ISSN 0120-9957
printed version

ISSN 2500-7440
online version

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22516/issn.2500-7440

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts
• Sending of manuscripts

The Revista colombiana de Gastroenterología is the official journal of the Colombian Association of Gastroenterology, a non-profit organization. It is published quarterly in the months of March, June, September and December. The journal is open to any member of the national and international medical community interested in publishing their work by strictly following the ethical recommendations for the publication of scholarly work in medical journals established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and complying with the editorial policies of the Journal such as peer review. The main objective of the journal is to publish original and unpublished papers addressing topics in or related to Gastroenterology that contribute to the progress of this medical specialty, and offer updated and relevant information on this specialty and related areas. Scientific papers of interest for the Journal include the areas of clinical gastroenterology, digestive endoscopy, digestive surgery, pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology and coloproctology. Original research papers, systematic reviews, case reports, clinical practice guidelines, consensus and letters to the editor written in Spanish can be submitted to the Journal to be considered for publication. The Journal will not publish narrative reviews of the literature, except if requested.

The Revista colombiana de Gastroenterología is indexed in the following databases and bibliographic indexes: SciELO Colombia (Scientific Electronic Library Online), LILACS (Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature), Publindex (Colciencias' National Index of Colombian Scientific and Technological Serial Publications), EBSCO information services, REDIB (Ibero-American Network for Innovation and Scientific Knowledge) and Redalyc (Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal).

Publication charges

The Revista colombiana de Gastroenterología does not charge any fee to authors for submission, editorial process, publication or translation into English of their articles, nor is there any charge for accessing published articles. 

Ethics statment

The Revista colombiana de Gastroenterología adheres to the Code of Conduct of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE). Articles must be prepared according to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (Vancouver Group), which were updated in December 2019 and are available at http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/icmje-recommendations/.

The Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology accepts submissions of scientific articles that conform to the following editorial guidelines. Non-compliance with them shall be cause for rejection.

1. All works submitted to the Journal must be original and unpublished. Papers that have been already published will not be accepted. In this sense, articles that partially or substantially reproduce works that have been published, even in other languages, shall not be submitted. Plagiarism detection tools are used in the editorial review process.

2. Authors: Authors' names and the order in which they appear must be carefully reviewed before making a submission so that they are recorded correctly in the website. Changes involving the addition, removal or rearrangement of authors must be done before the paper is accepted for publication and prior approval of the Editor of the Journal. Authors' identifying information must be included only in the submission made through the OJS website of the journal; it should not be included in the file that contains the article to be peer reviewed. Also, the ORCID ID code of all authors must be included, so that each author can be identified unambiguously. Any reference to the authors' identity or institutional affiliation must be omitted in the name of the file, its contents and supplementary materials (figures). Information regarding the institutional affiliation of all authors must be registered in the submission made in the website of the journal.

Authorship: As established in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts) of the ICMJE, to be considered an author, substantial contributions regarding a) the conception and design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; b) the drafting or planning of the paper or the revision of important intellectual content, and c) the final approval of the version to be published, must have been made. Authors must meet all these conditions to be considered as such. "Courtesy Authorship" is unacceptable. For example, being involved only in the provision of samples or the recruitment of patients, although essential for conducting the research, is not enough to be considered and author, since giving credit to the person responsible for these processes in the acknowledgments is usually enough. Also, authors must state their individual contributions in the making of the paper.

3. Format: Papers must be written in Spanish and must be submitted in a .doc or .docx file at the revistagastrocol.com website. Articles must have a minimum length of 3.000 words and a maximum of 6.000 words.

The English version of the title, abstract and keywords must be also included.
The text format shall be as follows:

- Single column, letter sized.
- 2.5 cm. margins, double spaced.
- All pages must be numbered in the lower right-hand corner
- Text: Verdana 12-pt font, justified paragraphs.

4. The title and subtitle shall not exceed 15 words together. They must be brief, but clearly inform the main contents of the study; besides, an English version must be also included. The abstract must be structured in a way that the following information is clearly described: the objectives of the research, the materials and methods used in the study, and the main results and most important conclusions of the study. Non-standard abbreviations must not be used. Unstructured and structured abstracts should not exceed 150 and 250 words, respectively. Editors may modify the wording of the abstract submitted by the authors if deemed necessary. Three to five keywords, both in English and Spanish, must be listed below the abstract and identified as such; these are used for indexing purposes and they must be terms appearing in the Medical Subjects Headings (MeSH) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh) or in the Descritores em Ciências da Saúde website (http://decs.bvs.br/E/homepagee.htm). These keywords will be used for indexing purposes. Citing references in the abstract must be omitted.

