Submission Instruction

Journal of Sun Yat-sen University (Medical Sciences), indexed by Chinese Core Journal, and Statistical Source Journal of Chinese Scientific Papers, is a national comprehensive academic journal in medicine governed by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, sponsored by Sun Yat-sen University. It mainly publishes the latest achievements in basic and clinical medicine at home and abroad. 

Innovative, scientific, and practical medical academic research manuscripts are welcomed. Medical researchers are encouraged to submit papers. The journal has columns including: Basic Research, Clinical Research, Technical Research, etc. The submission requirements and review system are described as follows:

Section 1 Submission Instruction

1.The manuscript should be innovative, scientific, and practical, with clear arguments, sufficient evidence, well-documented discussions and close integration of results, concise wording, clear levels, accurate data, and correct statistical methods. Copyright Transfer Agreement should be submitted after the paper is accepted. The wordcount should be controlled within 6000-12000 Chinese Characters (including figures/tables). For the format of manuscripts please refer to " Manuscript Template" (which can be downloaded from this website). If the format requirement is not observed, the editorial office will ask the author(s) to modify before peer review.

2.This journal implements online submission. The website address is: https://xuebaoyx.sysu.edu.cn/. Authors are requested to ensure that there is no multiple submission. All manuscripts will go through the plagiarism detection system developed by CNKI and Wanfang. Once academic misconduct is found, the journal will not accept submissions from the first author and corresponding author within 3 years. In serious cases, the institute of the first author and the corresponding author will be notified.

3.The order of authors shall be fixed when the manuscript is submitted, and cannot be changed, nor can authors’ affiliations be added or removed. For detailed ethical requirements, please refer to the "Ethics Statement" page of this website.

4.This journal has right to modify the manuscripts to be published, and major change will be decided after confirming with authors. Authors should declare in advance if they disagree with editorial modification.

5.This journal has been indexed by a series of full-text database (Please refer to “About Us” page of this website). Once the manuscript is published, it will be included in those databases. The journal will offer a remuneration for authors in one payment. If authors disagree, they must declare to the journal at the time of submission.

6.Journal of Sun Yat-sen University (Medical Sciences) is an open access journal. The articles are open access under the CC NY-NC 4.0 License. Please refer to the “Open Access Statement” page for detailed description.

Section 2 Review System

1.Review Process and Fees: The journal adopts double-blind review system. The specific process is as follows. Firstly, the editors will take the preliminary review. Manuscripts that are not rated as good or unsuitable for acceptance will be rejected. Then Manuscripts will undergo the external review by at least two peer experts. The editors always screen manuscripts based on experts’ opinions, and return them to authors for revision. Then the statistical review and English language review will be conducted. The revised manuscripts, once confirmed by editors, will be sent to the editor-in-chief for final review. At present, the acceptance rate of manuscripts is about 20%. The journal charges a manuscript processing fee after acceptance (covering the costs of review, typesetting, chart design and color print, etc., the charging standard is ￥300.00/page). Authors can check the manuscript processing status online at any time. For more details, please refer to the processing flow chart on the Chinese website. 

2.Review time: The journal generally requires reviewers to return review result within one month. If a reviewer fails to return the manuscript within one month, a new reviewer will be appointed for that case. The author's revision time is generally 15 days. Author should contact the editorial office if they cannot return the revision within the given time. 

3.Submission from Editorial Staff: The editorial staff / editors / editorial board members should not be involved in publishing decisions on papers which they have written themselves or have been written by their family members or colleagues. Any such submission should be strictly subject to the journal’s usual editorial process. Peer review should be handled independently from the relevant author/editor and their research groups.

4.Rejection Process: 1) The accepted manuscripts will be rejected once academic misconduct was found. Related files will be delivered to the editorial board of Journal of Sun Yat-sen University (Medical Sciences). 2) For serious cases causing economic losses, the editorial office will notify authors’ institutes, reject submission from the authors within 3 years and notify journals of similar discipline, or claim economic compensation. 

5.Appeal:  Authors may make an appeal if they disagree with the comment of the reviewers. Authors need to write an appeal letter (with the manuscript serial number) and send it to XBmed@mail.sysu.edu.cn. Detailed reasons for appealing must be stated, including a comprehensive and reasonable answer to the reviewers’ comment. The appeal letter should also be stamped by the author’s institute. The editorial office will consider whether to change the decision on a case-by-case basis.

6.Author withdrawal: 1) After submitting the manuscript online, if the authors request to withdraw the paper, a written statement with all author signatures and photocopies of ID cards should be provided. All losses will fall upon authors. Moreover, written statement with the official seal will also be needed if the author affiliation requires withdrawal. The editorial office will charge a fee depending on whether the request reasons are justifiable and how far the article has been processed. 2) The editorial office will not accept manuscripts from authors who have withdrawn submission more than 2 times. 

7.Retraction: If severe scientific errors are found, or the article is suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will retract the paper. 1) If the manuscript has not been officially published, the first author or corresponding author will receive the retraction letter, and the authors could appeal by providing written statement. 2) If the paper has been published, the editorial office will publish “Retraction Statement” on the journal website and in the newest issue of print journal, meanwhile, the statement will be sent to related database indexing institutes. 

8.Corrigendum: After papers are published, our journal encourages authors to correct obvious mistakes which impede the understanding of the paper. In such cases, joint statement of all signed authors shall be published. The editorial office will publish the Paper Corrigendum on the journal website and in the newest issue of print journal. Corrigendum will not be allowed for papers related to academic misconduct, which will be retracted from the journal.

If authors disagree with the above terms, they shall make a statement to this journal at the time of submission, or it shall be deemed that all terms are agreed by the authors.