Critical Care Science (Crit Care Sci), ISSN 2965-2774 (formerly Revista Brasileira de Terapia Intensiva), is the scientific journal of the Associação de Medicina Intensiva Brasileira (AMIB) and the Sociedade Portuguesa de Cuidados Intensivos (SPCI).
Areas of interest: As an international online journal, Critical Care Science covers all clinical and translational areas and topics of adult and pediatric critical care medicine.
Content
General policies
Original Research manuscripts reporting the results of observational causal inference studies (e.g., cohort studies, case‒control studies, cross-sectional studies) should adhere to the current guidance.
The editors of Critical Care Science endorse established international statements and guidelines designed to improve the accuracy and transparency of clinical research. An up-to-date catalog of resources for health research authors is maintained online by the EQUATOR Network Resource Center.
In addition to the statements and reporting guidelines noted in the instructions below, manuscripts developing or evaluating prediction models must follow the appropriate TRIPOD guideline(s) and checklist(s) to be considered by the journal.
The requirements for submitted articles generally conform to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), available at http://www.icmje.org/.
According to this recommendation and the guidelines of the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/WHO for journals indexed in the Latin American and Caribbean literature databases (Lilacs) and the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Critical Care Science will only accept the publication of clinical trials that have been registered in clinical trial registries that meet the WHO and ICMJE requirements.
Submission process
Manuscripts must be submitted in English or Portuguese. Critical Care Science is published in English and Portuguese.
Articles submitted in English will be translated by the journal into Portuguese, and articles submitted in Portuguese will be translated into English at no cost to the authors.
All articles must be submitted electronically to http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/ccsci-scielo.
Authors must submit to the journal
Cover letter – Must contain a statement attesting that the article is original and that it has not been and is not being submitted for publication in another journal. When applicable, the authors must declare that the study was approved by a Research Ethics Committee (REC). If necessary, during the peer review process, the authors may be asked to submit a copy of the REC approval.
Declaration of conflicts of interest – The conflicts of interest of all the authors must be disclosed on the title page of the manuscript. The authors should download the appropriate form (download it here), and after signing, the authors should upload the form during the submission process.
Funding – Information on possible sources of funding for the research will be required during the submission process, as well as on the title page of the manuscript.
Patient information – Written consent signed by the patient(s) or their guardians must be submitted in the case of manuscripts that include clinical information or photographs in which the patients may be individually identified.Clinical Trial Registration – Submission of the registration number on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT) is mandatory.
Peer Review Process
All manuscripts submitted to Critical Care Science are subject to a rigorous review process. Initial submissions are reviewed by the editorial team to ensure adherence to Critical Care Science guidelines and policies, including ethical requirements for human and animal experimentation. Once the initial evaluation is complete, the article may be returned to the authors for adjustment.
Subsequently, the submitted manuscripts will be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief. Manuscripts without merit, with significant methodological errors or that do not fit the editorial policy of the journal will be rejected without the formal process of peer review. The average turnaround time for this immediate rejection is one week.
Manuscripts approved by the Editor-in-Chief (or a designated editor) will be sent to two or more reviewers. Reviewers will always be from institutions other than the institution of origin of the manuscript, and anonymity will be maintained throughout the editorial process. Our average turnaround time for the first response to the authors is 30 days, although a longer period may be needed. After this evaluation, the editors will decide on acceptance, minor review, major review, rejection and resubmission or rejection.
After receiving the reviewers’ feedback, the authors must submit the revised version within 60 days, including the suggested changes and point-by-point responses to each reviewer suggestion. The authors may contact Critical Care Science (ccs@amib.org.br) if they need an extension. If the manuscript is not submitted within six months, it will be removed from the database, and any resubmission will follow the process of an initial submission. After resubmission, editors may choose to send the manuscript to external reviewers or make a decision based on their expertise.
The opinions expressed in the articles, including the changes requested by the reviewers, will solely be the responsibility of the authors.
Ethics
When reporting a study involving humans, their data or biological material, the authors must include a statement confirming that the study was approved (or that approval exemption was granted) by the institution’s Research Ethics Committee and/or the Ethics Committee for National Research, including the name of the committee, and certify that the study was conducted according to the ethical standards established in the Declaration of Helsinki of 1964 and its subsequent amendments or equivalent ethical standards. For studies conducted in Brazil, registration on the Plataforma Brasil and the Certificate of Presentation of Ethical Assessment (CAAE – Certificado de Apresentação de Apreciação Ética) is mandatory.
When reporting experiments on animals, the authors must indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed and whether the experiments were approved by the competent Ethics Committee. In any clinical or experimental study, human or animal, this information should be included in the Methods section.
The ethics statements of Critical Care Science can be found on our website.
Anti-plagiarism policy
For all contributions sent in a case of plagiarism, the authors will be subject to immediate rejection of the submitted manuscript. If the editor was not aware of the situation when accepting the manuscript, there will be a retraction in the subsequent issue of the journal.
Authorship criteria
The journal assumes that all authors have agreed upon the content of the manuscript, given tacit consent to its submission and obtained the consent of the responsible authorities of the institute/organization where the study was conducted before submission.
