Online Submission

Scope and policy

The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo (Journal of the São Paulo Institute of Tropical Medicine) is a journal devoted to research on different aspects of tropical infectious diseases. The journal welcomes original work on all infectious diseases, provided that data and results are directly linked to human health.

The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo follows the directives of the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE).

Intellectual property and terms of use

Journal's responsibility
The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo reserves the right to make normative, orthographic, and grammatical changes to the manuscripts to maintain the cultured standard of the language and adhere to the journal's standards while respecting the authors' style.

Authors' responsibility
The authors maintain full rights over their articles published in the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo. Total or partial reprint, deposition, or republication is subject to indicating the first publication in the journal through the Creative Commons license CC-BY. The original source of publication must be cited in all instances. The opinions expressed by the authors of the articles are their sole responsibility.

Resolution of conflict of interests will be the responsibility of the editor-in-chief, in addition to the four associate editors and the journal’s administrative sector. Eventually, area editors and members of the editorial board will be urged to give their opinion, and more rarely, there will be a need for the opinion of a researcher working outside the Institution.

All the submissions are analised at the arrival by the anti-plagiarism software iThenticate. If problems of plagiarism are found, such as, a large percentage of text identical to that of other publications that comprise entire paragraphs, even if they are articles of the same authors (self-plagiarism), they will be informed of the ethical infraction and the manuscript will be returned to the authors without entering the peer review process.

The journal publishes, besides original articles, reviews, case reports, brief communications and letters to the editor.

The manuscripts must be submitted only written in English, so we strongly advise authors with English as a foreign language to have their manuscripts checked by a scientist with English as a first language or preferably by one of the suggested specialized companies:

 Authorserv

 American Journal Experts

 Nature Publishing Group Editing Service

The receipt of a manuscript with the English usage considered inappropriate can lead to the return of the article to the authors even before the beginning of the review process.

The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo established a fee that must be paid by all the manuscripts accepted for publication.

These publication fees are essential to ensure quality, the increment of the journal’s impact factor and the number of citations, the maintenance of the electronic manuscript submission and review system and finally the review of the English style and of grammar issues.

For submissions made from January 1th 2023 on, the fees will be US$500 for original articles and reviews and US$300 for case reports, brief communications and letters to the editor. Only for Brazilian citizens, the fees will be BRL 2,000.00 for original articles and reviews and BRL 1,500.00 for case reports, brief communications and letters to the editor. Once the manuscript is approved, the corresponding author will receive instructions for payment of the publication fee. Thereafter, the corresponding author will receive the receipt of payment to be able to request reimbursement from funding agencies.

All types of manuscripts should be sent to the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo and they will be peer-reviewed (double-blind system) by two to four reviewers of the Editorial Board and/or ad hoc reviewers.
The decision to accept a publication rests with the editors and is based mainly on the recommendations of those reviewers.

A cover letter stating the following items should be included in the proper place on the submission website: 1) The manuscript and all parts of it have not been submitted elsewhere; 2) There are no financial or other relationships of any of the manuscript authors that might lead to any conflict of interest; 3) The submitted manuscript has been read by all authors carefully, and all authors agree that the manuscript represents their work. 4) Describe sources of funding that have supported the work. Please also describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; collection, analysis and interpretation of data; writing of the paper; and decision to submit it for publication; 5) The corresponding author will be responsible for the communication with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the paper; 6) there is no need of signatures in the cover letter. The manuscripts will be received only by online submission at: http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/rimtsp-scielo

On the same site, the authors can check the status of the submission at any time. The electronic file will be used for the editorial assessment and online refereeing, and the editorial decisions on the manuscript will be communicated to the corresponding author. Only the corresponding author will be contacted and always by e-mail, so be sure to designate an author who checks frequently the e-mail account.

Authors may suggest potential reviewers for their work provided that they give their e-mail addresses and affiliations of each scientist they have proposed. Please do not suggest scientists of the same institutions of the authors.

