Purpose and scope
The journal “Folia Cardiologica”, hereinafter referred to as The Journal, is a continuation of the journal “Folia Cardiologica Excerpta” and is a scientific and educational bimonthly reporting on various areas of cardiology. The Journal publishes original papers, reviews, case reports, reports on cardiology diagnostic tests and procedures, research results, literature reviews, letters to the editor, and editorial comments.
The “Young cardiology” section publishes original papers, the first author of which is younger than 35 years of age, and which have been peer-reviewed positively. Such papers are published with a biographical note and a photograph of the first author.
All papers are published after obtaining favorable comments from peer reviewers.

Folia Cardiologica (FC) accepts only clinical or translational human research that is clinically relevant or has clinical implications. FC does not accept basic science research.

For clinical trials, authors must follow CONSORT guidelines:  http://www.consort-statement.org/

We require registration of all intervention trials in a country specific or international clinical trial registry such as clinicaltrials.gov or WHO’ international Clinical Trial Registry Platform. Authors must provide clinical trial registration number at the end of the abstract.  

For observational studies, authors are advised to follow STROBE guidelines: https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/strobe/

For genetic association studies, authors are advised to follow STREGA guidelines: https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/strobe-strega/

Systematic reviews (rather than scooping or narrative reviews) are preferred. Meta-analysis and systematic reviews should be registered on PROSPERO , Open Science Framework or similar national/international registries. Registration number should be provided at the end of the abstract. Meta-analysis and systematic reviews should be reported per PRISMA guidance: https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma/

Publication
All papers are published in print and online. The official publication date of these papers is the date that they are posted online. Papers published online ahead of print are available on the journal website at http://www.fc.viamedica.pl. Requests for accelerated publication should be explained to the editors in the author statement.

Journal policies
Journal follows editorial recommendations of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (available at: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/).

Via Medica strongly recommends journal editors to adhere to the principles of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), particularly to deal with acts of ethical misconduct. For more information Authors, Readers and Editors may visit the COPE website: http://publicationethics.org/.

1. Prior publication. By sending the manuscript with figures and charts authors declare it has been neither published nor submitted for publication elsewhere (excluding the abstracts of 400 words or less). Figures or tables that have been published elsewhere must be identified, and written permission of the original copyright owner must be provided. Such responsibility lies entirely with the authors and the Publisher will not be liable for violation of anyone’s copyright or other rights by the authors. If the data presented in the article enable identification of the persons, their written consent to the publication must be enclosed.
2. Authorship. All collaborators who have made significant and substantial contributions to a study are considered coauthors. The nature and level of contribution of all authors of accepted manuscripts must be indicated, i.e. conception, design, execution and interpretation of the data being published, wrote the paper. An author may list more than one contribution, and more than one author may have contributed to the same aspect of the work. Other contributions to the work, such as providing of reagents or analytic tools, should be listed in the Acknowledgements. Ghostwriting and guest-authorship are forbidden. In case of detecting ghost written manuscripts, actions will be taken involving both the submitting authors and the participants involved.
The corresponding author must have obtained permission from all authors for the submission of each version of the paper and for any change in authorship. Submission of a paper that has not been approved by all authors may result in immediate rejection. Due to release from the responsibilities to the third parties, corresponding author is required to return to the Publisher a handwritten copy of the ‘Authors declaration’ together with the manuscript (the ″Author′s declaration″ is available at http://www.fc.viamedica.pl). ALL authors must agree to the conditions of publication, however the final responsibility for this information lay on the author submitting the manuscript. The author statement and the statement regarding ghostwriting and guest-authorship should be scanned and submitted to the manuscript processing system, and later sent by mail to the following address: I Klinika Kardiologii i Elektroterapii, Świętokrzyskie Centrum Kardiologii, Grunwaldzka 45, 25–736 Kielce, Poland (Tel. +48 41 36 71 510).
3. Conflict of interest. To meet the responsibility to the public to provide clear and unbiased scientific information, all authors must disclose any association that poses a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript. Authors must indicate any affiliations, funding sources, or financial holdings that might raise questions about possible causes of bias. This information will not be revealed to the reviewers and will not influence the decision concerning the acceptance of the manuscript. After the article is accepted for publication the Editor will discuss with the authors the manner in which the information concerning the financial sources should be provided to the readers. Reviewers and editors are also required to report any conflict of interest in case of recent collaborations with the author (coauthored a paper or worked together on a grant with the author within the past 24 months). Other examples of possible conflicts include a close personal friendship, past or present association as thesis advisor or thesis student, or a family relationship. Additionally, in case of articles presenting drugs or medical equipment, reviewers and editors should disclose to the Editor-in-Chief any financial relations with the corporations manufacturing described drugs and/or equipment.
4. The article should be free of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (more information at ori.hhs.gov/misconduct/definition_misconduct.shtml).
5. Copyright. Completion of the online submission form electronically is tantamount to automatically and free-of-charge transferring of the copyright for publishing and distribution of the submitted material (in all known now and developed in the future forms and fields of exploitation) to the Publisher, under condition that those materials are accepted for publication. The authors agree not to publish any data or figures presented in their work anywhere and in any language without the prior written consent of the owner of the copyrights, i.e. the Publisher.
6. Legal relations between the Publisher and the author(s) are in accordance with Polish law and with international conventions binding to Poland. The legal bases to acquiring the copyright are article 921 section copyright law and related law as well as the international conventions binding to Poland.
7. Human and animal participants and clinical trials. All research involving ′human and animal participants and clinical trials′ must have the authors institutional review board/local ethical committee approval. Authors are required to include in the Methods section a brief statement identifying the committee approving the experiments. All experiments involving humans must have been conducted according to the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors are obliged to include a declaration confirming that informed consent was obtained from all participants. For animal experimentation reported in the Journal, it is expected that investigators will have observed the Interdisciplinary Principles and Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research, Testing and Education issued by the New York Academy of Sciences Ad Hoc Committee on Animal Research. Adherence to these principles should be indicated in the text of manuscript.

