Instructions for authors

The European Respiratory Review presents state-of-the-art reviews, meeting proceedings, editorials and correspondence on current topical issues in respiratory medicine, science and surgery.

All submissions to the ERR are handled via the ScholarOne Manuscripts platform, which provides detailed instructions of how to follow the submission process. If you experience problems or require assistance, you can view the ScholarOne help page here, or contact the site administrator Sarah.Cleveland@ersnet.org.

The following table of contents can be used to navigate these instructions.

Overlapping publications and publications ethics
Manuscript preparation
Review and Series articles (including systematic reviews and meta-analyses)
Correspondence
Online supplementary data
Permission to reproduce materials
Authorship
Copyright
Open access licensing
Publication charges and read-and-publish agreements
Author self-archiving
Peer review
Conflict of interest
Sponsored article packages
Social media
Proofs
Correction policy
Further information and enquiries

Overlapping publications and publication ethics

Authors submitting a paper to the European Respiratory Review do so on the understanding that neither the work nor any part of its essential substance, tables or figures have been or will be published or submitted to another scientific journal or are being considered for publication elsewhere. This must be stated in the cover letter. This restriction does not apply to conference abstracts, articles deposited on non-peer-reviewed recognised community preprint servers such as bioRxiv and or medRxiv, material published under legal requirements for clinical trials reporting or material that forms part of an academic thesis or dissertation, but includes work published in another language. Preprint publication should be declared at the time of submission, and versions of a manuscript that have been altered as a result of the peer review process may not be deposited. After acceptance, authors are requested to update the preprint server record with a link to the final published version of the article on the journal website.

It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that submitted manuscripts are not duplicate publications; any simultaneous submissions of similar or related manuscripts must be declared at the point of submission and electronic copies of the manuscripts in question included as a supplement to your manuscript files. If there are any concerns following submission, the editors reserve the right to take appropriate action.

As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, the ERR follows the COPE codes of conduct and best practice guidelines.

The ERS journals "Publication Ethic and Malpractice Statement" can be found here.

Manuscript preparation

Presentation of manuscripts should be consistent with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). ERS manuscript preparation guidelines can be viewed here.

All manuscripts must be submitted electronically using the online submission at ScholarOne Manuscripts. Detailed instructions of how to submit are available on the website itself and the process is self-explanatory. However, if you do experience problems, please contact the submission site administrator by emailing Sarah.Cleveland@ersnet.org.

Before entering the ERR ScholarOne online submission area, please read and carefully follow the instructions below.

Brief requirements for articles are summarised in the following table. Further details can be found in the relevant sections below.

Article type	Word limit	Figures and tables	References	Online supplement	Abstract
Editorials	1500	2*	10	Not accepted	No
Reviews and series articles	5000	5*	200	Yes	Yes, 250 words
Mini-review articles	2500	4*	50	Yes	Yes, 250 words
Correspondence	1200	1*	12	Not accepted	No

*The number of figures and tables in the above summary refers to the combined total; for example, correspondence can have one figure or one table, not one of each.

General

The manuscript file you submit must be saved as .rtf (rich text format) or .doc (MS Word document).
Abbreviations and unusual terms should be described at the first time of use.
Symbols as defined by the ad hoc working group of the Commission of the European Communities (see Eur Respir J 1993; 6: Suppl. 16) are recommended.
The manuscript should be written in UK English.
Système International (SI) units are recommended.
Equations should be created as normal text.

Title page

Please provide a concise and informative title, limited to 90 characters, including spaces between words.
Include a list of all contributing authors (full names) and all of their affiliations, with a clear indication of who is associated with each institution.
Supply the full correspondence details for the corresponding author, including e-mail address. Please note that only one corresponding author per manuscript should be provided.
Provide a 256-character (including spaces) summary of the "take home" message of your paper, which can be used to publicise your study via social media.

