Author Guidelines

- Articles must be submitted to the journal's online peer review system by the corresponding author. Please submit here. 

- An anonymous version of your article should be submitted along with a separate title page.

- All authors, their affiliations and ORCIDs should be included on a separate title page. Please see a template for the title page here.

- All articles must be submitted with a completed ICJME form from all authors. 

- All article types (excluding invited editorials and letters to the editor) must include an abstract and keywords (min 3 and max 7).

- Articles must be submitted in Word.doc format and set up with continuous line numbering, double line spacing and page numbers.

- Figures and tables:

• 1. No more than 5 figures and tables in total.
• 2. Additional figures/ tables, and those that fill more than 2 pages, should be marked as supplementary material.
• 3. Should appear at the end of the article, not embedded in the text.
• 4. Must include a figure/table title of no more than 100 characters.
• 5. Each figure/table must be referred to within the manuscript
• 6. Figures uploaded as image files
• 7. Any videos must be supplied as a URL link only.

- References:

• 1. Must be cited within the text body and appear in numerical order of the first mention.
• 2. List the first three authors only, followed by et al., unless there are four authors, in which case list all four.
• 3. Must include DOI and PubMed ID.

- AER and JAPSC only: For all original research, review articles and case reports, authors must include a (bulleted) ‘Clinical Perspectives’ statement.

- Original Research articles must include:

• 1. Background
• 2. Methods
• 3. Results
• 4. Discussion
• 5. Study limitations
• 6. Conclusion
• 7. Trial Registration
• 8. Data availability statement

- Original Research and Case Reports must include a statement that written informed consent was obtained if experimentation with human subjects was conducted. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

- From 01 April 2022, Original Research must include a Data Access Statement even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible. Please choose an appropriate statement to accompany your submission.

- Word limits:

- Authors must accept the OA T&Cs in the submission questionnaire.

- Non-native English? Make sure you have considered a language edit prior to submission.

The Journal of Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology (JAPSC) endeavours to publish unbiased content. All articles must be of an impartial nature.
 

All submissions are assessed by the editor-in-chief with the support of the deputy and associate editors, and guidance from the editorial board.

Following submission, articles are subject to independent double-blind peer review and copy-editing prior to publication. All articles must receive final approval of the editor-in-chief and/or deputy editors before they are published.

Articles must be submitted using our electronic peer review system, Editorial Manager. Please submit here.

If you are interested in submitting a manuscript and wish to discuss it further, or have any editorial queries, please email the editorial contact for the relevant journal: mandy.webb@radcliffe-group.com

Radcliffe Cardiology’s journals aim to support the continuous medical education of both specialist and general cardiologists. We publish original research, review articles, expert opinions pieces and case reports written by leading authorities, addressing the most pertinent developments in their field. Our authors benefit from:
 

Open research

All research published in JAPSC is open access which means the version of record (VOR) is freely accessible to everyone across the globe immediately upon publication. As an author you retain all non-commercial rights for articles published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial CC-BY-NC 4.0 license, allowing users to read, download, copy, redistribute and make derivative works for non-commercial purposes, provided the original work is cited correctly.

Quality

We are committed to the highest standards of peer review. JAPSC follows a rigorous double-blind peer review process that is conducted independently and treated confidentially. All articles and the peer review comments received are evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief before they make their decision.

Speed

On average, articles submitted to Radcliffe Cardiology journals receive their first decision in 5 weeks of submission, ensuring rapid review whilst maintaining high quality, rigorous peer review.

Visibility

In order to maximise the reach and impact of your research, we are committed to ensuring every article we publish is promoted as widely as possible. Along with open access, which supports increased readership and citations with no barriers to access, our marketing team with their SEO expertise, will ensure your research is visible to the widest possible audience, including marketing through our social and email channels to our global community of 100,000+registered recipients.

Society Partnerships

The Journal of Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology (JAPSC) is the official journal of the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology. Radcliffe Cardiology publishes the journal on behalf of the society.   

All authors are automatically emailed at submission to ensure they are aware of and approve the submission of the manuscript, its content and authorship.

All authors that meet the conditions for authorship as indicated below (based on the ICMJE criteria) should be listed and are accountable for the content should it be published. Authors must meet all four of the following conditions to qualify for authorship:
 

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and
    
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
    
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.
    

