Reproductive and Developmental Medicine

​BEFORE YOU BEGIN

The Editorial Office is pleased to answer any questions you may have about preparing your manuscript in accordance with our guidelines.

Address: Lane 1326 Pingliang Road, Shanghai 200082, China
Tel: +86-21-5527 2379
Email: [email protected]; [email protected].
Website: http://www.repdevmed.org/
Online Submission: https://www.editorialmanager.com/rdm/

AIMS AND SCOPE

Reproductive and Developmental Medicine (RDM) is a peer-reviewed journal, quarterly. The journal allows free access (Open Access) to its contents and permits authors to self-archive final accepted version of the articles.

The journal publishes original research (basic, clinical and translational), reviews, opinions and debates on current importance or controversy of reproductive medicine and developmental biology. Papers cover reproductive endocrinology, reproductive immunology, gametogenesis, fertilization, embryo development and implantation, birth defect, reproductive genetics, biology of reproduction, fertility preservation, andrology, genetic diagnosis, preimplantation genetic testing, germline stem cell research, and new techniques and methods in reproductive medicine and developmental biology. Research that would be classified as clearly in the fields of reproductive system tumor will not be considered.

ONLINE SUBMISSION

All manuscripts must be submitted online at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/rdm/.

First-time Users

Please click the Register button at https://www.editorialmanager.com/rdm/. Upon successful registration, you will be sent an email providing your username and password. Save this information for future reference.

Note: If you have received an email from us with an assigned username and password, or if you are a repeat user, do not register again. Once you have an assigned username and password, you do not have to re-register. ​

Authors

Please click the Login button from the menu at the top of the page and login to the system as an author. Submit your manuscript according to the author instructions. You will be able to track the process of your manuscript through the system.​

JOURNAL POLICIES

Submission without animal or human subjects oversight approvals

Any manuscript submitted without proof of animal or human subjects approval by institutional or local IRBs will not be reviewed and will be returned to the authors.

Duplicate publication

Manuscripts are reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that they are being submitted only to the RDM and have not been published, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The Editorial team may subject any manuscript submitted for consideration of publication in RDM to plagiarism-detection software.

This does not preclude consideration of a manuscript that has been rejected by another journal or a complete report that follows publication of preliminary findings elsewhere, usually in the form of an abstract. Copies of any possibly duplicate published material should be submitted with the manuscript under consideration, with a statement in the cover letter as to why the manuscript currently being submitted is not a duplicate publication.

Conflict of Interest

Authors must state all possible conflicts of interest in the manuscript, including financial, consultant, institutional and other relationships that might lead to bias or a conflict of interest. If there is no conflict of interest, this should also be explicitly stated as none declared. All sources of funding should be acknowledged in the manuscript. All relevant conflicts of interest and sources of funding should be included on the title page of the manuscript with the heading "Conflicts of Interest and Source of Funding:". For example: "Conflicts of Interest and Source of Funding: A has received honoraria from Company Z. B is currently receiving a grant (#12345) from Organization Y, and is on the speaker's bureau for Organization X - the CME organizers for Company A. For the remaining authors none were declared."​

Data Availability Statement

Reproductive and Developmental Medicine^​ requires authors to include in any articles that report results derived from research data to include a Data Availability Statement from October 1, 2022. The provision of a Data Availability Statement will be verified as a condition of publication. Data Availability Statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Where research data are not publicly available, this must be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for accessing the data. Data Availability Statements should take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple types of research data) or be kept as provided by authors in the manuscripts. 

• The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
• The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. 
• The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study. 
• All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
• The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name]. ​​
  

Authorship

RDM expects that each person listed as an author has participated suffi­ciently in the intellectual content, the analysis of data, and/or the writing of the manuscript to take public responsibility for it. Each author must have reviewed the manuscript, believes it represents valid work, and approves it for submission.

Moreover, should the Editorial team request the data upon which the manuscript is based, the authors shall produce it. Each author's specific contributions to the work should be indicated; this information will be published as a footnote to the paper. For example, the areas of participation might include:

• The conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content​.
• Final approval of the version to be submitted.
• 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.

An author may list more than one contribution, and more than one author may have contributed to the same aspect of the work. Any change in authorship/contributions after submission must be approved in writing by all authors and submitted to the Editorial Office for final consideration.

Language and Grammar​

All manuscripts must be written in English, and must meet professional standards for grammatical accuracy, quality and style.

