Any article submitted to this journal will follow the guidelines described in this author guide, so it is essential to consult it before submitting manuscripts.
FIRST PAGE
Regardless of the type of article or the section of this journal, authors must always include on the first page of the article, in addition to the title, authors, affiliation, and email address, statements regarding Ethical Considerations, Informed Consent, Funding, Conflict of Interest, the use of artificial intelligence, and Authorship.
Declarations are required even if the author considers that none exist or are not applicable.
• Ethical Considerations. Any article involving experiments with human subjects requires the author to declare that all procedures were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, relevant laws, and institutional guidelines. The reference number for the ethical committee approval of the study must be included in Original Articles involving human experimentation. For Original Articles involving animal experimentation, compliance with the corresponding regulations must also be stated.
Declaration required in the Originals section.
• Informed Consent. All articles containing data, photographs, or evidence of patients, whether anonymized or not, must explicitly state within the body of the article that informed consent was obtained from the patient(s) included for reproduction purposes. It should be declared that no patient data are present in the article, or if present, that these do not violate patient privacy or confidentiality, nor allow identification, and that informed consent has been obtained in any case. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be respected.
Appropriate consents and permissions must be obtained when presenting one or more cases without experimentation, or when an author wishes to include personal details or other information or images of patients or any other individuals in an Elsevier publication. The author will retain written consents and provide Elsevier with copies of the consents or proof of their acquisition upon request. To avoid doubt, informed consent is always required for case reports, regardless of whether images are anonymized or not, including radiographs. Images accompanied by any patient data always require the statement. This declaration is mandatory in all sections except Editorials, Letters to the Editor, and Literature Reviews that do not include Clinical Cases.
• Funding. The author must identify who provided financial support for the research and/or preparation of the article and briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; data collection, analysis, and interpretation; manuscript writing; and decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, this should be stated.
This declaration is mandatory in all sections. If none exists, the author must explicitly declare that no funding was received.
• Conflict of Interest. Any financial or personal relationships with other persons or organizations that may have influenced the work must be specified, even if unrelated directly to the current manuscript. Examples of possible competing interests include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, other funding, travel grants, and participation in courses and conferences as a paid expert. If none of these conditions apply, the following should be stated: “Declaration of interest: none.”
If a member of the Editorial Board contributes as an author to a manuscript submitted to the Journal, the responsible editor must include the following statement in the conflict of interest section: “Since ABC is a member of the Journal’s Editorial Board, they have not participated in nor had access to information regarding the review and acceptance process of the manuscript.”
This declaration is always mandatory, with one declaration per participating author.
• Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Scientific Writing. No other use is authorized. Please refer to the description below in these guidelines.
Declaration is mandatory whenever such tools are used.
• Authorship. Those listed as authors must have made substantial contributions. Changes to authorship or the order of authors are not permitted once the article has been submitted without prior justification and approval by the Editor-in-Chief. Please refer to the relevant sections described later in these guidelines.
BODY OF THE ARTICLE
Ethical Considerations and Informed Consent must also be declared beyond the first page when animal or human experimentation is involved.
If experiments involve animals or humans, certain statements must be made within the manuscript even though they are also required on the first page. These must always be declared in Original Articles or Brief Originals (if included), even if the author believes they do not exist or do not apply.
Ethics and Informed Consent In the case of experiments involving human or animal subjects, the author shall declare in the Materials and Methods section of Original Articles, Brief Originals, or Case Series, as applicable, that the Human and Animal Rights guidelines described in the “Ethics in Publication” section of this author guide have been followed. Specifically, if experiments involve human subjects, the authors will confirm that the research was conducted in accordance with the ethical code of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki), and in the case of animals, that the ARRIVE guidelines have been followed or that they are acting in compliance with the Laboratory Animal Use and Care Act and, when applicable, the Animal Welfare Act. Authors must also declare in Materials and Methods (original or brief original) that informed consent and approval from the Clinical Research Ethics Committee (CREC) or the corresponding committee have been obtained, without revealing information that could compromise blinded review. Please note that the Spanish Biomedical Research Act establishes that the Ethics Committees for Research corresponding to each center must evaluate all biomedical research involving interventions in humans or the use of their biological samples.
All articles including patient data, photographs, or evidence, whether anonymized or not, must explicitly state within the body of the article that informed consent has been obtained from the patient(s) included for reproduction purposes. Appropriate consents and permissions must be obtained when presenting one or more cases without experimentation, or when an author wishes to include personal details, other information, or images of patients or any other individuals in an Elsevier publication. The author will retain written consent forms and provide Elsevier with copies of the consent forms or evidence of having obtained them upon request.
