Author Guidelines

Thank you for contributing to Journal of Academic Ophthalmology. Please read the instructions carefully and observe all the directions given. Failure to do so may result in unnecessary delays in publishing your article. All manuscripts must be submitted at the following link:

https://www2.cloud.editorialmanager.com/ophthalmology/default2.aspx

Submission Checklist
Manuscript Format
Digital Artwork Preparation
Submission Procedure
Production Procedure
Policy Statements
Statements & Declarations
Research Data Policy and Data Availability Guidelines for Authors
Supplementary materials
Article Publishing Charge

Submission Checklist

Author Information
◽All authors: full name, degrees, department, affiliation, e-mail address
◽Corresponding author: mailing address, telephone number

Manuscript File
◽Must be digital - hard copy submissions are not accepted

Abstract and Keywords
◽See the section Article Types for word limit

References
◽Cited sequentially in AMA style

Figures and Tables
◽Cited sequentially and included in the main document

Art Files
◽Must be saved separately from the main document

Permissions
◽Required if you plan to reproduce content from a published source or include a photograph of a patient

Ethnics Policies & Conflict of Interest
◽Authors are required to disclose any conflict of interest as per ICMJE COI guidelines and form
◽Declaration to be accompanied with studies involving human or animal participants

Manuscript Format

Article Types

JAO accepts research articles, editorials, and case reports for publication. Each type allows an abstract of up to 350 words, with no limit on the number of keywords. Titles for all article types may be up to 20 words in length.

Research Article – Presents original research findings, including background, methodology, results, and discussion, contributing new knowledge or insights to the field of academic ophthalmology.
Editorial – Offers expert commentary, perspective, or opinion on current topics, trends, or developments in ophthalmology, often authored by leaders in the field.
Case Report – Describes unique or unusual cases of interest to academic ophthalmology readership, including educational tools, teaching methodology and curricula and outcomes, with discussion of their relevance to academic ophthalmology.

General Guidelines

You must submit a digital copy of your manuscript. Hard copy submissions are not accepted.
Keep the format of your manuscript simple and clear. We will set your manuscript according to our style—do not try to “design” the document.
The manuscript, including the title page, abstract and keywords, text, references, figure captions, and tables should be typewritten, double-spaced in 12-point font with 1-inch margins all around and saved as one file.
Each figure should be saved as its own separate file. Do not embed figures within the manuscript file.
Keep abbreviations to a minimum and be sure to explain all of them the first time they are used in the text.
The manuscripts should be written in American English.
The authors should use Système International (SI) measurements. For clarity, nonmetric equivalents may be included in parentheses following the SI measurements.
Use generic names for drugs. You may cite proprietary names in parentheses along with the name and location of the manufacturer.
Credit suppliers and manufacturers of equipment, drugs, and other brand-name material mentioned in the manuscript within parentheses, giving the company name and primary location.

Language

Manuscripts must be written in English in a clear and concise manner. Any author who is not fluent in idiomatic English is urged to seek assistance with manuscript preparation prior to submission. Reviewers are not expected to correct grammatical errors and any deficiency in this area may detract from the scientific content of the paper and result in acceptance delays or rejection.

Title Page

This journal adheres to a single-blinded peer-review policy. The title page should be included in the main document.
The title page should list the article title and the corresponding author’s full name, degree, title, department, affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, and telephone and fax numbers. It should also list the full name, degree, title, department, and affiliation of every co-author.

Abstract and Keywords

See the section Article Types for word limits.The abstract should briefly outline the content of the article and any conclusions it may reach. The keywords should be words a reader would be likely to use in searching for the content of the article. The abstract should include the following sections: Background, Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusion.

Main Document

Please clearly distinguish the hierarchy of headings within the manuscript by using capital letters, underline, italic, and bold styles as necessary.
As needed, use italic, superscripts, subscripts, and boldface, but otherwise do not use multiple fonts and font sizes.
Do not insert page or section breaks except where noted in the Author Instructions.
Use hard returns (the Enter key) only at the end of a paragraph, not at the end of a line. Allow lines of text to break automatically in your word-processing software. Do not justify your text.
Use only one space, not two, after periods.
Create tables using the Table function in Microsoft Word.

Acknowledgments

The source of any financial support received and recognition of personal assistance for the work being published should be indicated at the end of the article, just before the Reference section, under the heading Acknowledgments.

