Author Guidelines

Nickan Research Institute (publisher) follows the guidelines of COPE (COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines;

https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf

https://publicationethics.org/core-practices

and respects the ICMJE (the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Recommendations; https://www.icmje.org/recommendations) for Editing, Reporting, Conduct and Publication of scientific papers in the health and therapeutic journals and the updated Good Publication Practice guideline regarding authorship;

https://www.ismpp.org/gpp3

Submission of a paper to these journals means that all authors have read and agreed to all materials and content. The papers must follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Online submission
Authors should only submit their papers directly via the online system of each journal. The editorial office does not consider submissions by intermediate companies or mediators. Manuscripts should be submitted by the corresponding author or one of the authors, however, they should not be submitted by anyone outside of the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible to submit the copyright alongside the paper submission. Only English-written papers are accepted. The articles also should be edited by a native speaker to guarantee that, the paper was compiled by standard English grammar. We strongly suggest the authors to conduct a professional English check before paper submission to prevent hindrances with the review process. The submission also should be provided by a cover letter, which should include a statement declaring that the study complies with current ethical considerations.

 Article Types

Research (Original) Article
Research (Original) papers are a central study, which should describe noteworthy and original findings (up to ~8000 words, including tables, figures, and references). The publication of these papers is according to the novelty, and scientific reliability with regard to the analysis methods.
To prepare the original papers, the authors are required to respect the EQUATOR Network for original studies.
Research articles must have approval from their Institutional /Hospital/University Ethics Committee for all investigations involving human or animal subjects.

Data Availability Statement

The journal’s data-sharing policy brightly incites the authors to create all datasets, making the relied conclusion of the article to be available for the readers, editors, and reviewers without unnecessary limitation.
Authors are demanded to create a Data Availability Statement in their article addressing that data is available near the corresponding author for presentation and where they can be found. In conditions, in which the research data are not publicly available or there are legal or ethical issues, the condition should be clearly mentioned in the Data Availability Statement alongside any circumstances for accessing the data. However, the judgment to publish will not be affected by whether or not; the authors share their research data.

Review Articles
A Review study (up to ~8000 words, including tables, figures, and references) is considered a summary of several articles, to cover a recent topic by authorities in its field. Review papers should comprise a serious discussion of the current studies and present a reasonable conclusion concerning previous investigations and debates.

Systematic Reviews
Systematic Review papers are literature studies dedicated to a demand which verify all high-quality published studies related to that demand. Systematic Review papers must be prepared as the following format; Introduction and Methods, then Results and Discussion. The topic should be well described. The objective of a Systematic Review study must lead to an evidence-based conclusion. The Methods section should contain a clear method of the literature search strategy. Accordingly, the data extraction procedure and grading of evidence, and finally kind of performed analysis should be described well. Meanwhile, authors are requested to conform to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines(www.prisma-statement.org).[T1] 

MOOSE: Meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology must be reported according to MOOSE guidelines

https://www.ijo.in/documents/14MOOSE_SS.pdf

EQUATOR: To find the reporting guidelines see (www.equator-network.org).
Authors are requested to register their Systematic Reviews in the Prospero (international prospective register of systematic reviews) by the following link; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/

Case Report
Case presentation is a case study, referred to the explanation of a patient’s history, which addresses a considerable new perception of a patient with an unusual and distinguished history. Submissions could be a single case or a case series. The uniqueness of the case may show by the presentation, the investigation, the phenotype, and case management.
To follow with the CARE guidelines (http://www.care-statement.org/) is strongly recommended. The authors should follow the CARE checklist (http://www.care-statement.org/resources/checklist) which should be submitted as a distinct file.

Commentary
Commentary papers, which are published along with the article, address the important points of the article, and many expand them. Additionally, the commentaries underline/discuss the positive points of the article with some comments. Commentaries are the author’s opinions, not original materials. Commentary papers are requested by the Editors as an invitation during peer review and are related to the field of expertise of the peer reviewers.

Photo clinic
In this section, an interesting photo in the field of nephrology or endocrinology is supported by a brief description and a few references (up to five).

