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AUTHOR INSTRUCTIONS

• Article Types
• Article Submission and Presubmission Inquiries
• Copyright
• Peer Review
• Standards and Guidelines
• Format and Style
• Additional Formatting Requirements for Accepted Articles

PEER REVIEWER INSTRUCTIONS

• Peer Review Model
• Reviewer Guidelines
• Reviewer Comments
• Article Evaluation Criteria

AUTHOR INSTRUCTIONS

ARTICLE TYPES

ACE-QI publishes a wide variety of articles types.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Original research articles should be no longer than 5000 words (excluding Title Page, Abstract and References) and in IMRAD format (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion).

• Abstract (unstructured, up to 400 words)
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion (and conclusions)
• References

Original research articles can have up to eight total tables and figures; additional figures and tables can be submitted as supplementary material.

Other Peer-Reviewed Articles

These article types should include any of the following that are applicable: acknowledgments, conflicts of interest, and data sharing/availability.

• Reviews: Narrative reviews should be no longer than 5,000 words, have no more than eight tables or figures, and have an unstructured abstract of up to 250 words.
• Brief reports: Brief reports should be no longer than 1,500 words have no more than two tables or figures, have no more than 10 references, and have an unstructured abstract of up to 200 words.

Other Types of Articles

The non-peer reviewed article types below should be no longer than 1,000 words, unless otherwise indicated, and have no abstract.

• Announcements
• Letters
• Commentary
• Editorials
• Creative expressions (oncology educators are welcome to share their creative works)
• Conference material
• Trainee corner (This category includes trainee-written works of varying length that do not fit in any of the peer-reviewed categories.)
• Media (This category includes video and other non-text material related to oncology education.)
• Corrections (When necessary, corrections to or retractions of published articles are made by the authors and journal editors.)

ARTICLE SUBMISSION AND PRESUBMISSION INQUIRIES

Submit articles using the online submission system. You will need to sign up for an author account. Once you've created and logged into your account, you'll have access to the submission portal where you can upload your work.

Authors may submit presubmission inquiries to the editors. Please only send an abstract or summary of your proposed paper; do not send the entire manuscript. Please note that a positive response to your inquiry is not a guarantee of acceptance.

COPYRIGHT

ACE-QI supports open access and applies the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike (BY-NC-SA) 4.0 license to the articles and other works we publish. This allows the articles to be freely accessed and increases readership and citation rates. When you submit your manuscript for publication in ACE-QI, you agree to have the CC BY-NC-SA license applied to your work. This open access license allows the author to retain copyright and allows the public to reuse the work under the following conditions:

• BY: reuse is only allowed if the original work is appropriately credited
• NC: reuse is only allowed for non-commercial purposes
• SA: reuse is only allowed if the new work is made available under the same license as the original

PEER REVIEW

All original research articles submitted to the journal are reviewed by at least two peer reviewers to determine their suitability for publication. ACE-QI uses a double-anonymized peer review process. Reviewers are not aware of the authors’ identities, and the reviewers’ names will not be shared with the authors. Anonymized reviews will appear in the editorial decision letter and will be accessible to the authors and other reviewers. Final decisions will be made by the editor-in-chief.

Authors are welcome to suggest peer reviewers to include or exclude at the time of submission. This can be done in the cover letter. Recommended reviewers should not have a conflict of interest with the authors or their work.

STANDARDS AND GUIDELINES

By submitting an article to ACE-QI, the authors agree that the manuscript has not been previously published, is not being considered for publication elsewhere, and has been approved by all co-authors and the institution at which the study was conducted.

Authors should adhere to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) for all articles submitted to Advances in Cancer Education and Quality Improvement (ACE-QI).

Authors should adhere to the appropriate reporting guidelines for reporting research, available from the EQUATOR Network.

Authors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions to use copyrighted materials in their work and for completing any necessary informed consent and release forms. All such forms should be submitted with the manuscript.

All articles must be written in American or British English. Non-native speakers are encouraged to seek professional editing help before submitting their article. The journal follows the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition.