Form and preparation of manuscripts 

Important recommendations:

  • In order to improve the external validity of the manuscripts published in the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo, as well as our internationalization process, we urge the authors to avoid the use of names of cities, states and provinces, especially in the titles of the articles, giving preference and only in cases of extreme need, to the use of regions of a particular country. In the body of the manuscript, authors must locate cities and regions using latitudes and longitudes;
  • Submissions with raw data or extensive supplementary material will have these files stored (during the reviewing process of the manuscript and perpetually, in case of publication), in the journal area at Scielo Data, available at https://data.scielo.org/dataverse/brrimtsp/ The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo staff will curate and analyze the data to be stored in the Scielo Data repository.

Types of articles

  • ORIGINAL ARTICLE

    For a manuscript to be considered an original article, it must be based primarily on data from research, in addition to the following conditions that need to be met:

    It must be based on partial or total results of a scientific research that has not been published before. In the case of publications that contain partial results, they generally present one of the aspects belonging to a large-scale study. These results must be robust and comprehensive enough in the specific aspect being investigated, so that they cannot be presented as a brief communication. Furthermore, the results must have scientific merit, even in the absence of all the results of the full-scale study;
    • It should include a research question or hypothesis, the study purpose (objective, aim), and details of the research methods (full description of protocols);
     • The research findings should be clearly reported;
     • The findings must be scientifically interpreted and possible implications (clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic etc.) for the knowledge area should be discussed, comparing the results of this study with recent and related literature.

    The original article should contain the following sections:

    INTRODUCTION: this section provides background information and explains what the study is about and the purpose behind it.

    MATERIALS AND METHODS: this section gives detailed explanation (protocols) of how the research was conducted and the type and concentration of reagents, materials, software and equipment used. The text must also contain the sample size calculation and how the results will be analyzed, with a comprehensive description of the statistical analysis. This is done so that other researchers can replicate the study and reproduce the findings. This section should also contain the research’s ethical approval by the institution.

    RESULTS: This section presents the research findings in detail along with all related data.

    DISCUSSION: This section interprets the findings and discusses the impact that they may have on the field of study. These results will be compared with similar ones from relevant literature (these articles should be as recent as possible and on the same subject). Agreements and disagreements between studies should be pointed out and explained, if possible.

    CONCLUSION(S): this section should summarize briefly and precisely what were the main findings or breakthroughs of this study, if they are definitive or still need further investigations to be confirmed and what will probably be their major contributions or implications (clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic etc.) for scientific knowledge in the area.

    ORIGINAL ARTICLE’S STRUCTURE: the text must contain a maximum of 6,000 words including abstract and references. The body of the manuscript should be preceded by a non-structured abstract (with no sub-headings), with a maximum of 500 words. References are limited to 40. Pages should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Tables and figures should be referred to in the text, numbered and contain a brief specific title. Figures such as drawings, maps, photographs, photomicrographs or electron micrographs should be planned to suit the size of a single or double page column. Figures in black and white or in color should be submitted in TIF format, with high resolution (1,200 DPI). The maximum number of attachments (the sum of figures and tables) is six. If any data are excessive long to be part of the article, they can be presented as supplementary material (flowcharts, diagrams, tables and figures). .

  • REVIEW ARTICLE

This type of article must be presented in the same format as the original articles. Review articles are intended for investigators who are experts in a particular field and who have made substantial contributions to that specific area of knowledge. The exception to these criteria is considered when there is a new microorganism or infectious disease, so that there are still no experts of the subject the scientific community. This type of manuscript should focus on the description of the state of art, highlighting the main breakthroughs on the subject. Eventually, researchers/scientists with notable expertise in a particular area may be invited by the editorial team to publish a review article. Narrative reviews and systematic reviews that may or may not constitute meta-analyses will be considered in this category.

REVIEW ARTICLE’S STRUCTURE: the structure is similar to the one of original articles, except that the number of references is limited to 60. Pages should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Tables and figures should be referred to in the text, numbered and contain a brief specific title. Figures such as drawings, maps, photographs, photomicrographs or electron micrographs should be planned to suit the size of a single or double page column. Figures in black and white or in color should be submitted in TIF format, with high resolution (1,200 DPI). The maximum number of attachments (the sum of figures and tables) is six.

