Submissions

Author Guidelines

Manuscript submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online through the online submission procedure. The submission should include:

• cover letter where the authors declare that the manuscript has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere;
• manuscript;
• tables and figures;
• author's contribution statement (individual contribution to the manuscript);
• conflict of interest statement (a conflict of interest exists when authors or their institutions have financial or personal relationship with other people or organizations that could inappropriately bias conduct and findings of the study);
• permission to reproduce figures, if appropriate.

NOTE FOR ISS AUTHORS: Authors whose affiliation is Istituto Superiore di Sanità can submit their paper only after completing the usual ISS authorization procedure (Infoweb).

Receipt of author's paper will be acknowledged by an email containing an identification number which should be used in future correspondence.

The publication of Monographic Sections has been discontinued. In case you wish to present a small number of coordinated contributions on specific themes concerning priorities in public health, please contact the Editorial office.

If only regional or Italian data are presented in the Manuscript, these should be compared with similar data available at European or international level.

Review procedure

Each paper submitted to Annali is subjected to the following procedures:

• it is reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief for general suitability;
• if it is judged suitable, qualified referees are selected and a peer review process takes place;
• based on the recommendations of the referees and replies of the authors, the Editor-in-Chief decides whether the article should be accepted, modified or rejected;
• once the paper has been accepted, authors will receive proofs from the editorial office, which should be corrected and returned (usually within three working days).

Manuscript presentation
Please ensure that your manuscript follows these guidelines. 
Manuscripts should be written in good English, as concisely as possible to allow a clear understanding of the text.
The title should be followed by the complete name of the authors, their affiliation – only one per author and in the original language – town and country. The name of the Working Group should appear at the end of the by-line; its composition should be reported before the References, names and affiliations of each member are required. The name and address, telephone and e-mail of the corresponding author should also be indicated. Provide also a running head of no more than 40 characters (including spaces). Original articles should normally be organized into different sections (i.e.: Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions). In the Methods section a specific paragraph on the adopted statistical analysis should necessarily be included.

Each article should be accompanied by:

• an abstract of about 150 words; the abstract should be structured when required (such as in original articles);
• key words up to a maximum number of five (MeSH headings, whenever possible. Refer to: https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search).

Tables and figures should be kept to a minimum and be presented only if necessary.
Authors should deal responsibly and effectively with security issues that might be raised by their papers (see: Statement on Scientific Publication and Security Science 2003;299:1149).

Annali follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publications of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) www.icmje.org recently updated with a specific section II.A.4. on Artificial Intelligence (AI)–Assisted Technology. In accordance with these Recommendations, Annali requires authors to disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)– assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology should describe, in both the cover letter and the submitted work, how they used it.

Authors are also encouraged to use fair, accurate and respectful language, but preferences can change and vary across groups and individuals and can also evolve overtime. The following guidelines may help in use of a correct terminology in the area of HIV:

https://www.cdc.gov/stophivtogether/library/stop-hiv-stigma/fact-sheets/cdc-lsht-stigma-factsheet-language-guide.pdf
https://www.hptn.org/resources/HIVLanguageGuide
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000144725

The name of the bioresource (and identifier, if available) which provided samples/data useful for the conduct of the study should be reported in extense, either in the Material and methods section or in the Acknowledgements.

 Length of the text

To provide a text that meets the requirements of our publication:

• the letter to the Editor should be about 450 words; it does not need an abstract; please contact the editorial office in advance if you wish to submit a letter;
• the editorial should be no longer than 1000 words; editorials are submitted on invitation. Please contact the editorial office in advance if you wish to submit an editorial; 
• the commentary, 2000 words; the commentary is an opinion piece or reflection on recent papers previously published on Annali ISS or elsewhere; an abstract is required; please contact in advance the editorial office;
• the brief note, 3000 words, including about 15 references, one table and one figure;
• the article, 6000 words, including about 40 references, and up to a maximum of three tables and two figures;
• the review should be no longer than 10 000 words, including no more than 100 references, and up to a maximum of four tables and three figures;
• supplementary materials should be no longer than two printed pages. If necessary, authors could invite readers to contact them.