Tables

Tables should be created and inserted into the text document using the 'Table', 'Insert Table'; function in your word processing package. Do not supply tables in a separate file.
Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals.
Limit data to a sensible number of significant figures.
Large tables should be avoided if possible. Due to space restrictions, they may need to be split over two pages.
Please provide a clear footnote for each table, making sure all abbreviations and symbols used are defined.
For reference numbering schemes, citations made in tables should continue in numerical order from the point in the main body text where the table is cited.

Figures

File formats and metadata

Figures must be uploaded as separate files, not as part of the main manuscript text document. During the upload process, you should fill in the “Caption/legend” box including the figure number and legend, so that reviewers know which figure they are looking at. Alternatively, you may add the figure captions at the end of the main manuscript text.
Supply line-art figures in EPS, Adobe Illustrator (.ai) TIFF, JPEG or PNG format. Please ensure image files are not layered and that the image size does not exceed 180 x 230mm. Graphs or bar charts may be supplied in Excel or similar spreadsheet format.
Supply halftone and photographic images in TIFF, PNG, JPEG or EPS format. Minimum resolution should be 300 dpi at the final typeset size (90 mm to 180 mm wide).
As an alternative to the above, you can supply figures as a single- or multi-page PDF. However, you must include figure legends within the PDF, as our submission software will not add them.
If your halftone or photographic image features text or arrows marking out particular features, you may wish to supply an additional copy as a layered Adobe Photoshop (.psd) file, labelled as “Supporting document (not for publication)”. This helps our production staff to ensure optimal reproduction of your figure.
If your figures were originally created in another format that contains extra information (e.g. embedded data in an Excel graph), consider supplying them as supplementary material (eligible article types only).

Size and quantity

Figures constitute a key element of manuscripts submitted to the ERS research journals. However, figures should be limited (both in size and number) to those required to show the essential features described in the manuscript.
Avoid large figures comprising many individual parts: as a maximum, each individual figure must fit to a single PDF page of the journal, with sufficient space for its accompanying caption.
If you have a large number of figures, consider publishing some of them as an online supplement.

Figure presentation

All submitted figures must be clearly named and numbered.
Whether for images, drawings or graphs, no more than four components should be used for a given figure. These should be labelled as a), b), c) and d).
Due to space restrictions, it is essential that each submitted figure show only the areas of interest with enough surrounding area for orientation purposes.
Radiographic images should be of high quality and combined into one array, such as posteroanterior and lateral views. They should also be sized the same to facilitate reproduction.
When several images of a given type are being shown, please reproduce all at the same magnification.
Photomicrographs must have internal linear scale markers (scale bars), since the size and magnification may be altered by the publisher or by the reader’s monitor/display.
Images should correspond in appearance to the tonal relations of the original radiograph (i.e. showing the bones white on a dark background), with the patient's right to the observer's left. CT scans and magnetic resonance images should employ the internationally-accepted 'view from below'.
Please label your images such that all important details are clearly visible. Avoid obscuring large areas of the images with excessive labelling.
Use a sans serif font for all labelling (preferably Arial), and ensure that the font size is reasonable and uniform throughout all the figures in your manuscript.
Please ensure that bar charts and graphs have a white background, with no shading or gridlines.
Use greyscale shading on bar charts and graphs (different weights can be used, e.g. from 0% (white) to 100% (black) for purposes of differentiation), in preference to hatching and patterning.
Three-dimensional effects should not be used in the presentation of bar charts.
For reference numbering schemes, citations made in figures should continue in numerical order from the point in the main body text where the figure is cited.

Guidelines for handling image data

If an image has been enhanced electronically, please explain the alterations that have been made and submit the original image along with the enhanced one. Moreover, keep an electronic set of original images, since our reviewers might ask you to modify their content and the display modus.
The Council of Science Editors (CSE) has established four basic guidelines for handling image data, which authors submitting to the ERR are urged to comply with. 1) No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, removed or introduced. 2) Adjustments of brightness, contrast or colour balance are acceptable if they are applied to the whole image and as long as they do not obscure, eliminate or misrepresent any information present in the original. 3) The grouping of images from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels, fields or exposures must be made explicit by the arrangement of the figure (e.g. dividing lines) and in the text of the figure legend. 4) If the original data cannot be produced by an author when asked to provide it, the acceptance of the manuscript may be revoked.