Those meeting the above criteria are eligible to participate in reviewing and drafting the final manuscript. The corresponding author will be responsible for key communication with the publisher. Those not meeting the above criteria should be acknowledged as a contributor in the acknowledgements section rather than as an author. The Publisher is not held responsible for identifying authors on the manuscript. This information must be supplied at submission.

For original research submissions, the contributions of all authors must be described using the CRediT Taxonomy to describe the individual contributions. We expect that all authors will have reviewed and agreed to their contributions prior to submission and that they will accurately reflect their work.

• Conceptualisation: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Data curation: Producing metadata, scrubbing data and maintaining research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
• Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize. study data.
• Funding acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
• Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
• Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
• Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
• Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
• Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
• Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
• Visualisation: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
• Writing – original draft preparation: Creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
• Writing – review & editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

Articles accepted for publication include the following content types and may be solicited or unsolicited:

To support your submission, please download and edit the templates below:

Title Page | PDF

We believe that a lack of English language should not be a barrier to publishing high-quality scientific research.

We strongly encourage authors that are non-native English speakers to have their manuscripts edited by a native speaker before submitting your article. Authors may choose to use a professional language-editing service before submitting to the journal, particularly if English is not their first language. This is optional and does not guarantee that the submission will be accepted as final decisions will be based on peer review. It may help to ensure that your manuscript is clear to reviewers and journal editors so that they might focus on the merits of your work and will help to improve things like language, grammar, punctuation and clarity.
 

Radcliffe partners with Enago, a leading provider of these services. Radcliffe authors will have free access to an AI tool called Trinka which will check your manuscript for free at no cost and provide you with a summary of suggested improvements. Radcliffe authors will need to create an account with Enago to use this free service. Authors choosing to use the editing service will receive a discounted rate via the Radcliffe Enago page. The site is available in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Radcliffe does not take responsibility for the service and there are alternative services available:

Charlesworth Author Services
Editage 

If a figure, table or illustration has been previously published, please ensure the original source is acknowledged as a figure legend and written permission from the copyright holder is sought. All figures/tables must have one of the below statements if they are not original:
 

If it is data taken from and no permissions are required – Data from: XXX et al. YEAR,RefXXX et al. YEAR,RefXXX et al. YEAR.Ref
If it is reproduced – Source: XXX et al. YEAR.Ref Reproduced with permission from PUBLISHER.
If it is adapted – Source: XXX et al. YEAR.Ref Adapted with permission from PUBLISHER.

Original images that are the authors own and that have not been published elsewhere, do not require permission. If applicable, please indicate this as a legend in your submission. If all images are original, please include a statement to this effect in the manuscript/at submission.

Our journals are open access. Please ensure that open access reuse permission is sought where possible. If it if not, please highlight this by adding ‘This content is not covered by the Creative Commons license of this publication. To reuse, please contact the rights holder.’
 

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for all copyrighted material, including tables, figures and images. Permission is required irrespective of ownership. Permission proof is required at the time of submission. Papers cannot be accepted for publication until all necessary permissions are sought.

A conflict of interest exists when an opinion may be influenced or biased by a secondary interest such as financial gain. Conflicts of interest may occur from commercial or financial interests and/or personal relationships, beliefs and or rivalries such as research funding, consultancy services, serving on speakers’ bureaus, travel expenses, appearance fees, the receipt of share options, or direct employment by a commercial entity.

Our publications make it clear where any conflicts of interest occur and inform readers when research has been funded. All authors, peer reviewers, editors and editorial board members must declare any conflicts of interest pertaining to the article when submitting a manuscript. All sources of support for the work where a conflict exists will be publicised. Conversely, please state clearly should there be no conflicts of interest to declare.

Reviewers must declare any conflicts of interest before conducting a peer review of a manuscript. Reviewers should decline to review if a potential conflict of interest is present. Editorial staff employed by Radcliffe Group, editors-in-chief, guest editors and editorial board members, will not handle manuscripts where a potential conflict of interest or competing interest exists and will be excluded from the peer-review process.