• Uniformly American English.
• Write the full term for each abbreviation at its first use in the title, abstract, keywords and text separately unless it is a standard unit of measure. Numerals from 1 to 10 spelt out.
• Numerals at the beginning of the sentence spelt out.
• Check the manuscript for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
• If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer's name and address (city and state/country).
• Species names should be in italics.

Reporting of Randomized Clinical Trials

Registration of Clinical Trials is an essential requirement for publication of clinical trials in this journal in accordance with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org) recommendations. Trials must be registered at or before the onset of patient enrollment. On the title page of your manuscript, provide the name of the trial registry and the registration number/identifier of the trial.

Acceptable web-based clinical trial registries include the following:

• EudraCT at https://eudract.ema.europa.eu for EU trials
• ClinicalTrials.gov at www.clinicaltrials.gov for US trials
• Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, found at http://www.chictr.org.cn
• Current Controlled Trials found at www.controlled-trials.com
• WHO International Trial Registry Network found at https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network
• Australian & New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, found at http://www.anzctr.org.au/
• And any publicly available primary registry of clinical trials ​

Randomized controlled trials should be presented according to the CONSORT guidelines. At manuscript submission, authors must provide the CONSORT checklist accompanied by a flow diagram that illustrates the progress of patients through the trial, including recruitment, enrollment, randomization, withdrawal and completion, and a detailed description of the randomization procedure.

Optional Reporting Guidelines

The following resources may be helpful to authors:

• PRISMA​ –Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
• STROBE​ - Strengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology
• STREGA – Strengthening the Reporting of Genetic Associations
• CARE - Strengthening the reporting of Clinical Case Report​

​For further information regarding reporting guidelines, authors should consult the EQUATOR Network web site (http://www.equator-network.org​), which maintains a useful, up-to-date list of guidelines as they are published, with links to articles and checklists.

​Copyright

The editorial office of Reproductive and Developmental Medicine is the owner of all copyrights to any articles published in the journal.

Open Access

Every peer-reviewed research article appearing in RDM will be published open access, which means that the article is universally and freely accessible via the internet in perpetuity, in an easily readable format immediately after publication. The journal does not charge for submission, processing or publication of manuscripts and even for color reproduction of photographs.

This journal is indexed by SHERPA/Romeo: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/41400​

Creative Commons Licenses

Open access articles will be freely available to read, download and share from the time of publication. Articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) which allows readers to disseminate and reuse the article, as well as share and reuse of the scientific material. It does not permit commercial exploitation or the creation of derivative works without specific permission. To view a copy of this license visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/​

Financial Support

A financial disclosure section is part of the submission process and must be completed by each author at first revision. This information is for review by the Editors but will be published if relevant to the content of the accepted manuscript.

The primary purpose of the disclosure section is to determine whether authors have received any commercial financial support that could create a conflict of interest. In addition to monetary interests, a potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an indi­vidual believes that a relationship (such as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties) affects his or her scientific judgment. Please review ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals at the following link​: http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest.

Ethics

When reporting studies on human beings, author should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration. For prospective studies involving human participants, authors are expected to mention about approval of regional/national/institutional or independent ethics committee or review board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary as per regional and/or national guidelines. Ensure confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants' names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

Evidence for approval by a local ethics committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. Animal experimental procedures should be as humane as possible and the details of anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the CPCSEA and World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Humans for studies involving experimental animals and human beings, respectively. The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the "Methods" section.

Protection of Patients' Rights to Privacy

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients' names from figures unless they have obtained written informed consent from the patients. The journal abides by ICMJE guidelines: (1) Authors, not the journals nor the publisher, need to have the patient consent form before the publication related to patient privacy and have the form properly archived by the author. (2) If the publication includes some facial images that make the patients identifiable, a statement about the patient's consent needs to be present in the manuscript.

Peer Review

RDM operates a single-blind external peer review process, wherein the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author. Brief introduction on peer review process of the journal:

On submission, editors screened all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding for formal peer-review. Manuscripts that are unlikely to be of interest to the readers of the journal are also liable to be rejected at this stage.

Manuscripts that are found suitable for potential publication of the journal are sent to an associate Editor-in-Chief, and the he/she will invite a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the manuscript. Authors submitting manuscripts to RDM may propose suitable reviewers or oppose reviewers who may have competing interests. The proposed reviewers should not be affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor(s). However, the selection of these reviewers is at the sole discretion of the editor, who selects reviewers to reflect relevant expertise, diversity, and geographical backgrounds.