Epidemiology and prevention
This part is devoted mostly to epidemiology and prevention of treatment in the area of nephrology or endocrinology.

News and views
News and views are devoted mostly to recent findings of treatment in nephrology or endocrinology and renal transplantation, accompanied by the views of the authors.

Hypothesis

This type of paper is related to an opinion or a hypothesis on a subject in the area of treatment in nephrology or endocrinology, kidney transplantation, and hemodialysis. Hypothesis articles are short manuscripts that present an original hypothesis. The article should set out a clearly identified hypothesis and be supported by adequate references.

Editorial
Editorial articles addressed a specific or a recent subject, relevant to the scope of the journal. Editorials are written by an editor or other members.

Letter-to-Editor
Letters are papers to expand the other published articles in the journal. These papers addressed the author’s opinion on an original/review or case report. Letters could debate a recently published paper and may explore the finding of the articles and discuss the controversies along with the author’s opinion of who wrote the letter.
The editor's office then will share such letters with the authors of the primary article prior to publication to receive the author’s reply to the letter, for the next issue of the journal.

The Declaration of Conflicting Interests strategy denotes our official policy, which refers to a conflict of interest (COI) statement by the author.
The Nickan Research Institute follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) [ https://publicationethics.org/competinginterests ] declares in its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice;

https://www.ismpp.org/gpp3

and the ICMJE recommendations for guidance concerning conflicts of interest.
Some instances of COI can comprise the subsequent items;

-Received money for consulting.

-Received money for research

-Relationship with the company

-Received money for attending an interrelated symposium, or congress

However, if there are any other, interests the readers might sense that the results of the study may affect the original paper; the authors accordingly should state them.

Accordingly, at the time of paper submission, the authors would declare all information on the financial source or other conflicts, which could affect the decisions on the manuscript. Therefore, the authors should complete and sign the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest, while the manuscripts submitted will not be conducted without completing this form.

Authors’ Contribution Statement
In the Authors’ Contributions section, a short statement explaining the role of each author. Contributors to the article which do not conform to the ICMJE Criteria for Authorship should be accredited in the Acknowledgement part of the paper.
If a contributor is deleted from or included in the authors’ list after submission, a separate letter to explain along with a new signed copyright form is necessary.

Author contributions should be clarified based on the following items;
Conceptualization;
Methodology;
Validation;
Formal Analysis;
Investigation;
Resources;
Data Curation;
Writing—Original Draft Preparation;
Writing—Review and Editing;
Visualization;
Supervision;
Project Administration;
Funding Acquisition;

Availability of materials
The Methods section of an original paper should contain enough data to permit a reader to understand the investigation. This Journal advises authors to employ; https://www.protocols.io as an open-access repository for their detailed methodology. For protocols recorded in https://www.protocols.io  please cite this record in your methods part and comprise its DOI in the references. Nickan Research Institute as the publisher encourages adding the Research Resource Identifiers in the methods and materials section (https://www.rrids.org/). See also; https://scicrunch.org/resources

Article Preparation

Formatting
The manuscripts should be prepared as Word files. Page number numbering should be provided too. Footnotes are not allowed.
All abbreviations should be expanded when they are used for the first time in the abstract part and in the body of the manuscript both.
For drugs, the generic names of medications should be employed. Regarding registered trade drugs, they should be marked with the superscript registration symbol ® or ™ whenever they are used.

Manuscript Preparing
Manuscripts submitted for research and review articles in the respective journal should be divided into the following sections

Title
Title page
Structured Abstract
Keywords
Text Organization
Conclusion
Limitations of the study
Acknowledgment
Authors’ contribution
Ethical considerations
Conflicts of interest
Data Availability Statement
Consent for Publication
Funding/Supports
References
Figures/Illustrations (if any)
Tables (if any)
Supplementary Materials (if any)

Title Page
The paper must contain a title and a running title of no more the eighty characters. Under the title, a list of authors’ names along with their affiliations which includes, first the department, then the university/ organization, city and state/province, and finally the country.

The authors should also provide their ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) by the following link; https://orcid.org

The corresponding authors should provide their mobile/ telephone number and e-mail address (mostly academic and general emails both).

