All papers are published online and in print. Electronic version is considered primary one. The official publication date of these papers is the date that they are posted online. Papers published online ahead of print are available at the journal's website. Requests for accelerated publication should be explained to the editors in the cover letter. All papers are published free of charge. Rheumatology Forum (RF) follows editorial recommendations of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), available at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/.

Publisher 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/.

The submission requires providing the nominations of two reviewers (from a different scientific institution than the authors).

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 250 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 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 co-authors. 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. Ghost-writing 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. To secure release from the responsibilities to the third parties, corresponding author is required to return to the Publisher a singed copy of the Authors' Statement together with the manuscript.

All authors must agree to the conditions of publication, however the final responsibility for this information lays on the author submitting the manuscript.

1. 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 Editors 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 (co-authored 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.
   
   
2. The article should be free of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (more information at https://ori.hhs.gov/definition-misconduct).
   
   
3. 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. 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.
   
   
4. 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.
   
   
5. 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 ‘RF’. 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. 

Preparation of manuscripts

Since December 2021 The Journal has been published in English version. Thus, Editors favor submissions in English but will aslo accept these in Polish. If such papers will be positively evaluated by the reviewers and qualified for publication, Authors will be asked to provide English version or the Publisher will translate the manuscript free of charge.

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. 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. The articles should be prepared within the following limits:

Section	Words*	References	Figures/tables**
Original articles	3500	30	8
Review articles	6000	50	6
Case reports	1500	15	6
Short communication	1000	8	2
Letters to the editor	1000
Editorial comments	500

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

Articles should be organized into the following sections:

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

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 

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 should first acknowledge the sources of any support for the work in the form of grants, equipment, or drugs presented in their article followed by any personal credits.

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 Medline  (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 Medline ), year, volume, issue number, first and last pages; for separate books: title and publisher, place and year of publication; (d) DOI numbers of cited paper. 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

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. The authors should submit an electronic version of the figures included as at the end of the manuscript text or separate files. Every figure and photo should be titled and pointed where it should appear in a main text. Figures should be submitted in following formats: TIF at the standard resolutions (i.e. 300 dpi for photos, 600 dpi for line art), JPG, EPS, CDR, AI sized at the final print size. 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 portrait 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.

Figure preparation. No specific feature within an image may be modified. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or colour 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.

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.

Contact information

Via Medica Publishers, 73 Swietokrzyska Str.; 80-180 Gdansk, Poland

phone (+48 58) 320-94-94, fax (+48 58) 320-94-60, viamedica@viamedica.pl

There is no fee for article publication.

Author statement

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