The authors are advised to adhere to the authorship guidelines applicable to their specific field of research. In the absence of specific guidelines, it is recommended that authors whose names appear on the submission have:
- Contributed substantially to the conception or design of the work; the collection, analysis or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work.
- Written or revised the work critically regarding the relevant intellectual content.
- Approved the version to be published.
- Agreed to be responsible for all aspects of the publication to ensure that issues related to the accuracy or completeness of any part of the manuscript are properly investigated and resolved.
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 section) of the manuscript. The submission and publication of content created by artificial intelligence, language models, machine learning, or similar technologies is discouraged, unless part of the formal research design or methods, and is not permitted without clear description of the content that was created and the name of the model or tool, version and extension numbers, and manufacturer. The authors must take responsibility for the integrity of the content generated by these models and tools.
Open Scientific Practice
Although Critical Care Science supports open science communication practices, the journal will continue to use its current double-blind peer review model and will not require research data to be available in repositories. Authors may be asked to provide the raw data related to an article for editorial review, and they should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers [ALPSP] Statement and International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers [STM] on data and databases) if practicable. It is desirable that data be kept for a reasonable period after publication.
Article Processing Charge
The journal is completely free to access, and there are no fees for submission, processing or publishing articles.
General information
- The documents must not have been previously published.
- The corresponding author, who submits the article, is responsible for obtaining the agreement of the coauthors, if any.
- Failure to return corrections or other requests by the established deadline will result in rejection of the manuscript, regardless of the decision made in its processing.
- Regarding the need to maintain the double-blind review policy, at this time, the journal will not publish articles that have already been deposited in preprint repositories. Articles will only be accepted for publication after the peer review process.
- Suggestions from three or more reviewers are accepted. Suggested reviewers should not be coauthors of other manuscripts in the past or have any conflicts of interest with the authors. This information will be requested during the submission process.
Article categories
Editorial
After the editor’s invitation, comments on articles published in the magazine with up to 1,000 words (excluding references), 1 figure or table, 3 authors and 5 references.
Guidelines and Consensus
The purpose of a guideline is to standardize activities based on best practices and on the best available research evidence. Up to 5,000 words; up to 6 tables or figures; and up to 120 references.
Original Article
Full-length reports of original research, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Maximum 3,000 words (excluding abstracts, references, and legends). Structured abstracts up to 350 words and up to 60 references.
Clinical Report (protocol papers and statistical analysis plans)
Articles describing the objectives and experimental design of clinical and epidemiological research studies in critical care medicine. Up to 3,000 words (excluding abstract, references, and legends); an unstructured abstract; and up to 250 words.
Research Letter
Brief research reports with up to 600 words (excluding references and legends), up to 1 figure and/or 1 table, and up to 10 references.
Narrative Review
Only after invitation by the editor OR submitted after query to the editor (by e-mail); evidence-based, narrative reviews that offer a tightly focused synthesis of current knowledge regarding a clinical problem or disease. The review will include 2,000 to 4,000 words; and unstructured abstract up to 250 words; 5 figures and/or tables; and 80 references.
Case Report
Case reports of unusual clinical presentations and/or management related to critical illness with up to 600 words (excluding references and legends), up to 1 figure and 1 table and up to 10 references.
Viewpoint
After invitation by the editor OR submitted after query to the editor. A viewpoint is a short commentary on a topic relating to critical care medicine of up to 1,000 words; 5 authors; only 1 figure or table; and up to 15 references.
Correspondence
Comments or responses to articles recently published in Critical Care Science of up to 500 words (excluding references); up to 5 authors; and up to 5 references. No figures or tables.
Supplementary Material
The authors may submit materials supporting the manuscript for publication as a Data Supplement to a Critical Care Science manuscript.
Videos, audio files, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint files (as well as other file types) may be included in this section. Additional text, tables (and supporting information), and figures (and supporting information) may also be included.
The supplementary material must be submitted simultaneously with the rest of the manuscript and will undergo peer review and be judged by the same criteria as the rest of the manuscript. The cover sheet of the material being submitted as supplementary material should give only the manuscript title, list the authors (not affiliations), and include the title “Supplementary Material.”
The Editorial Office staff is not responsible for extracting supplementary material from the main manuscript for publication as supplementary material. The information included in the Data Supplement will not be copyedited or proofread by the journal staff.
The figures and tables in the Supplementary Material should be labeled Figure 1S, Table 1S, and so on. To indicate the presence of these items, the author must make a statement in the main manuscript, such as “see Figure 1S in the Supplementary Material.”
Preprints
Manuscripts submitted to preprint repositories will be published only after the peer review process.
Preparation of manuscripts
All articles must include the following:
Title page – The title page must contain the full title of the article, full names of all the authors, institutional affiliations of all the authors (only the main affiliation, i.e., the affiliation with the institution where the study was developed), ORCIDs, the author’s full address for correspondence (including telephone, fax and e-mail), the institution responsible for sending the article, and the source of funding for the project.
Main document – All articles should have an Introduction, a Methods section, a Results section, a Discussion section, and a References section, and they may also have acknowledgments and/or an appendix in a unique document.
