Author Guidelines

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site here to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

The template of the Vietnamese manuscript can be downloaded here.

The template of the English manuscript can be downloaded here.

Guide to register and submit the manuscript here.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery will be reviewed.

There is a 2.000.000 VND fee required after the paper is accepted for publication.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

 

1. What do we publish?

1.1 Aims & Scope

Before submitting your manuscript to Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery , please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

1.2 Article Types

Manuscripts are considered for publication with the understanding that they have not been published previously and are not under consideration by another publication.

Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery is a peer-reviewed journal which welcomes new techniques and findings of special significance to Vietnam, Asia and the Pacific Rim:

• Original clinical manuscripts (including research reports)
• Case studies
• “How to do it” short discussions on surgical techniques
• Images/illustrative examples of surgical cases
• Reviews
• Letters to the Editor and regional news/events

1.3 Writing your paper

1.3.1 Make your article discoverable

When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google.

 

2. Editorial policies

2.1 Peer review policy

Submissions are reviewed by invited referees and selected editors. It is our policy to provide “blinded” reviews. Neither reviewers nor authors will be identified, so there is no possibility of bias in any editorial decision. Accepted material may be revised by editors for clarity, length, and style, without changing the meaning. One set of proofs is sent to the contact author for final confirmation (only minor alteration is permitted). Rejected articles are disposed of properly to preserve confidentiality.

2.2 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

(i)    Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
(ii)    Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
(iii)    Approved the version to be published,
(iv)    Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. 

2.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

2.3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

•  Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input 
  •    Identify any entities that paid for this assistance 
  •    Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

2.3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.

2.4 Funding

Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  

2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

It is the policy of Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.

2.6 Research ethics and patient consent

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative.

2.7 Clinical trials

The Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery complies with the Ministry of Health's regulations that clinical trials are registered for clinical trials and approved for clinical trials by the competent ethics committee.

2.8 Data

We acknowledges the importance of research data availability as an integral part of the research and verification process for academic journal articles.

Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery requests all authors submitting any primary data used in their research articles [“alongside their article submissions” or “if the articles are accepted”] to be published in the online version of the journal, or provide detailed information in their articles on how the data can be obtained. This information should include links to third-party data repositories or detailed contact information for third-party data sources. Data available only on an author-maintained website will need to be loaded onto either the journal’s platform or a third-party platform to ensure continuing accessibility. Examples of data types include but are not limited to statistical data files, replication code, text files, audio files, images, videos, appendices, and additional charts and graphs necessary to understand the original research. All data submitted should comply with Institutional or Ethical Review Board requirements and applicable government regulations.

2.10 Abstract presentations from conferences

All authors of oral/abstract presentations are required to submit an expanded, full manuscript to the journal prior to the annual conference. This includes all abstracts for competition and award sessions. Abstracts for the competition and award sessions will not be processed through the scientific committee if not accompanied by a full manuscript.

 

3. Publishing Policies

3.1 Publication ethics

We are committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors. 

3.1.1 Plagiarism

Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

3.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in our journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. If in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

 

4. Preparing your manuscript for submission

4.1 Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. 

A structured abstract should be included, comprising approximately 250 words for an original article. You should also list four to six key words.

Manuscript structure should be in the following order: title page, abstract and key words, text, acknowledgments, references, tables, figures, figure legends. It is important to ensure that you submit the title page, abstract and main text, images, tables and figures as separate files.

TITLE PAGE

The complete title should contain no abbreviations and must not exceed 80 characters, including spaces for both the original and any revisions of the article. A short title to be used as the running head should not exceed 40 characters including spaces. Authors' names should be listed in full, with the surnames (family names) underlined, followed by one single highest academic degree. All authors must fulfil the criteria for authorship described in "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" (JAMA 1997; 277:927-34. Available at http:/www.icmje.org). The name and location (city, country) of the institution where the work was performed should be stated in English. If the paper has been or is to be presented at a conference, provide the name, location and dates of the meeting. State the telephone number, email address and postal address of the contact author. Any conflict of interest must also be stated on the title page. The title page of all article types, should include a total word and reference count which should be update if a revision is submitted. 

ABSTRACT AND KEY WORDS

Original articles must contain a structured abstract using the heading format: Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions, and not exceeding 250 words. A brief abstract no more than 100 words must be included for case reports. No abbreviations are allowed in the abstract. Four to six key words must be listed for subject indexing. Keywords should be taken from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus; if suitable MeSH terms are not yet available for recently introduced terms, present terms may be used.

TEXT

The main text should be anonymous - containing no author information. The text should be written concisely. It must be continuous and should not contain lists. Original Contributions should include: Introduction, Material/Patients and Methods, Results and Discussion. Do not abbreviate terms used fewer than 4 times. Full terms of abbreviations or acronyms should be stated at first mention, with the acronym following in parentheses. Use standard abbreviations only. Generic names for drugs should be used, unless brand names are essential to the discussion. At the mention of drugs, equipment and other brand-name material, indicate the manufacturer's name and location (city, state, country) in parentheses. Measurements should be in metric units (meter, kilogram, liter). Temperature must be in degrees Celsius. Blood pressure should be in millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). All hematological and clinical chemistry data must be in System International (SI) units. If in doubt, refer to a recently published article.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgements of financial or personal assistance should be placed at the end of the text. All papers prepared in consultation with a statistician who is not a co-author should contain an acknowledgment indicating the name and a single highest academic qualification of the consultant statistician. Individuals who have made substantial intellectual contributions to the paper but do not fulfil the criteria for authorship may be named in this section.

REFERENCES

The maximum number of references is 20 for Original Contributions, 8 for Case Studies and How-To-do-it articles, 60 for review articles and 5 for Letters to the Editor. References cited should be from journals which are Medline indexed. Works accepted for publication but not yet released should be indicated by "in press" in parentheses after the name of the publication concerned. Do not cite personal communications or unpublished work. Avoid using abstracts as references. References must be numbered and cited in the text. Authors are solely responsible for the completeness and accuracy of the references. References should conform to the format outlined below:

Journals - list the first 6 authors' surnames and initials, followed by "et al." (if more than 6 authors), full title of the article, correct abbreviation of the journal name (conform to that used in Index Medicus), year, volume number, first and last pages.

Books - list authors' surnames and initials, chapter title, editor's name(s) and initial(s), book title, edition, city, publisher, date, first and last pages.

Other materials - format according to Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http:/www/icmje.org).

For Image Papers the manuscript should be no longer than 150 words, contain up to three images and must not list any references.

4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from the editorial team after confirmation of your accepted article.

Figures should be supplied as TIFF or JPEG and contain no text or graphs. 

Graphs and line art should be supplied in EPS format. 

4.3 Supplementary material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.

4.4 Reference style

Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery adheres to the American Psychological Association (APA//0 6th edition style of referencing

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the APA 6th EndNote output file. Or Zotero user go to Zotero/style and download the APA 6th referencing style.

Further detail please visit this resource for detailed guide

 

5. Submitting your manuscript

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. 

5.1 Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

5.2 Permissions

Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Author Gateway

6. On acceptance and publication

6.1 Journal’s Production

Your Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly.  Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. Please note that if there are any changes to the author list at this stage all authors will be required to complete and sign a form authorizing the change.

 

7. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery editorial office as follows:

Editor-in-chief: Professor . LE NGOC THANH, MD, PhD.

Director of E Hospital, Dean of School of Medicine & Pharmacy, Vietnam National University

Director of Cardiovascular Center, E - Hospital

Editor in Chief of Vietnam Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery

President of the Association of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery of Vietnam

Council Member of the Association of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons ofAsia