Editorial members and guest editors may submit to the Journal and are not given any priority over other manuscript submissions. Articles authored by any in-house Editorial Board members will be treated with the same rigorous peer-review rules and handled avoiding any potential conflicts of interest. Where an author is a guest editor or editorial board member, this must be declared using one of the following statements in the submitted manuscript: [Author initials], is on the [insert journal name] editorial board; this did not influence peer review. For multiple editorial board members: [Author initials], is a/an [insert role] and [Author initials] is on the [insert journal name] editorial board; this did not influence peer review. [unless they have other COIs, in which case these shall be listed and added to the individual COIs]

The authors must complete the questions asked in our electronic submission system (Editorial Manager), which follows the ICMJE recommendations. These answers will be stored, and a disclosure statement will appear on every manuscript published within the journal based on your response. The purpose of this statement is to provide readers of your manuscript with information about your other interests that could influence how they receive and understand your work. For more information and to download a Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest, which can be submitted with your manuscript, please visit https://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest.

Acknowledgements: The author(s) should acknowledge substantive contributions to the article, including receipt of financial assistance, materials and other resources.

Informed consent: Authors must ensure that manuscripts involving human subjects have written informed consent from the individual(s) involved and must ensure they provide consent to be involved in/aware of the planned publication as soon as possible. "Consent" refers to the consent to publish an individual's personal information. You should make sure that the original copy of informed consent is held by the treating institution should any queries be raised in the future. 

Informed consent must be given voluntarily, with free will and under no coercion and bribery of any kind. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that written informed consent was obtained if experimentation/transplantation with human subjects was conducted. This applies even if the participant is deceased.

The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed and steps should be taken to anonymise information that can identify a patient. Examples of identifying information include individual case histories, photos, x-rays or genetic phenotypes.

For more information please read the Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report. 

The table below provides some template statements that you may use or adapt. You can find further guidance on how to compose this statement on the ICMJE recommendations website.

Ethics approval, human and animal rights: If the work involves the use of animal or human subjects, the author should ensure that the work described has been carried out following the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for research involving humans or the EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments and/or ARRIVE guidelines for animal research. 

All articles must be fully referenced. References must be numbered in order of the first mention. They must be indicated in the text by a number with the full list at the end of the article in numerical order. They must not be used to promote self-interests.
 

Journal Articles 
Journal abbreviations are used as per Medline. If there are more than three authors, list the first three followed by et al., unless there are four authors, in which case list all four. Details should be ordered as: Surname Initials. Article title. Journal name year;volume:page numbers. doi: [doi number]. PMID: [PMID number].

Example: Delpón E, Cordeiro JM, Núñez L, et al. Functional effects of KCNE3 mutation and its role in the development of Brugada syndrome. Circ Arrhythm Electrophysiol 2008;1:209–18. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCEP.107.748103; PMID: 19122847.

Book Chapters
Example: Mansbach H. Sumatriptan: looking back and looking forward. In: Humphrey P, Ferari M, Olesen J (eds). The Triptans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001;183–9.

We operate a double-blind peer-review process. All peer reviews are conducted within the Editorial Manager platform.
 

On submission, items submitted to the journal are assessed by the Editor-in-Chief to assess their suitability for inclusion. Items that fail a technical check are returned to the author at this stage for rectifying and are resubmitted. Manuscripts rejected at this stage are either insufficiently original, scientifically/statistically flawed, poor grammar/English language or deemed unsuitable/more suitable for another journal/outside the journal aims and scope.

The Review Editor, following consultation with the Editor-in-Chief, Deputy Editors and/or a member of the Editorial Board, sends the manuscript for peer review. All peer reviews are conducted independently, treated confidentially and are double-blinded. We require a minimum of two independent peer reviews but will seek a third review where there are conflicting reports. The peer reviewers are selected on the basis of their expertise in the article subject matter and have no conflicts of interest. Peer reviewers are not part of the editorial staff and are independent of the article.

The peer-review feedback is used to critically assess the quality of the article, to assess its suitability for inclusion in the journal and to ensure its credibility of scientific information.

Following review, manuscripts are either accepted without modification, accepted pending modification, or may require further revision, in which case the manuscripts may be returned to the author(s) to incorporate required changes, or may be rejected outright. Not all articles that are revised are subsequently accepted. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to accept or reject any proposed amendments. The Editors will not consider papers previously rejected by the journal.

