Instructions to authors
Chinese Journal of Dermatology （CJD） aims at providing a platform for communication among clinicians and researchers in the field of dermatology and venereology. It publishes advances in clinical practice and basic researches, guidelines or expert consensus, commentaries on hot topics in this field. The journal covers clinical and basic studies, articles with clinical interest and implications will be given preference. 

About the journal
CJD, established in 1953, is sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association, and edited and published by the Institute of Dermatology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS). It is published monthly in Chinese, and is a peer reviewed medical journal for senior and junior clinicians, researchers, and educators in dermatology and venereology as well as other related fields. It is now indexed by 8 foreign databases, including Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, American Chemical Society，CAB Abstracts，Tropical Diseases Bulletin，Review of Aromatic and Medicinal Plants，Abstracts on Hygiene and Communicable Diseases, and the Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM), as well as by 10 kinds of domestic databases, such as the Chinese Sci-tech Paper and Citation Database (CSTPCD), Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), A Guide to the Core Journals of China, Chinese BioMedical Literature Database on disc, Wanfang Data-Digital Periodicals, etc. The journal is available both in print and online.

Editorial process
A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to CJD alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with CJD for all matters related to the manuscript. On submission, full time editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding for formal peer-review. Manuscripts that are unlikely to be of interest to the journal readers are also liable to be rejected at this stage.

Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in CJD are sent to two or more expert reviewers. During submission, the contributor is requested to provide names of two or three qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but this is not mandatory. The reviewers should not be affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor/s. The selection of these reviewers is at the sole discretion of full time editors. The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. The journal holds a meeting monthly in Nanjing or outside Nanjing to make the final decision on whether or not to publish a manuscript, with the managing editor and about 10 editorial board members of the journal as attendees. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/ rejection/ amendments in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point by point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript. Authors have the right to appeal against the rejection decision by contacting the associate editor and resubmit their manuscript after modification

Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited by full time editors in the editorial office. Page proofs are sent to the first author and corresponding author. The corrected proofs are expected to return within several days. The whole process of submission of the manuscript to final decision and sending proofs is completed online.

Authorship criteria
As stated in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations, credit for authorship requires:
?Substantial contributions to the conception and design, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data;
?The drafting of the article or critical revision for important intellectual content;
?Final approval of the version to be published;
?Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the article are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the four components mentioned above.
Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors. Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The corresponding author takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review.

Changes in authorship
Authors should determine the order of authorship by themselves and should settle any disagreements before submitting their manuscript. Changes in authorship (ie, order, addition, and deletion of authors) should be discussed and approved by all authors. Any requests for such changes in authorship after initial manuscript submission and before publication should be explained in writing to the editor in a letter or email from all authors and should send the original signed written consent of all authors with authorized unit stamp.

Contribution details
Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. One author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as ‘corresponding author’.

Conflicts of interest
All authors must disclose any and all conflicts of interest, they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript. A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence (or bias) the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript. All authors are required to complete and submit the Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Note: This form will be requested after a manuscript has been submitted, but authors should also include conflict of interest disclosures in the Acknowledgment section of the submitted manuscript.

Clinical trial registry
Registration of clinical trials before beginning of study is necessary for manuscripts submitted to CJD. Registration in the following platforms for trial registry is acceptable: http://www.chictr.org.cn/, http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/, http:// www.isrctn.org/, http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/index.asp, http://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr, and any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/index.html).

Retraction policy
CJD should consider retracting a publication if:
?Editors have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).
?The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication).
?It constitutes plagiarism.
?It reports unethical research.
CJD abides by COPE Retraction Guidelines (http://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines_0.pdf). 

Submission of manuscripts
All manuscripts must be submitted on-line through the website:  http://zhpfkzz.yiigle.com or http://www.pifukezazhi.com/CN/0412-4030/home.shtml. New users should register at this site. Registration is free but mandatory. Registered authors can keep track of their articles after logging into the site using their user name and password. For any problems, authors may contact the editorial office by Email: pifukezazhi@aliyun.com.
The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Instructions to authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction before they undergo editorial/peer-review.

Preparation of manuscripts
Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with “ICMJE Recommendations”, and the uniform and specific requirement of CJD are summarized below. Before submitting a manuscript, contributors are requested to check for the latest instructions available. Instructions are also available at the website of the journal http://zhpfkzz.yiigle.com or http://www.pifukezazhi.com/CN/0412-4030/home.shtml.
Copies of any permission(s)
It is the responsibility of authors/contributors to obtain permissions for reproducing any copyrighted material. A copy of the permission obtained must accompany the manuscript. Copies of any and all published articles or other manuscripts in preparation or submitted elsewhere that are related to the manuscript must also accompany the manuscript.

Types of manuscripts
Editorial/Expert’s Commentaries/Special Articles: Editorial/expert’s commentaries/special articles are usually commissioned, however, unsolicited editorials/commentaries/special articles are also welcome. Editorials/expert’s commentaries/special articles can be up to 3000 – 4000 words in length (not including tables, figures, and references).
 
Guidelines and Consensus: Guidelines and expert consensus on the diagnosis and treatment of dermatoses and STDs or other aspects in the field of dermatology and venereology produced by the China Dermatologist Association, Chinese Society of Dermatology, or the Committee on Dermatology and Venereology, China Society of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, are reported in this type of article.
 
Original Articles and Research Reports (Short Communications): These include randomized controlled trials, epidemiological studies, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, cost effectiveness analyses, case-control series, basic medical studies, and so on. Research Report is a summary of an original research with fewer results compared to the original research article. 

The text of original articles or research reports should be divided into sections with the headings including Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and References. The length of Original Articles and Research Reports (excluding abstract, keywords, figures, tables, and references) should be 5000 – 6000 and 3000 – 4000 words, respectively.
Abstract: The abstract of original articles or research reports in CJD is usually a structured abstract, which includes the following parts: Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. For articles reporting rare diseases firstly in China or worldwide, an unstructured abstract is required, usually including the general information of patients, current and past medical history, clinical and pathological findings, diagnosis, treatment and follow up outcomes of cases. The total number of words in Abstract should be 300 – 500 words, and no less than 200 notional words are required for the English abstract. For the convenience of international readers, the English abstract may be more specific than the Chinese abstract.

Keywords: 5 – 8 keywords according to MeSH.

Introduction: State the background, purpose, and summarize the rationale for the study or observation.

Methods: include and describe the following aspects.

Ethics: When reporting studies on human beings, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html). For prospective studies involving human participants, authors are expected to mention about approval of regional/ national/ institutional or independent Ethics Committee or Review Board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary as per regional and/ or national guidelines. Ensure confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants’ names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution’s or a national research council’s guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
 
Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. Animal experimental procedures should be as humane as possible and the details of anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Humans for studies involving experimental animals and human beings, respectively. The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the ‘Methods’ section.

Study design: Describe your selection of the observational or experimental participants (patients or laboratory animals, including controls) clearly, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population.

Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer's name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results.
Give references to established methods, including statistical methods (see below); provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known; describe new or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.

Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements based on the CONSORT Statement (http://www.consort-statement.org), including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding).

Statistics: Quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Authors should report losses to observation (such as, dropouts from a clinical trial). When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Specify the computer software used. P values are encouraged to be reported as the exact value or less than 0.05 or 0.01. Mean differences in continuous variables, proportions in categorical variables and relative risks including odds ratios and hazard ratios should be accompanied by their confidence intervals.

Results: Present the results in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and figures, giving the main or most important findings first. Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or figures; emphasize or summarize only important observations.

When data are summarized in the Results section, give numeric results not only as derivatives (for example, percentages) but also as the absolute numbers from which the derivatives were calculated, and specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Where scientifically appropriate, analyses of the data by variables such as age and sex should be included.

Discussion: Include summary of key findings (primary outcome measures, secondary outcome measures, results as they relate to a prior hypothesis); Strengths and limitations of the study (study question, study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation); Interpretation and implications in the context of the totality of evidence; Controversies raised by this study; and Future research directions (for this particular research collaboration, underlying mechanisms, clinical research).

Do not simply repeat in detail data or other materials given in the Introduction or the Results section. In particular, contributors should avoid making statements on economic benefits and costs unless their manuscript includes economic data and analyses. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. About 30 references can be included.

Meta-analysis
Only results of meta-analysis are reported in this kind of article. The length of the article should be 3000 – 5000 words (not including tables, figures, and references).

Clinical Experience
Experience in the treatment and diagnosis of dermatoses and STDs from clinical practices with low-level evidence is reported in this type of article. The text should be no more than 3000 words (not including tables, figures, and references). No abstract is needed in this case. 

Dermatological Surgery
New or modified surgical procedures for the treatment of dermatoses or STDs are usually reported in this type of article. The text should be limited to 3000 words (not including tables, figures, and references). No abstract is needed in this case.

Medicines and Clinics
This type of article usually reports outcomes from small-scaled controlled clinical studies on the efficacy/safety of new or old medicines in the treatment of dermatoses or STDs. The text is limited to no more than 3000 words (not including tables, figures, and references). No abstract is needed for this type of article.

Case reports
Special cases are reported in this kind of article. The length of the article should be less than 2000 words (not including tables, figures, and references).

Reviews
It is expected that these articles would be written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field. The prescribed word count is less than 6000 words (excluding tables, references and abstract). The kind of manuscript may have about 50 references, and the proportion of references published within 5 years before publication of the review should be no less than 50%.

Letter
Letter to editors should preferably be related to articles previously published in the journal or views expressed in the journal. The text contains no abstract and keywords, with five or fewer references, maximum of one table/figure.

References
Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references and for correct citation of the text. References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript before the punctuation marks. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Avoid using abstracts as references. Avoid citing a “personal communication” unless it provides essential information not available from a public source, in which case the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text.

The commonly cited types of references are shown here.
Note: List authors and/or editors up to three; if there are more than three, the first three authors are listed followed by et al. From Jan 2016, the available doi should be added at the end of each reference.

Examples of journal citations
1 Wang Q, Xiang B, Ji Y, et al. Propranolol versus atenolol in the treatment of infantile hemangioma: a comparative effectiveness study[J]. Chin J Dermatol, 2016, 49(10): 683-687. doi:10.3760/cma.j.issn.0412-4030.2016.10.001.
2 Kaminaka C, Uede M, Matsunaka H, et al. Clinical studies of the treatment of facial atrophic acne scars and acne with a bipolar fractional radiofrequency system[J]. J Dermatol, 2015, 42(6): 580-587. doi:10.1111/1346?8138.12864.
 
Example of a book citation
1 Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, et al. Medical microbiology[M]. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby, 2002: 45-49.
 
Example of electronic sources citation
1 Jablonski S. Online multiple congenital anomaly/mental retardation (MCA/MR) syndromes [DB/OL]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US). 1999 (2001-11-20) [2002-12-12]. http: //www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/jablonski/syndrome_title.html.

Tables
?Tables should be self-explanatory and not duplicate textual material.
?Number tables, in Arabic numerals, consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each.
?Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading.
?Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations that are used in each table.
?Obtain permission for all fully borrowed, adapted, and modified tables and provide a credit line in the footnote.
?For footnotes use the following symbols, in this sequence: a, b, c.

Figures
?Upload the images in JPG format within 50 Mb in size.
?Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order firstly cited in the text.
?Labels, numbers, and symbols should be clear and of uniform size. The lettering for figures should be large enough to be legible after reduction to fit the width of a printed column.
?Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background and be marked neatly.
?Titles and detailed explanations should be described in the legends for figures.
?When graphs, scatter-grams or histograms submitted the numerical data on which they are based should also be supplied.
?Photographs should have a high resolution (no less than 8 million pixels) and contrast ratio. Photographs and figures should be trimmed to remove all the unwanted areas. An internal scale marker should be included in photomicrographs.
?If a figure has been published elsewhere, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material. A credit should appear in the legend for such figures.
?The journal reserves the right to crop, rotate, reduce, or enlarge the photographs to an acceptable size.

Protection of patients’ privacy
Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (parents or guardians of subject, wherever applicable) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients’ names from figures unless they have obtained written informed consent from the patients.

Copyrights
The Chinese Medical Association is the owner of all copyrights to any articles published in the journal. Published manuscripts become the permanent property of Chinese Medical Association and may not be published elsewhere without written permission. Chinese Medical Association keeps the right to use these manuscripts in any form, including print, video, audio and digital.