Contents

• General Information
• Manuscript Submission
• Authorship
• Manuscript Preparation
• Permissions
• Copyright Agreement
• Prior Presentations
• Editorial Freedom
• Peer Review Process and Revisions
• Manuscript Categories

General Information

Advocate Aurora Research Institute's Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews (JPCRR) contains original and rigorously peer-reviewed scholarly writings of interest to a multidisciplinary audience in the clinical, population health and medical sciences. Editorial content focuses on works that serve to advance patient-centered care practices, health outcomes, and patient experiences.

JPCRR Mission Statement: To provide an open access medium for peer-reviewed clinical, laboratory, and qualitative research and patient-centered practices in health care and medical education, for the purpose of improving human health, individual patient care, and population health outcomes.

The first issue of this freely accessible quarterly journal was released in January 2014. Article categories include:

• Original Research
• Reviews
• Quality Improvement
• Brief Reports (intended for pilot research; JPCRR does not publish single case reports)
• Topic Synopsis
• Specialty Content

Manuscript Submission

• To submit a manuscript, please click Submit Article (located in the sidebar), create (or log in to) your JPCRR author account, and follow the steps provided. To contact the JPCRR editorial office, please email .
• Submissions must include the following: a title page document (uploaded separately from the manuscript file) that includes affiliation and email address for each author, details regarding the manuscript per all required fields in the submission pathway, the manuscript file with tables/figures inserted after the reference list, and any accompanying figure/video files or other supplemental material.
• The submission process is designed so that authors will remain anonymous until an editorial decision is made. If possible, please avoid self-identifying authors and institutional affiliations within the main manuscript file (e.g., use author initials, describe institution in generic terms).
• JPCRR does not charge any article processing or submission fees.

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Authorship

• All authors should follow common ethical standards of research as described in “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.” JPCRR strives to follow the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding authorship, protection of research participants, conflicts of interest, confidentiality and editorial integrity.
• Authorship requirements are fulfilled by those who have contributed original ideas, provided data collection and/or analysis, wrote the manuscript, and/or substantially edited the manuscript. All authors must have sufficient knowledge to defend the content of the manuscript.
• Submitting authors must specify all author contributions to the manuscript at time of submission. For accepted works, these attributions will be disclosed within the published article.

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Manuscript Preparation

Style and Formatting

• The blinded manuscript should be submitted as a Microsoft Word file (without macros).
• Document formatting: 1" margins, double-spaced, continuous line numbering, 12 pt. Times New Roman.
• The first page should begin with the title and abstract.
• Abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and defined when they first appear in the text.
• Heading and subheading levels should be clearly distinct through use of bold and/or italic face.
• Authors must use only one space after periods, not two.
• It is the author's responsibility to present a manuscript free of spelling and grammatical errors.
• Tables may be single-spaced to improve readability.
• Acknowledgments and COI may be noted in the separately uploaded title page document. Avoid naming specific individuals in the main manuscript file.

Title Page

• Upload title page as a separate file; do not include within main manuscript document.
• The title should reflect the content of the article, be concise and be informative.
• Include full names of each author, his/her academic degrees, his/her current departmental and institutional affiliations, and email address for each author. Additionally, provide full contact information for the corresponding author, including mailing address, phone number, fax number and email address. This person will be notified of decisions and be held responsible for submitting revisions.
• Authors’ ORCID ID numbers may also be shared.
• Note the intended Manuscript Category (as outlined below) and, when submitting the paper online, select the corresponding option from the dropdown menu provided.
• Keyword bank: please provide a list of 3-5 keywords for the journal’s use that are searchable on PubMed.

Conflicts of Interest

• Authors should provide a list of any and all relationships, circumstances or conditions that present a potential conflict of interest. This can be included in the title page document, either by listing any conflicts of interest or simply stating that none exist. Disclosure of a potential conflict does not preclude the submission from receiving full consideration for publication.
• All funding sources relevant to the manuscript also should be noted in the title page document.

Regulatory Approval or Research Subject Protection Requirements

• Original research or any report involving research using human or animal subjects must have appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approvals or determinations prior to submitting. Note this status clearly in the manuscript’s methods section. You may be required to provide proof of appropriate oversight.
• Identifying information, including names, initials or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent must be obtained if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained.
• You are expected to adhere to JAMA's "Updated Guidance on the Reporting of Race and Ethnicity in Medical and Science Journals" report, which can be accessed here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2783090

Acknowledgments

• Authors may list individuals who did not fulfill the authorship requirements yet made significant contributions to the manuscript in an Acknowledgment section. This section should appear only in the title page document.