  • CASE REPORT

OBJECTIVE: The reported case must be unique, rare, which cannot be explained by known diseases or syndromes. Alternatively, case reports can describe an unusual or more serious occurrence and, as such, remain one of the cornerstones of medical progress, notably for clinical practice, providing new insights into the field of human health. Every case report must have a clear learning point for the readers. The case should add value to the diagnosis (clinical or laboratory), management or treatment of infectious diseases. Unexpected adverse responses to therapies or vaccines are also welcome in this format. A case report should provide the details of the case in the following order: patient’s description that must be made in such a way that it is not possible to identify the patient; case history; physical examination results; results of pathological, laboratory, imaging and other investigations; treatment plan and its expected outcome; follow-up and evolution of the patient and of the infectious disease outcome; personal impact for the described patient.  Case reports must have been authorized by the Research and Ethics Committee of the institution and, if the report contains photos of the patient, they must have been authorized by the corresponding patient or, when it is not possible to contact the patient, authorizations from the Research Committee will be accepted. In other words, case reports should cover the following five sections: a short and informative summary, a succinct and direct introduction that will act as a brief literature review on the subject highlights that are covered in the case report, a comprehensive and complete description of the case (patient) or case series (patients) covering the ethical issues (authorizations by the Research and Ethics Committee of the institution and/or the patient’s authorizations for publishing his/her photos or images), a discussion that includes a rationale for the literature review that was carried out, ending with a brief summary of the case, what was learned from it and the conclusion remarks.

CASE REPORT’S STRUCTURE: The text of a case report should be short and succinct, not exceeding 2,000 words, references are limited to 20, and the attachments, which may be figures (photographs, maps, graphics etc.) or tables, must not exceed three (the sum of figures and tables).

  • BRIEF COMMUNICATION

OBJECTIVE: Brief communications should follow the same format of original articles, however, with a reduced number of words. They are short (hence the word “brief”) research articles reporting important research findings with groundbreaking results that deserve to be published as soon as possible. These findings are often part of a larger research, but the authors felt that the dissemination of preliminary results was worthwhile.

BRIEF COMMUNICATION’S STRUCTURE: In this category of manuscripts, the number of words is limited to 2,500, references are limited to 20, and the attachments, which may be figures (photographs, maps, graphics etc.) or tables, must not exceed three (the sum of figures and tables). 

  • LETTER TO THE EDITOR

OBJECTIVE: A letter to the editor (LTE) is a brief, short communication addressed to the journal's editor. It usually contains an opinion contrary to an article recently published in the journal, but it can also contain the discussion of a specific topic unrelated to a published article, but which is of interest to the journal's readers and the topic is timely, that is, it is being subject of discussions in the scientific community. The LTE’s text should be brief, clear and to the point, beginning with what the letter is about, then why the issue is important. The LTE should provide scientific evidence for any praise or criticism, stating the LTE’s author clear opinion and what should be done. In any case, these LTEs must deal with topics that deserve a new scientific approach, and the additional and critical information presented must be supported by the literature and present relevance to the article or to the topic being addressed. If the LTE deals with a critique of an article recently published in RIMTSP, authors will be invited to send a response to answer to these questions. The editor-in-chief will decide on the publication of both, the LTE and the authors’ response, based on scientific merit, in addition to the importance of the discussion, always having the interest of the journal’s target audience as the most important parameter.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR’S STRUCTURE: In this category of manuscripts, the number of words is limited to 1,500, references are limited to 20, and the attachments, which may be figures (photographs, maps, graphics etc.) or tables, must not exceed three (the sum of figures and tables).

Acknowledgments

Should be brief, and should not include thanks to anonymous referees and editors, or effusive comments. Private or Governmental organizations that have provided financial support to the research should be mentioned, together with the grants or contribution numbers and period of validity.

Authors’ Contributions

The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo encourages authors to include a statement to specify the individual contributions of each co-author.

As the Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo reviewers work blindly, the Acknowledgments, the Funding and the Authors’ Contributions must not be included in the main text of the manuscript, and should be placed in the title page. Those statements will be included in the body of the text on the final version of the article.