Once the authors have revised a manuscript in accordance with the reviewers’ comments, the manuscript is returned to the reviewers to ensure the revised version meets their quality expectations. Once approved, the manuscript is sent to the Editor-in-Chief for final approval prior to publication. We aim to complete the peer review process with the average time from submission to the first decision within 6 weeks and submission to a final decision within 10 weeks.

It is our aim to ensure authors are notified of any rejection or retraction as soon as possible. An editor can reject an article at any time before publication, including after acceptance if there are concerns over the work. In the event that a journal is no longer published, access to all articles will be available via alternative platforms, such as PubMed Central, ESCI or Scopus.

Radcliffe is committed to an open science landscape, removing barriers from the sharing of research and the underlying data. This facilitates openness, transparency and reproducibility of research. All Radcliffe journals are open access, and we encourage our authors to share their research data. Research data refers to the information gathered, reviewed, analysed, generated or created and can be presented in a variety of formats including numerical, descriptive, aural, or visual. We encourage Radcliffe authors to:
 

1. share your research data in a relevant public data repository, where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid subject privacy concerns.
2. include a data availability statement (DAS) that links to your data. Where the data cannot be shared, you should confirm why it is not possible to share the data within this statement.
3. cite the data in your research.

A recent study has found that citations can be increased by up to 25% for articles that share their data in a repository (Colavizza 2020). 

As all of our journals operate under a double-blind peer-review process, if sharing your data, you will need to use a repository that includes an option to preserve your anonymity.

Authors are encouraged to share their data but not required to. The decision to publish will not be affected by whether or not the authors share their research data.

We advise authors to speak to your institutional librarian, funder or colleagues for guidance on choosing a repository that is relevant to your discipline. Alternatively, some useful resources for searching for a suitable repository are FAIRsharing and re3data.org, which provide a list of certified data repositories. Some general repositories that are not subject-specific include:
 

• Dryad Digital Repository
• Figshare
• Harvard Dataverse
• Mendeley 
• DataOpen Science Framework
• Zenodo
• Code Ocean (with code) 

As per the ICMJE recommendations data sharing statements should include:
 

1. whether individual de-identified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared (“undecided” is not an acceptable answer);
2. what data, in particular, will be shared;
3. whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.);
4. when the data will become available and for how long;
5. by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism).

The table below provides some template statements that you may use or adapt. You can find further guidance on how to compose this statement on the ICMJE recommendations website.

In order to be compliant with open access funder policies, from 01 April 2022, original research must include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible. Please choose an appropriate statement from the list below to accompany your submission: 

Radcliffe supports the Force 11 Data Citation Principles, as such all publicly available datasets must be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI) using the following format and in line with the Radcliffe reference style:
 

[dataset]* Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), accession number/DOI * The [dataset] tag will help us identify and tag the correct citation, but this will be removed prior to publication.

We protect an individual's data and will not publish any patient data that might identify an individual without their written consent. For detailed information on our data sharing policy please click here.

All accepted manuscripts will be subject to editorial revisions for clarity, punctuation, syntax and conformity to house style.
 

Laid-out proofs will be sent to the corresponding author following the first stage of editing. Any requests for changes must be returned by the deadline given. Articles are considered final once an author approves the corrected proofs. Only minor changes can be made at the proofing stage; major changes will not be accepted.

CCBYNC

Articles published in our Journals are gold open access, which means the version of record (VoR) is freely available, immediately upon publication, without charge, and allows users to read, download, copy, redistribute and make derivative works for non-commercial purposes, provided the original work is cited correctly.

The author retains all non-commercial rights and Radcliffe Medical Media retains all commercial rights (unless otherwise stated) for articles published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial CC-BY-NC 4.0 license. 

After your manuscript is accepted the corresponding author will be asked to sign a mandatory publishing agreement to grant us permission to publish the manuscript under these terms.

CCBY
From 01 April 2022, we offer the option of publication under the CC-BY 4.0 license for an article publication charge of £1,750 | €2,069 | $2,299 to UK Research Councils (UKRI) and The Wellcome Trust funded authors. Funded authors who wish to use this option to comply with funder mandates must indicate this upon submission by selecting the correct option in the submission system. 