5. Structure: Research articles must have the following sections:

a - Introduction and presentation of the study-Methodology (Materials and methods)
b - Results
c - Discussion and Conclusions
d - Acknowledgments
e - References.

Other types of articles such as Review articles, case reports and editorials may be presented using other organization formats, which must be approved by the Editors of the Journal.

a. Introduction. In this section, the study must be summarized and its purpose must be clearly stated. When appropriate, the hypothesis tested in the study must be explicitly presented. Please do not include an extensive review of the topic to be addressed by the paper and only use references that are absolutely necessary.

b. Materials and Methods. The selection process of subjects included in the study (patients or experimental animals, organs, tissues, cells, etc.) and their respective controls must be described. Also, the methods, instruments, devices, and procedures used must be informed in a precise way, so that external observers are able to reproduce the results of the study. If well-established methods are used, including statistical methods, they must only be listed with their respective references. On the other hand, if methods that have already been published, but are not widely known, are used, a brief description should be provided, together with relevant references. In case new methods are used, or modifications to established methods were made, said methods or modifications must be precisely described, and the reasons for their use, as well as their limitations, must be provided. In case of studies where experiments involving human beings were performed, it must be explicitly stated that the ethical principles established by the Declaration of Helsinki (updated in 2013) were followed and that the study was reviewed and approved by an ad hoc committee of the institution in which it was conducted. If requested by the editors, authors must attach a copy of the approval document issued by said committee. Pharmaceutical and chemical agents used must be identified using their generic names; the doses and methods used to administer them must be also described. Patients must be identified using sequential numbers; use of initials or hospital medical records identification numbers must be avoided. The number of patients or observations made, the statistical methods used, and the level of statistical significance considered must be always stated. Proper identification of the statistical methods used in the study is fundamental.

c. Results. Results must be presented in a logical and consistent order in the body of the article, as well as in its tables and figures. Data can be presented in tables or figures, but the same data cannot be included simultaneously in both. Only include the main findings in the text of this section: do not repeat all the data shown in tables or figures. Only results must be included, they must not be discussed here.

d. Discussion and conclusions. In this section, rather than a general review of the topic, a discussion of the results obtained in the study should be made. Only the new and important findings of the study and the conclusions drawn from said findings must be included. In this sense, data already included in the results section must not be repeated in detail here. Also, the findings of the study must be compared with the findings reported by other relevant studies, duly referenced, stating whether they are similar or differ, as well as their limitations. Conclusions must be in line with the objective or objectives of the study, which should have been described in the introduction section. Conclusions that are not supported by the findings of the study or that are supported by unfinished research must not be included. If deemed appropriate, new hypotheses may be proposed, but they must be clearly presented as what they are, i.e., a hypothesis. When appropriate, recommendations can be made.

e. Acknowledgements. Only acknowledgements to people and institutions that have made substantial contributions to the research, but that do not imply authorship, such as technical support, help in writing the manuscript, or general support provided by the head of the department should be made. Any financial support and material resource received should also be included in the acknowledgements.

Including detailed descriptions of the program funding the study or the type of grant or the allowance is not necessary. When funding comes from a regional or national grant, or from resources allocated by universities or other research institutions, the name of the institution or organization must be stated. If no funding was received, please include the following sentence: No specific financial aid from public or private sector agencies or from non-profit organizations was received while conducting the research.

f. References. If possible, references (bibliographic citations) should be limited to a maximum of 40, except for original research papers, where the number of references must be higher than 50 but less than 100. They must be numbered consecutively depending on the order they are first included in the body of the article. References must be identified with Arabic numbers inside parentheses, and said identification must be included at the end of the sentence or paragraph were they are mentioned or referred to. References appearing only in tables or figures must be also numbered in order of appearance in the body of the article based on the first time said tables or figures are mentioned. Unpublished works or personal communications shall not be included in the reference list, yet they can be mentioned in the paper. In addition, papers that have been accepted for publication in a journal, but their publication process has not yet finished, may be cited as long as the full reference is included in the reference list and the words "en prensa" (Spanish for "in press") are added next to the shortened name of the journal. Finally, references must be formatted according to the Vancouver referencing style standards, which can be reviewed in detail at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.

Some examples are listed below:

a. Journal Articles: Authors' surnames and initials. All authors must be listed. Punctuation must be limited to the use of commas to separate authors. Full title of the article in the original language it was published. Abbreviated name of the journal according to the Index Medicus format (available at http://www.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji/html) without parentheses. Publication year; Volume: first and last page of the paper, separated by a hyphen (-).