References

• The corresponding author is responsible for providing accurate and complete references in accordance with AMA style.
• References must be numbered serially in the order in which they appear in the text and typed double-spaced on a separate page.
• Superscripts should always occur after punctuation and, when necessary, embedded in the sentence.
• References appearing in tables/figures should be cited in succession in the text at the location of the table or figure notation. Use MEDLINE (National Library of Medicine) abbreviations for journal titles.
• When citing an article from the Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews, it is important to note the correct citation format is J Patient Cent Res Rev.
• Identify abstracts by inserting the abbreviation (abstr.) after the title.
• List all authors when 6 or fewer; when 7 or more, list first 3 and add "et al." Do not use periods after the authors’ initials. Do provide inclusive page numbers. Use the following style and punctuation for citations:
  
  • Format for Journals
    • Baumgardner DJ, Grundle J, Walters JM, et al. This is an article title. J Patient Cent Res Rev. 2014;8:429-35.
  • Format for Books
    • Oh JK, Seward JB, Tajik AJ. The Echo Manual, 3rd Edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007, p.245.
  • Format for Book Chapters
    • Mirza M, Shen WK, Jahangir A. Senescence and arrhythmogenesis. In: Gussak I, Antzelevitch C, Wilde AAM, Powell BD, Ackerman MJ, Shen WK (eds). Electrical Diseases of the Heart: Genetics, Mechanisms, Treatment, Prevention, Second Edition. London: Springer-Verlag, 2013, pp. 317-332.
  • Format for Online Media
    • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Coronary artery disease. Page last reviewed 2015 Aug 10. https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/coronary_ad.htm. Accessed October 1, 2018.

Unpublished data and personal communications may be cited in the text, but should not be listed as references. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their references.

Tables and Figures

• Limit the total number of tables and figures to 8. For Patient-Centered Essays, Creative Writing and From the Other Side of the Table submissions, please limit to no more than 2 tables/figures.
• Table and figure numbers must correspond with the order they appear in the text.
• Each table requires a title, and each figure requires a legend. Use superscript lowercase letters in alphabetical order to denote explanatory material in footnotes.
• Format all tables in Microsoft Word and place each on separate pages following the reference list. All text within tables should be editable and able to be copied.
• Figures should be submitted electronically as separate EPS, TIF or JPG files with minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Figures can also be inserted at the end of the main manuscript document for ease of peer review.

Videos

• Inclusion of videos in the online publication is at the discretion of the Editors.
• Video files must be submitted electronically in either AVI or MPG format and should be no larger than 5 megabytes. (It is advisable to compress files to use as little bandwidth as possible.)
• Each video requires a brief descriptive legend, which should be submitted in the main manuscript document on a page following figure legends.

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Permissions

Use of previously published tables and figures/images is discouraged unless absolutely necessary for the article. The author is responsible for obtaining permission to reuse material, which can usually be accomplished by contacting the copyright owner. Keep in mind that the copyright owner is normally the publisher, not the author. Documentation of permission to reuse previously copyrighted material must accompany the manuscript submission.

Copyright Agreement

• Manuscripts are received with the understanding that they are submitted solely to Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews, that upon submission, they become the property of the Publisher (Advocate Aurora Research Institute), that the work has not been previously published, and that the data in the manuscripts have been reviewed by all authors, who agree with the analyses of the data and the conclusions reached in the manuscript. The Publisher reserves copyright and renewal on all published material, and such material may not be reproduced without the written permission of the Publisher. Statements in articles are the responsibility of the authors.
• If your paper is accepted, all authors must sign our copyright transfer agreement in order to proceed with publication. While JPCRR largely follows a diamond open access publishing model and embraces liberal material re-use policies, it does not allow duplicate publication of articles or verbatim copying of text without appropriate citation.

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Duplicate Publications

• Manuscripts will not be considered if they have been previously published, including in both print and electronically. Additionally, the manuscript should not be under consideration elsewhere. If authors have any questions regarding the legitimacy of publication, authors should include copies of what might constitute as a duplicate publication with the submission form. Exceptions may be considered for unusual circumstances.
• Full-length manuscripts based on abstracts or other preliminary documents previously published in relation to scientific meetings are acceptable and do not violate the restrictions as described above.

Prior Presentations

Provide the name, date, and location of all conferences at which portions of the manuscript content have been presented on the title page.

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Editorial Freedom

• The journal does not endorse companies, products or services displayed in any advertisements.
• Decisions of the Editorial Board are final.

Peer Review Process

• Each manuscript will receive a minimum of two anonymous reviews, in addition to editorial review.
• Most manuscripts require revisions. Corresponding authors will be given editorial decisions and reviewer feedback. Authors are responsible for completing these revisions in a timely manner, as prescribed by the response from the Editor.
• For a thorough description on the review process, see the journal’s Peer Review Policy.
• JPCRR recognizes that potentially impactful patient-centered scholarly work may not gain acceptance by another medical journal for reasons of mission scope and priority. Such submissions may merit an expedited review process by JPCRR that takes into account the previously performed peer reviews. To apply for expedited review, the corresponding author must submit a presubmission request to that includes the following information:
  • Abstract of the work;
  • Original decision letter received from the prior journal;
  • All reviewer critiques received from the prior journal;
  • Author assurance that the information provided is complete, accurate and unedited; and
  • Brief description of how the work has since been revised to address the prior journal's primary concerns.
  After reviewing this material, the editors will determine whether the work sufficiently justifies a streamlined decision process that incorporates prior peer reviews.

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