Disclaimer
Every effort is made by the Publisher and Editorial Board to ensure that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement appears in ‘FC’. However, responsibility for the accuracy of statements of fact, the authenticity of scientific findings or observations, expressions of scientific or other opinion and any other material published in the journal rests solely with the author, the respective contributor, sponsor or advertiser. Accordingly, the Publisher and the Editorial Board accept no liability whatsoever for the consequences of any such inaccurate of misleading data, opinion or statement. Every effort is made to ensure that drug doses and other quantities are presented accurately. Nevertheless, readers are advised that methods and techniques involving drug usage and other treatments described in the Journal should only be followed in conjunction with the drug or treatment manufacturer own documentation as published in the country of the reader. 

Review process and manuscript selection
‘Folia Cardiologica’ is committed to prompt evaluation and publication of submitted articles. All manuscripts together with supplementary files should be submitted online at www.dk.viamedica.pl. The submission and review process is fully electronic and submissions by e-mail or postal mail will not be accepted. Please follow the manuscript preparation directions presented below. Manuscripts submitted for publication in ‘FC’ are evaluated as to whether they present new insights into the announced topic and are likely to contribute to progress in research or to changes in clinical practice. Received manuscripts are initially examined by the Journal editors. Manuscripts with insufficient priority for publication are rejected immediately to allow the authors to recognize deficiencies and submit the paper to another journal or submit a revised version to ‘FC’. Incomplete submissions or manuscripts not prepared in the required style (see ′Preparation of manuscripts′) are sent back to the authors without scientific review. If manuscript is accepted for review, the authors will be notified in the electronic way only with the reference to the article ID number in the electronic system. Articles are evaluated by at least two outside referees who are contacted before being sent a paper and asked to return comments within 3 weeks. All submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential documents, and reviewers are instructed to treat manuscripts as such. The peer review process is also confidential and identities of reviewers are not released. Referees are asked to provide a written review together with recommendation of acceptance, requirement for revision or rejection of the article. Submitted papers are accepted for publication after a positive opinion has been returned by the referees. Authors are notified of decisions by e-mail only. Selected papers are edited to improve accuracy and clarity and for length. Papers submitted to ‘FC’ but not accepted for publication may, in some cases, be eligible for publication in other journals of the Publisher.

Preparation of manuscripts
Manuscripts should be written in simple, concise and grammatical American English, within the size limits specified for each type of article, prepared according to the guidelines below. Original papers are published in English. A manuscript may by submitted in Polish or English. Original papers submitted in English are preferred. The main text of the manuscript should be written in a standard PC-compatible word processing program (e.g., Microsoft Word) using Times New Roman font size 12, double-spaced throughout and submit as .doc/.docx or .rtf file. The text must be provided unjustified and auto-hyphenation must be inactivated. Greek and other special characters may be used only by inserting in the text as ″Symbol″ (and not by using ″symbol″ font which may be lost during subsequent file processing. It is advised not to underline in the text and avoid footnotes. When essential, footnotes are numbered consecutively and typed at the foot of the appropriate page. All dimensions and measurements must be specified in the metric system. Particular attention needs to be paid to the selection of appropriate analysis of data and the results of statistical test should be incorporated in the results section. Abbreviations, if used, should be defined in brackets on their first appearance in the text. The abbreviations that are not accepted by the international groups of experts, should be avoided.

