General Information
HemaSphere is an online, open access journal, powered by the European Hematology Association (EHA) and dedicated to supporting hematology patient care, research, and education worldwide.
HemaSphere publishes results of highly relevant basic, translational, and clinical research in hematology. We are especially looking for strong studies reporting novel findings that are of high impact to the field of hematology. HemaSphere is the premier hematology information resource, which is enhanced by the HemaTopics and HemaPolicy sections of the journal. These sections provide insightful discussions on all aspects related to hematology, including summaries of important articles, reports of new therapies, discussions on European policy, and other hematology news items.
HemaSphere is guided by Editor in Chief Jan Cools and Deputy Editor in Chief Claire Harrison. The Editors and Editorial Board of
HemaSphere are international research and clinical leaders, representing a diverse range of areas of hematologic expertise.
Thank you for considering to publish in
HemaSphere! Below, you will find information that we hope is helpful as you preapre your manuscript. If you have questions or are uncertain, please do reach out to our Editorial Office.
Citation Metrics & Indexing
HemaSphere is proud to have a
2021 Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of 8.3. Additionally,
HemaSphere has a Scopus 2021 CiteScore of 5.4.
HemaSphere is fully indexed in PubMed Central (PMC), and in the following Clarivate Analytics products and categories:
- SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED (SCIE) - Hematology
- CC/CLINICAL MEDICINE - Hematology
Peer Review
All articles submitted to HemaSphere are subject to critical double-blind peer review by our editors and external hematology experts. We adhere to the principles of peer review as recommended by ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org), which is fundamental to the scientific publication process.
Authors submitting manuscripts to HemaSphere may propose suitable reviewers or oppose reviewers who may have competing interests. Manuscripts are accepted on the basis of quality, originality, significance, novelty, and importance for the hematology field.
Types of Manuscripts
Type
|
Text word
count* (max)
|
Abstract word count (max)
|
Figures/tables (max)
|
References (max)
|
Supplement possible
|
Article
|
5000
|
250
|
10
|
100
|
Yes
|
Review Article
|
5000
|
250
|
10
|
100
|
Yes
|
Guideline Article
|
5000
|
250 |
10
|
50
|
Yes
|
Controversy
|
5000
|
250
|
10
|
100
|
Yes
|
Perspective
|
2000
|
No abstract
|
3
|
50
|
No
|
Letter**
|
1500
|
No abstract
|
2
|
25
|
Yes
|
Editorial
|
1500
|
No abstract
|
2
|
15
|
No
|
Comment
|
1000
| No abstract
| 1
| 15
| No
|
HemaTopics
|
1200
| No abstract
| 2
| 25
| No
|
HemaPolicy
|
1200
|
No abstract
| 1
|
25
|
No
|
*Text word count is flexible and excludes title page, abstract, figure legends, and references.
**Description of single cases cannot be considered as Letters.
Description of Manuscript Types
Articles are full-length reports of completed basic, translational, or clinical research. Articles should report important, novel, and fully completed studies with strong conclusions. There is a maximum length of 5000 words, but shorter articles are also considered as long as these are conclusive reports. Preliminary reports cannot be accepted. Articles have an unstructured abstract with a maximum of 250 words, and can have up to 10 figures/tables. A supplement with additional information is possible. Professionally-created graphical abstracts are offered by the Editors to accompany selected articles. The HemaSphere Editorial Office will contact the corresponding author of the article as applicable.
Letters are short reports based on limited new data that provide solid conclusions or initiate important new questions. Letters have no abstract and therefore should begin with a short introductory paragraph explaining the background and the rationale for the study. Letters can contain 1500 words, 2 tables/figures, and up to 25 references. The text should be divided into several paragraphs, but no subheadings should be used (no separate results, methods, discussion sections).
Case Reports are not considered for publication. However, interesting case series with novel observations and with additional experimental data can be submitted as a ‘Letter’.
Review Articles are typically invited; suggestions can be sent to the editors using the Editorial Office’s email:[email protected].
Review articles have an unstructured abstract of maximum 250 words and an overall word count of approximately 5000 words. Review articles should not simply summarize information, but should also discuss the importance and impact of the data providing a clear view on how these insights have transformed or will transform the hematology field. Authors of review articles are encouraged to include several figures and tables to summarize and visualize data. We work with a professional artist who can help to prepare the final figures of the review articles with pre-approval from the HemaSphere office.