All the original research articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses must be accompanied by a structured abstract. Ideally, each abstract should include the following sub-headings, but these may vary according to the requirements of the article.
Introduction
Objectives
Patients/Materials and Methods
Results
Conclusion

Keywords
At least three words related to the manuscript should be selected.

Introduction
This section should clearly and briefly, (up to 600 words) provide an adequate background with relevant references, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. The last paragraph should address the main objectives of the work.

Objectives
This section serves as a brief description of the aim of the study

Patients and Methods (Materials and Methods for preclinical investigations)
This section should provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced, with details of the supplier (i.e., company’s name, city, country) and catalog number when appropriate. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described. The company’s name, city, and country of manufacturer of the major equipment should be given. Unexpected hazards encountered during the experimental work should be noted. Any unusual hazards inherent in the use of chemicals, procedures or equipment in the investigation should be clearly identified. In cases where a study involves the use of live animals or human subjects, the author should include a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines and also state the institutional committee(s) that has approved the experiments. They should also include a statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects.

Results
Results should be clear, descriptive, and concise. Attention should be paid to the matter of significant figures and tables. The same data should not be presented in more than one figure or in both a figure and a table.
Basically, as a rule, interpretation of the results should be reserved for the discussion section of a full original research article.

Discussion
The discussion should explore the significance of the results of the work (without repeating them) in comparison with other similar reports. Extensive citations and discussion of published literature should be avoided.

Conclusion
The main question of the work should be very concisely stated and the final 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(s).

Text
Submit your text in DOC format. Do not embed figures or tables in this document. These should be submitted as separate files.

Tables
Tables should be created with a word processor and saved in either DOC or RTF format. Do not embed tables in your text. Tables should be on separate pages and saved as one file in DOC format.

Figures
To ensure the highest print quality, the figures must be submitted in either TIF or EPS format according to the following minimum resolutions:

• 1200 dpi (dots per inch) for black and white line art (simple bar graphs, charts, etc.)
• 300 dpi for halftones (black and white photographs)
• 600 dpi for combination halftones (photographs that also contain line art such as labeling or thin lines), figures should be saved as individual files. Vector-based figures (e.g. figures created in Adobe Illustrator) should be submitted in EPS format.

Color figures must be submitted in a CMYK color.

Ethical considerations

General cautions

Every experimental or clinical study may raise controversial ethical issues (e.g., Institutional Ethical Approval for working with animal or human subjects). Thus, the Journal of Renal Endocrinology expects all authors, reviewers, and editors to consider COPE, ICMJE, and Equator Network’s reporting guidelines in medical ethics plus scientific writing.
Ethical issues (including plagiarism, misconduct, data fabrication, falsification, double publication, or redundancy) must be completely considered by the authors.
Authors reporting experimental studies on human subjects must include a statement of assurance at the end of the manuscript which addresses; (1) informed consent was obtained from each patient enrolled in the study and (2) the study protocol conforms to the ethical guidelines of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki as reflected in a priori approval by the institution's human research committee. In studies involving animal experimentation, provide assurance that all animals received humane care according to the criteria outlined in the "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" prepared by the National Academy of Sciences and published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH publication 86-23 revised 1985) and the general care of the experimental animals used for this study was conducted in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5140&page=114).

Statement of Ethics in original articles
The original articles published must follow the internationally accepted institutes/universities for original works and their reporting. Papers will be rejected if the journal’s office found that the study has not been provided by a proper ethical review board, and when troubles developed after publication can result to the retraction, correction, or explanation of the mooted concern conforming to COPE guidelines.

Therefore, human subject studies must be conducted upon the approval of the ethics committee along with appropriate participants’ informed consent according to the tenets of the Helsinki Declaration.

In the manuscript, the authors must address the name of the ethics committee who approved the research protocol along with the reference number.

For all investigations communicating the human body, written informed consent to participate in the research should be received from participants or their parents/legal guardians. Besides, a statement detailing this statement should be addressed in the paper.

According to the ICMJE recommendations regarding the protection of research participants, authors should avoid the spread of identifying information about participants unless strictly necessary for the submission. In this condition, the authors should certify that the study patients have offered written consent for the presentation of that information in a publication.