Peer reviewers have access to the submitted manuscript and any appendices included by the authors. If the paper is a randomized controlled trial, peer reviewers will also have access to the trial protocol. Peer review assists editors in their decision on whether to publish an article and helps authors revise and improve their manuscripts. Peer reviewers make suggestions for improvements, critique the analysis, point out relevant published work which is not yet cited, and provide recommendations to the authors and the editors. At RDM​, reviewer comments are sent to the authors anonymously. Details of peer review including dates and peer review comments are not shared publicly. Reviewed articles are treated confidentially prior to their publication.

Based on the comments from the reviewers, the handling editor takes an acceptance decision on the manuscript and convey the comments and suggestions (acceptance/ rejection/ amendments in manuscript) to the corresponding author, who is requested to provide a point-by-point response to reviewers' comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated until reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript. Manuscripts are accepted on the basis of quality, originality, significance, novelty and importance for the field.

The authors do have the right to appeal if they have a genuine cause to believe that the editorial board has wrongly rejected the paper. If the authors wish to appeal the decision, they should email the editorial office (email: [email protected]) explaining in detail the reason for the appeal. The appeals will be acknowledged by the editorial office and will be investigated in an unbiased manner. The processing of appeals will be done within 6–8 weeks. While under appeal, the said manuscript should not be submitted to other journals. The final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. Second appeals are not considered.

Manuscripts received from Editorial Board Members will be screened by the Editor-in-Chief and sent to external peer reviewers. In case, Editor-in-Chief is the author, then the article will be screened by Assistant Editor/Co-Editor-in-Chief and sent to external peer reviewers. The Editorial Board Members who are authors will be excluded from publication decisions.

Editors are not involved in decisions about papers which they have written themselves or have been written by family members or colleagues or whoever relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest. Any such submission is subject to the journal's standard procedures, with peer review handled independently of the relevant editor and their research groups.

All special issue articles follow the same peer review process as above.​

Types of Articles

• Original Articles are full-length reports of completed basic, clinical or translational research. Articles should report important, novel and fully completed studies with strong conclusions. A research article should contain up to 8,000 words (~10 pages) in the main text (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) and up to 8 display items (Figures and Tables). Additional information, including detailed Methods where appropriate, may be provided as Supplementary Material. Articles have a structured abstract of maximum 300 words. The abstracts should be structured as follows: Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion.
• Reviews should not simply summarize information, but also discuss the importance and impact of the data providing a clear view on how these insights have transformed or will transform the field. Authors of review articles are encouraged to include several figures and tables to summarize and visualize data. Review Articles have an unstructured abstract of maximum 300 words and a word count of approximately 10,000 words (~12 pages).
• Meta Analysis are results of meta analysis. The length of the article is about 5000 words (not including tables, figures, and references). The meta analysis should have the following headings: Keywords, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Reference, Tables, and Legends in that order and have an unstructured abstract of maximum 300 words.
• Guideline Article are official recommendations from professional organizations on issues related to clinical practice and health care delivery. RDM is flexible with length, reference, and other format requirements given the variability in the format of guidelines developed by different organizations. A concise table or concise graphic summarizing the recommendations and other key points is desirable. Guidelines that meet standards (http://www.equator-network.org/) will fare more favorably than those that do not.
• Methodology articles present a new experimental or clinical method, test, procedure or technique. The method described may be new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.
• Letter to the Editor can take three forms: a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article; a substantial response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication; or an article that may not cover 'standard research' but that may be relevant to readers.
• Editorial are invited articles to explain the importance of specific articles or to provide opinions on general concepts in practice, research or policy. Editorials have no abstract and are typically 1000 to 1500 words long. Editorials who discuss a recently published article should cite that article as the first reference.
• Perspectives are welcomed and the length should be about 1500 words (not including tables, figures, and references). Authors of this type of articles should sign their real names; no anonymous pieces are published.
• Correspondence is short discussions based on limited new data that still come to solid conclusions or initiate important new questions. Correspondence has a brief abstract and should begin with a short introductory paragraph explaining the background and the rationale for the letter. Correspondence can only have 1,200 words and 2 tables/figures.

PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION

Authors must submit all elements of their manuscripts online at https://www.editorialmanager.com/rdm. The online system automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF files at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision takes place via email.

Submitted manuscripts are screened by Journal staff and editors. For some papers, a decision is made to decline immediately. All others undergo peer review.

Use of word processing software

It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the word processor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced. In particular, do not use the word processor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts. Note that source files of figures, tables and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text.

Cover letter

Cover letter should include the name(s) and contact information of the corresponding author(s). Include the title of the manuscript, describe the rationale behind the study and the major findings from the research. Also state other issues, including duplicate publication, conflicts of interest, and ethical approval statements.