Perspectives provide an overview on important new developments with discussion of their importance. The focus should be on recent years and an outlook for the future. Perspectives have no abstract and are typically up to 2000 words with a maximum of 50 references. Several figures and tables are encouraged.
Guideline Articles report new or updated guidelines prepared by an international group of experts.
HemaSphere favors the preparation and publication of evidence-based guidelines. Consensus based guidelines and expert opinion guidelines are less favored, but can be considered for important topics where there is insufficient data. Guideline articles include unstructured abstracts of 250 words maximum, which should state the need for the guideline and the main conclusions/recommendations. Guideline articles can be up to 5000 words. Authors of guideline articles are encouraged to include several figures and tables to summarize and visualize the various aspects of the data and the guidelines.
Controversies define and discuss current controversies in hematology practice, especially for those areas where there is a lack of studies and/or where there are opposing views or data. A controversy article is preferentially prepared by an international group of experts. These articles should have an unstructured abstract of maximum 250 words introducing the topic and the main controversies. The introduction should summarize the current status of the field, and the main text should list and discuss the major controversies. Several tables and figures can be included. Please include one referenced table summarizing all of the controversies discussed in the article.
Editorials are short manuscripts that are used to introduce a specific topic to our readers and should provide an unbiased critical view. Edutorials can be used to explain the importance of specific studies or to provide opinions/guidance on hematology practice, research, or any related topics. Editorials have no abstract and can be up to 1500 words with up to 15 references. Editorials that introduce a recently published study in
HemaSphere should cite that article as the first reference.
Comments are short discussions (maximum 1000 words) to be used only to provide comments on a recently published study in HemaSphere. Comments typically describe an individual (provocative) opinion. These manuscripts have no abstract and should cite the article under discussion.
HemaTopics articles are editorial type articles authored by
HemaSphere scientific editors and focus on a variety of topics, including hot hematology topics, recent research developments, updates on diagnosis and treatment, patient perspectives, etc.
HemaPolicy articles are editorial type articles that are policy focused, including policy that influences the hematology field or advocacy for hematologists in the European context. Suggestions for these articles can be sent to the editors using the email: [email protected]. These articles can be up to 1200 words, do not contain abstracts, can contain 1 figure/table, and include up to 25 references.
Article Publication Charges (APCs)
HemaSphere is an open access, peer reviewed journal. To provide open access, the journal charges publication fees for each article accepted and published. These fees cover the expenses incurred by publication, including the peer review process, journal production and publication, hosting and archiving fees, and article promotions. Fees vary by article type. Invited manuscripts will be published free of charge. HemaSphere does not charge any article submission fees.
Article types
|
EHA members
|
Non-members
|
Tier 1: Articles, Review Articles, Guideline Articles, Controversy Articles
|
50%**
|
€1,269* equivalent ($1,350)
|
Tier 2: Editorials, Perspectives, letters
|
50%**
|
€635* equivalent ($675)
|
Tier 3: Comments, HemaTopics, HemaPolicy
|
FREE
|
FREE
|
All invited manuscripts*** (invited review articles, invited guidelines, invited editorials and invited perspectives)
|
FREE
|
FREE
|
*The publisher charges APCs in USD. The USD/EUR rate is 1.180.
**50% discount for EHA members (first and last authors of the manuscript) who are active members at the time of submission. Offer valid until December 31, 2023.
***APCs for all contributions on invitation by the Editors will be waived.
HemaSphere offers full or partial equitable waivers for accepted articles from low-income and middle-income economies. Eligibility is based on the Research4Life eligibility criteria. Countries listed in Group A are eligible for the full waiver and countries listed in Group B are eligible for the partial (50%) waiver. The waiver is automatically applied based on the Corresponding Author's country information provided during submission.
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Returning users can simply 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 instructions for authors. You will be able to track the process of your manuscript through the system.
New Submissions
Once the manuscript has been created, visit the submission site at
http://www.editorialmanager.com/hemasphere to upload the manuscript. At first submission, we are flexible with the format of the manuscript (for example reference style). However, we do request the use of a separate file for title page (with author names and affiliations, disclosures, and author contributions) and separate manuscript file, since we follow a double-blinded review process.
