Submission, format and organization
Submit all new manuscripts online, at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ar. Check for an existing account. If you are submitting for the first time, create a new account. At the end of a successful submission, a confirmation screen with manuscript number will appear and you will receive an e-mail confirming that the manuscript has been received by the journal. If this does not happen, please check your submission and/or contact tech support at
Submit manuscript and all figures as one file if possible. You do not need to mail any hard copies.
An electronic cover letter should accompany the manuscript. Note in cover letter what type of manuscript (e.g., full-length article, brief report, case report, concise communication, or letter to the editor); manuscripts should not be classified as editorials or special articles unless they have been specifically invited. Confirm that each individual named as an author meets the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals criteria for authorship. Confirm that the manuscript has not been submitted or is not simultaneously being submitted elsewhere, and that no portion of the data has been or will be published in proceedings or transactions of meetings or symposium volumes. The publication of data in abstracts, and presentation in oral or poster sessions at meetings, do not constitute previous publication. Indicate any financial support or other benefits from commercial sources for the work reported on in the manuscript, or any other financial interests that any of the authors may have, which could create a potential conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest with regard to the work. Corresponding author should include address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address.
Type all pages of the manuscript, including those containing references, tables, and figure legends, double space in 12-point type, with 1-1 1/2-inch margins. Number all sheets in succession, including references, tables, and figure legends. Title page is page 1. On the first page, type the running head (short title for top of each page), title (which cannot include any acronyms), names of the authors and their academic degrees, grants or other financial supporters of the study, address for correspondence and reprint requests, and corresponding author's telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address. Also on the first page, again indicate any financial support or other benefits from commercial sources for the work reported on in the manuscript, or any other financial interests that any of the authors may have, which could create a potential conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest with regard to the work.
Full-length articles, reviews, and brief reports
Definition: Full-length articles are descriptions of original research that adds to the body of knowledge in arthritis and the rheumatic diseases. Reviews critically and analytically discuss new and rapidly evolviing fields. Brief reports are short papers of investigations into disease mechanisms, reports of clinical experience, therapeutic trials, or research and/or clinical contributions to diagnosis, treatment, etiopathology, and epidemiology of rheumatic diseases.
On the second page of full-length articles and brief reports (but not reviews), include an abstract of fewer than 250 words. The abstract should be divided into the following sections: Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion.
On the third page, begin the introduction (no heading is necessary). Follow this plan of organization: Materials and Methods (or Patients and Methods), Results, Discussion, References, Tables, and Figure Legends. Organization of reviews should be appropriate to the topic discussed.
Full-length articles and reviews should not exceed 4,200 words from introduction through discussion (not including references, tables, and figure legends). The total number of tables and figures combined may not exceed 6, and the number of references may not exceed 50. Captions of tables and figures should be brief but allow the reader to understand the purpose of the table or figure at a glance.
Brief reports should not exceed 2,500 words from introduction through references. The total number of tables and figures combined may not exceed 3, and the number of references may not exceed 15.
Case reports may no longer be submitted to the journal. In rare cases, brief reports that include case report information will be considered for publication. The main criterion for consideration will be that, in addition to the clinical description of a case or cases, the report includes investigative research that advances the field of rheumatology by, e.g., providing a key insight into disease mechanism. These should be submitted in brief report format, with a Patients and Methods section (including, but not limited to, description of the case or cases), a Results section, and a Discussion section.
EDITORIALS
Definition: Editorials are succinct commentaries on a concurrently published article in Arthritis & Rheumatism. Editorials are invited by the editorial office and should be submitted within 3 weeks of invitation.
Clinical images
Definition: Clinical images are photographic depictions (clinical, radiologic, or pathologic) of interesting rheumatologic phenomena. Clinical images should consist of no more than 2 figures (which should be oriented horizontally) and text of no more than 300 words. Reference citations are not required; if references are included, there should be no more than 3. Do not add separate figure legends to clinical images; the entire clinical image text is the figure legend. Images should be submitted with the manuscript in one of the following formats: .tif(preferred), .eps, .xls, or .doc.
Letters to the editor/concise communications
Definitions: Letters to the editor should be limited to commentaries on previous articles published in Arthritis & Rheumatism and issues affecting rheumatology and the American College of Rheumatology. Concise communications should be very short reports of cases or research findings, with no abstract, subheads, or acknowledgments section.
Letters that are commentaries on previous articles must be submitted within 6 months after publication of the article.
Names of all authors of a letter to the editor or concise communication should be included in the manuscript. For "reply" letters, it is not necessary that all authors of the article being commented upon be included as authors of the reply.