Example: Awad W, Garay A, Martínez C, Oñate V, Turu I, Yarmuch J. Descenso ponderal y calidad de vida mediante la cirugía de Bypass gástrico con y sin anillo de calibración. Rev Chil Cir 2008; 60:17-21.

Optional: if a journal has continuous pagination (as many medical journals do), the month and the issue number must be omitted.

Example: Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Trasplante de órganos sólidos en pacientes infectados por el VIH. N Engl J Med. 2002; 347: 284-7.

b. Chapter in a Book: Authors of the chapter (.) Title of chapter (.)Last name(s) and initials of the author(s) or editor(s) of the book (.) Title of the book (.) Edition (.) City (:) Publishing House (;) Publication year (.) First and last page of the chapter (p.), separated by a hyphen (-).

Example: Croxatto H. Prostaglandinas. Funciones endocrinas del riñón. En: Pumarino H, ed. Endocrinología y Metabolismo. Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1984; 823- 840.

c. E-journal Articles: Include information about the authors, the title of the paper and the journal in which it was published as stablished in the Print Journal Articles section. Then, add the website or link where the article was retrieved from and the date when the query was done.

Example: Morse S. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [online] (cited 1996 Jun 5). Available from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/eid.htm.

To list other reference types, please check the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals at www.icmje.org. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references listed in the paper.

d. Online references links

Online references links favor the dissemination of research and the quality level of the peer review system. In order to create links to indexing and query services such as Scopus, CrossRef and PubMed, data provided in the references list must be correct. Please note that errors made regarding the authors' names, the title of the article, the year of publication and its pagination may prevent the creation of the link linking to the paper that is cited. When copying a reference, be aware that it may contain errors. The use of the DOI is strongly recommended.

The DOI never changes, therefore it can be used as a permanent link identifying an electronic article. Example of a citation using the OI: VanDecar J.C., Russo R.M., James D.E., Ambeh W.B., Franke M. (2003). Aseismic continuation of the Lesser Antilles slab beneath northeastern Venezuela. Journal of Geophysical Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JB000884. These citations must be formatted with the same referencing style described above for the other reference types.

6. Tables: At most 5 tables can be included. Bear in mind that charts and graphs are considered tables. Tables must be editable, that is, they cannot be included as images, instead use the Table tool of your word processor program. Tables must be included within the body of the text; they must not be sent on separate files.

7. Figures: At most 10 figures can be included. Figures include diagrams, illustrations, maps, blueprints, drawings and photos, among others. Digital images must be submitted in high resolution (300 dpi or higher) and in JPEG or TIFF format, so that they can be edited in widely used graphic design programs. Figures must be sent in a separate file. Letters, numbers, arrows or symbols appearing in photographs must be clear and large enough to be legible when the figure is reduced in size for publication purposes. Titles and captions must not appear within photographs, rather, they shall be included on a separate page to allow the graphic designer to place them correctly in the layout process. Symbols, arrows and letters appearing in microscopic images should be large enough and have enough contrast to be differentiated from the surrounding image. Each figure should be mentioned in the text of the article within parentheses and in order of appearance. If a figure has been already fully or partially published, then the source must be cited and permission, in written, by the authors and the editor of the journal or book where the material was published to reproduce it must be obtained. Photographs in which patients appear must be properly edited so that their faces are not identifiable and their anonymity is ensured.

Figures captions. Titles and captions of figures must be presented on a separate page. All symbols, arrows, numbers, and letters used in the figures must be clearly identified and explained in the captions.

8. Units of measurement. Use decimal metric system measurement units.

9. Corrections made by the authors. Once a paper has been accepted for publication, the galley proof will be usually sent to authors for their final review. If corrections are needed, they must be made only in the galley proof (they shall never be made on the original version) and then sent back to the editors within the established deadline.

10. Responsibility. Authors are entirely responsible for the contents and concepts published in the paper. The Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology will ensure that ethical principles are followed at all times.

11.  Copyright. All articles accepted for publication in the Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. By making a submission to the Journal, it is implicitly understood that authors know and adhere to the conditions set forth in said license.

12.  Privacy statement. Names and email addresses entered into the Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology website during the submission process shall be used exclusively for the purposes stated here and shall not be used for any other purpose.

13. Citing papers published in the Journal. The abbreviation of the Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology is Rev. colomb. Gastroenterol. and must be used when citing papers published in it.