Guide for authors

Clinical trials
Physiotherapy Quarterly is published in accordance with ICMJE policies and recommendations.
The ICMJE requires and recommends that all medical journal editors require registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for article publication.
The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events.

The ICMJE accepts publicly accessible registration in any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) that includes the minimum acceptable 24-item trial registration data set or in ClinicalTrials.gov, which is a data provider to the WHO ICTRP.

In accordance with the ICMJE recommendations, the Editors of Physiotherapy Quarterly require authors to provide all necessary information regarding the registered study when submitting the article for publication: name of the register, Main ID, Public Title, Date of Registration. The data provided by the author are verified by the editors.

More information on this can be found here https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

Source: ICMJE, Clinical Trials, https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

Article Sharing
1. The Editorial Board does not allow authors to include pre-prints, i.e. articles before peer-review, on private websites or in institutional repositories.
2. The author may, with the permission of the Editorial Board, include the post-print version of their article on private websites and in institutional repositories (the peer-reviewed version, including the changes implemented during the review process and approved by the Editorial Board), provided that they specify the source information (journal title, year, doi, journal website address) and indicate in the content of the article that this is a version prior to publication, and provided that the copyright and publication rights of the article are preserved. After the publication of the article in the journal, the author is responsible for updating the archived post-print with a reference to the journal (including doi) and a link to the published article on the relevant journal website.
3. The author may individually include the published version of the article (the final PDF file), i.e. the official version issued in the journal, on private websites and in institutional repositories.
Appendix 1 to the Physiotherapy Quarterly Author Guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS ON SUBMITTING AND PREPARING ARTICLES
The Editor accepts solely papers submitted via the electronic Editorial System. The paper registration proceeds according to the System guidelines. The management of the editorial stages and contacting the author take place via the Editorial System exclusively. The author’s e-mail address in used to confirm the reception of the paper by the Editor and to provide information about the editorial process stages.

The articles are published in English. Manuscripts sent in other languages will not be accepted. English text verification before submission is strongly suggested for non-native English authors.

The papers have to be anonymous for the reviewers; therefore, all information identifying the authors of the article within the text, references, footnotes, and bibliography should be removed.

Together with the abstract, figures, and tables, an empirical article should not exceed 20 A4 pages (1800 characters including spaces per page), and a review article – 30 pages.

The paper should be prepared in the Microsoft Word text editor and respect the following standards:
– font: Times New Roman, 12 points;
– line spacing: 1,5;
– text alignment: justified;
– title alignment: centred.

Paper composition:
a) the title page (separate) should include: the article full tittle, abbreviated title (up to 60 characters including spaces), the first name and surname of the author/authors, ORCID (Open Research and Contributor ID), the affiliation of the author/authors (university name, city, country), the main author’s correspondence address (department/chair name, institution address, e-mail address, telephone number), and the e-mail addresses of all authors;
b) the article text should include:
– the article full tittle;
– abstract (up to 250 words), divided into the following sections (in experimental papers): Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions;
– 3–6 key words in English (selected as MeSH descriptors);
– the main text.

The key information is available in the manuscript template.

The main text of an experimental paper should include the following sections:
INTRODUCTION
Here, the author presents the article subject, as well as describes its aim, its hypotheses, and the existing research (literature review).
SUBJECTS AND METHODS
This section is to clearly describe the research material (if human subjects participate in the experiment, their number, age, sex, and other characteristic features should be provided), conditions, time, methods, and the equipment used (including the producer’s name and address). The measurement procedures need to be provided in sufficient detail in order to allow for their reproducibility. If a method is being used for the first time, the author should describe it in special detail, presenting its validity and reliability (reproducibility). If the existing methods are modified, the changes must be discussed and justified. All experiments employing human or animal subjects must obtain approval of an appropriate research ethics committee or the National Ethics Committee on Animal Experiments on implementing the methods suggested by the author in the experiment (a copy of the approval document must be attached to the paper). Statistical methods should be described in a way allowing to assess their correctness. In the case of a review article, methods of searching for and selecting the material should also be provided.

The protection of privacy is a legal right that must not be breached without individual informed consent. In cases where the identification of personal information is necessary for scientific reasons, authors should obtain full documentation of informed consent, including written permission from the patient prior to inclusion in the study.

Informed consent: Informed consent has been obtained from all individuals included in this study.
Ethical approval: The research related to human use has been complied with all the relevant national regulations, institutional policies and in accordance the tenets of the Helsinki Declaration, and has been approved by the authors' institutional review board or equivalent committee.