Length of letters to the editor and concise communications should be no more than 2 pages, including references.
Only 1 table or figure may accompany a letter to the editor or concise communication.
Content
Do not use new technical words, laboratory slang, words not defined in dictionaries, or abbreviations or terminology not consistent with internationally accepted guidelines. Define any abbreviations the first time they are used. A list of acronyms for many common rheumatology terms has been developed by an international group of rheumatology journal editors.
In order to make the description of patients as clear as possible and to facilitate comparisons with other studies, the Methods section should include, whenever possible, a short paragraph detailing the proportion of patients who satisfy the ACR classification criteria for the particular disease described.
Information on some specific study types
Genetic association studies
Highest priority for acceptance of genetic association studies will be given to reports of new associations that have mechanistic implications, test and validation populations, quantitative significance (high odds ratios), clinical importance, and novelty.
Submissions reporting associations that lack test/validation populations, or that report low odds ratios with no mechanistic implication or clinical importance, will not under most circumstances be considered unless special justification is presented. Submissions that lack statistical power to support the claims made will not be considered.
Confirmatory studies, including those in special populations, should be submitted as brief reports or concise communications, not as full-length articles (full data can be included on the authors', the journal's, or a public web site).
Authors should consult the following publications for further guidance: Huizinga TW, Pisetsky DS, Kimberly RP. Associations, populations, and the truth: recommendations for genetic association studies in Arthritis & Rheumatism. Arthritis Rheum 2004;50:2066-71 and Little J, Higgins JP, Ioannidis JP, Moher D, Gagnon F, von Elm E, et al. STrengthening the REporting of Genetic Association Studies (STREGA): an extension of the STROBE instrument. Ann Intern Med 2009;150:206-15.
Clinical trials
Clinical trials must be registered with the appropriate national body before they will be considered for publication in Arthritis & Rheumatism. Specific information on the type of work that must be registered is available on the journal's Web site. Authors of articles describing randomized controlled trials should consult the CONSORT (CONsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) Statement for guidance on content that should be included in the report.
Meta-analyses
Authors of articles reporting on meta-analyses should consult the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Statement for guidance on content that should be included in the report.
Compliance with research ethics standards
Research carried out with human subjects must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body that gave approval. Similarly, for prospective studies involving animal subjects, the Methods section must include a statement indicating approval by the appropriate institutional review board or comparable formal ethics review committee. Compliance with Open Access regulations required by funding bodies, such as the National Institutes of Health, is required.
The journal reserves the right to subject any submitted text or figures to electronic scrutiny to ensure that text has not been plagiarized and images have not been inappropriately manipulated.
Illustrations
Images should be submitted with the manuscript in one of the following formats:.tif (preferred), .eps, .xls, or .doc. The minimum acceptable resolution for figures is 300 dpi.
Each figure legend should be no more than 200 words; lengthy descriptions of methods should appear in the Methods section of the article and not in figure legends.
Although the letter of a multiple-part figure may be printed directly on the figure, the main figure number should not be (i.e., for Figure 2A, an "A" may appear on the figure, but "2" may not); the number will appear in the text of the figure legend.
Obtain releases from any patients whose identifiable pictures will be printed in the journal. Blinders on the eyes are not a substitute for patient's permission.
An article may include one page of color at no charge to the author. For subsequent pages of color, the author will be billed $500 per page.
Tables
Type tables entirely in double space. Do not include any vertical lines in tables. Include horizontal lines below the title and headings and above the table footnotes only; there should be no horizontal lines separating the individual lines of data in the table body. Limit the width of each table (number of columns) such that it will fit in portrait (not landscape) orientation on a journal column (inches) or page (7 inches) and will not exceed the height of the page. Refer to current issues of the journal for further guidance regarding table style.
Tables with sections (e.g., Table 1a, Table 1b) are not acceptable and will be handled as two separate tables unless the information can be logically combined into one table with one set of headings.
Provide each table with an explanatory title so that it is intelligible without specific reference to the text.
Provide each table column with an appropriate heading. Indicate clearly any units of measure on a table.
Lengthy descriptions of methods should appear in the Methods section of the article and not in table footnotes.
Supplementary material
Supplementary material will be considered for publication in the online edition of Arthritis & Rheumatism under the specific conditions described below.
The content of supplementary material will be restricted to essential supporting information for clinical trial reports, genome-wide association studies, gene array and proteomic studies, and meta-analyses for which important background information is too lengthy for inclusion in the main body of the article. File formats not currently amenable to inclusion in the primary report (e.g., short videos) will also be allowed.