Once the manuscript has been vetted for compliance to the Journal's requirements, a manuscript number will be assigned to the submission. 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.
All revised submissions also require an updated revised manuscript document. The Editorial Manager system will request that you upload both a marked and a clean version of the revised manuscript. Changes made in the revised manuscript should be indicated using track changes, highlighting, or distincly colored text.
Revised manuscripts should be submitted within the deadline specified in the decision letter. Please contact us for an extension 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 the original specifications for the submission type. Sometimes changes made in response to the decision/critiques may bring the revised manuscript out of compliance (eg, 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.
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Required Elements for Every Submission
Title Page
Please provide a separate title page with title, author names and affiliations, disclosures, and author contributions so that your manuscript can be reviewed in an anonymous way (external reviewers will not see the title page and thus will not see the names of the authors).
Title. Include a descriptive title of the work; the title should not be a sentence. No proprietary or brand names for drugs or agents may be used in the title.
Authors. The full first name and family name of each author, as well as the name(s) of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed. Please carefully include/exclude middle initials and other details as you wish, remembering that this is how your information will be indexed in PubMed Central. Per ICMJE recommendations, artificial intelligence tools are not considered authors. Use of these tools must be transparently disclosed in the manuscript. Please see the section 'Journal Policies - Authorship' below for more information.
Correspondence. Provide the name and email address for the corresponding author.
Short Title. Provide a short title (maximum 70 characters); this will be shown on top of every other page of the final manuscript PDF.
Acknowledgments. This section includes names of collaborators who are not listed as coauthors, or any others and/or affiliates who contributed to the manuscript. Where a medical writer or editorial assistant has been used to write or edit an article, the writer must be identified and named, together with the source of funding. If the authors have no acknowledgements to list, it is acceptable to omit this section.
Author Contributions. Please include an overview of each author's contribution to this manuscript. You are welcome to use abbreviations for author names as you see fit.
Disclosures. Please disclose any potential conflict of interest for each of the authors. If the author(s) have nothing to disclose, please include the phrase, "The authors declare no conflicts of interest."
Sources of Funding. Please include a statement regarding sources of funding recieved for this work, especially details of funding from any of the following organizations: National Institutes of Health (NIH); Wellcome Trust; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). If no sources of funding were received for this work, please specify "The authors delcare no sources of funding."
Manuscript Content
Abstract. Where required, abstracts are limited to 250 words, which are excluded from the overall manuscript word count. The abstract is unstructured and should briefly describe: (1) the problem being addressed in the study, (2) how the study was performed, (3) the most important results, and (4) what the authors conclude from the results. Note that not all manuscript types can have an abstract.
Introduction. The introduction contains a statement of the purpose of the work, the problem that stimulated it, and a brief summary of relevant published investigations.
Materials and Methods. Provide full details of all materials and methods used, but avoid detailed description of previously published methods and cite the appropriate references. Provide full details of antibodies, cell lines, mouse strains, drugs, concentrations, time points, temperatures, etc.
Data Availability. All data required to produce the results of your study should be provided within the manuscript, via supplemental files, or with links to the datasets. All datasets that were previously generated and re-used in your study should be clearly described and a link to the data and/or reference should be provided. All datasets generated in your study should be deposited to a public repository and accession numbers need to be listed. Reviewers should have access to this data and upon publication of the manuscript, the data should be made publicly available. Access to patient data could be considered with certain restrictions, based on local guidelines and in accordance with GDPR. If the work did not generate new datasets, it is adequate to state "This work did not generate new datasets."
Results. The results should be concise, avoiding redundant tables and figures illustrating the same data.
Discussion. This section should follow the results and is used to interpret results, with minimal recapitulation of findings.
References. The journal uses American Medical Association (AMA) style. References should begin on a separate page and numbered in the order in which they are cited in the text, where they are designated by superscript numbers placed outside periods and commas, and inside colons and semicolons. Only published works and manuscripts that have been accepted for publication should be listed in the References. Manuscripts in preperation, unpublished observations, and personal communications should be referred to in parentheses in the text. Completed manuscripts submitted for publication may be cited as references, noting they are in press. If these are subsequently accepted, the author should update the details in the reference section of the galley proof.