Requirements regarding different types of articles:

Original papers should report results of novel research, with clearly presented findings discussed in the context of available literature data.
Reviews should summarize up-to-date knowledge on a specific subject.
Case reports should be brief descriptions of an interesting, rare, and clinically instructive case, with particular emphasis on figures showing results of imaging studies or electrocardiograms of good resolution and quality.
Reports on cardiology diagnostic tests and procedures should be related to interesting, rare conditions in cardiology. We accept descriptions of electrocardiograms, echocardiographic examinations, electrophysiological studies, angiographic studies, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging.

The articles should be prepared within the following limits:

*Excluding title page, figure legends and references; **Including any supplementary data

Articles should be organized into the following sections:
Reviews
Title page
Abstract and key words
Introduction
Main text, divided into subheadings
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Statement of competing interests
List of abbreviations
References
Figure legends
Figures
Tables

Research/original articles (full and short)
Title page
Abstract and key words
Introduction
Materials and methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Statement of competing interests
List of abbreviations
References
Figure legends
Figures
Tables

Case Reports
Title page
Abstract and key words
Introduction
Body of text subdivided into sections
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Statement of competing interests
List of abbreviations
References
Figure legends
Figures Tables 

Opinions, letters, meeting reports and news should not be divided into subheadings. Full contact details of all authors, including mailing address, telephone number, fax and email should be provided.

Sections of manuscript

Title page: The title page should provide manuscript title and running title of no more than 60 characters, excluding spaces; full names of all authors and their institutional addresses; name, address, telephone, fax and email of the corresponding author.

Abstract and key words: The abstract should be comprehensive but concise consisting of no more than 250 words and should be structured to give a brief background to the study, main methods, results of the study, and conclusions. The abstract should be followed by a list of 5–7 carefully chosen keywords, which should be in accordance with MeSH system. Only common abbreviations should be used in the abstract.

Introduction: Should present state of knowledge up-to-date, the aim and the background of the studies and explain how original is the aim.

Methods: Should describe the investigated group, applied methods and the statistical analysis. Experimental procedures should be given in sufficient detail to allow these to be replicated by other researchers. The source of the various materials used in the study should be given, where possible. Results should be presented very in a logical fashion, with no need for the reader to solve. One should remember that curves and columns are more readable than tables or results presented in plain text.

Discussion: The obtained results should be discussed in the light of any previous research and available literature. In discussion one should not repeat the results presented in the results section.

Conclusions: Should refer to the aims of study and be presented in precise form, preferably in a bulleted form.
Acknowledgements: The authors may wish to express their thanks to those who contributed to the work but could not be co-authors of the manuscript. Sources of any support for the work in the form of grants, equipment, or drugs presented in the article should be listed as funding.

Statement of competing interests: Include an detailed disclosure of any competing interests (financial or others) that may have affected the research or the conclusions drawn from the study. If none, state the authors report no competing interests′.

List of abbreviations: Authors should define all non-standard abbreviations on their first appearance in the text as well as provide a list. Standard abbreviations need not to be included in the list.

References: Authors must ensure that all references are cited accurately and those in the main text body are also included in the list of references and vice versa. Standard abbreviations should be used for journal names. References older than ten years should only be cited if absolutely necessary. The style of references is that of Index Medicus/NLM:(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/policy/cit_format.html).

The references should list all the bibliographical sources cited in the text, in the order of their appearance. The following should be provided: (a) consecutive number; (b) surname(s) of the author(s) along with the first letter of the first name(s) (in the case of more than 3 authors the surnames of the first three authors should be provided and followed by ‘et al.’); (c) title of the paper, journal name using the applicable abbreviations (see Index Medicus), year, volume, issue number, first and last pages; for separate books: title and publisher, place and year of publication; (d) DOI numer of cited paper.

The reference list should be limited to the most relevant ones (up to 25). Citations in the text should be put in square brackets.

PLEASE NOTE: References should include DOI numbers of the cited papers (if applicable) – it will enable the references to be linked out directly to proper websites. (e.g. Redon J, Cifkova R, Laurent S, et al. Mechanisms of hypertension in the cardiometabolic syndrome. J Hypertens. 2009; 27(3): 441–451, doi: 10.1097/HJH.0b013e32831e13e5.).