Generative AI tools do not meet the ICMJE authorship criteria and thus cannot be listed as authors on manuscripts submitted to ACE-QI. All authors are responsible for the content of their manuscript. Generative AI tools should not be used to analyze or interpret data, draw conclusions, or generate clinical recommendations. They also should not be used to create or modify text or images. Authors who do use such tools should disclose which AI tools they have used and how they were used in a statement at the end of the manuscript or in the Methods section. This policy will be updated as needed to reflect ongoing advancements in technology and changes to ethical standards. 

FORMAT AND STYLE

All submissions should include:

• Cover letter
• Title page with:
  • Title
  • Running title (50 characters, including spaces)
  • Full name, highest academic degree(s), ORCID ID, and affiliations of each author
  • Corresponding author, indicated by an asterisk (*) with their name, address, and email address
  • Acknowledgments, conflicts of interest, and data sharing/availability
  • Suggested article type (see below)

• Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers. These will be added by the editors.
• Format your manuscript, including tables, figures, etc., as a single file (Word, RTF, and PDF files are accepted).
• Figures: Use high-resolution figures, preferably encoded as encapsulated PostScript (eps).
• Page size should be 8.5 × 11 inches.
• All margins (left, right, top, and bottom) should be 1 inch (2.54 cm), including your tables and figures.

Font

• Title page, abstract and main body—12 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available.
• Figure legends—10 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available.
• Tables—10-12 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available.
• Footnotes—10 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available.

Indenting, Line Spacing, Justification

• Single space the text.
• All text should be left-justified (i.e., flush with the left margin—except where indented). Where possible, it should also be right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin).
• Indent all paragraphs except those following a section heading. Indents should be 0.5 inches (1.27 cm).
• Do not insert extra space between paragraphs of text except for long quotations, theorems, propositions, special remarks, etc. These should be set off from the surrounding text by additional space above and below.

Headings

• Use bold font for first-level headings
• Use bold italic font for second-level headings
• Use italic font for third-level headings
• Insert a line space above headings.

Footnotes

• appear at the bottom of the page on which they are referenced rather than at the end of the paper with a footnote separator rule (line).
• be labeled with superscript lower case letters (^a, ^b, etc.) after punctuation.
• be left and right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin), unless this creates awkward spacing

ADDITIONAL FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS FOR ACCEPTED ARTICLES

• Do not include a title page or abstract. Begin the document with the introduction; a title page, including the abstract, will be added to your paper by the editors.
• Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers. These will be added by the editors.
• Format your manuscript, including tables, figures, appendices, etc., as a single file (Word, RTF, and PDF files are accepted).
• Page size should be 8.5 x 11 inches.
• All margins (left, right, top, and bottom) should be 1 inch (2.54 cm), including tables and figures.
• Single-space the text.
• Use a single-column layout with both left and right margins justified.
• Use high-resolution figures, preferably encoded as encapsulated PostScript (eps).

Colored Text

• Set the font color to black. We encourage authors to take advantage of the ability to use color in the production of figures; however, color in situations where its conversion to black and white would render the material illegible or incomprehensible.
• Please ensure that there are no colored mark-ups or comments in the final version, unless they are meant to be part of the final text. (You may need to "accept all changes" in track changes or set your document to "normal" in final markup.)

Emphasized Text

• Whenever possible, use italics to indicate text you wish to emphasize rather than underlining it. The use of color to emphasize text is discouraged.

Foreign Terms

• Whenever possible, foreign terms should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Titles

• Whenever possible, titles of books, movies, etc., should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Tables and Figures

• Original research articles can have up to eight total tables and figures; additional figures and tables can be submitted as supplementary material.
• To the extent possible, tables and figures should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Large tables or figures should be put on pages by themselves.
• Avoid the use of overly small type in tables.
• All tables and figures must fit within 1.5" margins on all sides (top, bottom, left and right) in both portrait and landscape view.