References format: No more than six authors should be listed. If there are seven or more, only the first three followed by "et al." should be included. HemaSphere does not include study group names in reference page author lists. Titles of journal articles must be included, and abbreviations of journal names should conform to Index Medicus style.
Two authors:
Ahmed KA, Xiang J. Mechanisms of cellular communication through intercellular protein transfer. J Cell Mol Med.
2011;15:1458.
More than seven authors:
Ali JM, Bolton EM, Bradley JA, et al. Allorecognition pathways in transplant rejection and tolerance. Transplantation.
2013;96:681.
Organization as author:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prevention of herpes zoster: recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). MMWR Recomm Rep. 2008;57:1.
Manuscript Tables & Figures
Tables. Photographs of tables are not acceptable. Type each table, 1.3 spacing throughout (including column headings, footnotes, and data), on a separate page. Tables may be included as part of the main body file and placed after the references section. Number the tables in sequence in Arabic numerals and supply a concise, informative title for each one. Each column in the tables should carry a concise heading describing the data in the column.
Use lowercase superscript letters to designate footnotes, and type the footnotes below the tables to whcih they refer. Tables are cited in the text in numerical order. Each table should be able to be understood without consulting the text.
Like text, tables should be prepared using a standard word-processing program and may either be included within the main body text document or uploaded separately. Do not upload table files more than once (that is, in the main document and in separate files). Acceptable document file types for tables include .DOC and .DOCX; do not submit PDF, XLS or XLSX type files.
Figures. Figure files should be uploaded separately and in high resolution. Please reduce the file size so that the figure files are below 5 Mb. Figure legends should not be included in the figure, but should be provided separately. Figure legends are numbered to correspond with the figures and typed double-spaced on a separate page. Please provide a title and a clear explanation of the figure.
Figure legends for any supplemental figures being submitted are to be provided separately; see section, Supplemental Digital Content.
Format, file type, and size requirements:
- Do not embed figures into the main body file
- All final digital figures for accepted manuscripts must be submitted in JPG, EPS, or TIFF format
- Each figure must be uploaded as a separate file
- Histology figures must be in color
- Monochrome images (such as line graphs) should be prepared at a resolution of 1200 DPI
- Halftones images (black/white or color) should be prepared at a resolution of 300 DPI
- Combination halftones (images containing both pictures and text labeling) should be prepared at 600 DPI
- Color images must be saved as "RGB"
- Your manuscript may be returned to you for correction if the images are of insufficient quality
- Authors submitting a revised paper will have the opportunity to check the quality of their images and make the necessary changes. This step is required for all revisions
Supplemental Digital Content
Authors may submit Supplemental Digital Content (SDC) to supplement the information provided in the manuscript. It is preferable to include all significant figures and tables in the main manuscript since we allow up to 10 figures/tables. Nonetheless, SDC may include the following types of content: text, tables, figures, references peripheral to information provided as SDC, audio, and video. SDC should be consecutively cited in the main body of text of the submitted manuscript. SDC filed will be available via URL(s) placed at the citation points within the article and are not copyedited by the publisher. Note that Journal policies for manuscript submission relating to peer review, patient anonymity, ethics, financial disclosure, copyright, and permissions also apply to SDC. Authors should mask patients' eyes and remove patients' names from SDC unless they obtain written consent from the patients and submit them as supplemental files at the time of the manuscript submission.
Format, file type, and size requirements:
SDC must be provided in one Word or PowerPoint file. Each SDC in the file should have a visual header in the following name format (eg, "SDC, Figure 1"; "SDC, Materials and Methods") and a corresponding citation must appear in the main body text. Note that SDC is numbered separately from non-SDC material. If providing SDC figure(s), a figure legend should be included on the figure itself. When uploading SDC select "Supplemental Digital Content" as the file designation. For each submission, the SDC file cannot exceed a total size of 10 MB.
