About the Journal
Official Journal of the Mediterranean Society of Myology and Associazione Italiana di Miologia
Available in open access
Cited in PubMed, Medicine, Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), Index Copernicus
Available on PubMed Central
Focus, Scope and Objective
Acta Myologica is a quarterly journal that publishes articles relating to the study of primary myopathies, cardiomyopathies and neuromyopathies and their practical application. It includes original articles, observational studies, clinical, epidemiological, genetic studies, and studies on the outcomes and applied (translational) progress of basic research.
Acta Myologica is the oldest international myology journal, with its first issue published in June 1982 under the name Cardiomyology, with the aim to provide a publication platform of novel and impactful research but, also importantly, to become an educational tool in disseminating state-of-art scientific and medical knowledge to young physicians and scientists especially in developing countries.
In 1997 the Cardiomyology title was changed in Acta Myologica. In those pre-pubmed years, they would not normally have access to such scientific information. The founder Editor Prof. Giovanni Nigro was adamant that there should be no barriers to accessing the journal and, therefore, that Acta should be free of subscription. This was a precursor of the open access model, which has now become the norm, within the medical and scientific literature.
Acta Myologica is the official journal of the Mediterranean Society of Myology (MSM) and of the Associazione Italiana di Miologia (AIM). Since 2016, it is an online journal (AMO)
Submission on line
Submit new article via our new Editorial Manager System
(Please before submitting your manuscript check Authors Guidelines)
Editorial Policies
Acta Myologica follows the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA)
Open Access Policy
As previously reported, the journal provides immediate open access to its content, respecting the idea of its founder that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
The journal is distributed in accordance with the CC-BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International) license: the work can be used by mentioning the author and the license, but only for non-commercial purposes and only in the original version. For further information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en
Pre- and post-prints
Acta Myologica allows and encourages Authors to deposit both their pre- and post-prints in Open-Access institutional archives or repositories. The primary benefit of pre- and post-print self-archiving is to reach larger audience which enhances the visibility and impact of your research.
Ethical Approvals (Statement of human rights and Statement on welfare of animals)
Trial involving human subjects will only be published if such research has been conducted in full compliance with ethical principles, including the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013) and any additional requirements of the country where the research was carried out.
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a statement that the experiments were conducted with the understanding and written consent of each subject and according to the principles mentioned above. When experimental animals are used, the methods section must clearly state that adequate measures have been taken to minimize pain or discomfort. The experiments should be performed in accordance with the Guidelines established by the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the USA regarding the care and use of animals for experimental procedures or with the Directive of the Council of the European Communities of 24 November 1986 (86 / 609 / EEC) and in compliance with local laws and regulations. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision).
All manuscripts submitted to Acta Myologica must include an explicit statement in the Materials and Methods section, the name of the Ethics Committee and the reference number where appropriate. In case a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should be detailed in the manuscript, together with the name of the Ethics Committee that granted the exemption. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editors consider that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.
If a study has not been submitted to an Ethics Committee prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review.
Authors must have obtained Ethics Committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool where a clear clinical benefit based on clinical need was not evident prior the treatment.
For retrospective/protocol studies where only aggregate data is analyzed, ethical approval by an appropriate Committee is usually not required, as the data cannot be traced to specific patients.
The Editors reserve the right to refuse papers in case of doubts about the use of adequate procedures.
Informed Consent
For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual subjects, written informed consent for their publication must be obtained from the participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement on this point appear in the manuscript.
If the participant has died, consent for publication must be obtained from the participant’s closest relative. This documentation must be available to Publishers on request, and will be treated confidentially. In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for image’s publication may not be required. The final decision on the need for consent to publication is at the Editor(s)’ discretion.
Acta Myologica strictly follows the ICMJE policy on the Protection of Research Participants. Patients have a right to privacy, which should not be violated without their consent. Once informed consent is obtained, Publishers may request authors to provide a copy before making the editorial decision.
Data Availability
To promote transparency of data supporting the results reported in the article, the Journal encourages authors to provide a statement of data availability, provided that the research data can be made publicly. This should be included at the end of the “Materials and Methods” section under a separate “Data availability” subheading. Data availability statement should include information on where data can be found, whether data are deposited on publicly available data research repositories or they are available on reasonable request to the corresponding author (examples of data availability statements: 1) the data associated with the paper are available in the [NAME] repository; 2) the data associated with the paper are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request; 3) the data associated with the paper will be available in the [NAME] repository following an embargo period). Such data will not be published as Supplementary Digital Material.
Clinical Trials
Clinical trials should be reported using the guidelines available at www.consort-statement.org. The Journal encourages Authors submitting manuscripts reporting data from a clinical trial to register the trials in any of the following free, public clinical trials registries: www.clinicaltrials.gov, http://clinicaltrials.ifpma.org/clinicaltrials/, http://isrctn.org/.
The clinical trial registration number and the name of the trial register will be published in the paper.
The authors should ensure that they have met the requirements of their funding and regulatory agencies regarding the aggregate clinical trial results they report in clinical trial registries.
It is the authors’ and not the journal editors’ responsibility to explain any discrepancies between results reported in registries and journal publications.