Likewise, the research concerning embryonic germ cells, human embryonic stem cells, cell lines, or induced pluripotent stem cells must conform with the ' Guidelines for the Conduct of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research ' (ISSCR).

In line with the ICMJE recommendations for Clinical Trials, they should be recorded in a country that has an accessible registry recognized by the ICMJE or WHO, thereby a clinical trial number must be definitively mentioned in the paper.
Registration in the following trial registers is acceptable. Additionally, any registry that is a fundamental register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP; www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/index.html).

http://www.irct.ir
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov
http://www.trialregister.nl
http://www.umin.ac.jp

Articles reporting clinical trials should follow the guidelines of their research protocol, like the CONSORT flow chart for randomized controlled trials( https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/consort/). Moreover, authors must use TREND for the non-randomized trial research, or other clear guidelines as mentioned on the Equator network website.

Nickan Research Institute (the publisher of this journal), adheres to the WHO definition of clinical trials.

Please also visit guidelines at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html
STARD and TRIPOD: Investigations of diagnostic accuracy should be reported according to STARD guidelines; ( www.stard-statement.org ) and TRIPOD guidelines; (www.tripod-statement.org).

STROBE: Observational studies (cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional designs) should be reported consistent with the STROBE statement, and must be submitted with their protocols; (www.strobe-statement.org).

The clinical trials must contain the registration number mentioned in the manuscripts following the end of the abstract part and the end of the manuscripts both.

Experimental investigations on animals must follow the authors' Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or an equal ethical committee (local) and should respect internationally documented rules like the ARRIVE recommendations. Hence, in the paper, the authors must address the name of the local/university ethical committee along with the reference approved number of the study protocol.

see;   https://arriveguidelines.org/about

COREQ: Qualitative research should be described according to the COREQ recommendations; (see; https://academic.oup.com/intqhc/article/19/6/349/1791966).

CHEERS: Economic evaluations must be reported according to CHEERS guidelines; (www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1049).

STREGA: Genetic association studies must be reported according to STREGA recommendations; (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19278015/).

The authors are encouraged to submit the ethical committee reference letter alongside the paper submission.

Statement of Ethics in Systematic Review Papers
The registered systematic reviews must contain a number mentioned in the manuscripts at the end of abstracts and at the end of the manuscripts both.
In systematic Review papers, authors are also encouraged to obtain institutional ethical approval from their university/hospital.

Statement of Ethics in Case Reports
The manuscript should contain a sentence delegating that, written informed consent for publication was taken and from whom
Accordingly, case reports/ case series should have approval from their Institutional /Hospital/University Ethics Committee for all investigations involving human or animal subjects.
If the patient was deceased, a publication consent statement should be taken from their first relatives.
Consent for publication for babies/children should be taken from the parents or legal guardians.
The consent statement must be available to the journal if demanded.
The authors are encouraged to submit the ethical committee reference letter alongside the paper submission.

Informed Consent
In the case of research on human subjects, informed consent and other ethical considerations should be mentioned in the "methods" section of the manuscript. The author should include a statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects. As we follow the ICMJE, please consider their guideline for more information. In cases where a study involves the use of live animals or human subjects, the author should also include a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines and also state the institutional committee(s) that has approved the experiments. Moreover, the templates can be seen from WHO.

The authors can use the below form to obtain consent for publication from the participant

Consent form

I …………………………….………………………………..…………....

[Name] give my consent for information about myself/my child or ward/my relative (circle as appropriate) to be published in
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………
[The journal name, manuscript number, and corresponding author].
I understand that the information will be published without my/my child's or ward’s/my relative’s (circle as appropriate) name attached, but that full anonymity cannot be guaranteed.
I understand that the text and any pictures or videos published in the article will be freely available on the internet and may be seen by the general public. The pictures, videos, and text may also appear on other websites or in print, may be translated into other languages, or used for commercial purposes.
I have been offered the opportunity to read the manuscript.
Signing this consent form does not remove my rights to privacy.

Name…………………………………

Date………………………………….

Signed………………………………..

