Preparing manuscripts for JMNS.

Three publication routes.

Primary- and secondary-data Original Research follow the same standards of scientific quality. Studies combining newly collected and existing data should satisfy the requirements applicable to both components.

Complete science, flexible formatting.

JMNS uses flexible first submission. There is no fixed first-submission limit on main-text word count, number of figures, number of tables or number of references; authors should nevertheless be concise and keep essential methods and results in the main manuscript. References may use any consistent scholarly style.

House formatting and reference styling are production matters and should not create unnecessary work before peer review. Article-specific scientific structure, reporting checklists, ethics information and transparency statements are still required.

Structured where the study design benefits from it.

Original Research should include a structured abstract using Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusions, with additional design-specific information required by the applicable reporting guideline. A typical target is approximately 250–300 words; longer abstracts are acceptable when complete CONSORT, PRISMA or other design-specific reporting requires additional space.

Systematic reviews, meta-analyses and scoping reviews should use a structured abstract appropriate to the reporting standard. Critical, narrative and mini reviews may use an unstructured abstract when that better fits the article.

What every submission should contain.

Use the current guideline and relevant extensions.

Use the current EQUATOR guideline for the study design and submit the completed checklist when one exists. More specialized extensions should be used when they better match the design, population, intervention or analytical method.

Contribution and accountability must be explicit.

Authors should meet accepted ICMJE-style biomedical authorship criteria: substantial scholarly contribution, participation in drafting or critical revision, approval of the submitted and published versions, and accountability for the work. CRediT describes individual contributions but does not by itself determine authorship.

Funding statements should identify financial and material support and, when relevant, describe the role of the funder or sponsor in study design, conduct, data access, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation and the decision to submit. Financial and non-financial competing interests must be disclosed.

Make the analytical record traceable.

Original Research requires a Data Availability Statement. A Code Availability Statement is required when custom analytical or processing code materially supports the work. Legitimate ethical, legal, privacy or repository restrictions should be described rather than obscured.

Public datasets and software should be cited with persistent identifiers when available. Secondary-data studies should identify the authoritative repository, exact dataset version or release, applicable licence or access model and any repository Data Use Agreement that governs the data used.

Report relevant software, package, library, firmware and acquisition-system versions when they materially affect reproducibility. Received, Revised, Accepted and Published dates are generated by the JMNS editorial workflow; authors do not supply these dates as manuscript metadata.

Human responsibility and faithful presentation.

AI-assisted systems cannot be listed as authors. Authors should disclose material use of generative or AI-assisted tools at submission and describe the tool and purpose in the manuscript when the use affects text production, analysis, code, images or reproducibility. Human authors remain responsible for accuracy, originality, citations and interpretation.

Figures and images must faithfully represent the underlying data. Selective enhancement, deletion, movement or alteration of features that changes scientific interpretation is not permitted. JMNS may request original image, signal or data files when needed for editorial or integrity review.

English-language editing is provided after acceptance.

Manuscripts must be sufficiently clear in English for scientific peer review. Professional English-language editing for accepted manuscripts is provided at no cost to authors. This post-acceptance service does not affect editorial decisions and does not transfer responsibility for scientific content or final proof approval from the authors to JMNS.

See the Publication Fees page for the complete no-fee policy.