Systematic Reviews
Systematic reviews should be reported using the PRISMA guidelines available at http://prisma-statement.org. A PRISMA checklist and flow diagram (as a Figure) should also be included in the submission material.
Conflict of Interest and Source of Funding
A conflict of interest occurs when any financial interest may affect the content of an article. This does not imply that any financial involvement with a sponsor that supported the research or funded a consultation is problematic.
Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and those most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself.
All participants in the peer-review and publication process must disclose any relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Disclosure of such reports is also important in connection with editorials and review articles, because it can be more difficult to detect bias in these types of publications than in original research reports.
To promote transparency and avoid any possible prejudice of the readers towards the article, each author is required to report any potential conflict of interest both in the Authorship responsibility – Financial disclosure – Copyright Transfer Form and at the end of the file manuscript in the notes under the “Conflicts of interest” section.
Publishers may use information disclosed in conflict-of-interest and financial-interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions, and may request additional information relating to competing interests. Potential conflicts of interest may be directly or indirectly related to an article and may include, but are not limited, to research funds from organizations that have a financial interest in the results of publication, financial support for participation in symposia or educational programs, advisory relationships, employment funds, personal financial interests. Disclosure of the conflict of interest should follow the recommendations of the ICMJE.
All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘conflict of interest’ section listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). In the absence of a conflict of interest, the Authors should state at the end of the manuscript file in the notes under the “Conflicts of interest” section: “The Authors declare that they have no conflict of interest”.
All sources of funding must be mentioned at the end of the manuscript file in the notes under the “Funding” section. The role of the eventual sponsor in the study design, acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data, must be briefly described in the drafting the manuscript. If the sponsor was not specifically involved in the research, this should be declared.
Authorship and Contributorship
Acta Myologica endorses the ICMJE criteria for defining the roles of Authors and Contributors to justify authorship.
According to the ICMJE, authorship criteria should be based on 1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) final approval of the version to be published and 4) 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 work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, 3 and 4. It is a requirement that all authors have been accredited as appropriate upon submission of the manuscript. Contributors who do not qualify as authors should be mentioned under Acknowledgements.
Acknowledgements
Contributors to the article other than the accredited authors should be specified under acknowledgements. The specifics of the funding source for the study and any potential conflict of interests, if any, should be also included.
Peer Review Process
Peer reviewed articles include:
- original articles
- reviews
- case reports, scientific letters
- rapid reports
- congress proceedings
The Journal’s Editors will immediately screen all articles submitted for publication. Those articles which fail to reach the scientific standards of the journal or do not fall in its field of interest, may be declined without further review. Articles that meet the requirements of the Journal will be sent to at least two independent peer reviewers and, based on their comments, a recommendation will be made on the acceptability of the manuscript for publication. In some exceptional circumstances, particularly in niche and emerging fields, in which it may not be possible to obtain two independent peer reviewers, the Editor(s) may wish to make a decision to publish based on one peer review report. When making a decision based on one report, Editor(s) are expected to only do so if the peer review report meets the standards set out below.
Every effort is made to provide an editorial decision on the acceptance for publication within 3 months from submission. The reviewers may request a revision of the manuscript. In this case, it is generally understood that only the revised version can be considered for further evaluation under the peer review system. The Editorial Board of the journal is responsible for the selection of referees to conduct the peer-review process. Reviewers are expected to be professional, honest, courteous, prompt, and constructive. They should:
- assist in improving the quality of the published paper by reviewing the manuscript objectively, in a timely manner.
- comment on major strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript as a written communication, independent of the design, methodology, results, and interpretation of the study.
- maintain the confidentiality of any information supplied by the editor or author and not retain or copy the manuscript.
- alert the editor to any published or submitted content that is substantially similar to that under review.
- be aware of any potential conflicts of interest (financial, institutional, collaborative or other relationships between the reviewer and author) and to alert the editor to these.
Manuscripts that do not report primary research or secondary analysis of primary research, such as Editorials, Book Reviews, Commentaries, Letters to the Editor or Opinion articles, may be accepted without peer review. Such manuscripts should be assessed by the Editor(s) if the topic is in the area of expertise of the Editor(s); if the topic is not in area of expertise of the Editor(s), the manuscripts should be assessed by at least one independent expert reviewer or Editorial Board Member.
Blinded peer review: Acta Myologica uses a single-blind peer review process; that is, author identities are known to peer reviewers, but peer reviewers identities are not revealed to the authors.
All selected members of the Editorial Board and referees must declare any competing interests they may have in reviewing a manuscript. All final decision on acceptability of the manuscripts will be made by the Editor-in-Chief.
Cited in PubMed, Medicine, Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), Index Copernicus
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If you are seeking permission to copy, reproduce, or republish content from Acta Myologica you may send an e-mail to: request_permissions@pacinieditore.it.
Mediterranean Society of Myology (MSM), Associazione Italiana di Miologia (AIM) and Pacini Editore srl inform readers and users of the Acta Myologica, that the published articles reflect only the research and the opinion of the authors signing the contents. These articles therefore do not represent and do not in any way constitute indications or guidelines of MSM and AIM itself. This differs from the texts and contents that are explicitly declared as official institutional matrix and published in the appropriate sections of the Journal, which are dedicated to the Guidelines of MSM and AIM.
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