al. Personal communications (Loebe, personal communication) must be authorized in writing by those involved, and unpublished data should be cited in the text as (unpublished data). References to manuscripts submitted, but not yet accepted, should be cited in the text as (Ennker and Hausmann, manuscript in preparation) and should not be included in the list of references. Authors are encouraged to cite web URLs in parentheses at the appropriate mention in the text.