Formatting guidelines
Text

• Use Times New Roman font, 12 point, single spaced;
• do not use the automated features of your application (endnotes, headers, footers, especially for references);
• avoid using bold characters to emphasise words or sentences within the text;
• indicate clearly titles of chapters and subchapters avoiding numbering.

Tables and figures
They should be understandable also without reference to the text and should be numbered in Arabic numerals in a consecutive and independent way according to their citation within the paper.
Tables should be presented on a separate sheet and preceeded by a title. Each column within the table should have a heading. Abbreviations should be reported in full in the legend.
Figures should be loaded as separate files. The following file formats are acceptable: JPEG, TIFF or EPS. Vectorial images (graphs, flow charts, schemes, and other non bitmap material) should be in Excel, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Power Point so as to allow the editorial formatting of the material.
Figures are redrawn into the Annali style by our in-house illustrators.
Photographs must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.
Captions should be presented on a separate sheet and contain a sufficient explanation of their object. They should be concise but comprehensive.

References
All references in the text must be numbered in square brackets, i.e. [1, 2, 3-6], and mentioned at the end of the article in the order in which they are quoted.   They should conform to the “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publications of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (www.icmje.org), according to the following examples. Titles of periodicals should be abbreviated in accordance with the Medline abbreviation of the US National Library of Medicine (www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/aim.html). 

Online journal articles must be cited reporting, in addition to the complete citation, the doi number.

Do not insert websites among the References but directly in the text in parentheses, where necessary.

Articles in journal
Bozzuto G, Ruggieri P, Molinari A. Molecular aspects of tumor cell migration and invasion. Ann Ist Super Sanità. 2010;46(1):66-80. doi: 10.4415/ANN_10_01_09

Books and chapters in a book
Godlee F, Jefferson T. Peer review in health sciences. London: BMJ Books; 1999.
Van Weely S, Leufkens HGM. Background paper: orphan diseases. In: Kaplan W, Laing R (Eds). Priority medicines for Europe and the world – a public health approach to innovation. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2004.

Proceedings
Fadda A, Giacomozzi C, Macellari V. Comparative measurements to validate a new telemetric pressure insoles system. In: 2. International Symposium on measurement, analysis and modelling of human functions. 1. Mediterranean Conference on measurement. Workshop on evaluation check of traceability. Proceedings. Genova: June 14-16, 2004. p. 425-7.

Technical reports
Della Seta M, Di Benedetto C, Leone L, Pizzarelli S, Siegmund U. ETHICSWEB technical guides. Manual for the creation of standards and guidelines for sharing information about knowledge organization systems on ethics and science. Roma: Istituto Superiore di Sanità; 2011. (Rapporti ISTISAN, 11/32).

Legislation
Italia. Decreto legislativo 29 ottobre, n. 419. Riordinamento del sistema degli enti pubblici nazionali, a norma degli articoli 11 e 14 della legge 15 marzo 1997, n. 59. Gazzetta Ufficiale – Serie Generale n. 268, 15 ottobre 1999.
US Social Security Administration. Evidentiary requirements for making findings about medical equivalence. Final rules. Fed Reg. 2006 Mar 1;71(40):10419-33.

The authors should check that each reference cited in the text appears in the reference list and viceversa. References should not include works submitted for publication but not yet accepted or unpublished results, etc. These can be mentioned in the text in parentheses.

Conventions

All Latin or foreign words should be in italics. The authors should use internationally accepted abbreviations. All abbreviations should be spelled out in full the first time they occur in the text, followed by the shortened term in parentheses; afterwards use the abbreviation only.
Avoid abbreviations in the title of the manuscript.
For writing symbols, quantities and units of measurements refer to the International Systems of Units (SI) and the ISO standards.

Licenses and Agreements
Extended quotations and illustrative material taken from other publications must be accompanied by the original permission granted by the Authors and by the publisher or in accordance with the copyright policy of the original publication and the Creative Commons. Responsibility for the contents and opinions expressed on this journal rests solely with the Author(s). 

Please, contact the Editorial Office for any other information. Editorial Office Publishing Unit
Istituto Superiore di Sanità
Viale Regina Elena, 299 00161 Rome, Italy Tel.: +39 06 49902945 Fax: +39 06 49902253
E-mail: annali@iss.it Website: https://www.iss.it/annali1 - https://annali.iss.it/