Body of text – The articles must be submitted in an MS Word® file, in Times New Roman 12-point font and double spaced, including tables, legends and references. In all categories of articles, citations must be numerical, superscripted and sequential.
Abstracts – Abstracts must be presented in the same language as the manuscript, either in Portuguese or in English. The abstracts of Original Articles are limited to 350 words. The use of abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible. The abstract must be structured (objective, methods, results and conclusion) and accurately reflect the main content of the text. In the case of a Clinical Report and Review, a structured abstract is not required. Editorial, Research Letter and Viewpoint must not have a summary.
Keywords – Six terms defining the subject of the work must be provided. The authors should base their approach on the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the National Library of Medicines, or in the Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS)of the Virtual Health Library.
Acknowledgments – Authors should use this section to recognize possible research funding and support from academic organizations, funding agencies, colleagues and other collaborators who are not part of the authorship.
Authors’ contributions – The contribution of each author must be acknowledged to provide transparency regarding the contributions of each author to the study conception, experimental design/planning, data collection, analysis of results, writing of the first draft, revision of the final version and approval.
References – References should be updated, preferably containing the most relevant articles published on the subject in the past 5 years. They must not contain articles that are not mentioned in the text, unpublished work or work deposited in prepress repositories. They must be numbered consecutively according to the citation sequence in the text and identified with Arabic numerals. The presentation must follow the Vancouver style format.
Formatting
Critical Care Science requires a specific format for submission manuscripts. The requirements include a title page with article title, author names with their affiliations and ORCIDs, and contact information for the corresponding author; abstract in English with its keywords; sources of financing, if any; declaração of approval by the Institutional Ethics Committee.
Tables and figures
All figures and tables must be numbered according to the order mentioned in the text. Tables and figures should be inserted after the references, only one on each page, and the figures should preferably be prepared in MS Excel® or editable format in 300 DPI files. They must also have a title. Figures that require higher resolution should be sent in separate files. Figures with text must be provided in open files for translation. If this is not possible, the author must provide a translation.
The quantities, units and symbols used must comply with the rules in force in the country. Figures should have captions explaining the results, allowing for understanding without consulting the text. The legends of tables and figures should be concise but self-explanatory, allowing comprehension without consulting the text. The units must be within the table, and the statistical tests must be indicated in the legend.
Figures that have already been published must be accompanied by the authorization of the author/editor.
The reproduction of figures, graphs, diagrams or tables that do not originally belong to the article must refer to the source.
Abbreviations
The use of acronyms should be avoided in the title of the article, abstract and titles of tables and figures. The use of acronyms should be minimized throughout the text. They must be preceded by the full name when mentioned for the first time in the text. Abbreviations, symbols and other meanings of signs must be provided in the footnotes of figures and tables.
Citations and ReferencesReferences should be updated, preferably containing the most relevant articles published on the subject in the past 5 years. They must not contain articles that are not mentioned in the text, unpublished work or work deposited in preprint repositories. They must be numbered consecutively according to the citation sequence in the text and identified with Arabic numerals. The presentation must follow the Vancouver Style format, as in the following templates. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the National Library of Medicine, available in the List of Journal Indexed in Index Medicus. For all references, cite up to six authors. In the case of more than six authors, mention the first six followed by the expression “et al.”
Printed articles
Emanuel EJ, Persad G, Upshur R, Thome B, Parker M, Glickman A, et al. Fair allocation of scarce medical resources in the time of Covid-19. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(21):2049-55.
Zhou F, Yu T, Du R, Fan G, Liu Y, Liu Z, et al. Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult inpatients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: a retrospective cohort study. Lancet. 2020;395(10229):1054-62.
Electronic articles
World Health Organization (WHO). Conceptual framework for the international classification for patient safety version 1.1: final technical report January 2009. Geneva: WHO; 2009 [cited 2022 Dec 12]. Available from: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/7088212
São Paulo. Government of the State of São Paulo. Secretary of State for Health. Clinical Hospital, University of São Paulo School of Medicine. Activity report. Management Result Brightness in the Eyes. Years 2015 and 2016. [cited 2022 Jul 30]. Available at
https://www.hc.fm.usp.br/images/pdf/superintendencia/relatorios/Relatorio_Atividades_2015_2016_1.pdf
Supplements
Chawla R, Dixit SB, Zirpe KG, Chaudhry D, Khilnani GC, Mehta Y, et al. ISCCM Guidelines for the Use of Non-invasive Ventilation in Acute Respiratory Failure in Adult ICUs. Indian J Crit Care Med. 2020;24(Suppl 1):S61-S81.
Books
Hall JE. Guyton and Hall textbook of medical physiology. 13th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2016.
Book chapters
Ricci Z, Romagnoli S. Technical complications of continuous renal replacement therapy. In: Bellomo R, Kellum JA, La Manna G, Ronco C, Editors. 40 years of continuous renal replacement therapy. Contributions to Nephrology. Basel: Karger; 2018. vol. 194, p. 99-108.
Submission of the manuscript
Articles must be sent electronically to https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/ccsci-scielo.
©2024 Associação de Medicina Intensiva Brasileira/Sociedade Portuguesa de Cuidados Intensivos.