Ethical approval: The research related to animals use has been complied with all the relevant national regulations and institutional policies for the care and use of animals.
If the manuscript does not contain any study that requires human or animal ethical approval, the following statement should be included in the Methods section:
Ethical approval: The conducted research is not related to either human or animals use.

Authors should indicate the ethics committee approval number with the date of receipt. In the case of clinical trials, the registration number in the publicly available database.

RESULTS
Results, closely tied with the data included in the tables and figures, should be presented logically and consistently.
DISCUSSION
In this section, the author should discuss the obtained results and refer them to the outcomes described in literature (other than those mentioned in the introduction), emphasising new and significant aspects of their paper.
LIMITATION
List and discuss the limitations of the study, possible sources of bias, and any reasonable alternative explanations for the findings and interpretation of the study.
CONCLUSION
It is important to bear in mind the original aim of the paper and the formulated hypotheses. Vague statements and those unsupported by the research results should be avoided. Putting forward new hypotheses must be clearly emphasized.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Here, the author enumerates the people and institutions that contributed to the preparation of the paper, served as consultants, or provided financial or technical support.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors of the article are obliged to report an actual or potential conflict of interest that prevents the pursuit of the scientific truth. A conflict of interest arises when at least one of the authors is – either directly or through immediate family – associated with any organization or entity: financially (e.g. by royalties, scientific grants, membership, employment, consultations, ownership rights or other equity and expert testimonies or license agreements on patents) or non-financially (e.g. by affinity, legal ties, professional dependence, membership, knowledge or beliefs regarding the subject or materials covered by the article). If a conflict of interest is suspected, the author is obliged to report this in the cover letter sent to the Editor, indicate it in a footnote to the publication (e.g. by specifying the sources of the financial support and other financial and personal ties with the article), and attach a relevant statement.
Statement
The authors hereby declare the following conflict of interest: .........................
Signatures of all the authors
If there are no conflicts of interest, the following statement should be included before the References (or at the end of the Acknowledgments section):
Conflict of interest: Authors state no conflict of interest.
Disclosure statement: No author has any financial interest or received any financial benefit from this research.

REFERENCES
The referencing style used by the journal is the Vancouver style.
References should be placed at the end of the work - written in the same font as the text. The arrangement of references must comply with the Vancouver standard (author-number) in the order of citations in the work.
Please include the surname, first letters of names, title of the work, abbreviation of the journal title without dots (in accordance with the current list of journals indexed in Index Medicus NLM, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog?Db=journals&Cmd =DetailsSearch&Term=currentlyindexed%5BAll%5D),year, volume and start and end pages.
All authors of the work are required.
Original and review works should include up to 40 items.
Each publication should be placed on a new line and the item number should be given in square brackets.
Examples of correct reference writing, in accordance with the Vancouver/ICMJE convention used by MEDLINE: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html
Article:
Vant RM, Vrijland WW, Lange JF, Hop WC, Jeekel J, Bonjer HJ. Mesh repair of incisional hernia: comparison of laparoscopic and open repair. Eur J Surg. 2002;168:684-689.
Book:
Hawking S.W. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. New York: Bantam Books; 1988.
Chapter in the book:
Bron J.D. Early events in the infection of the arthopod gut by pathogenic insect viruses. In: Maramorosch K, Shope RE, editors. Invertebrate Immunity. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press; 1976. p. 80-111.
Orkiszewska A. Studies in surgical patients. In: Rowiński W, Dziak A, eds. Surgery for nurses. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Lekarskie PZWL: 1999; 4: pp. 48-72.
Links to online publications are permitted only in the absence of adequate data in published literature.

Instructions concerning TABLES, FIGURES, and PHOTOGRAPHS:
– they should be provided with numbers and captions;
– they should be placed within the text;
– in addition, figures and photographs must be attached as separate xls, stg, pdf, cdr, eps, tif or jpg files (minimum resolution of 300 dpi);
– the same results should not be repeated in tables and figures;
– symbols, e.g. arrows or stars, as well as abbreviations used in tables or figures should be clearly explained in a legend so that they are legible and comprehensible irrespective of the paper text.

All the quotations included in the paper must be accompanied by bibliographic information, including numbers of the source pages.

If a figure or table has been developed on the basis of some other figure or table, the source should be provided. In the case of reprinting a table or figure from another publication, obtaining the publisher’s permission is necessary.

Prior to publishing, the author will receive their paper for acceptance in a PDF file format. The author is obliged to immediately inform the Editor accepting the paper for print. At this stage, only minor corrections will be accepted.