The manuscripts should be written in English. Brief Communications are intended for the presentation of brief observations that do not warrant full length papers, but have sufficient originality and utility to be considered for publication. The information must be presented in sufficient detail so that readers can understand and appreciate the material presented. Brief communications undergo the same review process as full-length papers and are not published sooner than the full-length papers. The manuscripts are classified according to the following 8 specific areas, and the author should state the appropriate area of interest in their manuscripts. However, the associate editor of each field may request to the author to change the area of interest and resubmit the manuscript, if necessary.

Topics

• Diagnostic Hematology
• Clinical Chemistry
• Clinical Microbiology
• Diagnostic Immunology
• Transfusion and Cell Therapy
• Diagnostic Genetics
• Laboratory Informatics
• General Laboratory Medicine

Article formats

• Original Article
• Review Article (Invited Only)
• Guideline
• Brief Communication
• Opinion
• Letter to the Editor
• Editorials

Have you read and understood our policies? Visit our editorial and publishing policies page to find out more.
Ethical considerations, Clinical trial data sharing plan, duplicate publication, authorship, Conflict of interest, personal data/protection, Plagiarism policy, Reporting sex and gender

• Ethical Considerations: For the policies on the research and publication ethics such as plagiarism/duplicate publication/research misconduct, Ann Lab Med adheres to the “Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (https://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct), previously published as “Guidelines on Good Publication Practice”. Experiments using human subjects, human specimens, clinical specimens, and clinical information should be performed according to the Declaration of Helsinki https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/) and must be approved by the Research Ethics Committee or the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the institution where the experiment was performed. Written informed consent should be obtained from all subjects, when necessary. In the case of an animal study, it should be mentioned that the experimental processes such as breeding and the use of laboratory animals were approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the institution where the experiment was performed or that these processes complied with the rules of the Research Ethics Committee of the institution or National Institutes for Health (NIH) Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (National Research Council. 2011. Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, https://doi.org/10.17226/12910). The authors should retain the raw data of the experiment and study for at least a year after the publication of the paper and should present these data if required by the editorial board.
• Clinical Trial Data Sharing Plan: As of July 1, 2018, manuscripts that report the results of clinical trials must contain a data sharing statement that indicates the following:
  • whether individual deidentified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared
  • what data in particular will be shared
  • whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g. study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.)
  • when the data will become available and for how long
  • by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism)

  Also clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after January 1, 2019 must include a data sharing plan in the trial’s registration. This is an effort of adherence to the ICMJE policy and further information regarding this policy can be found at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html.

• Duplicate Publication: The manuscripts are accepted only on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere. The manuscripts published in this journal cannot be submitted for publication elsewhere. If the author(s) wishes a duplicate or a secondary publication, for example, for the readers of a different language, the author must obtain approval from the Editor-in-Chief of both the first and second journals. Further, the conditios specified in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals http://www.icmje.org (updated December 2017) should be met, such as insertion of a comment as a footnote in the title page of the second journal stating the primary reference and the duplicate nature of the paper.
• Authorship: Only those who have made significant contributions to the preparation and publication of the manuscript are eligible for authorship and should take responsibility for the same. We permit only one co-first author and/or one co-corresponding author, if necessary. All authors should meet following four conditions recommended by ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org). 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; AND 2) drafting the article 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. Each author should sign electronically the Authorship Responsibility and Copyright Transfer Agreement Form attesting that he or she fulfills the authorship criteria before or after acceptance for publication. Authors are required to identify their contributions to the work described at the title page of the manuscript.
• Changes to Authorship: Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any alterations, such as additions, deletions, or reordering of author names, should only occur before the manuscript's acceptance and with the approval of the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the Editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.
• Conflict of Interest: Each author is responsible for disclosing to the Publisher all potential conflicts of interest regarding the manuscript and whether the author regards them as actual conflicts of interest. In particular, funding support (grant) information, if applicable, should be provided with both ‘funding agency’ and ‘grand number’. Corresponding author should sign electronically a statement disclosing any conflict of interest on behalf of all author(s) at the time of submission. Each author also should sign electronically a statement disclosing any conflict of interest at the journal website after acceptance of the manuscript.
• Personal Data and Protection: Information provided during manuscript submission progress will be used for providing services that we offer. ALM is commited to protecting personal data and privacy, and should anyone have concern over this issue, please refer to our privacy policy page. For studies using personal data and any other third-party resources (e.g. social media, webpage and etc.) should be collected and used according to each Terms and Conditions of the source also with appropriate permissions. Please remember to acknowlede those data sources clearly within your manuscript.
• Plagiarism Policy: Not only text but any part of the manuscript, including tables and figures from another publication without permission or copyright attribution may constitute plagiarism. Please note that authors’ reuse of their previous work without attribution can be considered as self-plagiarism. NIH Office of Research Integrity publication (Roig, Miguel. "Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing." (2006)) may guide authors with concerns regarding possible research misconduct. The editorial office processes submitted manuscripts through software-based plagiarism recognition before distributing to associate editors for peer-review. Any form of reproduction from copyrighted material requires obtained permission from the copyright holder in advance. Copyrighted materials include not only text but also figures, tables, illustrations, charts, and photographs. Certain materials such as public domain work or open access content may not require permission, however should be properly acknowledged to its source. Acknowledgement should be made as a foot note or a legend (e.g. "Reprinted from Ann Lab Med. Year;Vol:Page with permission" or "Revised schema from Ann Lab Med. Year;Vol:Page with permission"). To obtain permission to use copyrighted materials published by ALM, refer here for further instructions.
• Reporting Sex and Gender: The term sex and gender should be used in accordance with the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines. This includes the correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (when reporting identity, psychosocial, or cultural factors) and separate reporting and interpretation of the data by sex and gender. If sex and/or gender information are not reported or an exclusive population was involved (i.e., prostate cancer or ovarian cancer), this should be explained.
• Preprint: Authors are allowed to present their findings ahead of publication only for manuscripts that have not conducted peer review posted on recognized noncommercial community preprint servers. Authors must retain copyright for the manuscript so that it may be transferred to the Ann Lab Med if the manuscript is accepted, per the journal’s copyright policy. Authors are expected to declare any relevant preprint information of the work in their cover letter. The preprint cannot be updated while the manuscript is under review and cannot be updated if it is accepted for publication in Ann Lab Med. Once published, authors are responsible for updating their preprint records with publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the Ann Lab Med’s website.