Preparation of Articles

Accepted Article Types

For accepted article types, please click here.

General Preparation 

The manuscript text file should include only the cover page, abstract, body text, references, and figure legends. Begin each section on a new page with a section heading. Double space every page of your manuscript text file, including the cover page and references. Please do not include line numbering. Margins should be one inch on all sides of the page. Use a serif font, such as Times New Roman, and font size 12 for manuscript body text. Please upload your manuscript as a .doc or .docx file, we do not accept manuscripts in .pdf format.

Cover Page 

The first page of your manuscript text file should be the cover page. The manuscript cover page must contain the following information:

• Full title. The title should be descriptive and concise (a maximum of 14 words). If a study was conducted using animal models, that must be apparent from the title. Also:
  • Make the title indicate that the article is unique.
  • Choose a descriptive phrase, do not use complete sentences or questions.
  • Do not oversell your manuscript.
  • Only mention technique if it is the primary focus
  • We also recommend authors utilize this AJE resource and recommendations regarding their title   
  • Keywords. Use keywords in your title that stand out.
  • See the MeSH homepage for guidance on MeSh keywords  
  • Search your title and abstract on MeSH on Demand for MeSH keywords
• Author details. Provide a complete and ordered list of authors: first name, middle initial(s), and last name. See “Authorship” for more information about the Pediatric Research authorship policy, including joint and equally contributing authors, and how they should be listed. The corresponding author should be clearly designated with an asterisk; any group or consortia listings should follow the Group and Consortia Author formatting guidelines to ensure they are indexed appropriately downstream. Please include all co-authors affiliations on the cover page. See also "Author Contributions" section, below, for more details.
• Authors’ institutional affiliations. The department name; institutional affiliation; city, state or province; and country of each author must appear on the manuscript cover page. (If in the United States, country name should not be included) Link author names with affiliations using superscripted numbers.
• Corresponding author. Include the name, full postal address, as well as phone, fax and email address for the corresponding author. See “Authorship” for more information about the Pediatric Research authorship policy, including joint corresponding authors, and how they should be listed. The corresponding author should be clearly designated with an asterisk.  
• ​Large Language Models (LLMs). Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript.
• Category of study. Manuscripts should be identified as basic science, clinical, population study, quality improvement, review, correspondence, comment, editorial, or special article.
• Impact Statement. Label as "Impact" on title page, and limit statement to 100 words or less. Note:
• For Original Research and Systematic Reviews: Please enter three to five bullet points answering the following questions: What is the key message of your article? What does it add to the existing literature? What is the impact? 
• For Review Articles: Please enter 1-3 bullet points answering the following questions: What does this article add to the existing literature? 

Abstract

See Article Type Specifications for details on the Abstract, which should be no more than 200 words in total. Please do not include keywords with your abstract. If structured, the Abstract’s Background should briefly describe the problem being addressed and the hypothesis; the Methods should describe how the study was performed; the Results should present the key findings; and the Conclusion should include an interpretation of the results. Statistical and methodological detail that can be found in the paper should not be included.

Note: Based on a recent analysis of citation trends, we have found that, if one pastes their abstract into Mesh-on-Demand, that having 1 additional term listed increases the liklihood for higher number of citations. This observation is probably due to increasing "finadability" on Google for potential citations. We encourage authors to paste their abstract into Mesh-on-Demand, and edit it appropriately until an additional term is noted.

Abbreviations 

Authors should not include an Abbreviation List in their paper but instead should spell out each abbreviation on first mention in the text of the paper and place the abbreviation in parentheses. Abbreviations used only in tables or figures can be defined in the table footnotes or figure legends. For enzymes, include the enzyme commission number if one has been assigned.

Introduction 

The Introduction should be succinct, orienting the reader to the state of knowledge in the specific area under investigation and clearly delineating the questions and hypothesis of the research.

Methods 

The Methods should be described and referenced in sufficient detail so other researchers can repeat the work. For clarity, it is often helpful to subdivide Methods into sections such as subjects, measurements, protocol, and data analysis. It is suggested that a statistician review complex data analyses. For support, Springer Nature has made available these statistical guidelines, in the form of checklists, for editors and authors. Provide manufacturer information for all products named in your manuscript text including chemicals, reagents, special pieces of apparatus, and software or database products. The manufacture’s name should appear in parentheses after the name of the product. On first mention of a manufacturer, provide their location – city and state for US based manufacturers and city and country for all others. Celsius, although not an SI unit, should be used for body temperature or for laboratory measurement temperatures in the physiologic range. Listings of SI units may be found in Lundberg GS, Iverson C, Radulescu G JAMA 1986;255:2329; Young DS Ann Intern Med 1987;106:114-129; Page CH, Vigoureux P, eds., NBS Special Publication 330 (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office); and in the IUPAC Manual of Symbols and Terminology for Physiochemical Quantities and Units (Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, 1979).

Clinical trial registry should be noted in the Methods. Please refer to Clinical Trials in the Editorial Policy section for information on clinical trial registry. For studies involving humans, provide a statement that informed consent was obtained and the study was approved by your Institutional Review Board. Include the full name of the institution in the statement. For animal studies, include a statement that the study has been approved by your Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee in your Methods. Include the full name of the institution in the statement.