References

The list of references, including only those actually mentioned in the text or tables, should be in Vancouver format, listed in order of the citation in the text, and numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals followed by a dot. The citations on the text must be in superscript format, only the numbers without parentheses.
Example: has been widely applied in clinical practice¹²
Example: according to the protocol used by Silva et al.²¹

References must be formatted as follows:

  • Articles from journals: Last names and initials (only the two first initials) of all authors (unless there are more than six, when only the first six names should be mentioned, followed by et al.), full title of the article, title of the journal (title abbreviations by NLM can be found on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals), the year of publication, the volume number, the number of the first and last pages.

Example: Leveau CM, Uez O, Vacchino MN. Spatiotemporal trends of cases of pandemic influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 in Argentina, 2009-2012. Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo. 2015;57:133-8.
Example: Yamamoto L, Santos EH, Pinto LS, Rocha MC, Kanunfre KA, Vallada MG, et al. SARS-CoV-2 infections with emphasis on pediatric patients: a narrative review. Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo. 2020;62:e65.

  • Articles that have not yet been published, but already exist in the preprint format: Last names and initials (only the two first initials) of all authors (unless there are more than six, when only the first six names should be mentioned, followed by et al.), full title of the article, title of the journal or of the repository (title abbreviations by NLM can be found on  http://www.ncbi.nml.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals), the year of the preprint submission, followed by the words In Press.

Example: Savarin MT, March JH, Reynolds CJ. Hypertension in pregnancy: from pathophysiology to clinical practice. Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo. 2021 In Press.
Example: Yin D, Fang L, Liu J, Zhong X, Guo T, Wan X, et al. Characteristics of cytokines in peripheral blood of hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus. medRxiv. 2021 In Press. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals), the year of the preprint submission, followed by the words In Press.
Example: Savarin MT, March JH, Reynolds CJ. Hypertension in pregnancy: from pathophysiology to clinical practice. Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo. 2021 In Press.
Example: Yin D, Fang L, Liu J, Zhong X, Guo T, Wan X, et al. Characteristics of cytokines in peripheral blood of hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus. medRxiv. 2021 In Press.

  • Books: Last names and initials of all authors, full title of the book, edition, place of publication, the publisher, and the year.

Example: Lewin JK. Genes and virus. 2nd ed. Boston: Jones and Bartlett; 2008.
Citing books is not prohibited, but authors should give preference to citing articles published in indexed international scientific journals.

  • Chapter of books: Last names and initials of all authors of the chapter, full title of the chapter, last names and initials of all authors of the book, full title of the book, edition, place of publication, the publisher, the year, the pages of the chapter.

Example: Ferreira HO. Doença de Chagas. In: Farhat CF, Carvalho ES, Carvalho LH, Succi RC, editores. Infectologia pediátrica. São Paulo: Atheneu; 1998. p.531-7.
Citing chapters of books is not prohibited, but authors should give preference to citing articles published in indexed international scientific journals.

  • Websites: Name of the organization, the full title of the document cited, place of publication (if available), the publisher (if available), the year (if available), date of citing, URL of the precise document cited (not the organization URL).

Example: World Health Organization. Leprosy elimination. [cited 2021 Feb 26]. Available from: http://www.who.int/lep/situation/new_cases/en/ 
Example: Brasil. Ministério da Saúde. Secretaria de Vigilância em Saúde. Manual de recomendações para o controle da tuberculose no Brasil. 2ª ed. Brasília: Ministério da Saúde; 2019. [cited 2021 Feb 26]. Available from: https://bvsms.saude.gov.br/bvs/publicacoes/manual_recomendacoes_controle_tuberculose_brasil_2_ed.pdf

  • Thesis: The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo will not accept the citation of master of Science, PhD thesis, or similar work.
  • Softwares: The softwares used should not originate references, but the manufacturer and its location (city, State and country) should be cited in the text as is the case for equipments and laboratory reagents:

Example: The SPSS statistical software (version 16.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for all the calculations

Ethical Guidelines

Articles must state in the Material and Methods section that: 1) informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and from parents or legal guardians of minors together with the approved consent of the Ethical Commission; 2) a consent term was applied to study participants in the case of children over the age of seven and adolescents besides the consent obtained from parents or legal guardians of minors together with the approved consent of the Ethics Committee; 3) the maintenance of and procedures on experimental animals comply with the guidelines on the use of laboratory animals prevailing in the country of origin.