Captions

Please provide a clear caption for each figure.
Captions should be brief and not repetitive of information given in the text.
Where appropriate, they should include the imaging technique used, the body part imaged and any noteworthy details.
All abbreviations should be expanded.
Use of internal scales should be mentioned.

Acknowledgements

All acknowledgements should be grouped into one paragraph placed after the Discussion section.
Only acknowledge persons who have made substantial contributions, and provide the affiliation of those you name.
Provide the names and affiliation details of members of collaborating bodies.
Financial support should be acknowledged in a separate support statement; financial support provided to individuals must be disclosed on the conflict of interest declaration.

References

Number references consecutively in the order in which they first appear in the text, using full size Arabic numerals in square brackets to cite references.
The first three authors should be listed, followed by et al.
References should conform to the style used in Index Medicus (Vancouver style) as shown in the following examples:
1. Bannerjee D, Khair OA, Honeybourne D. Impact of sputum bacteria on airway inflammation and health status in clinical stable COPD. Eur Respir J 2004; 23: 685-692.
2. Bourbon J, Henrion-Caude A, Gaultier C. Molecular basis of lung development. In: Gibson GJ, Geddes DM, Costable U, Sterk PJ, Corrin B, eds. Respiratory Medicine. 3rd Edn. Edinburgh/Philadelphia, Elsevier Science, 2002; pp. 64-81.
Sources published as websites should be listed in the reference list, not in the text, and only used when an original citation is unavailable; citations should be listed as follows (include the author of the webpage, its title, the URL on which the cited material can be found, and the dates on which the webpage was last accessed by you, and on which it was last updated):
3. WHO. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). www.who.int/csr/sars/en/index.html. Date last updated: June 1 2004. Date last accessed: June 1 2004.
Citations made in figures or tables should continue in numerical order from the point in the main body text where the figure/table is cited.
Works that have not yet been accepted for publication and personal communications should not appear in the reference list.
A copy of any paper cited as "in press" should be uploaded to the ScholarOne submission platform as supplementary material, if at the time of submission they are not yet (or will not be) published online ahead of print.

For further general guidance on how to write papers, please refer to: Sterk PJ, Rabe KF. The joy of writing a paper. Breathe 2008; 4: 224-232, and guidelines for authors on how to write scientific articles to be published in English at http://www.ease.org.uk/publications/author-guidelines

Review and series articles (including systematic reviews and meta-analyses)

The ERR welcomes the submission of all types of reviews in any area of respiratory/thoracic basic or translational science, clinical practice, surgery, radiology, physiology or respiratory sleep medicine.

1. Narrative reviews are welcome, but should demonstrate evidence of the following.

Justification of the article’s importance for the readership.
Statement of concrete aims or formulation of questions.
Description of the literature search. The literature search should be described in detail, including search terms and inclusion criteria. However, this does not need to be undertaken to the same extent as for a systematic review.
Key statements must be supported by references.
Scientific reasoning (e.g. incorporation of appropriate evidence, such as randomised controlled trials in clinical medicine)
Appropriate presentation of data (e.g. absolute versus relative risk)

The SANRA scale for the quality assessment of narrative review articles may provide useful guidance for structuring narrative reviews.

2. Systematic reviews can be of two types:

Those where qualitative synthesis only can be undertaken
Meta-analyses

Reporting should follow PRISMA guidelines. Meta-analysis of observational data should follow MOOSE guidelines. Systematic reviews where only qualitative synthesis can be undertaken should follow SWiM reporting guidelines. A completed PRISMA or MOOSE checklist must be included with the submission. Additionally, systematic reviews and meta-analyses must be registered on a recognised database, such as the PROSPERO database.