Author name………………………..

Date…………………………………

Signed………………………………

Please keep this consent form in the patient’s case files. The manuscript reporting this patient’s details should state that ‘Written informed consent for publication of their clinical details and/or clinical images was obtained from the patient/parent/guardian/ relative of the patient. A copy of the consent form is available for review by the Editor of this journal.

Conflicts of Interest
The authors must declare any conflict of interests of contributed authors very briefly in a separate paragraph at the end of the paper. All sources of funding should be declared; unless otherwise the following sentence should be given “Authors declare no conflict of interests”.
To prevent the information on potential conflicts of interest for authors from being overlooked or misplaced, mention this information in the cover letter. Authors must identify any potential financial conflicts of interest before the review process begins. Declared conflict of interest will not automatically result in rejection of the paper but the editors reserve the right to publish any declared conflict of interest alongside accepted. The following would generally be regarded as potential conflicts of interest:
1. Direct financial payment to an author for the research or manuscript production by the sponsor of a product or service evaluated in an article.
2. Ownership of shares by an author in the company sponsoring a product service evaluated in an article (or in a company sponsoring a competing product).
3. Personal consultant for companies or other organizations with a financial interest in the promotion of particular healthcare products and services.

Source of Funding
Authors are required to specify the source of funding for their research when submitting a paper alongside with grant/award number for example, “This study was financially supported by xxxx (Grant number#....). Suppliers of materials also should be mentioned by their location too.
Likewise, if a study did not have any specific funding source, or is part of the employment of the authors, therefore the name of the employer will be necessary. Authors will have to definitively mention that the funder was in charge of writing, editing, or decision to publish the paper.

Acknowledgments
Authors should acknowledge any scientific, technical, statistical, and financial support. Contributors other than coauthors may be very briefly acknowledged in a separate paragraph at the end of the paper. All sources of funding should be declared.

Implication for health policy makers/practice/research/medical education
This part will be used for better understand the main message of the article in a simple way. Maximum word count should not be more than 50-120.

References
Authors are responsible for the accuracy of all references. These should be numbered in order of their appearance in the text and listed in a separate section following the text, double-spaced.

Numbered references should appear at the end of the paper and should consist of surnames and initials of all authors when six or fewer (when seven or more list the first six then et al). Title of article, name of the journal abbreviated according to Index Medicus style, year, volume, and first and last page numbers along with doi number of the articles.

Examples
- Nasri H, Mubarak M. Extracapillary proliferation in IgA nephropathy; recent findings and new ideas. J Nephropathol. 2015 Jan;4(1):1-5. doi: 10.12860/jnp.2015.01.

-Paranhos RM, De Souza Figueiredo GA, De Abreu GR, Ferreira GC, Fonseca GG, Simões E Silva AC. Immunoglobulin A nephropathy in pediatrics: An up-to-date. Nephrology (Carlton). 2022;27:307-317. doi: 10.1111/nep.13987.

For books, the names and initials of all authors, the full title, place of publication, publisher, year of publication, and page number should be given.

The references should be numbered sequentially in the order in which they are first cited in the text. Other materials with a DOI, like preprints or datasets, may be included too.

Copyediting and Proofs
Manuscripts accepted for publication by Nickan Research Institute as the publisher will undergo proofreading to check for grammar mistakes and spelling. Our publisher’s style is based on The Chicago Manual of Style(https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html).

Then an e-mail containing the PDF proofs will be sent to the corresponding author, which must check the proofs and answer to all questions that have been provided as comments of the proof within 48 hours.
Authors are not allowed to change the text of the proof and should answer the comments or provide new comments to correct the text.

DOI Number
All papers will get a DOI number as a unique identifier on each article. DOIs are valuable for recognizing and citing online articles

Errata and Retractions
Nickan Research Institute as the publisher is committed to maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the scientific record. Retractions will be mentioned where necessitated according to the COPE guidelines. Errors in an article that influence the material of the paper, like results, figures, or the manuscript’s metadata, like the author’s list, will be modified by the publication of an Erratum. Authors can send an email to report errors in their manuscripts, by addressing, the article title with the DOI number and the place of error.