Numbers

Numbers that begin a sentence or those that are less than 10 should be spelled out using letters. Centuries and decades should be spelled out, e.g. the Eighties or Nineteenth Century. Laboratory parameters, time, temperature, length, area, mass, and volume should be expressed using digits.

Units

The International Unit System must be used, with the exception of blood pressure values which are to be reported in mmHg. Please use the metric system for the expression of length, area, mass, and volume. Temperatures are to be given in degrees Celsius. Hours must be abbreviated as h, minutes as min, and seconds as s (all of them without dots after the abbreviated word).

Devices and equipment

The Materials and Methods section must include sufficient technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated. The sources of all media (i.e., name and location of manufacturer) or components of a new formulation must be provided.When centrifugation conditions are mentioned, give enough information to enable another investigator to repeat the procedure: brand of the centrifuge (manufacturer), model of the equipment and model of the rotor, temperature, time at maximum speed, and centrifugation force (X g instead of rotations per minute).For devices and other products, the specific brand or trade name, the manufacturer and their location (city, State, country) should be provided the first time the device or product is mentioned in the text. Thereafter, the generic term (if appropriate) should be used.

Example: QIAamp® DNA Mini Kit (QIAGEN Inc., Hilden, Germany).

Names and identification of drugs and other products

Authors are asked to use the Recommended International Nonproprietary Name (rINN) for medicinal substances, unless the specific trade name of a drug is actually relevant to the discussion. Generic drug names should appear in lowercase letters in the text. If a specific proprietary drug needs to be identified, the brand name may appear only once in the manuscript in parentheses following the generic name the first time the drug is mentioned in the text.The description of new methods should be complete and provide sources of unusual chemicals, reagents, equipment, or microbial strains. When large numbers of microbial strains or mutants are used in a study, authors are asked to include tables identifying the immediate sources (i.e., sources from whom the strains were obtained) and properties of the strains, mutants, bacteriophages, plasmids etc.

Patient identification:

The informed consent is not needed if the patient cannot be identified from any material in a manuscript. In the absence of the informed consent, identifying details, such as the patient initials, specific dates, specific geographic exposures, or other identification features (including body features in figures), should be omitted, but this must not alter the scientific meaning.
Important information that is relevant to the scientific meaning should be stated so that the patient cannot be identified, e.g., by stating a season instead of a date, or a region instead of a city.
If a patient can be identified from the material in a manuscript, the informed consent is required. It can be obtained from the patient(s) or their parents/legal guardians in the case of minors.
For children of seven years old or more, beyond the informed consent of the parents/legal guardians, an informed assent of the child should be provided.
The Informed consent requires that the patient has had the opportunity to see and approve the manuscript prior to submission. The written informed consent must state either that the patient has seen and approved the complete manuscript, or that the patient declined to do so.
The patient consent should be attached as an additional file at the time of the manuscript submission. A statement attesting the receipt and archiving of the written consent of the patient should be included in the published article.

Randomized Controlled Trials and Clinical Trials

The Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo supports the policy of Clinical Trials registration delivered by WHO and the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) recognizing the importance, in open access, of these initiatives for the registration and international knowledge of the information on clinical studies. Therefore, from 2007 on, only papers of clinical research dealing with these issues having an identification number provided by one of the clinical assays validated by established criteria from WHO and ICMJE will be accepted. The addresses can be found in the ICMJE site (http://www.icmje.org). The trial registration number should be written at the end of the summary.

Submission of manuscripts

The manuscripts will be received only by on-line submission at: http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/rimtsp-scielo, where the authors can check the status of the submission at any time. The electronic file will be used for the editorial assessment and the online refereeing. The editorial decisions on the manuscript will be communicated to the corresponding author by e-mail.