About the Journal

Summary

Brief history of the Journal

In November 1988, the PUCRS Medical Journal was launched with the aim of publishing scientific production from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. In 2004, the "Scientia Medica Project" brought with it the new name for the journal - Scientia Medica. Its main objective was to stimulate scientific production by professors, professionals, graduate and undergraduate medical students, research institutes and health courses, both at the University and in other regions of the country. From then on, the journal opened its institutions and began to accept articles from various institutions. In 2006, Scientia Medica began to have a new editorial board. That same year, the Electronic Journal Publishing System (SEER) was implemented, which made the editorial process easier and more practical. Both the printed and electronic formats always contained the same scientific content. In 2015, the printed edition, whose ISSN was 1806-5562, was discontinued and began to be published electronically

Metrics

Scopus (2022): Cite-score = 0.6
SJR = 0,169
SNIP = 0,174
Web of Science - JCI (2022) = 0,7

Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

Contribute to the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the various areas of Medicine and other Health Sciences, with an interdisciplinary focus and regional, national and international scope.

Section Policies

All studies submitted to Scientia Medica must follow the formatting and writing standards and the guidelines of Rede EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) available at:

Scientia Medica welcomes submissions of original articles, review articles and letters to the editor as follows: The Equator Network is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of the published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and wider use of robust reporting guidelines.

Editorial: written by one or more editors or at the invitation of the editor-in-chief, and it is recommended to include bibliographical references for citations.

Original Articles: are those that result from original research and include studies on controlled and randomized clinical trials, screening and diagnostic studies and other descriptive and intervention studies, as well as reports on basic research carried out with laboratory animals (see section Results of Clinical Trials).

Randomized clinical trials should be presented in accordance with the guidelines of the CONSORT. When submitting a manuscript, authors should provide the CONSORT checklist accompanied by a flow diagram illustrating the progress of patients through the study, including recruitment, enrollment, randomization, withdrawal, and termination, and a detailed description of the randomization procedure. The trial registration number should be included at the end of the article abstract. The CONSORT checklist and flow diagram template are available at: consort.

Observational studies (cohort, case-control and cross-sectional) are those in which the assignment of medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator. In this type of study there is no need for this record. When submitting the manuscript, authors must provide the checklist STROBE (strobe). In diagnostic and prognostic studies, authors should provide the checklist STARD (stard).

Simulation in Healthcare: Includes original articles in this area of teaching. The same rules adopted in original studies are considered here.

Health Sciences Education:

Includes original or review articles on Medical Education or other disciplines within the Health Sciences.

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: These are review articles with specialized methodology with high methodological value. Their protocol must be registered in the PROSPEROUS ou OSF or equivalent. Upon submission of the manuscript, authors must provide the checklist and flowchart PRISMA ou EQUATOR.

Case Reports: They may include up to three cases, while a larger number characterizes a Case Series. They must be unusual or rare cases or a new diagnostic method or there must be a special interest of the academic class. Case reports require approval by a Research Ethics Committee, as do original articles. When submitting the manuscript, authors must provide the CARE checklist (reporting-guidelines).

Review articles: Scientia Medica is publishing review articles (narratives) by authors of recognized expertise invited by the journal's editorial team. However, even invited articles will undergo peer review, following the usual procedure. Authors who wish to apply to write this type of article must submit a draft to the editorial team for prior evaluation before submitting the full review article. Its organization may contain topics related to subtopics according to their relevance to the text.

Access EQUATOR for more information on how to build this type of article.

Ethics in health care: Review articles that address issues related to bioethics in health.

History of Medicine: Review articles that address issues related to the history of medicine.

Letters to the Editor: These are criticisms, opinions or discussions of works recently published in Scientia Médica. Whenever possible, a response from the authors of the article to which the letter refers will be published together with it.

Access EQUATOR for more information on how to build each article template.

Peer Review Process

This journal uses a peer review system to process manuscripts for publication. All articles undergo an initial evaluation by the editors to verify that the subject is within the focus and scope of the journal and that the journal's rules and specified quality standards are met. Also in this initial phase, the original is entered into a software program specialized in plagiarism detection to check for possible excessive similarities with previously published texts. If the basic requirements for publishing in Scientia Medica are not met, a submission may be rejected shortly after these steps and the authors will be informed of the reasons. The manuscript is sent to at least two external reviewers, experts in the corresponding field, who evaluate the article, adding comments, suggesting changes and giving an opinion on its acceptance for publication. If the reviews are discordant, a third or more reviewers will be assigned. Documents may undergo statistical review whenever necessary. Scientia Medica uses a double-blind peer review, whereby authors and reviewers are blind to each other. The guidelines for reviewers are automatically provided by the publishing operating system when the invited reviewer is available for a review. They include topics such as confidentiality, conflicts of interest and guidance on the practicalities of the review. Statements on the ethical principles followed by Scientia Medica in relation to the peer review process are included in the section "Principles of Ethics and Good Practice in Academic Publishing" below. After receiving the reviews, the editor will make the decision to accept, reject or require a review of the article by the authors. When necessary, the Editorial Board is consulted. Suggested changes are forwarded to the authors for their response and review of the article. The authors' revised manuscript is then reviewed by the editor or by the same reviewers to ensure that the requirements have been met. From submission to editorial decision, the entire process can be tracked electronically by the author by consulting the website using the username and password that is provided to the registrar. This decision is independent of commercial or any other competing interests. The final editorial decision and the reasons for it are always communicated to the authors. Scientia Medica does not exclude studies with results that are not statistically significant or are inconclusive. In accordance with ICMJE recommendations, such studies may provide evidence that, when combined with other studies, may help answer important questions, or may otherwise be valuable to other researchers considering similar work.