Mathematics

• Roman letters used in mathematical expressions as variables should be italicized. Roman letters used as part of multi-letter function names should not be italicized. Whenever possible, subscripts and superscripts should be a smaller font size than the main text.
• Short mathematical expressions should be typed inline. Longer expressions using many different levels (e.g., fractions) should be set as display math. Important definitions or concepts can also be set off as display math.
• Equations should be numbered sequentially. Equation numbers can be placed on the right or left but should be consistent.
• Symbols and notations in unusual fonts should be avoided. This will not only enhance the clarity of the manuscript, but will also help ensure that it displays correctly on the reader's screen and prints correctly. When proofing your PDF document, pay particular attention to the rendering of the mathematics, especially symbols and notations drawn from other than standard fonts.

References

The journal follows the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition. It is the author's obligation to provide complete references with the necessary information. After the last sentence of your submission, please insert a line break—not a page break—and begin your references on the same page, if possible. References should appear after the text. The margins should be both left and right justified. Each reference should give the last names of all the authors, their first names or first initials, and, optionally, their middle initials. The hierarchy for ordering the references is:

1. Last name of first author
2. First name of first author
3. Last name of second author (if any). Co-authored work is listed after solo-authored work by the same first author (e.g., Edlin, Aaron S. would precede Edlin, Aaron S. and Stefan Reichelstein).
4. First name of second author
5. Publication date
6. Order cited in text

The information to be given with each citation in the references is as follows:

Articles in traditional journals:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of article, name of journal, year of publication (or "n.d." if no date), volume number, page numbers.

Optional (but desirable): issue number and month/season of publication. For forthcoming (in press) articles, put expected year of publication and substitute "forthcoming" for the volume and page numbers.

Optional(but desirable): A hyperlink to the article using its digital object identifier (DOI).

Books:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of book, year of publication (or "n.d." if no date), publisher, publisher's address, edition (if not first). For forthcoming (in press) books, put expected year of publication and add "forthcoming."

Chapters in collections or anthologies:

Required: Name(s) of author(s) of chapter, name(s) of editor(s) of book, title of chapter, title of book, year of publication (or "n.d." if no date), publisher, publisher's address, and edition (if not first). For forthcoming (in press) books, put expected year of publication and add "forthcoming."

Working papers:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of working paper, year (or "n.d." if no date), location (e.g., "Department of Economics Working Paper, University of California, Berkeley" or "Author's web site: http://www.someurl.edu/author." If the working paper is part of series, then the series name and the number of the working paper within the series must also be given.

Other works:

Required: Author's (authors') name(s), title of work, year (or "n.d." if no date), and information about how the reader could obtain a copy.

Within the references section, the citations can be formatted as you like, provided (i) the formatting is consistent and (ii) each citation begins with the last name of the first author. That is, the following would all be acceptable:

Smith, Adam (1776) The Wealth of Nations, . . .

Smith, A., The Wealth of Nations, . . . , ,1776. 

Smith, Adam: The Wealth of Nations, 1776, . . .

Use hanging indents for citations (i.e., the first line of the citation should be flush with the left margin and all other lines should be indented from the left margin by a set amount). Citations should be single-spaced with extra space between citations.

When works by the same author are listed in a row, use — instead of writing the name again. Hence, one might have

Smith, Adam: The Wealth of Nations, . . .

—: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, . . . 

Similarly, instead of repeating two names use

"— and —."

For instance,

Edlin, A. and S. Reichelstein (1995) . . .
— and — (1996) . . . 

Within the text of your manuscript, use the author-date method of citation.For instance,

"As noted by Smith (1776)." 

When there are two authors, use both last names. For instance,

"Edlin and Reichelstein (1996) claim . . . "

If there are three or more authors give the last name of the first author and append et al. For instance, a 1987 work by Abel, Baker, and Charley, would be cited as

"Abel et al. (1987)." 

If two or more cited works share the same authors and dates, use "a," "b," and so on to distinguish among them. For instance,

"Jones (1994b) provides a more general analysis of the model introduced
in Example 3 of Jones (1994a)."

After the first cite in the text using the author-date method, subsequent cites can use just the last names if that would be unambiguous. For example, Edlin and Reichelstein (1996) can be followed by just Edlin and Reichelstein provided no other Edlin & Reichelstein article is referenced; if one is, then the date must always be attached.

When citations appear within parentheses, use commas—rather than parentheses or brackets—to separate the date from the surrounding text. For instance,

" ...(see Smith, 1776, for an early discussion of this)."