Conflict of Interest

All authors (including corresponding and co-authors associated with the manuscript) must make a formal statement at the time of submission indicating any potential conflict of interest that might constitute an embarrassment to any of the authors if it were not to be declared and were to emerge after publication. Such conflicts might include, but are not limited to, shareholding in or receipt of a grant or consultancy fee from a company whose product features in the submitted manuscript or which manufactures a competing product. Should the article be accepted for publication, this information will be published with the paper.

Types of conflicts include: Consulting, Royalties, Research Support, Institutional Support, Ownership, Stock/Options, Speakers Bureau, and Fellowship Support. Any commercial entity whose products are described, reviewed, evaluated, or compared in the manuscript, except for those disclosed in the Acknowledgments section, are potential conflicts.

This journal follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and an ICMJE disclosure of potential conflicts of interest (COI) form must be submitted for each author at the time of manuscript submission. Forms must be submitted even if there is no conflict of interest. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy prior to submission.

A conflict of interest statement must also be included in the manuscript after any "Acknowledgements" and "Funding" sections and should summarize all aspects of any conflicts of interest included on the ICMJE form. If there is no conflict of interest, authors must include 'Conflict of Interest: none declared'.

Please click http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest to download a Conflict of Interest form. The disclosure information is important in article processing. If the provided forms are incomplete or missing, it can cause delays in publishing of article.

Informed Consent

The journal adheres to the principles set forth in the Helsinki Declaration and holds that all reported research conducted with human participants should be conducted in accordance with such principles. Reports describing data obtained from research conducted in human participants must contain a statement in the Methods section indicating approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The authors should also indicate whether or not individual consent for the study was obtained, or whether it was waived.

References

References should be the most recent and pertinent literature available. It is essential that they are complete and thoroughly checked. If the reference information is incomplete, good online sites to search for full details are the National Library of Medicine: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/; Books in Print: http://www.booksinprint.com/; PubMed: http://www.booksinprint.com/; or individual publisher Web sites.

References must be listed in AMA style, using Index Medicus journal title abbreviations.
References follow the article text. Insert a page break between the end of text and the start of references.
References must be cited sequentially (NOT alphabetically) in the text using superscript numbers.
By way of exception to AMA style, do not italicize book titles or journal title abbreviations and do not put a period at the end of a reference.
List all author names, up to and including six names. For more than six authors, list the first three followed by et al.
References should be styled per the following examples:

Citing a journal article:

Citing a chapter in a book:

Citing a book:

Citing a thesis:

Citing a government publication:

Citing an online article:

Citing a symposium article:

Figure Captions

Figures include photographs or radiographs, drawings, graphs, bar charts, flow charts, and pathways, but NOT lists or tables.
Figures must be cited sequentially in the text. Number all figures (and corresponding figure captions) sequentially in the order they are cited in the text.
Figure captions should be written after the reference list. Insert a page break between the end of references and the start of figure captions.
Figure captions should include a description of the figure and/or each lettered part (A, B, etc.) and of any portions of the figure highlighted by arrows, arrowheads, asterisks, etc.
For a figure borrowed or adapted from another publication (used with permission), add a credit line in parentheses at the end of each figure legend. This credit line should be a complete bibliographic listing of the source publication (as a reference), or other credit line as supplied by the copyright holder. For example (Reprinted with permission from Calfee DR, Wispelwey B. Brain abscess. Semin Neurol 2000;20:357.)

Tables

Data given in tables should be commented on but not repeated in the text. Be sure that lists or columns of related data are composed in a word-processing program like the rest of the text.
Do not intersperse tables in the text. Tables should appear after the figure captions. Insert a page break between the end of the figure captions and the start of the tables.
Tables must be double-spaced and numbered in the same sequence they are cited in the text. A short descriptive title should be provided for each table.
If a table contains artwork, supply the artwork separately as a digital file
For tables borrowed or adapted from another publication (used with permission), add a credit line as the first footnote beneath each table. This credit line should be a complete bibliographical listing of the source publication (as a reference), or other credit line as supplied by the copyright holder. For example, “Reprinted with permission from Calfee DR, Wispelwey B. Brain abscess. Semin Neurol 2000;20:357.” (“Data from . . .” or “Adapted from . . .” may also be used, as appropriate.)
Other footnotes for tables should be indicated in the table using superscript letters in alphabetical order.
Any abbreviations used in the table should be explained at the end of the table in a footnote.