The format of supplementary material will be restricted to tables, figures, or short videos. Supplementary text is allowed only for clinical trial reports and is restricted to the study protocol, the statistical analysis plan, and/or a study instrument. No more than 3 supplementary items meeting these criteria will be published with an article.
Supplementary tables and figures that do not conform to the above restrictions will not be published as supplementary material in the online edition of the journal. Authors may publish these materials on their institution's or their personal web site, for which a link will be included in the published article; if this is not possible, it can be stated in the article that the information is available upon request from the corresponding author. Materials not being included as supplementary material in the online edition of the journal will not be referred to in the article as "supplementary."
A request by a reviewer for supplementary material to be considered in the review process does not guarantee that the material will meet criteria for publication in the online edition of the journal, should the article be accepted.
References
Compile references numerically according to the order of the citation. Consult recent issues of Arthritis & Rheumatism for reference style.
For references to journal articles, include the first 6 authors, followed by "et al" if there are more than 6 authors. The author names are followed by the title (with only the first word capitalized),the abbreviated name of the journal (use abbreviations that conform to those in the National Library of Medicine journals database), the year, volume number (without issue number), and page range. Example: Kennedy A, Ng CT, Biniecka M, Saber T, Taylor C, O'Sullivan J, et al. Angiogenesis and blood vessel stability in inflammatory arthritis. Arthritis Rheum 2010;62:711-21. If the journal material being cited is an editorial, review, abstract, or letter, indicate this in brackets at the end of the title.
For chapters of books that have an editor(s) and individually authored chapters, include the names of the chapter authors, followed by the chapter title, the book editors, the book title, the city of publication, publisher name, year of publication, and chapter page range. Example: Katz JN. Developments in surgery for rheumatic and musculoskeletal disorders. In: Pisetsky DS, editor. The ACR at 75: a diamond jubilee. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Blackwell; 2009. p. 87-91.
For references to electronic publications, include the author or organization as applicable, title as applicable, and the URL; prior to submission, please confirm that the URL is active.
Assignment of reviewers
Authors are asked to suggest potential reviewers of their manuscript. If there are individuals they would prefer not to review their manuscripts, they may also indicate. Editors will consider these suggestions but are not bound by them.
Related manuscripts/Duplicate publication
If the authors are aware of any related manuscript (e.g., another manuscript resulting from the same study) that has been or will be published by or submitted to another journal or to Arthritis & Rheumatism, a copy of the other manuscript should be sent along with the one that is being submitted for publication in Arthritis & Rheumatism.
Articles are received only for exclusive publication in Arthritis & Rheumatism with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (in part or in full, in other words or in the same words, in letter or article form, or otherwise), are not at the time of submission under consideration by another journal or other publication, and will not be submitted elsewhere unless rejected by Arthritis & Rheumatism. Publication of preliminary data in the form of an abstract generally is not considered duplicate publication unless the abstract exceeds two pages in length and/or is cited in PubMed.
If an author violates this requirement or engages in other similar misconduct, the Editor may, in addition to rejecting the manuscript, impose a moratorium on the acceptance of new manuscripts from the author and, if the misconduct is deemed sufficiently serious, may refer the matter to the author's academic institution or hospital and/or the appropriate state or local disciplinary body.
Disclosure of interest/copyright transfer
At the time a manuscript under consideration is sent for revision, the corresponding author must obtain the journal's Disclosure of Interest forms. The corresponding author should have each individual author fill out the form to disclose information about financial support and consulting activities that might be interpreted as constituting a possible conflict of interest for the study and about each author's role in the study. The corresponding author must collect the completed forms from all authors and submit them to the journal editorial office along with the revised manuscript. Reported information that constitutes a possible conflict of interest, or the appearance thereof, will be divulged in a footnote in the published article.
The Disclosure of Interest form described above also contains a section in which, in accordance with the 1978 Copyright Law, authors are requested to sign a copyright transfer statement.
Author corrections on proofs
The corresponding author will be provided with page proofs and asked to check for errors and editorial queries. Although the correction of editorial and typographical errors will be made without charge, the cost of excessive additional alterations may be charged to the author.
Publication of the article may be delayed if the proofs are not sent back in a timely manner.
Page charge
A $70 per page charge will be assessed for publication in Arthritis & Rheumatism.
Instructions for payment will be sent to authors along with the proofs. In extreme cases of inability to pay, the page charge may be reduced or waived. There is no page charge for solicited articles, letters to the editor, or book reviews. Questions regarding the page charge should be directed to the , Arthritis & Rheumatism, 2200 Lake Boulevard NE, Atlanta, GA 30319.