More detailed examples can be found at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html

Figure preparation. No specific feature within an image may be modified. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if they are applied to the whole image and if they do not obscure, eliminate, or misrepresent any information present in the original, including backgrounds. The editors may request the original data from the authors for comparison with the prepared figures.

Figures legends: should be comprehensive but concise and should not duplicate information provided in the text of the article. The figure title should be given as the first line of the legend. Figures and photos should be numbered in sequence using Arabic numerals. Figures should be submitted in an electronic form and provided at the end of the manuscript or as separate files. Acceptable file formats are TIF, JPG with standard resolution (300 dpi), EPS, CDR, and Al. Other file formats may also be used, e.g., high-resolution PDF, while PPT, DOC and PS file formats should not be used as they do not allow further graphical processing. Color figures may be printed in the Journal.
Other figure formats may be supported, but DO NOT USE PDF, PPT, or PS files for either text or figures, as they cannot be used for typesetting purposes.

Tables should be prepared with the same skill, thought, and care as the text. They are best prepared in text editor as they will be copyedited in Word and consecutively numbered (Table 4, Table 5, etc.). They must not be larger than a single page and be prepared in potrait orientation. Tables should complement and not repeat information provided in the main text body. Each table should be given on a separate page with a brief title; the table number and title appear above the table text. All table columns must have a heading and any abbreviations should be explained in footnotes. DO NOT embed figures, tables or any other non-textual features in the main text. Figures and tables may be added at the end of the manuscript text or as separate, supplementary files.

Supplementary data. Authors are encouraged to provide supplementary data enhancing their paper, however the print version of the article must stand on its own merits. Supplementary data may take the form of supplemental figures, tables, datasets, derivations, and videos. Supplementary data are reviewed along with the paper and must be approved by the editors and reviewers. The data are posted on the journal website at the time of article publication and referred to in the main text. Upon acceptance supplementary data cannot be altered by authors.

Fees

This journal charges the following author fees.

If this paper is accepted for publication, you will be asked to pay an Article Publication Fee to cover publications costs: — 800 PLN for original papers or review papers, — 500 PLN for case reports, short reports and letters to the editor

Privacy policy

Names and e-mail addresses introduced into Journal’s manuscript system will be used exclusively for the purpose of paper publication and will not be made available to other purposes.

Contact information

Via Medica Publishers, 73 Swietokrzyska Str, 80–180 Gdansk, Poland

phone +48 58 320 94 94, fax +48 58 320 94 60

Author statement

These specific elements should be provided in dedicated sections of the submission panel; they are available according to the type of article. Please, do not include these elements in the main text. More information on particular items is provided in the Author Guidelines panel.

Acknowledgments

If applicable, please provide any acknowledgments for the conduct of the study and/or support for manuscript preparation. 

Author contributions

Please, describe the contribution of all co-authors to the final manuscript.

Funding

Please, highlight any funding that you may have received for the reported research or state that no funding, grants, or other support was received.

Availability of data and materials

Please, indicate that original contributions presented in the study are included in the article (and as Supplementary Material, if applicable) and that further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Please, if applicable state that the study was reviewed and approved by an Ethics Committee and that patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. If not applicable, please explain why ethical approval and/or consent were not required.

Competing interests

Any possible conflicts of interest regarding the submitted article should be described for each author, or authors should declare they have no conflict of interest related to the submitted manuscript.

Supplementary Material

If applicable: the Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: (link will be provided by an Editor).

Table 1. Elements of Article Information and Declarations according to submission type

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Registration and login are required to submit items online and to check the status of current submissions.

Completion of the online submission form electronically is tantamount to automatically and free-of-charge transferring of the copyright for publishing and distribution of the submitted material (in all known now and developed in the future forms and fields of exploitation) to the Publisher, under condition that those materials are accepted for publication. The authors agree not to publish any data or figures presented in their work anywhere and in any language without the prior written consent of the owner of the copyrights, i.e. the Publisher.
Legal relations between the Publisher and the author(s) are in accordance with Polish law and with international conventions binding to Poland. The legal bases to acquiring the copyright are article 921 section copyright law and related law as well as the international conventions binding to Poland.

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

This journal charges the following author fees.

Publikacja artykułu: 800,00 PLN (plus tax)
If this paper is accepted for publication, you will be asked to pay an Article Publication Fee to cover publications costs:
— 800 PLN for original papers or review papers,
— 500 PLN for case reports, short reports and letters to the editor