Original Articles. These will be considered clinical or experimental works, including randomized clinical trials, cohort studies, screening or diagnostic test studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, decision-making evaluation studies, interventional studies, case-control studies, as well as survey-based studies that have achieved a high response rate. They may cover any field related to Ophthalmology, and their clinical relevance will be particularly valued.
Manuscripts must follow the "article structure" section included in these guidelines. The text length must not exceed 2,500 words, excluding: the title page, the structured summary and abstract of up to 250 words each (organized as described below), keywords, bibliographic references (maximum 50), and figure legends. Up to 5 tables or figures will be accepted. The number of authors must not exceed 10.
For the preparation of controlled clinical trials, the CONSORT guidelines must be followed, available at: http://www.consort-statement.org/
For observational studies, the items outlined in the checklist available at: http://www.strobe-statement.org/ must be followed.
For systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the PRISMA guidelines available at: http://www.prismastatement.org/statement.htm apply.
For studies on the validity of diagnostic tests, the STARD guidelines available at: http://www.stard-statement.org/ should be followed.
Reviews. This section will be mainly by invitation. Reviews may appear in one of the following formats:
Narrative clinical review with a maximum length of 5,000 words in the manuscript, excluding the title page, an unstructured summary and abstract of up to 150 words each, keywords, bibliography (maximum 80 references), and figure legends. Up to 8 tables or figures may be included;
Brief clinical review with a maximum length of 4,000 words in the manuscript, excluding the title page, structured summary and abstract of up to 150 words each, keywords, bibliography (maximum 50 references), and figure legends. Up to 2 tables or figures may be included;
Clinical practice guideline: will follow the same requirements as the brief clinical review. The maximum number of authors for any of the three formats is 6. Any author may submit manuscripts spontaneously for consideration in this section, provided prior contact and topic approval by the Editorial Team.
Short Communications. These should be concise manuscripts describing technical innovations or clinicopathological correlations. They must not exceed 1,500 words, excluding the title page, structured summary (up to 150 words), keywords, no more than 10 bibliographic references, and figure legends. Up to 3 figures or tables may be included. The number of signing authors must not exceed 6.
Clinical Cases. Descriptions of one or more clinical cases of special interest that provide an important teaching point or scientific observation. They may describe novel techniques, use of equipment, or new information about diseases of relevance. Section headings should be: Summary, Introduction, Case Report, Discussion, Declaration of Conflicts of Interest (if any), Acknowledgments (if any), and References. The Introduction should describe the purpose of the present report, the importance and specificity of the disease, and briefly review the relevant literature. The Case Report should include general case data, medical history, family history, main reason for consultation, current illness, clinical manifestations, diagnostic methods and treatment, and outcome. The Discussion should compare, analyze, and discuss similarities and differences between the reported case and similar cases published in other articles. The importance or specificity of the case should be reiterated when discussing differential diagnoses. Prognosis and possibilities for prevention are suggested.
Formatting Guide:
• Word limit: 1,000 words (excluding summary and references)
• References: 10 or fewer
• Summary: up to 150 words, unstructured (i.e., without subheadings)
• Tables/Figures: up to 4 tables or figures, but data in the text should not be extensively repeated in tables or figures
• Maximum of three authors
Editorials. Opinion articles commissioned by the editorial team. They must not exceed 1,000 words and 10 bibliographic references. Their topics will relate to original articles published in the journal or subjects of general interest. They will not include figures or tables, except in special cases where they are essential to improve text understanding.
Letters to the Editor. These are comments on articles previously published in the journal. The text length of Letters to the Editor must not exceed 500 words, with a maximum of 10 bibliographic references. One figure or one table may be included. The number of signing authors is limited to 4. Letters to the Editor have the right of reply. They will be sent to the author of the original article, who may respond with a text of similar length within one month. The Letter to the Editor and the author’s response will be published together.
Ophthalmology in Images. This section will include photographs or photocompositions with several high-quality images of entities with striking or unusual features of clinical entities in the specialty. It would be especially interesting if, in addition to the biomicroscopic or fundus image, a key diagnostic image is associated (pathological anatomy, OCT, etc.). The image will be accompanied by a brief descriptive text of fewer than 100 words. The maximum number of bibliographic references is two.