Every review should include an abstract of no more than 250 words in length, which provides an overview of the full article and which is easily understood without reference to the text.

Review articles should include a box summarising “Points for clinical practice” and/or “Questions for future research”, as appropriate to the topic discussed.

Review articles should not exceed 5000 words in length (you do not need to include abstract, references, tables and figure captions in this word count); if manuscripts exceed this limit, please state the final word count and explicit reasons for exceeding the limit in your covering letter.

Review articles can include a maximum of five figures and/or tables (i.e. any combination of tables and figures up to a total of five overall, not five figures and five tables).

Given the nature of review articles, it is appropriate to include a higher number of references than in original articles, but this should not exceed 200 references in total.

Correspondence

Correspondence can be submitted for discussion of recently published European Respiratory Review articles.

Correspondence should not exceed 1200 words (you do not need to include references, tables and figure captions in this word count), should have no more than 12 references and should not include more than one figure or one table.

The European Respiratory Review will not publish online supplementary material for correspondence.

Online supplementary material

Authors have the option of providing supplementary data or figures, and accompanying videos, as an online supplement. This is an optional function and can be used at the discretion of the author and/or editor. The European Respiratory Review will not accept supplementary material for editorials, letters or correspondence. Documents should be uploaded as "Supplementary material" during the submission process.

Videos to be presented as part of the online depository should be supplied in one of the following formats: Quicktime; MPEG; Microsoft AVI; Windows media video; Shockwave Flash.

Authors should note that their supplementary material will not be edited by the publications office, and will be published online as it is supplied.

Permission to re-publish materials

The European Respiratory Review discourages the use of previously published figures and tables, or any other material previously published elsewhere, unless absolutely essential. If it is essential that such material be included in your manuscript, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner before you submit your manuscript to the ERR. The copyright owner is usually the publisher, and not the original author. Please note that in order to secure the re-use of the material in question, you may be required to pay a fee to the original publisher. Furthermore, some publishers will not provide permission for publication, which precludes the material from being published in the ERR.

Authors should be aware that externally produced questionnaires are often copyrighted, meaning that their use, reproduction and modification may be restricted. Before using, modifying or reproducing questionnaires, you should contact the copyright holder (the individual/group credited with creation of the questionnaire) to seek their support and gain written permission for reproduction and/or modification of the questionnaire, as necessary. If you are unsure about usage, modification and reproduction of questionnaires, you should contact the copyright holder/creator of the questionnaire in the first instance. Should concerns arise regarding the use, reproduction and modification of questionnaires, the ERR reserves the right to take appropriate action.

Once your manuscript has been accepted for publication, the ERR publications team will contact you requesting that all the written permission agreements you have obtained are forwarded to the office for our records.

Authorship

There is no maximum for the number of authors of a manuscript, although all work must have been approved by all co-authors.

Authorship credit should be based on fulfillment of all of the following four criteria:

1) substantial contributions to either: the conception and design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; 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.

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group does not justify authorship.

Writing assistance from medical writers or agencies must be included in the acknowledgements section, or should be given appropriate credit as authorship.

As manuscripts must have been approved by all authors prior to submission, any changes to the list of authors that are proposed after manuscript submission will require written approval from all named authors; this is in accord with the procedures outlined by the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE).

Copyright

Submission of the manuscript implies that if and when it is accepted for publication, all authors will grant to ERS a worldwide and exclusive licence to produce, publish, sell, distribute and make available, and to further sub-licence their article in print, digital and other media formats, including abstracts and supplementary material. This enables ERS to ensure maximum international copyright protection against infringement, and to disseminate your article, and the relevant publication, to the widest possible readership. Depending on which Creative Commons licence you choose to publish your work, elements of that licence may override the exclusivity of this grant.

In the event that the paper is accepted for publication, all authors will be contacted and asked to complete an online form granting ERS a licence to publish the work. All authors must complete this online form before the paper can be published.

