Additional layout requirements to be introduced by SciELO

• • DOIs must be included on the PDFs (on the first page) and in the XMLs of research manuscripts. DOIs are essential to maximize the visibility and interoperability of articles from SciELO journals. It is a mandatory indexing criterion. SciELO's future bibliometrics requires the presence of the DOI to measure the performance of articles and journals. 

  • ORCiDs need to be included in the PDF (preferred) or landing page of an article. 

  • CC-BY license choice must be stated on every PDF and XML.

  • Detailed affiliations need to be provided after the author’s name and before the abstract. The author affiliation needs to be in either ascending or descending order (min 3 steps) plus the geographic location: the Unit (where applicable), Department/School, University, City and Country. e.g., John Smith, Steve Biko Academic Hospital, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

  • Title, abstract, keywords: For global accessibility, every article needs to have an English abstract and keywords. Where the title of an article is not in English, the English equivalent needs to be provided.

In the near future the following will become compulsory:

• • Author contributions: At the end of each article the contribution of each author and collaborator needs to be stated, e.g., active participants, or, revision and approval of the final version of the manuscript (recommended from 2020).

  • The dates of the evaluation, acceptance and publication of an article need to be stated.

  • SciELO SA journals using the ASSAf Crossref prefix they need to create links to each resource listed in the bibliography / reference list of each article.

  • All journals need to use Crossref’s Reference Linking (https://www.crossref.org/services/reference-linking/). For the steps see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvPhmRMCICg

  • Medical, Health and Biological journals are encouraged to use structured abstracts, i.e. abstracts with distinct, labelled sections (e.g., Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) for rapid comprehension. See: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/policy/structured_abstracts.html.

  • At the end of the abstract it is advisable to add the Contribution / Value-Add / Significance that the article offers, i.e. what makes it different to other research done in that field.

  • The citations of data sets need to be provided where available (see here for a basic guide).

  • In the future the Level 1 Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines will be implemented. See the TOP summary table here.