Manuscript Preparation Requirements for Anhui Medical Journal
1. Title
The title shall be concise, eye-catching and reflective of the core theme of the manuscript. The Chinese title should contain no more than 20 Chinese characters, and the English title shall be consistent with its Chinese counterpart.
2. Authors
Chinese format: Postal Code, City, Affiliation (Authors)
English format: Department, City City Postal Code, China
The corresponding author shall be clearly indicated if applicable.
3. Abstract
Original articles are required to be accompanied by both Chinese and English structured abstracts, which must consist of four sections: Objective, Methods, Results (with specific data provided), and Conclusions, each headed by the corresponding section title. Abstracts shall be written in the third person without subjective pronouns such as "this paper" or similar expressions as the subject. The Chinese abstract is approximately 200 Chinese characters, while the English abstract shall match the Chinese version with around 400 content words.
4. Keywords
3 to 8 keywords are required. Authors shall select terms from the latest edition of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) compiled by the United States National Library of Medicine. If no matching term is available in the latest MeSH, follow the rules below:
. Combine several closely related subject headings;
. Select the most immediate broader subject heading from the MeSH tree structure;
. Use free terms when necessary and place them at the end of the keyword list.
All abbreviations in keywords shall be expanded to their full names in accordance with MeSH (e.g., HBsAg shall be indexed as Hepatitis B Surface Antigen). The first letter of each English keyword shall be capitalized, and keywords shall be separated by semicolons.
5. Medical Nomenclature
Medical terms shall follow Medical Nomenclature published by Science Press after 1989 and the standard terminologies of relevant disciplines. For terms not yet officially released, English-Chinese Medical Vocabulary compiled by People’s Medical Publishing House shall be adopted. Chinese generic drug names shall comply with the 1995 edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (for official drugs) or Drug Nomenclature compiled by the Pharmacopoeia Commission of the Ministry of Health (for non-official drugs). International Nonproprietary Names (INNs) shall be used for English drug names instead of trade names.
6. Figures and Tables
Figures and tables shall be placed at appropriate positions in the text and numbered consecutively in the order of their first appearance in the main text. Use Figure 1 even for a single figure and Table 1 even for a single table. Each figure or table shall be equipped with a title. Explanatory notes shall be placed below each figure or table, with all non-standard abbreviations defined in the captions.
Three-line tables are required (top rule, middle separator rule, bottom rule). An additional horizontal line shall be added above rows containing subtotals or statistical results (such as t-value, P-value). Data within tables shall retain a consistent number of significant digits for the same indicator, generally determined based on one-third of the standard deviation. Line graphs shall adopt a height-to-width ratio of approximately 5:7. All images must be clear with high contrast. Written informed consent from the photographed individual must be obtained for published portraits, or identifiable facial features shall be obscured. Gross specimen photographs shall include scale bars, and pathological micrographs shall specify staining methods and magnification factors. Sources must be cited for any figures or tables reproduced from other publications.
7. Units of Measurement
All measurements shall adopt the Statutory Units of Measurement of the People’s Republic of China promulgated by the State Council in February 1984 and be expressed with standard unit symbols. When more than one slash is used to denote division in combined unit symbols, parentheses shall be applied, e.g., ng/(kg·min) instead of ng/kg/min. Slashes and negative exponents shall not be mixed in combined units (e.g., ng/kg·min?¹ is not permitted).
State statutory values shall be listed first in the text with traditional unit values enclosed in parentheses. For repeated measurements, only the conversion factor between statutory and traditional units needs to be noted upon first mention, followed solely by statutory unit values thereafter. Blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg), with the conversion factor 1 mmHg ≈ 0.133 kPa indicated at its first use.
Both quantities and their tolerances must carry units. If a quantity and its tolerance share the same unit, enclose the numerical range in parentheses and place the common unit symbol after the bracket, e.g., (75.4±18.2) ng/L instead of 75.4 ng/L±18.2 ng/L. All quantity symbols shall be italicized, such as absorbance symbol A (formerly known as optical density, OD). Use body mass instead of body weight, μm for micrometer, and mL for milliliter.
8. Numerals
Numerals shall comply with GB/T 15835-1995 Rules for Writing Numerals in Publications. Arabic numerals are used for centuries, years, months, dates, times, counts and measurements. When there are more than three digits before or after the decimal point, group the digits in sets of three, with a quarter-em space between groups. For example, "1,329.476,5" should be written as "1 309.476 5". No digit grouping is applied to ordinal numbers, years, page numbers, military designations, instrument models and standard numbers.
The percentage symbol must be retained for both values in percentage ranges and deviations: write 5%–95% rather than 5–95%, and (50.2±0.6)% rather than 50.2±0.6%. Dimensions of multiplied measurements shall be formatted as 4 cm×3 cm×5 cm instead of 4×3×5 cm³.
9. Statistical Symbols
Statistical notations shall follow GB 3358-82 Statistical Terms and Symbols, with standard specifications as follows:
. Lowercase italic x? for sample arithmetic mean; uppercase italic M for median;
. Lowercase italic s for standard deviation;
. Lowercase italic s?? for standard error of the mean;
. Lowercase italic t for t-test;
. Uppercase italic F for F-test;
. Lowercase italic χ² for chi-square test;
. Lowercase italic r for correlation coefficient;
. Lowercase italic ν for degrees of freedom;
. Uppercase italic P for probability, with corresponding test statistics (t-value, χ²-value, q-value, etc.) presented before each P-value.
10. Abbreviations
Abbreviations are generally not allowed in titles and shall be minimized in the main text. Where necessary, provide the full name followed by the full English term and its abbreviation separated by a comma at the first occurrence. Abbreviations must not be split across two lines.
11. Hierarchical Headings
Arabic numerals shall be adopted for hierarchical numbering in the format: 1; 1.1; 1.1.1.
12. References
References shall be formatted in sequential coding style in accordance with GB/T 7714-2005 Rules for Bibliographic Description of References. Except for case reports, a minimum of 20 references is required. References shall be marked sequentially as superscript Arabic numerals enclosed in square brackets in the order of their first citation in the text. At least 30% of all cited references shall be published within the most recent three years. For detailed formatting requirements, please refer to the “Anhui Medical Journal Manuscript Template”.