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for all copyrighted material, including tables, figures and images. Evidence will need to be provided for all permissions granted.

After your manuscript is accepted the corresponding author will be asked to sign a mandatory publishing agreement to grant us permission to publish the manuscript under these terms.

Radcliffe General License 
Radcliffe Medical Media retain all rights (unless otherwise stated) for articles that are not published under a creative commons open-access license (pre-2019). Permission to reproduce such an article or any of its contents for commercial purposes, either in full or in part, should be sought from the publication's Managing Editor.

To support open access publication costs, Radcliffe Cardiology and Radcliffe Vascular charge an Article Publication Charge (APC) to authors upon acceptance of an unsolicited paper, as follows:
 

From 01 April 2022, we offer the option of publication under the CC-BY license for UKRI and Wellcome Trust funded submissions. An article publication charge of £1,750 | €2,069 | $2,299 applies. Authors who wish to use this option must indicate this upon submission by selecting the correct funding option in the submission system. 

Members of the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology will receive a 30% discount on the APC.

Submissions from the UK will be subject to VAT. A VAT registration number should be supplied if applicable. If you are not registered for VAT, your invoice will still have VAT added.
 

After manuscript acceptance, the corresponding author will be contacted, and an invoice will be sent. Accepted articles will not be published until payment has been received.

A 100% waiver is applicable under the following circumstances:
 

• For all content solicited by Radcliffe Cardiology/Radcliffe Vascular.
• For all letters and editorials submitted to the journal.
• If the corresponding author is from a low-income country (as defined by the World Bank). For a full list, see here.

A 50% waiver is applicable under the following circumstances:

• If the corresponding author is from a lower-middle-income country (as defined by the World Bank). For a full list, see here. 
• If the corresponding author is an editorial board member. [Update effective 01.09.22]

A 30% waiver is applicable under the following circumstances:

• Society member discounts are available on valid agreements with the publisher for unsolicited content.

A 25% waiver is applicable under the following circumstances:

• If the corresponding author submits a paper within 12 months of completing their most recent peer review for a Radcliffe journal.
• If the corresponding author is from an upper-middle-income country (as defined by the World Bank). For a full list, please see here. 
• Society member discounts are available on valid agreements with the publisher. 

Discretionary waivers may also be considered.

Radcliffe Cardiology/Radcliffe Vascular remains dedicated to helping researchers to disseminate scientific information globally and is working to partner with individual institutions to offer full or partial APC discounts. If you are an institution looking to partner with us, or think your institution should, then please contact the Publishing Director.

To ensure editorial integrity, the waiver process is not handled by the managing editors. Authors should submit a waiver request during the electronic submission process.

We take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where misconduct has occurred. In no case shall we as the publisher or our editors encourage or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place to published and unpublished papers. 
 

Our journals use similarity checking software to detect unoriginal material and to avoid plagiarism. Where duplication is highlighted, the concerns will be raised with the author.

We do not permit the manipulation of research data through data falsification or data fabrication. Where data falsification or fabrication is suspected, the concerns will be raised with the author.

We reserve the right to reverse decisions to accept a submission where we believe our editorial policies have been infringed and papers suspected of misconduct will not be considered for publication. We reserve the right to inform the author’s co-authors and/or institution/regulatory body when such instances occur.

We take strive to ensure the academic integrity of our journals and to ensure that all content is reproduced correctly. However, we cannot guarantee the accuracy, adequacy or completeness of the information and cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use thereof. Occasionally circumstances may arise were an article is published that must later be retracted or removed. We commit to retract, correct and apologise for any inaccuracies or misleading statements with due prominence through errata which are issued as needed. Any errors should be reported to the journal’s Managing Editor. In all cases, our archives at The British Library and the Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries retain all versions.

Advertising is not permitted to influence editorial decisions. Advertisements cannot be carried by the journal that juxtapose editorial content on the same product. Adverts may appear at the front and back of a journal (never within text). Misleading adverts may be refused. 