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Formatting & Post Acceptance Information
Language & Style Guidelines
General
- Manuscripts must be written in clear, grammatically-correct English using US English spelling
- At initial submission, we are flexible and can accept all formats, as long as the results are presented in a clear and logical way
- Please number each page and do not add line numbers as the system will generate those when the PDF is built
- Acceptable document file types for text and tables include .DOC and .DOCX; do not submit a PDF
Use of Gene/Protein Symbols
Please use the official symbol when referring to genes, transcripts or proteins. For example: use
ABL1, not ABL or c-ABL; use MYC, not c-Myc. Please use this database as a reference:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene
Also note: human genes have to be shown in italics and in capital letters (for example:
ABL1), mouse and rat genes are indicated in italics, with only the first letter capitalized (for example:
Abl1). Human, mouse or rat proteins are shown in capital letters (for example: ABL1). Zebrafish and frog genes have to be indicated in italics and all lowercase (for example:
abl1). Zebrafish and frog proteins should have the first letter capitalized and the remaining letters in lowercase (for example Abl1). Information on gene symbols in model organisms:
http://www.alliancegenome.orgx
Units of Measure
Variable
|
Abbreviation
|
Unit
|
Unit symbol*
|
Full blood count
|
FBC
|
|
|
White blood cell count
|
WBC
|
number × 109/
|
|
Red blood cell count
|
RBC
|
number × 1012/
|
|
Hemaglobin concentration
|
Hb
|
grams/liter OR millimoles per liter
|
g/or mmol/
|
Hematocrit
|
Hct
|
no unit OR liter / liter**
|
no unit or
/l**
|
Packed cell volume
|
PCV
|
no unit OR liter / liter**
|
no unit or /l**
|
Mean cell volume
|
MCV
|
femtoliter
|
f
|
Mean cell hemoglobin
|
MCH
|
picograms OR femtomoles
|
pg or fm
|
Mean cell hemoglobin concentration
|
MCHC
|
grams/liter OR millimoles per liter
|
g/ or mmol/
|
Red cell distribution width
|
RDW
|
usually expressed as CV
|
%
|
Platelet count
|
Pt
|
number × 109/
| |
Mean platelet volume
|
MPV
|
femtoliter
|
f
|
Plateletcrit
|
Pct
|
liter/liter
|
/
|
Reticulocyte count
|
Retic
|
number × 109/
|
|
Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (Westergren, 1 hour)
|
ESR
|
millimeters, 1h
|
mm, 1h
|
* L is acceptable as an alternative to
.
** Often expressed as / but no unit is needed as it is a dimensionless fraction expressed as a decimal.
Post Acceptance: Publication Fees & Page Proofs
Article Publication Charges (APCs)
HemaSphere is an open access, peer reviewed journal. To provide open access, the journal charges publication fees for each article accepted and published. These fees cover the expenses incurred by publication, including the peer review process, journal production and publication, hosting and archiving fees, and article promotions.
HemaSphere does not charge any article submission fees. Publication fees vary by article type – further information can be found in the section above titled
‘Article Publication Charges (APCs)’.
Page 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 our
publisher
at
([email protected]).
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.
Please check your proof pages very carefully, including a thorough check of your authors' names and related details. Once you submit your approved proof, the Editorial Office will adjust for any house style items, and the manuscript is considered final for publication.
Once a publication is complete, correction requests must be reviewed by
HemaSphere, and if approved, formally published as a correction notice. Corrections will be reviewed and considered if they affect the publication record, the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or
HemaSphere. Corrections that do not significantly affect the paper may not be approved (ie, a spelling error). All decisions about corrections are made by the Editor.
Copyright & Compliance
Authors Retain Copyright
Authors retain their copyright for all articles. Authors grant Wolters Kluwer a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
Creative Commons Licence
Open access articles will be freely available to read, download and share from the time of publication.
HemaSphere provides authors the choice of applying any of the Creative Commons 4.0 licenses defined below, to be determined after acceptance. For more information:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: CC BY-NC-ND
This license is the
most restrictive of the six main licences, only allowing others to download your works and share it with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change the work in any way or use it commercially. *Authors wishing to re-use their own work with changes will need to request permission via [email protected] .
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work noncommercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work noncommercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be noncommercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
Attribution-NoDerivs: CC BY-ND
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and noncommercial, of your work as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
Attribution-ShareAlike: CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
Attribution: CC-BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered.