Digital Artwork Preparation

General Guidelines

It is best to use Adobe Photoshop to create and save images, and Adobe Illustrator for line art and labels.
Do not submit art created in Microsoft Excel, Word, or PowerPoint. These files cannot be used by the typesetter.
Save each figure in a separate file.
Do not compress files.
All black-and-white and color artwork should be at a resolution of 300 dpi (dots per inch) in TIFF format. Line art should be 1,200 dpi in EPS or TIFF format.
It is preferable for figures to be cropped to their final size (approximately 3½ inches for a single column and up to 7 inches for a double column), or larger, and in the correct orientation. If art is submitted smaller and then has to be enlarged, its resolution (dpi) and clarity will decrease.

Note: Lower resolutions (less than 300 dpi) and JPEG format (.jpg extension) for grayscale and color artwork are strongly discouraged due to the poor quality they yield in printing, which requires 300 dpi resolution for sharp, clear, detailed images. JPEG format, by definition, is a lower resolution (compressed) format designed for quick upload on computer screens.

Black-and-White Art

Black-and-white artwork can be halftone (or grayscale) photographs, radiographs, drawings, line art, graphs, and flowcharts. Only digital artwork is accepted.
If possible, do not send color art for conversion to black-and-white. Do the conversion yourself so that you can check the results and confirm in advance that no critical details are lost or obscured by the change to black-and-white.
For best results, line art should be black on a white background. Lines and type should be clean and evenly dark. Avoid screens or cross-hatching, as they can darken or be uneven in printing and lead to unacceptable printing quality.

Color Art

All color artwork should be saved in CMYK, not RGB.

Art Labels

Arrows, asterisks, and arrowheads (or other markers) should be white in dark or black areas and black in light or white areas, and large in size. If not, these highlighting marks may become difficult to see when figures are reduced in size during the typesetting process.
Use 1-point (or thicker) rules and leader lines.
Capitalize the first word of each label and all proper nouns. Consider using all capitals if you need a higher level of labels.
Where there are alternate terms or spellings for a named structure, use the most common one and make sure it is consistent with what is used in the text.
Avoid using multiple fonts and font sizes for the labels; use only one or two sizes of a serif font

Submission Procedure

Article Processing Charge (APC)

Currently, there are no article processing fees associated with JAO.

Submission Procedure

Consult the checklist on the first page of this document to ensure that you are ready to submit your manuscript.
Please note: There are no submission charges to submit your manuscript to this journal.
Manuscripts must be submitted electronically at the following link: https://www2.cloud.editorialmanager.com/ophthalmology/default2.aspx.
Always review your manuscript before submitting it. You may stop a submission at any phase and save it to submit later. After submission, you will receive a confirmation email.

You may also check the status of your manuscript by logging in to the submission system. The Editor in Chief will inform you via email once a decision has been made.

Initial evaluation

All submitted manuscripts will be checked by the Editorial Office to determine whether they are properly prepared and whether they follow the ethical policies of the journal. All submitted manuscripts are screened for potential plagiarism via iThenticate software. Manuscripts that do not fit the journal's ethics policy or do not meet the standards of the journal will be rejected before peer review. Incomplete manuscripts not prepared in the advised style will be sent back to authors without scientific review. After these checks, the Editorial Office will consult the journal’s Editor-in-Chief to determine whether the manuscript fits the scope of the journal and whether it is scientifically sound. Manuscripts with insufficient priority for publication will be rejected promptly. Please write your text in good English (American usage is accepted). The Editor reserves the right to reject a manuscript on the grounds of insufficient language quality. Reject decisions at this stage will be verified by the Editor-in-Chief.

Peer Review Process

Each manuscript accepted by the Editorial Office undergoes a strict peer review process. At least two referees are assigned to Research Article, Editorial, and Case Report. The reviewers are chosen according to their areas of expertise in the field. An appropriate selection of keywords will help with assignment. The review process is done in a single-blinded fashion; the reviewer knows the identity of the authors/institution, but the authors does not know the identity of the reviewers. This anonymization procedure is provided by the Editorial Office to convey a maximum of impartiality.

Preprint Server Statement

Journal of Academic Ophthalmology encourages the submission of manuscripts that have been deposited in an initial draft version in preprint repositories such as Research Square, arXiv, and medRxiv. Drafts of short conference abstracts or degree theses posted on the website of the degree-granting institution, and draft manuscripts deposited on authors’ or institutional websites are also welcome. All other prior publication is forbidden.