Basic Format

Requirements for manuscripts submitted to the Journal generally conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org).

Manuscripts must be submitted in English, double spaced, with a font size no smaller than 12. Number pages consecutively in the upper right corner in the following order: title page, condensation and short version of title, abstract, main text, acknowledgments, references, tables, and figure legends. Continuous line numbers (1st through last page) must appear on manuscripts upon submission.

IMPORTANT: Figures are to be uploaded individually and in separate files (one figure per file). DO NOT embed the figure into the manuscript text file, as this compromises the image quality, creating an unpublishable image.

Title page

• Type of manuscript. Editorial, Guideline Article, Perspective, Original Article, Meta Analysis, Clinical Observation, Review, Correspondence, etc.
• Title. Concise and informative, state the key point of the manuscript. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations where possible. Conclusion statements are NOT permitted in the manuscript title.
• Running title. A short version of your title, consisting of 40 characters or less, including spaces.
• Author names and affiliations. List the first name, middle initial, and family name of each author, and present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and the e-mail address of each author.
• Address for correspondence. Provide complete contact information including street address for the corresponding author. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author. Include the full name, address, work and home and/or cell phone numbers (indicating which is which), and email address.
• Acknowledgements
  This section thanks those other than the authors who have made substantive contributions to the manuscript, including participants in collaborative trials and persons providing only data collection or assistance with preparing the paper for submission or publication. Name only those who have made substantive contributions to the study.
  For each person named under Acknowledgments, including science writers, the following information must be provided: name, place of employment, funding source(s), and disclosure of source of compensation, whether financial or in the form of services or complimentary products. All individuals named in this section must consent to such acknowledgment.
• Grant support. Indicate financial support including funding agency name(s) and grant or contract numbers where applicable.

Abstract page

• Abstract

The abstract must be formatted as required for each article type (e.g., structured vs unstructured, word count, etc.). Abbreviations and references are NOT permitted in the abstract.

The abstract should provide sufficient detail for the editors, reviewers, and readers to clearly understand the main message of your paper. Abstracts are freely available on search engines such as Scopus, PubMed, etc., and is a key component in assessing the quality of an article.

• Key words

Key words are a pertinent component in making articles more visible and accessible to potential readers and assist in the dissemination of your research. Provide as many alphabetized key words or short phrases as needing for indexing purposes. Approximately 10 terms are recommended, but do not duplicate terms or phrases utilized in the manuscript title as they are automatically included.

Article structure

Divide your article into clearly defined sections. Each subsection is given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line. Subsections should be used as much as possible when cross-referencing text: refer to the subsection by heading as opposed to simply 'the text'.

• Introduction

Concisely explain the background that the reader needs to know in order to understand the aim and significance of the work reported in the manuscript. An important knowledge gap and how the new work fills this gap should be clearly presented.

• Material and methods

Ethics: It must be stated and documented those investigations using experimental animals or human subjects were conducted in accordance with the relevant institutional and/or national guidelines and standards.

A statement of Institutional Review Board (IRB) status must be included. Similarly, a statement of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approval must be provided for research involving animals.

Describe methods in sufficient detail that a competent scientist could replicate the experiments. Common techniques should not be explained in detail, unless a specific aspect is important to obtain or interpret the results. If an extended description of methods is needed, this can be provided in Supplementary Material. The source of all reagents should be clearly identified. Any modifications of images must be clearly explained. State the statistical methods used for data analysis.

• Results

Following a logical order, describe the experimental results. Begin each paragraph with a brief (usually one sentence) statement of the specific aim of the experiment to be described, followed by the approach. State the results clearly and concisely, using the past tense and referring to the appropriate display item(s). Where appropriate, the paragraph may be concluded with a statement indicating the meaning or significance of the results.

• Discussion

Provide a clear and concise interpretation of the results; avoid repeating them. Place them in a larger context, making clear how they advance knowledge both in the specific subject area and more generally in the field of reproductive biology.

• Conclusions

The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section.

References

Follow the format in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. http://www.icmje.org Standard journal title abbreviations are available in the List of Serials Indexed for Online Users from the National Library of Medicine. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/terms_cond.html

• Numbering and order

All references are to be numbered sequentially as they fall in the text. For references that are not cited in the main text but only within table(s) or figure(s), begin such numbering after the numbers in the main reference list.

Insert citations in Arabic numerals as superscripts using square brackets. Do not include the first author of the cited reference in the text, in parentheses or otherwise, except as part of the text itself (Li et al. found…. or In a study by Li et al., ....).

• Reference style

In general references follow AMA style. For information on AMA style, please visit http://www.amamanualofstyle.com.