Compliance With NIH and Other Research Funding Agency Accessibility Requirements
A number of research funding agencies now require or request authors to submit the post print (the article after peer review and acceptance but not the final published article) to a repository that is accessible online by all without charge.
As a service to our authors, Wolters Kluwer identifies to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) articles that require deposit and transmits the post-print of an article based on research funded in whole or in part by the National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, or other funding agencies to PubMed Central. The License to Publish provides the mechanism. Wolters Kluwer ensures that authors can fully comply with the public access requirements of major funding bodies worldwide.
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Journal Policies
Duplicate Publication
Manuscripts are reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that they are being submitted only to HemaSphere 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
HemaSphere 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.
Disclosure of Conflicts
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, no relevant conflicts of interest were declared.”
Authorship
HemaSphere 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. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure these aspects, which is confirmed during the online submission processed by the corresponding author. Kindly note that Artificial Intelligence (AI) authoring tools do not meet the requirements for Authorship as recommended by the ICMJE. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.
Moreover, should the Editorial team request the data upon which the manuscript is based, the authors shall provide the data. Each author’s specific contributions to the work should be indicated via a submitted title page; this information will be published as a section towards the end of the paper. When writing this section, it is acceptable to use author initials as you see fit. For example, the areas of participation might include:
• Participated in research design
• Participated in the writing of the paper
• Participated in the performance of the research
• Contributed new reagents or analytic tools
• Participated in data analysis
An author may list more than one contribution, and more than one author may have contributed to the same aspect of the work. Following guidelines outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and in support of good publishing practices, any change in authorship/contributions after submission must be approved in writing by all authors and then submitted to the Editorial Office for final consideration.
Ethical Considerations
Protection of human individuals in research: Documented review and approval from a formally constituted review board (Institutional Review Board or Ethics committee) is required for all studies (prospective or retrospective) involving people, medical records, and/or human tissues.
When reporting experiments on human individuals, we request that authors indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
We request that the right to privacy of patients is respected and that informed consent is obtained. Identifying information (names, initials, or hospital numbers) cannot be used in manuscripts.
Obligation to register clinical trials: Registration of Clinical Trials is an essential requirement for publication of clinical trials in
HemaSphere. The ICMJE provides specific guidelines on this topic (
http://www.icmje.org). 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:
• And any publicly available primary registry of clinical trials
Randomized clinical trials: Reports of randomized clinical trials should follow the recommendations given in the Consolidated Standards of Reported Trials (CONSORT) statement
http://www.consort-statement.org. In brief, this statement comprises a checklist and flow diagram to help improve the quality of reports of randomized controlled trials and offers a standard way for researchers to report trials.
Protection of animals in research: When performing experiments on animals or animal tissues, we request that authors seek approval by an institutional ethics committee and strictly follow the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals. At time of manuscript submission, we request that authors provide information on the study approval by an institutional ethical committee. We can only consider manuscripts reporting on studies on animals or animal tissues if ethical committee approval of the study can be documented.
Data sharing statement: Manuscripts must contain a data sharing statement on whether data is available or not as outlined in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors policy (
http://www.icmje.org). A data sharing plan must be included in a trial’s registration for those that begin enrolling participants on or after January 1, 2019. Authors of secondary analyses using shared data must reference the source of the data and attest their use was in accordance with any terms agreed.
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research provides in-depth insights on people’s values, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. Qualitative methodology informs approaches to data collection and analysis, and includes grounded theory, ethnography, and phenomenology. Open-ended interviews and focus groups are commonly used to collect data. Authors are advised to follow the COREQ guidelines for reporting primary qualitative research. Please visit:
http://intqhc.oxfordjournals.org/ content/19/6/349.full.pdfSystematic review and/or synthesis of primary qualitative studies can provide a broader understanding of people’s perspectives across different healthcare contexts.
Methodologies for synthesis of qualitative research include thematic synthesis, meta-ethnography and critical interpretive synthesis. Authors can refer to the ENTREQ statement at
https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-12-181
Financial Support & Competing Interests
A financial disclosure section is part of the submission process and must be completed by each author at submission. 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.
Editorial Office Contacts
The Editorial Office is pleased to answer any questions you may have about preparing your manuscript in accordance with our guidelines.
Email the publisher:
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