Any complaints should be first directed to the Editorial Office/Managing Editor of the Journal in writing. If they are the subject of the complaint, please raise this with the Publishing Director. We as the Publisher will aim to deal with any complaints or allegations of misconduct as appropriately and as swiftly as possible. If not resolved satisfactorily, any complaints can be passed to the overseeing body or ombudsmen where one exists. Complaints may be referred to COPES within six months if it cannot be resolved through the journal's complaints procedure and only if it pertains to procedural complaints rather than editorial content.

Reprints of all published articles are available to authors, institutions and commercial organisations. Reprints are published as they appear in the journal unless a correction is to be added. Please contact Rob Barclay at rob.barclay@radcliffe-group.com

The Editor-in-Chief/Deputy Editor-in-Chief is appointed by the Publisher and/or Society (if a society-owned journal) as an agent and serves at the pleasure of the Publisher/Society. The Editor-in-Chief agrees to assist in a variety of aspects to support the journal, their responsibilities include (but are not limited to):
 

- Supporting the strategic development of the journal.

- Ensuring academic integrity and scientific expertise for the journal.

- Ensuring that accepted content is of the highest possible quality for publication in the journal.

- Making editorial decisions based on the quality and suitability of the journal and not for any political or financial gain.

- Evaluating new submissions to assess their suitability for peer review or immediate rejection, based on journal aims and scope as well as quality standards.

- Deciding on acceptance or rejection following peer review and providing suggestions for revision as appropriate.

- Acting as a final arbiter of the content.

- Suggesting potential authors and proposing titles/topics warranting inclusion or consideration in the journal.

- Ensuring the journal operates ethically and observes the policies set forth herein.

- Providing advice and guidance on editorial board structure and suggesting new members or membership renewal as appropriate.

- Promoting their editorship via appropriate channels to attract high-quality submissions, for example by passively raising the journal’s profile.

- Deputy EiC acting as EiC if required, e.g., for any submissions co-authored by the EiC.

Section editors, associate editors, regional editors, and editorial board members benefit the journal by helping to improve turnaround times, increase visibility and submissions and to help expand the scope of a journal. They agree to assist in a variety of aspects of running the journal, their responsibilities include (but are not limited to):
 

- Supporting the journal’s Editor-in-Chief to drive the overall quality of the journal.

- Providing scientific expertise for the journal.

- Submitting one review or expert opinion piece every two years.

- Contributing a minimum of two peer reviews per year on articles they feel qualified to review.

- Promoting the journal to attract high-quality submissions, for example by passively raising the journal’s profile and promoting their board membership where appropriate.

- Providing feedback and suggestions for the journal’s improvement and development.

- Suggesting relevant topics for consideration and potential authors that are within the aims and scope of the journal.

- Attend an annual board meeting so that members can be kept abreast of key journal developments and performance, but this is not compulsory.

Editorial Board members are regularly rotated (ideally once every two to three years) and as a Publisher, we encourage diversity in all areas of our editorial boards (nationalities, geographical reach and gender).

Editors-in-Chief, Deputy Editors and Section Editors are selected via an external recruitment and interview process where we would advertise a vacant position on our website and advertise this directly to our cardiovascular community. Editorial Board members are selected based on their activity, knowledge, and research in the field. They should be leaders in research, forward-thinking academics who are reliable and respected in their field and well-positioned to add credit to the journal.

In order to ensure a strong copy flow, which is critical to ensure the success of a journal, submissions may from time to time be solicited from experts in the field. These are identified in conjunction with the Editor-in-Chief, editorial board and Managing Editor/Publisher to ensure solicited articles are of the highest quality and relevance to the field.

To ensure the journal remains relevant, solicited content is identified based on emerging/hot topics in the field by examining content presented at key conferences that offers new data to the research area, including any important unpublished studies. In addition,  other journal publications are reviewed to identify key trials that may be suitable for summarising their impact on clinical practice in a review article.

For solicited submissions, high-profile, expert authors are identified through publication databases such as Web of Science and Dimensions as well as on recommendation by the Editor-in-Chief, senior editors and editorial board. Authors are solicited based on their research impact (citations, publishing activity, leaders in research, forward-thinking academics and experience within the field). Solicited authors should be reliable and respected in the research community.

Solicited submissions are still always subject to a rigorous double-blind peer-review process.