During submission, authors should (1) note use of the preprint repository in the cover letter, (2) state what adjustments and/or updates the draft has undergone between deposition and submission and (3) cite the preprint, including the DOI, as a reference in the manuscript.

After submission to the journal, and until a final decision has been made, authors are discouraged from depositing versions of their manuscript as preprints. Upon publication authors should add a link from the preprint to the published article. Twelve months after publication, authors can update the preprint with the accepted manuscript.

Revision Procedure

Should the editors decide that your article requires a revision, you will need to make the changes via a word- processing program and resubmit it electronically.
Log In to the submission system and find your article, which will be marked for revision.
The best way to make revisions to your manuscript is by enabling the Track Changes mode in Microsoft Word, which will automatically highlight and mark up revised text. Please submit both a marked up copy and a clean copy of your revised manuscript to the submission system.
Your original files will still be available after you upload your revised manuscript, so you should delete any redundant files before completing the submission.
You will also be provided space in which to respond to the reviewers’ and editors’ comments. Please be as specific as possible in your response.

Production Procedure

Page Proofs

Page proofs will be sent to you via email. The proofs will be in a PDF file format, which should be opened using Acrobat Reader software. You will receive further instructions with your proofs. Take this opportunity to check the typeset text for typographic and related errors. Elective alterations are difficult to accommodate owing to the associated time and expense of introducing them. Therefore, please be sure that when you submit your manuscript, it is accurate, complete, and final.

Policy Statements

Statement on Liability

The legislation on product liability makes increased demands on the duty of care to be exercised by authors of scientific research and medical publications. This applies in particular to papers and publications containing therapeutic directions or instructions and doses or dosage schedules. We therefore request you to examine with particular care, also in your own interest, the factual correctness of the contents of your manuscript once it has been copyedited and returned to you in the form of galley proofs. The responsibility for the correctness of data and statements made in the manuscript rests entirely with the author.

Submission Declaration and Verification

By submitting a research article to the Journal of Academic Ophthalmology (JAO), you certify and warrant that you have the authorization of all coauthors to submit the work for consideration. You confirm that you are the sole author(s) of the article, are legally entitled to submit it, and have the authority to grant the journal permission to publish it. If applicable laws require the article to be published in the public domain, you must inform the journal at the time of submission.

You further affirm that the research article is original, has not been published elsewhere, is not under consideration by another journal, and does not infringe upon any existing copyright or legal rights. The article must not contain any material that is unlawful, defamatory, or that would, if published, breach any contract or confidentiality agreement.

Finally, you confirm that due care, diligence, and appropriate investigations were undertaken in preparing the article to ensure its accuracy. To the best of your knowledge, all factual statements are true and correct.

Copyright Statement

All submitted manuscripts must be original, unpublished work not under consideration by another journal. The Journal of Academic Ophthalmology uses CrossCheck powered by iThenticate to detect plagiarism, duplicate publication, and other forms of scientific misconduct. Suspected violations may result in investigation and possible retraction.

If reproducing text, tables, or figures from a published source—even your own previously published work—you must obtain written permission from the copyright holder (typically the publisher). For unpublished material provided by another individual, written permission from that individual is required. Authors are responsible for securing permissions, paying any associated fees, providing copies of permissions with the manuscript, and including appropriate credit lines in captions, footnotes, or text. Delays in publication can occur if permissions are not obtained.

Articles published in the Journal of Academic Ophthalmology are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Statement of Ethics

This journal follows the ethical guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and authors are expected to comply with these principles.

For manuscripts involving human or animal participants, authors must obtain formal review and approval—or documented exemption—from an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB) or ethics committee. Any required HIPAA consent must also be secured. These approvals or exemptions should be clearly described in the Methods section, including the full name of the reviewing body. All clinical trials must be registered in a publicly accessible trials registry, with both the registry name and registration number provided.

Patient Permission Policy and GDPR Policy

A signed patient permission form is required for every recognizable individual whose photograph is used. If permission cannot be obtained, the patient’s identity must be fully obscured prior to publication, though this may reduce the educational value of the image. Written consent must be obtained from all recognizable individuals; for minors or persons under supervision, consent must be signed by both parents, a legal guardian, or a supervisor. A sample consent form is available in the journal’s authors’ lounge.

