Instructions to authors of the Brazilian Journal of Family and Community Medicine

Abstract

The Brazilian Journal of Family and Community Medicine (BJFCM) is a three-monthly publication of the Brazilian Society of Family and Community Medicine, aimed at sensitizing professionals and health authorities to this field of interest, stimulating and disseminating Primary Health Care (PHC) issues and investigations, and facilitating interchange between academic institutions, health care services and organized social movements. The periodical also aims to promote an interdisciplinary approach to this area and to serve as a vehicle for continued and permanent education in the field of Family and Community Health, with emphasis to the central subject PHC.

Manuscripts will be reviewed by members of the Scientific and Editorial Board as well as by outside referees. This peer-review process safeguards the identity of authors and their institutions of origin, which only will be revealed to the Editorial Board in the end of the evaluation process.

All manuscripts should be prepared in Portuguese language. Foreign authors, not living in Brazil, can submit their papers in English or Spanish.

Categories and formats of papers

The journal is divided into the following sections:

Editorial

Original articles

Review articles

Directives in Family and Community Medicine

Essays

Case reports

Theses

Letters to the Editor

The Editorial is responsibility of the editor of the journal, but can be prepared by third persons on his request.

The section Original Articles is dedicated to reports on scientific investigations, presenting original data on findings from experiments or observation with emphasis to qualitative or quantitative studies in fields of interest for PHC. Original articles are criticisms or creations on science, technology and the art of health sciences, contributing to the evolution of knowledge about Man, nature and social and cultural inclusion. The papers - including introduction, material or rationale, methods, results, discussion and conclusion should not exceed 25 pages.

The section Reviews is composed by articles about Health Management, Clinics and Health Education. Review articles are papers presenting an up-to-date synthesis of available knowledge on health science subjects, with the intent to elucidate, organize, normalize and simplify approaches to the different problems affecting human knowledge about Man and nature and social and cultural inclusion. These papers are aimed at summarizing, analyzing, evaluating and synthesizing investigations already published in scientific journals and should not exceed 20 pages, including introduction, rationale and conclusion.

The section Directives in FCM receives articles prepared according to the norms for Clinical Directives of the Brazilian Association of Physicians, validated by the BSFCM. The purpose of these articles - prepared under the guidance of the Scientific Board of the BSFCM – is to organize and reference the work of physicians involved in FMC in Brazil.

The section Essays publishes critical analyses regarding specific topics related to Family and Community Medicine. Articles should have 5 to 10 pages.

Case Reports are articles addressing cases or experiences by exploring a method or problem based on an example. These articles indicate details such as sex and age of the studied individual – human or animal – emphasize their importance in practice and indicate ways, procedures and conducts for solving the problem. Articles for this section should not exceed 8 pages and include introduction, rationale and conclusion.

The section Abstracts of Theses is aimed at publishing scientific production in the field covered by the journal in form of abstracts of master’s and doctor’s dissertations defended in Brazilian universities or abroad. Abstracts should not exceed one page, state the official title of the dissertation, the academic degree achieved, date and place where the thesis was defended and indicate the name of the supervisor and where the dissertation is available for consultation.

In the section Letters to the Editor, readers are invited to express their opinion and make suggestions to the journal.

Articles should be submitted by electronic mail, directed to the Secretariat of the Brazilian Society of Family and Community Health or to the Editor. Papers should be typed in word processor Word for Windows version 0.6 or superior paper size ISO A4, font Arial, size 11, space between lines 1,5, and all pages should be numbered sequentially. References should be kept to the necessary minimum. The same refers to tables and figures, which should be understandable independently from the text. Corresponding authors should inform their full names and addresses. The funding sources by which the work was supported should be stated.

Articles describing investigations on human subjects must include a statement referring institutional ethics committee clearance.

Manuscripts should be structured as below:

1. Title

2. Complete names – first name(s) followed by family name(s) of the author(s)

3. Abstract giving a clear synthesis of the purpose, describing the methods used and main conclusions of the study.

4. Key words – a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 key words or describers of the contents of the work, following the norms of DeCS, available at http://decs.bvs.br/

5. Text of the article, according to the recommendations for each category given above.

6. Figures (graphs, diagrams and tables) according to the recommendations given above.

7. References: are responsibility of the authors and should be arranged numerically according to the order in which they appear in the text, according to the rules of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, available at http://www.icmje.org

Examples:

Periodical

Valla VV. Educação popular e saúde diante das formas de se lidar com a saúde. APS Journal. 2000; (5): 46-53.

Book

Birman J. Pensamento freudiano. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar; 1994. 204p.

Book chapter

Vasconcelos EM. Atividades coletivas dentro do Centro de Saúde. In: ________. Educação popular nos serviços de saúde. 3rd. ed. São Paulo: HUCITEC; 1997. p. 65-69.

Dissertation

Caldas CP. Memória dos velhos trabalhadores. [Dissertation]. Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Medicina Social, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; 1993.

Event

Mauad NM, Campos EM. Avaliação da implantação das ações de assistência integral à saúde da mulher no PIES/UFJF; 6th Brazilian Congress on Collectyive Health; 2000, Salvador. Salvador: Associação Brasileira de Pós-graduação em Saúde Coletiva; 2000. p.328.

References from the internet

Civitas. Coordinated by: Simão Pedro P. Marinho. Developed by: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, 1995-1998. Presents texts on urbanism and city development. Available at: <http//www.gcsnet.com.br/oamis/civitas>. Accessed: Nov 27. 1998.

Review procedures and publication of submitted manuscripts

The articles are of the full and exclusive responsibility of the authors.

Peer-review procedure: received articles are registered by the Secretariat of the journal and submitted to the Scientific and Editorial Board for screening, preliminary evaluation and posterior distribution to ad hoc referees with specific expertise in the subject addressed by the article. All manuscripts are submitted to two referees, coming from institutions different from those of the author(s) who, in a double-blind review process, assess them with respect to the following aspects: pertinence of the title in relation to the content, structure of the manuscript, pertinence and clearness of objectives, methodology, intelligible information, conformity of citations and references with the technical norms and alignment with the editorial line of the journal. The referees fill in the review form accepting or rejecting the manuscript or suggesting improvements and/or necessary corrections. In this case, the manuscript is returned to the author(s) for revision and resubmission, followed by a new evaluation. The result is communicated to the author(s) and accepted articles will be published following the order of registry. No additions or modifications in manuscripts already accepted for publication will be admitted.

Responsibility Statement

All individuals named as authors for having participated substantially in the submitted study have to take public responsibility for the integrity of their work and consequently sign the following Responsibility Statement:

“I hereby declare to have participated substantially in the conception and design of the present work and in the writing of the manuscript, taking public responsibility for its integrity. I have read the final version of this work and agreed to its submission for publication. The work in its present or a similar form has not been published elsewhere, nor is it currently under consideration for publication in another periodical.””

Articles prepared by more than one author should state the specific contribution of each of them. The authors of each article will receive three exemplars of the edition in which their study was published.

Ethics in experimentation

Articles based on investigations involving human subjects should declare in the text that the investigation has been cleared by the responsible Ethics Committee on Human Experimentation.

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to:

Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina de Família e Comunidade - SBMFC

Contact Address:

Rua 28 de Setembro, 44 sala 804

Rio de Janeiro - RJ

Cep: 20551-031

Tel/fax: 21 2264-5117

e-mail: rbmfc@sbmfc.org.br