For permissions and reuse please see https://www.ersjournals.com/reuse/permission

Open access licensing

The European Respiratory Society will publish accepted manuscripts under the terms of one of the following Creative Commons licences, depending upon the option chosen by the author.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (‘CC-BY’) - under this licence, anyone may share, reuse or adapt the manuscript for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, providing they give credit to the original source and indicate any changes. They may not apply extra restrictions to the content or imply that the original author endorses them or their use.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (‘CC-BY-NC’) - under this licence, anyone may share, reuse or adapt the manuscript for any non-commercial purpose, providing they give credit to the original source and indicate any changes. They may not apply extra restrictions to the content or imply that the original author endorses them or their use.

Commercial purposes include:

copying or downloading articles for further commercial redistribution, sale or licensing;
copying, downloading or posting by a site or service that incorporates advertising with such content;
the inclusion or incorporation of article content in other works or services that are then available for sale or licensing, for a fee;
use of article content by for-profit organisations for promotional purposes;
use for the purposes of monetary reward by means of sale, resale, licence, loan, transfer or other form of commercial exploitation such as marketing products.

Publication charges

European Respiratory Society imposes a charge for publishing articles (other than specially commissioned editorials and reviews, and correspondence in response to a published article) in the European Respiratory Review. Commissioned articles, and correspondence in response to a published article, will not incur a fee.

ERS has entered into “read-and-publish” agreements with institutions and groups of institutions to publish articles from eligible institutions or countries open access at no extra charge. For more information visit https://www.ersjournals.com/ers-transformative-deals

Publication charges for articles submitted between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024

	Standard price	Standard price (corresponding author is ERS member)	Research4Life Group B country	Research4Life Group A country
CC-BY-NC licence
Correspondence (not in response to a published article), editorials, viewpoints	€660	€594	€330	Free
Reviews, series, mini-reviews	€1210	€1090	€605	Free
CC-BY licence
	€3465

Publication charges for articles submitted from 1 April 2024

	Standard price	Standard price (corresponding author is ERS member)	Research4Life Group B country	Research4Life Group A country
CC-BY-NC licence
Correspondence (not in response to a published article), editorials, viewpoints	€690	€621	€345	Free
Reviews, series, mini-reviews	€1270	€1143	€635	Free
CC-BY licence
	€3640

The country of origin of a manuscript is determined by the location of the home institution of its corresponding author. Country income bands are as defined by the Research4Life initiative.

REFUND POLICY

If you decide to publish your article with one of our open access licences and pay the article processing charge outlined above, you will be eligible for a refund if:

We publish your article with an incorrect licence, and we fail to correct and republish the article within 1 month of you having informed us of the error;
We fail to submit your article to Medline within 2 months of final publication of the article on our own website; or
We fail to publish an author correction or erratum concerning your article within 2 months of you having informed us of the error, subject to our agreement that the reported correction necessitates correction and republication of the article, per our usual policies.

Author self-archiving

The European Respiratory Society will publish accepted manuscripts under the terms of the Creative Commons licence chosen by the author at acceptance (or by their institution in the case of an institutional open access arrangement). Authors of ERR articles are entitled to deposit the final published version of their manuscripts in an institutional (or other) repository for public archiving immediately upon publication, subject to the terms of the relevant Creative Commons licence.

For articles with Coalition S or UKRI funding (https://www.coalition-s.org/organisations/), the author retains the right to archive the peer-reviewed "author accepted manuscript" (before copy-editing and publication) under a CC-BY licence without embargo, regardless of the Creative Commons licence under which the version of record is published.

Peer review

On submission of your manuscript, you will be notified by e-mail on receipt of the submitted online draft and provided with a manuscript number for future reference.