Results

The experimental data should be presented in the most appropriate form; submitting the same data in tabular and graphic form is discouraged. When possible, it is desirable to present data in graphical form.

Discussion 

The Discussion should focus on the implications of the results of the study. It should relate the findings to other relevant studies. Please be sure to include any limitations of your study.

Data Availability

Pediatric Research adheres to Springer Nature’s Data Policy Type 3. This means that a submission to Pediatric Research implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality. It also means that a Data Availability Statement (see here for more details on this Statement) is required by the journal.

References 

Pediatric Research does not limit the number of references submitted in a manuscript. References should be cited numerically and should be numbered in the order they appear in the text. Pediatric Research encourages authors to use the “Think. Check. Submit.” tool to identify trusted journals and publishers for their references. The citations should be superscripted numbers. For publications in the reference list, all authors should be included unless there are more than five, in which case only the first author should be given, followed by “et al.” Authors should be listed last name first, followed by a comma and initials of given names. Titles of articles should be in Roman text and titles of books or journals in italics. Journal names are italicized and abbreviated (with periods after each abbreviated word) according to common usage; refer to Index Medicus (PubMed) for details. Volume numbers appear in bold. For book citations, the publisher and city of publication are required; include the country (and state for US) for lesser-known cities or where any ambiguity is possible (e.g., John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, USA; MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA).

Examples for different types of references: 

Journal articles
Xu, J., Murphy, S. L., Kochanek, K. D., Bastian, B. & Arias. E. Deaths: final data for 2016. Natl. Vital Stat. Rep. 67, 1–76 (2018).

Books
Eisen, H. N. Immunology: An Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Principles of the Immune Response 5th edn. (Harper & Row, New York, 1974).

Chapters in books
Weinstein, L. & Schwartz, M. N. Pathogenic properties of invading microorganisms. In Pathologic Physiology: Mechanisms of Disease (Sodeman, W. A. Jr. & Sodeman, W. A., eds) 457-473 (W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1974).

Endnote users should select the Pediatric Research style template for help formatting references.

Acknowledgments 

If applicable, acknowledgment of technical assistance, critical advice, or other assistance should be included in this section and placed after the references.

Funding

This mandatory section should exist after the Acknowledgements section. A statement of financial support from extramural sources (e.g. from grants, government, industry) must be included. If no financial assistance was received in support of the study, please include a statement to this fact.

Author contributions

This mandatory section should exist after the Acknowledgements section. Please confirm that each author has met the Pediatric Research authorship requirements listed below. In order to meet the requirements of authorship, each author must have contributed to at least one of the aspects below. Additional contributors to the submitted work should appear in the Acknowledgments. In your manuscript, please list which authors completed each of the following criteria:

• Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
• Final approval of the version to be published.

Competing interests

Please include a statement indicating any authors’ financial ties to products in the study or potential/perceived conflicts of interest under a "Competing interests" section, after the "Author Contributions" section. If there are no potential conflicts of interest, please state this. 

Consent statement

Please include a statement regarding the patient consent that was required for your paper in a "Consent statement" after the "Competing interests" section; if patient consent was not required, please state this.

Tables 

Tables should be submitted as a single file in Word, separate from the manuscript text file. Table captions and legends should not be included in the main document or in the figure legend but included in the separate word document with the tables themselves. Each table should begin on a new page, be numbered (1, 2, 3, etc.), and have a title. Each table must be intelligible without reference to the text. Care should be taken to minimize redundant or repetitious entries in a table. For instance, rather than stating “p < 0.05” for each of 20 comparisons within a table, it is sufficient to use a designated p-value symbol defined in a footnote to denote specified probability levels. Table footnotes should be placed on the same page as the table, immediately following it. Except for p-values, the footnotes should be identified with superscript letters: a, b, c, etc. Notes for p-values are identified with *, **, †, ‡, §.

Figures 

Each figure should be uploaded in its own file separate from the manuscript text file. All figures intended for print publication should be submitted as .pdf, .jpg, .tif, .eps, or .ai files. Figure resolution for print must be a minimum of 300 dpi for color/gray scale images and 600 dpi for line art. Color images must be submitted in CMYK color mode, not RGB. Only figures submitted in color are eligible for selection as issue cover art. Detailed guidelines for submitting  artwork for publication can be found by downloading these Artwork Guidelines. (Supplemental figures files do not need to be high resolution images.) Figures should be numbered according to the order in which they are cited in the text. They should be constructed in a clear and uncluttered fashion, with lettering large enough to permit reduction to the size of a single column (9 cm or 3.5 in). If fonts are used in the artwork, they must be converted to paths or outlines, or they must be embedded in the file. All panels of a composite figure should be placed together on the same page and submitted as one figure. Add a panel letter in the top left corner of each panel of a composite figure, please use lower case letters for panel labels and figure legends. Figure legends should appear on a new page after the references and include all figures submitted with the manuscript. Figure legends should not include tables or supplemental files. A figure key can be provided in the figure itself. Figures can be submitted in any of the following formats: