GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

Introduction

Types of paper

Contributions falling into the following categories will be considered for publication:

Editorials usually provide commentary and analysis concerning an article in the issue of the Journal in which they appear. They may include 1 figure or table. They are nearly always solicited, although unsolicited editorials may occasionally be considered. Editorials are limited to 750 words, with up to 10 references.

Reviews should include the urological questions or issues which are importance for biomedical research, clinical practice, special practice, or public health; description of how the relevant evidence was identified, assessed for quality, and selected for inclusion; synthesis of the available evidence such that the bestquality evidence (e.g., randomized clinical trials, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and high-quality prospective cohort studies) should receive the greatest emphasis; and discussion of controversial aspects and unresolved issues. Authors will be asked to describe characteristics of the literature search performed for their review. A narrative (unstructured) or structured abstract is required and should not exceed 250 words. Maximum length: 6000 words of text (not including abstract, tables, figures, references, and online-only material), with no more than a total of 4 tables and/or figures and no more than 50-75 references.

Mini-reviews are much more focused than Reviews. A Minireview introduces the reader to a particular area of an author’s research through a concise overview of a selected topic. The content should balance scope with depth, and references to important works from others that are significant to the topic, should be included. It is shorter (approximately 2000 words) and does not contain a frontispiece or biographical sketch(es). However, it should still have an Abstract (no more than 150 words) that should similarly arouse the readers’ interest.

Original articles typically include basic research, randomized trials, intervention studies, cohort studies, case-control studies, epidemiologic assessments, other observational studies, surveys with high response rates, cost-effectiveness analyses and decision analyses, and studies of screening and diagnostic tests. These articles should be arranged as follows: Title Page, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References, Tables, Legends. The title page should contain a concise, descriptive title, the names and affiliations of all authors, and a brief descriptive runninghead not to exceed 50 characters. Three to eight key words should be typed at the bottom of the title page. A structured abstract no more than 250 words is required and must conform to the following style: Purpose, Materials and Methods, Results and Conclusions. Maximum length: 5000 words of text (not including abstract, tables, figures, references, and online-only material). There is no limit to the tables or figures.

Clinical experiences report the experience for diagnosis, treatment or prevention of urological diseases. A structured abstract is required. Maximum length: 2000 words of text (not including abstract, tables, figures, references, and online-only material) with no more than a total of 5 tables and/or figures.

Clinical images are intended to provide a visual image of an interesting and unique urological observation. A 500-word description (including acknowledgment, all text, tables, figure legends, and references) of the clinical issue, the patient’s urological findings, and the image should be included. There should be no more than 2 images and 4 references.

Case reports include short reports or original studies or evaluations or unique, first-time reports or clinical cases (individual or a series). Maximum length: 1000-2000 words (including acknowledgment, abstract, all text, tables, figure legends, and references), with no more than 15 references and 4 tables and/or figures.

Letters should be useful to urological practitioners. The length should not exceed 500 words. Only Letters concerning articles published in the Journal within the last year are considered.

Rapid communications describe an important issue in clinical medicine, public health, health policy, or medical research in a scholarly, thorough, well-referenced, systematic, and evidencebased manner. A narrative (unstructured) abstract of no more than 200 words is required. Maximum length: 3000 words of text (not including tables, figures, or references) with no more than a total of 4 tables and/or figures and no more than 50 references.

Special feature

Urological data include 1) the number, distribution and features of urological institutes, equipments, and researching faculty in various countries in the world, 2) the data analysis of international cutting-edge researches on urology, such as new theories, techniques, projects, clinical trials, awards, patents, and outcomes transforming, and 3) quantitative analysis on urological literatures to provide references for future researches. Submissions could be research article (3000-4000 words), commentary (1000-2000 words), or meta analysis (4000-6000 words).

Asian fo cus w elcomes ep idemiological, g enetic a nd r egional papers, as well as occupational, clinical or health policy studies from Asian countries and regions. For Asian Focus, we prefer for the name of the country or region to be included in the title. Submissions could be r esearch a rticle (3000-4000 w ords), review (4000-6000 w ords), commentary (1000-2000 words), opinion or view points (1000-2000 words).

Please ensure that you select the appropriate article type from the list of options when making your submission. Authors contributing to special issues should ensure that they select the special issue article type from this list.

Before You Begin

Ethics in Publishing

All materials must adhere to high ethical and animal welfare standards. Any use of animals must be based on ethological knowledge and respect for species-specific requirements for health and well-being. For investigations of human subjects, an appropriate institutional review board approved the project and the informed consent was obtained from the study participants.

For information on Ethics in Publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.

Conflict of interest

All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also http://www.elsevier.com/ conflictsofinterest.

Submission declaration

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Changes to authorship

This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:

Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.

After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a“License to Publish”. Acceptance of the license will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a “License to Publish” form or a link to the online version of this license. Permission of the journal is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult ajurology@smmu. edu.cn). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article.

Role of the funding source

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated. Please see http://www.elsevier.com/funding.

Language and language services

Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and postsubmission please visit http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageediting or our customer support site at http://support.elsevier.com for more information.

Submission

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online. Use the following guidelines to prepare your article. Via the homepage of this journal (http://www.ajurology.com, http://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/aju) you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of the various files. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor’s decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the author’s homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy paper trail. If you are unable to provide an electronic version, please contact the editorial office prior to submission (e-mail: ajurology@smmu.edu.cn).

Process for Manuscript Submission

Submitted manuscripts should be accompanied by a covering letter giving details of: 1) the title of the manuscript and its main point; 2) a statement that the manuscript has not been published in part or whole (except in the form of abstract) or is under consideration for publication elsewhere in any language; 3) a statement that all authors have agreed to be so listed and have seen and approved the manuscript, its consent and its submission to AJUR; 4) a full current postal address, telephone and fax numbers, and current e-mail address. We usually communicate with authors by e-mail. Authors must specify if they wish to exclude a method of communication. Authors may suggest 2-3 reviewers. Please provide the name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, and fields of interest. Authors may also suggest that specific individuals not be involved as reviewers, but AJUR reserves the right of final selection.

Manuscript Status

Upon receipt of the manuscript, the AJUR Editorial Office will immediately assign a code number, which is strongly recommended for use in subsequent correspondence. A letter acknowledging receipt will be sent to the corresponding author. After being pre-reviewed by the editors, most of the submitted manuscripts will be sent to expert referees for peer-review. All manuscripts are subject to editorial modifications. AJUR disclaims any liability for statements made by authors or advertisers.

Additional Information

Tables and figures may be presented with captions within the main body of the manuscript; if so, figures should additionally be uploaded as high resolution files.

Preparation

Use of wordprocessing software

It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use the wordprocessor’s options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier: http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Note that source files of figures, tables and text graphics will be requiredwhether or not you embed your figures in the text. See also the section on Electronic illustrations.

To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the“spell-check” and “grammar-check” functions of your wordprocessor.

LaTeX

If the LaTeX file is suitable, proofs will be produced without rekeying the text. The article should preferably be written using Elsevier’s document class “elsarticle”, or alternatively any of the other recognized classes and formats supported in Elsevier’s electronic submissions system, for further information see http://www.elsevier. com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/latex-ees-supported.

The Elsevier “elsarticle” LaTeX style file package (including detailed instructions for LaTeX preparation) can be obtained from the Quickguide: http://www.elsevier.com/latex. It consists of the file: elsarticle.cls, complete user documentation for the class file, bibliographic style files in various styles, and template files for a quick start.

Article structure

Subdivision - numbered sections

Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to “the text”. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line.

Introduction

State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

Material and methods

Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.

Theory/calculation

A Theory section should extend, not repeat, the background to the article already dealt with in the Introduction and lay the foundation for further work. In contrast, a Calculation section represents a practical development from a theoretical basis.

Results

Results should be clear and concise.

Discussion

This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.

Conclusions

The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.

Appendices

If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

Essential title page information

? Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

? Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors’ affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lowercase superscript letter immediately after the author’s name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name, and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.

? Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.

? Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a “Present address” (or “Permanent address”) may be indicated as a footnote to that author’s name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.

A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Authors are invited to submit keywords associated with their paper.

Abbreviations

Define abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations that are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.

Acknowledgements

Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Nomenclature and units

Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI). If other quantities are mentioned, give their equivalent in SI. Authors wishing to present a table of nomenclature should do so on the second page of their manuscript.

Math formulae

Present simple formulae in the line of normal text where possible and use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms, e.g., X/Y. In principle, variables are to be presented in italics. Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp. Numberconsecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text).

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.

Table footnotes

Indicate each footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase letter.

Artwork

Electronic artwork

General points

? Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.

? Save text in illustrations as “graphics” or enclose the font.

? Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.

? Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.

? Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.

? Provide captions to illustrations separately.

? Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.

? Submit each figure as a separate file.

A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions

You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.

Formats

Regardless of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please “save as” or convert the images to one of the following formats (note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):

EPS: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save the text as “graphics”.

TIFF: color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.

TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.

TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.

If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please supply “as is”.

Please do not:

? Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;

? Supply files that are too low in resolution;

? Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Color artwork

Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version.

Figure captions

Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Tables

Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either “Unpublished results” or “Personal communication” Citation of a reference as “in press” implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

Web references

As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

References in a special issue

Please ensure that the words ‘this issue’ are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special Issue.

Reference management software

This journal has standard templates available in key reference management packages EndNote ( http://www.endnote.com/support/ enstyles.asp) and Reference Manager ( http://refman.com/support/ rmstyles.asp). Using plug-ins to wordprocessing packages, authors only need to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their article and the list of references and citations to these will be formatted according to the journal style which is described below.

Reference style

Citation in text

Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either “Unpublished results” or “Personal communication”. Citation of a reference as “in press” implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

Web references

As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after thereference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

References in a special issue

Please ensure that the words ‘this issue’ are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special Issue.

Reference management software

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references and for correct text citation. Number references in the order they appear in the text; do not alphabetize. Unpublished data, classified periodicals, and personal communications may not be used as references. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by superscript of Arabic numerals in parentheses. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in MEDLINE/ PubMed. List all authors and/or editors up to 6 (if more than 6, list the first 6 followed by “et al.”), title of the article, name of the journal or book, year, volume (issue) and the first and last pages.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

1. Amory JK, Arnold S, Lardone MC, Piottante A, Ebensperger M, Isoherranen N, et al. Levels of the retinoic acid synthesizing enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase-1A2 are lower in testicular tissue from men with infertility. Fertil Steril 2014;101(4):960-6.

Reference to a book:

2. Bostwick DG,Cheng L.Urologic surgical pathology: expert consult. Louisville: Mosby’s Inc., 2008. p. 123-33.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

3. Kurland LT. The epidemiologic characteristics of multiple sclerosis. In: Vinken PJ, Bruyn GW, editors. Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Vol 9: Multiple Scler osis and Other Demyelinating

Diseases. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1970. p. 63–84.

Journal abbreviations source

Journal names should be abbreviated according to

Index Medicus journal abbreviations: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/ serials/lji.html;

List of title word abbreviations: http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;

CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service): http://www.cas.org/sent.html.

Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.

Ensure that the following items are present:

One Author designated as corresponding Author:

? E-mail address

? Full postal address

? Telephone and fax numbers

All necessary files have been uploaded

? Keywords

? All figure captions

? All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

Further considerations

? Manuscript has been “spellchecked” and “grammar-checked”

? References are in the correct format for this journal

? All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa

? Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)

? Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-andwhite in print

? If only color on the Web is required, black and white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes

For any further information please visit our customer support site at http://support.elsevier.com.

After Acceptence

Use of the Digital Object Identifier

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly ‘Articles in press’ because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from a document in the journal Physics Letters B): doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059

When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed never to change.

Proofs

One set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post) or, a link will be provided in the e-mail so that authors can download the files themselves. Elsevier now provides authors with PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from http://get.adobe.com/reader. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs (also given online). The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http:// www.adobe.com/products/reader/systemreqs.

If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return them to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately – please let us have all your corrections within 48 hours. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.More information about article offprint is available here: http:// webshop.elsevier.com/

A uthor Inquiries

For inqui ries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal’s homepage (http:// www.ajurology.com). Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the Editorial Office.

Page Charge and Color Charge

In 2014-2015, we are waiving all fees for authors, including page charge, cost for color photos and cover images.

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