No more than three authors should be listed. If there are four or more, only the first three followed by ''et al.'' should be included. Titles of journal articles must be included, and standard journal title abbreviations should conform to Index Medicus style. The available Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be added at the end of every reference.

Example:

Journal article:

[1] Ediriweera MK, Tennekoon KH, Samarakoon SR. Role of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway in ovarian cancer: Biological and therapeutic significance. Semin Cancer Biol 2019;59:147‑160. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2019.05.012.
[2] Sun D, Long HY, He X, et al. Syncytin-A knockout induces placental developmental abnormalities partially through calpain1-apoptosis-inducing factor-mediated trophoblast apoptosis. Reprod Dev Med 2021;5:63-70. doi:10.4103/2096-2924.320885

Book

[1] Weinstein L, Swartz MN. Pathogenic properties of invading microorganisms. In: Sodeman WA Jr., Sodeman WA, eds. Pathologic physiology: mechanisms of disease. Philadelphia: Saunders; 1974: 457-472.
[2] Anderson SC, Poulsen KB. Anderson's electronic atlas of hematology. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2002.

Database

Cumulative number of reported cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Geneva: World Health Organization, 2003. Available from: http://www.who.int/csr/sarscountry/2003_04_04/en/. [Last accessed on 2003 April 9].

Figures

• There is no charge for the use of color figures.
• Submit each figure individually (one figure per file) with high quality. Images, graphics and diagrams that clearly illustrate the intended point are key to drawing attention and making the data more convincing.
• DO NOT copy and paste or embed images into the manuscript text file or in a slide presentation. This compromises image quality making it unpublishable.
• Preferred image formats are: TIFF or JPEG.
• Number figures sequentially in order as they appear in the text, with Arabic numbers (Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3A, etc.).

Figure legends

• On the final page of the manuscript supply the following for each figure.
• Figure legends should be concise while providing enough information for the reader to understand the Figure without referring to the text. Indicate sample size and which statistical tests have been performed where appropriate.
• Explain any arrowhead, letter, or other symbol used to identify parts of a photograph, drawing, or other illustration.
• Spell out any abbreviations used.
• In photomicrographs, explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining, if appropriate.

Tables

• Please submit tables as editable text and not as images.
• Tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript file, following the figure legends or reference list.
• Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body.
• Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

Submission

New submissions

Once the manuscript has been created, visit the submission site at https://www.editorialmanager.com/rdm/ to upload the manuscript. Once the manuscript has been vetted for compliance to the Journal's requirements, a manuscript number will be assigned to the submission. Failure to adhere to these guidelines will result in your manuscript being returned to you for correction. Faxed, scanned or emailed copies of manuscripts will not be accepted.

Revised submissions

All revised submissions require a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments. Please upload this document as file type Response to Reviewers.

Changes made in the revised manuscript should be indicated using highlighted, bold or underlined text. Upload both a Marked and a Clean version of the revised manuscript. File types are provided for both versions.

A requirement of all revisions is the artwork quality check as described above (see Figures).

Revised manuscripts should be submitted within the deadline specified in the decision letter. Please contact us for an extension of the due date if it is not possible to submit the revision within that period, or should you desire to withdraw the manuscript from further consideration.

Revisions should adhere to original specifications for the submission type. Sometimes changes made in response to the decision/critiques may bring the revised manuscript out of compliance (e.g., over the word count and/or table/figure limit) with original specifications. This may be allowed by the Editor, but must be noted in the point-by-point response.

Mandatory Author Forms

Upon first revision, authors will be required to complete a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) form. CTA forms are required of every author listed on the submission. Please ensure each author's email address is properly listed on the footnotes page of your manuscript to avoid delays in reaching authors. Manuscripts will not pass to production without completed forms. CTA forms are available from the site https://www.editorialmanager.com/rdm/.

Post Acceptance

Proofs

The publisher's Journal Production Editor will contact you when page proofs are ready for your review. The figures included on author's proofs are high resolution. Please inform the Journal Production Editor immediately if you have any questions concerning the quality of the figures on the proofs. For information regarding proofs, or the status of publication of your accepted manuscript, please contact [email protected].

Changes in corresponding author's contact information

Please give all new information, including email address, to the editorial office and to the publisher. Authors may send this information to Current Urology, [email protected]. If the Journal is unsuccessful in contacting the corresponding author, the author will not receive proofs for approval, and the manuscript may not be published.

Changes at proofs

It is expected that the final manuscript sent to the Editor is indeed the final version, so few changes should be required at proof stage.