Each manuscript will be reviewed by the Chief Editor. Manuscripts will be subjected to single-anonymised peer review by external reviewers and statistical advisors. "Single-anonymised" means that the reviewers will know authors' identities, but authors will not know the reviewers' identities. After your manuscript has been reviewed, you may be requested to make changes to your manuscript arising from reviewer comments. When submitting your revised manuscript, two copies must be provided: one clean copy of the revised manuscript, and one copy in which all of the text added as a result of reviewer comments is highlighted in red.

The reviewers will recommend their decisions to the Chief Editor, who will then be responsible for the final decision to accept or reject a manuscript.

If your manuscript is rejected after peer review, and you wish to appeal the decision, please e-mail a letter of rebuttal to: Sarah.Cleveland@ersnet.org

In the appeal letter, you should clearly state your name, the title of your manuscript and the manuscript number. Furthermore, it will help us to handle your appeal if you can provide specific point-by-point responses to any comments made by the editors and reviewers in support of their original decision. We will respond to all appeals as soon as possible, but of course in some cases it may take some time to make a final decision. The decision of the Chief Editor is final and only one appeal will be considered per manuscript.

Conflict of interest

Any conflict of interest for a given manuscript and for all authors of a manuscript must be dealt with according to the statement of the ICMJE (the 'Vancouver Group') as published in Lancet 1993; 341: 742. Editors and reviewers must disclose to the Chief Editor any personal or financial relationship that could bias their opinion and decision in the peer-review process.

In the interests of transparency, all authors must provide a written statement that details any conflicts of interest they may have (even if they have none). The submitting author should collect these statements and include them in the main manuscript document.

Authors must acknowledge all financial support for the work (including, but not limited to, support from pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies) and other financial or personal conflicts of interest that are both connected and unconnected with the work. The author should consider: grants; honoraria; royalties; relevant current/past employment and other affiliations; patents (either pending, issued or licensed); expenses/travel costs paid for conference attendance; drugs/equipment supplied by a particular company; administrative support; and fees for consulting, lecturing, working on speakers' bureaus or advisory boards, and providing expert testimony. It is each author’s responsibility to provide their own written statement. If the author does not have any conflicts of interest they should clearly indicate this. ERS and the Chief Editor reserve the right to take appropriate action if the appropriate information has not been provided. A statement of interest will be included in the published manuscript.

The ERS publications and their editors are guided by the ERS conflicts of interests policy, and will not consider for publication contributions from authors who are or who have been, full or part-time employees of, or paid consultants to, or those with any real or perceived, direct or indirect links, to the tobacco industry, or who have received any financial or in-kind benefit from the tobacco industry, at any time after 1 January 2000. Contributions from authors who have conflicts of interest relating to alternative nicotine delivery products such as e-cigarette and heated tobacco products, at any time after 1 January 2020, will not be considered. If it is discovered during peer review that competing interests were not declared at submission, or when an article is commissioned, this will result in immediate rejection of the paper. If a competing interest comes to light after publication, the article will be retracted or corrected, as appropriate.

On manuscript submission, authors will be asked if they comply with this policy. If you have any queries regarding this, please contact the ERS publications office.

Social media

For researchers and authors, social channels are an opportunity to boost the profile of their work, to explain it in less technical ways and to new audiences, to get immediate feedback from their peers and to discuss aspects of their scientific work that might not form part of their conventional published output. For more information refer to the ERS social media guide.

Correction policy

Errors in the ERR should be brought to the attention of the Chief Editor.

Any correction deemed significant by the Chief Editor will be published in the ERR at the earliest opportunity.

Proofs

Before publication, a proof will be sent by e-mail (pdf file) to the corresponding author. It should be corrected and returned to the ERR publications office within 48 hours by email. Late return will delay publication. Modification to proofs should be limited to typographical errors only.

Further information and enquiries

European Respiratory Society
442 Glossop Road
Sheffield
S10 2PX
UK
Tel: 44 114 2672860
E-mail: Sarah.Cleveland@ersnet.org

This page was updated on 15 February 2024

Main menu

User menu

Search