About the journal

Editorial policies and ethics

Conflicts of interest, authorship, ethical aspects. In general, the journal makes reference to the document of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). This is a constantly updated position statement. A letter is required to ensure that the work is unpublished, to confirm the transfer of literary ownership of the article to the publishing house, to declare the absence of conflicts of interest and to suggest the section of the journal in which the author would like to have the work published. In the case of articles signed by several authors, a declaration is required stating the individual contribution made to the preparation of the article. All authors must have contributed to the conception of the content and the latest revision.

Conflicts of interest. Particular attention should be paid to the declaration of the possible existence of economic conflicts of interest. The latter, in fact, if expressed, do not constitute grounds for penalisation in the evaluation of the work. On the contrary, should the editors or reviewers determine the existence of potentially conflicting interests (participation in satellite symposia or involvement in research projects) not declared by one or more authors, this may constitute a reason for rejecting the publication proposal.
The journal editorial staff does not consider such possible conflicts of interest as “cultural or intellectual”. In other words, having spoken positively or negatively about classes of drugs, specific approaches to clinical practice or health policy strategies is not a reason for prejudice in the evaluation of proposed content.

Data sharing policy. A submission to the journal implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality. The journal strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible.

Review procedure. The Journal of Sex- and Gender-Specific Medicine employs a single-blind peer review process to evaluate manuscripts.
Submitted manuscripts are evaluated for scope, scientific accuracy, novelty, and interest for the readership by the Scientific editors. Every manuscript is treated by the scientific editors and reviewers as privileged information, and reviewers are instructed to exclude themselves from review of any manuscript that might involve a conflict of interest.
Only those manuscripts that seem to meet our scientific and editorial criteria are sent out for peer review. If the scientific editors find the work of insufficient interest or otherwise inappropriate or not-original, the manuscript is rejected without external review.
Manuscripts considered of potential interest to our readers are assigned by the scientific editors to at least two reviewers. Reviewers are chosen among the scientific committee or they can be external reviewers on the basis of the field discussed in the manuscript.
On the basis of the reviewers' advice, several different possibilities are taken into account:

• The manuscript can be accepted with or without editorial revisions.
• The authors can be solicited to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns of the reviewers. Thereafter, a reassessment of the manuscript is carried out by the reviewers or by the editors.
• The manuscript can be rejected, but the editors can suggest the authors to resubmit the manuscript after further work.
• The manuscript can be definitely rejected, typically on the basis of low interest, lack of novelty, insufficient scientific advance or major technical problems.

Solicited manuscripts undergo the same single-blind peer review process as submitted ones. Regarding in-house submissions, the review process typically focuses on formal aspects and is conducted solely by the editorial board.

Authorship. It is important that only those who actually contributed to the preparation of the content are listed as authors. The conditions for signing a work are those described in the editorial by Phil Fontanarosa et al. published in JAMA in December 2017: Fontanarosa P, Bauchner H, Flanagin A. Authorship and team science. JAMA 2017; 318(24):2433-2437.