Periodicity

Continuous flow.

Open Access Policy

The journal Scientia Medica, from the School of Medicine at PUCRS, adopts an open access policy, making all its content freely available since its first issue. The published articles are original, unpublished, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This license ensures the preservation of copyright and promotes the global exchange of knowledge. Users are free to read, download, copy, remix, adapt, and transform the texts for any lawful purpose, without the need for prior permission from the editor or the authors, provided that the original authorship is properly acknowledged, with clear and visible mention of the authors and the journal.

Principles of ethics and good practices in academic publishing

Scientia Medica is a member of the Publication Ethics Committee (Comitê de Ética em Publicação Cope) and follows its principles of ethics, transparency and integrity in publishing. It follows the recommendation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Follows the recommendation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (Comitê Internacional de Editores de Revistas Médicas - ICMJE) for the Conducting, Reporting, Editing and Publishing of Academic Papers in Medical Journals. It is also a member of the Association of Open Access Academic Publishers(Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association - OASPA),

Authorship

Authorship is based on the following four criteria:

substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
prepare the work or critically review it for its intellectual content;
final approval of the version to be published;
agreement to be accountable for aspects of the work, ensuring that questions related to the accuracy and integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

All those designated as authors must meet the four criteria for authorship, and all those who meet the four criteria must be identified as authors. Contributors who do not meet the criteria should be mentioned in the acknowledgments.

Use of artificial intelligence

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT or Large Language Models, in research publications cannot be listed as authors of a Scientia Medica article, as per the position adopted by COPE (https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author) and by (https://wame.org/page3.php?id=106). These AI tools cannot meet authorship requirements because they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work and, as non-legal entities, cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest, nor manage copyright and licensing agreements. As a result, the scientific integrity required for the production of open scientific knowledge related to the use of artificial intelligence is not assured.

Scientia Medica informs that:

artificial intelligence engines (such as ChatGPT and other similar chatbots) do not meet the requirements for co-authorship;
Authors who use AI tools in writing the manuscript, producing images or graphic elements, or in collecting and analyzing data, must declare which and how the AI tool was used in the article's methodology. Failure to provide this information, if detected by the editorial team, will result in the study being rejected.
Authors are responsible for errors, plagiarism and other bad practices that may occur in their research due to the use of AI mechanisms.

Originality and originality

By submitting the manuscript, the authors guarantee that the work has not been previously published and is not under review by another journal, except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or an academic thesis. Verbatim copies of previously published excerpts are not acceptable, except in exceptional cases, in the form of citations. When it is necessary to copy the words of another author, use the citation rules. Illustrations and graphics from other sources must be credited or accompanied by permission from their copyright holders, if applicable.

To verify originality and prevent plagiarism, the manuscript is subjected to analysis by the similarity detector software Turnitin®

Prepress (or Pre-print)

Sharing a preprint of a manuscript on a preprint server will not count as a previous publication. However, this information must be included in the article's cover letter. Failure to do so will result in the article being rejected. If accepted for publication, Scientia Medica advises authors to link the preprint to its formal publication through its Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

Use of inclusive language

Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect for all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities. Content should not make assumptions about any reader’s beliefs or commitments; contain nothing that could imply that one individual is superior to another based on age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability, or health condition; and use inclusive language throughout. Authors should ensure that writing is free of bias, stereotypes, slang, reference to the dominant culture, and/or cultural assumptions. We advise aiming for gender neutrality by using plural nouns (“doctors, patients/clients”) as a default/whenever possible to avoid using “he, she,” or “him/her.” We recommend avoiding the use of descriptors that refer to personal attributes such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability, or health condition unless they are relevant and valid. When using coding terminology, we recommend avoiding offensive or exclusionary terms such as “master,” “slave,” “blacklist,” and “whitelist.” We suggest using more appropriate and (self-)explanatory alternatives such as “primary,” “secondary,” “blocklist,” and “allowlist.” These guidelines serve as a reference point to help identify appropriate language, but are by no means exhaustive or definitive.

Sex and gender equity in research

We encourage our authors to follow the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) Guidelines (https://ease.org.uk/communities/gender-policy-committee/), endorsed by COPE (https://publicationethics.org/news/cope-endorses-ease-sager-guidelines), and to include considerations of sex and gender where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) with caution, in order to avoid confusion between the two terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should clearly indicate which sex(s) the study applies to. Authors should also describe in the background whether sex and/or gender differences can be expected; report how sex and/or gender were taken into account in the study design; provide data disaggregated by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss the respective results. If no sex and/or gender analysis is performed, the justification should be presented in the discussion. We suggest that our authors consult the full Guidelines before submission.