All submitted images must be fully anonymized and free of personal data, both visibly and in the file’s metadata. Personal data may appear directly (e.g., a name or birth date in an X-ray) or be embedded in metadata, which can be accessed with appropriate software. Cropping features in programs like PowerPoint or Word may conceal but not remove such data. The journal cannot accept or store any image containing personal data. Authors with questions about data protection requirements should contact the editorial office before submission.

Statements & Declarations

The following statements must be included in your submitted manuscript under the heading 'Statements and Declarations'. This should be placed just before the References section. Please note that submissions that do not include required statements will be returned as incomplete.

Funding

Authors must disclose all sources of financial support for the work, including grants, sponsorships, or institutional funding. Funding statements should specify the name of the funding organization and any associated grant numbers.

Example statements:

This work was supported by [Funding Agency] (Grant numbers [X] and [Y]). Author A.B. has received research support from Company A.

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

Competing Interests

Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the submitted work. Disclosures should cover interests from the three years prior to initiating the work (including research and manuscript preparation). Interests outside this timeframe should also be reported if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the work.

Example statements:

Financial interests: Author A and B declare no financial interests. Author C has received speaker and consultant honoraria from Company M, as well as research funding from Company M and Company N. Author D has received travel support from Company O. Non-financial interests: Author D has served on advisory boards for Company M and Company N.

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Author Contributions

A clear description of each author’s role in the study and manuscript preparation is encouraged but not required.

Example statement:

All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name], and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name], and all authors provided comments on previous versions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Data Availability Policy

Authors are encouraged but not required to include a Data Availability Statement in their articles. This statement should explain where the data supporting the article's results can be found. If your data is in a public repository, provide hyperlinks to the datasets. If data can be shared upon request, state that it's available from the authors. If no new data were generated or analyzed for the study, you may state that.

Example statements: "The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT LINK TO DATASETS]." Alternatively, "The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request."

Important Note for Studies with Human/Animal Subjects: Manuscripts reporting results from studies involving humans or animals must include additional declarations. Please refer to the "Research Data Policy and Data Availability" section for more details.

Ethics approval

If the research involved human or animal subjects, authors should include a statement confirming approval or exemption from the relevant institutional or national research ethics committee. This statement should include the full name of the ethics committee and, if available, its reference number. For studies involving animals, their data, or biological material, authors should provide detailed information in the submission about the ethical treatment of these animals. If the study was granted an exemption or did not require ethics approval, it must be clearly detailed in the manuscript.

Example statements include: "This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of University B (Date.../No....)," or

"This is an observational study. The XYZ Research Ethics Committee has confirmed that no ethical approval is required."

For detailed information on relevant ethical standards and criteria, please refer to the sections on “Research involving human participants, their data or biological material”, “Research involving animals, their data or biological material”.

Consent to participate

For all research involving human subjects, freely-given, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.

Example statement:

“Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.”
“Written informed consent was obtained from the parents.”

Please refer to the section on “Informed Consent” for additional help with completing this information.

Consent to publish

Individuals may consent to participate in a study, but object to having their data published in a journal article. If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. This is in particular applicable to case studies. A statement confirming that consent to publish has been received from all participants should appear in the manuscript.

Example statement:

“The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent for publication of the images in Figure(s) 1a, 1b and 1c.”

Please refer to the section on “Informed Consent” for additional help with completing this information.

Research Data Policy and Data Availability Guidelines for Authors

Research Data Policy

JAO encourages the sharing of research data to promote transparency, reproducibility, and the advancement of knowledge within the academic community. We recognize the importance of making data accessible to other researchers while respecting ethical and legal considerations. To this end, we have established the following guidelines for the inclusion of research data statements in submitted manuscripts.

Data Sharing Expectations

Authors are encouraged to make their data available to the public whenever possible, except where privacy, confidentiality, or legal constraints apply. Data should be shared in a manner that allows verification of results and the reuse of data for further research.

Data Availability Statements

Authors are required to include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscripts. This statement should clearly outline where the data supporting the findings of the study can be accessed, or explain why the data cannot be shared. Below are examples of acceptable Data Availability Statements:

Data Available in a Public Repository: The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT LINK TO DATASETS].
Data Available on Request: The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
No Data Available: No datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Supplementary materials

Authors can publish online supplementary files along with their article. Each supplementary file should include an article title, journal name, authors' names, affiliations, and email address of the corresponding author. supplementary files will be published as received from the authors without any conversion, editing, or reforming.

Article Publishing Charge

Currently there are no Article Processing Charges (APC) for publication of the journal on all submissions.