Error correction and retractions

The publisher and editors are willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary. Authors should cooperate with the editors in making corrections or retractions. Scientia Medica follows the COPE guidelines for retracting or correcting articles. They are considered appropriate to identify and prevent publication of articles with errors or in which research misconduct has occurred.

Confidentiality

Editorial staff and external reviewers are instructed not to cite a manuscript before it is published and not to distribute or use the information contained therein to advance their own research. In such cases, the reviewer retains responsibility for ensuring confidentiality. The reviewer should inform the editor of other individuals who have commented on a review.

Conflicts of interest

Scientia Medica requires all authors to declare any relevant non-financial conflicts of interest and to publish at least those that are perceived by the reader of an article. Perceptions of conflicts of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest. Whenever there is a relationship between authors and any public or private organization that could generate a conflict of interest, this possibility is communicated and specified in the article. In the case of no conflicts.

Reviewers: In the peer review system used by Scientia Medica, the manuscript is sent to the reviewer without identifying the authors. However, if the reviewer recognizes the authors or the institution, there may be a conflict of interest. To maintain the impartiality of the peer review process, the reviewer must determine whether the manuscript can be judged impartially. If there is any competing interest, the reviewer must immediately inform the editor so that another reviewer can be assigned.
Editors: Editors will not be involved in decisions about articles in which they may have a conflict of interest, for example, if they work at the same institution or have a personal relationship with the authors. Each submission is handled by an editor without any conflict of interest regarding the manuscript or the authors.

Sources of funding

The source of funding for the research must be declared and published and, if applicable, your role in the design, conduct, analysis or reporting of the research will be declared and published.

Editorial board and editorial freedom

Editorial decisions are based on the quality and integrity of a manuscript. Decisions are not influenced by commercial interests, personal relationships or agendas, or other secondary interests. Scientia Médica has a multi-institutional Editorial Board to help establish and maintain editorial policies, support editorial decisions, and potentially controversial expressions of opinion.

Ethical approval for research involving human and animal subjects

In the article, declare in the Methods section that ethical standards for human experimentation were followed and provide the name of the institution and the number of the approval document (the Consolidated Opinion). The published material must follow all the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its subsequent amendments. Research conducted in Brazil must meet the requirements of resolutions 466/2012 and 510/2016 of the National Health Council. If applicable, consent must have been obtained from all adult participants and/or from the parents or legal guardians of minors or incapacitated adults, and a standard consent form from adolescents and children. Confidentiality of the patient's identity is always preserved. In the case of experimental studies with animals, the maintenance and care of the animals comply with the guidelines of the authority or agency of the country or institution for the humane use of animals in research. The editors are attentive to concerns about the ethical conduct of research. They may seek advice from members of the Editorial Board with specific expertise in that area, and may require further assurances or evidence from authors or their institutions. Articles may be rejected on ethical grounds even if the research has been approved by an ethics committee.

Clinical Trial Results

Public registration of a trial is a mandatory condition for publication of clinical trials in this journal, according to the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (https://www.icmje.org/). Trials must be registered before or at the beginning of patient enrollment. The clinical trial registration number should appear at the end of the article abstract. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) do not require such registration.

A clinical trial is defined as any research study that prospectively assigns one or more health-related interventions to human participants or groups of human participants to evaluate the effects of health outcomes. Health-related interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (e.g., medications, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, dietary interventions, and changes in the process of care). Health outcomes include any health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including measures pharmacokinetics and adverse events. In line with the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Scientia Medica will not consider results published in the same clinical trials registry as the primary registry as prior publication if the published results are presented in the form of a structured abstract (less than 500 words), summary or table. However, disclosure of results in other circumstances (e.g. investor meetings) is discouraged and may jeopardize consideration of the manuscript. Authors must fully disclose all postings in results registries of the same or closely related work.

Editorial Flow

The editing process begins when the manuscript is submitted to the system (OJS). The Editor-in-Chief then performs a pre-analysis to verify compliance with the mandatory documents, according to the instructions, and will decide whether to approve or reject the manuscript, considering its scientific relevance and the methods accepted by Scientia Medica. Upon approval, the Section Editor will be appointed, who will designate two reviewers to issue double-blind reviews, preserving the anonymity of the authors and reviewers. The reviews issued by the reviewers may consider accepting, rejecting or requesting adjustments to the manuscript, whether in form or content. The Section Editor will decide whether to approve, reformulate or reject the texts, based on the evaluations performed by the reviewers and will inform the Editor-in-Chief of the final recommendation.

If the manuscript is approved for publication, the scientific text will undergo pre-publication editorial procedures, such as grammar correction, reference checking, layout, HTML and PDF production, DOI assignment and licensing. Before publication, the authors will receive a proof of the layout for approval and, finally, the article will be published on the Scientia Medica website, being available for free and full access.

Indexers, directories and repositories

Other Information

Article Submission Fee Policy and Article Processing Fees (APCs)

This journal does not charge publication fees.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Scientia Medica uses leading technologies for information retrieval, indexing and assigns the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all published articles..