Medwave adheres to international guidelines to improve the quality and transparency of medical reporting, such as STROBE, CONSORT, PRISMA, among others (see Equator-Network).
The journal also urges authors to prepare their manuscripts before submission using the reporting guideline that suits their study design. During the peer review process, peer reviewers will be asked to use the appropriate guideline when reviewing.
We strive to:
Medwave is a peer-reviewed biomedical journal, meaning that all submitted manuscripts are evaluated by reviewers who are not part of the permanent group of editors. External peer review improves the accuracy and clarity of the published articles and helps associate editors and editors-in-chief make better decisions for acceptance or rejection. However, it must be pointed out that this process does not ensure that there will be no errors as this is a human endeavor and, as such, vulnerable to honest mistakes.
Medwave’s policies regarding the peer review process are described below.
For more information on the peer review process, please go to: Frequently asked questions on Medwave's peer review process.
Up to March, 2013, Medwave published monthly issues, as explained above. Since April, 2013, though, we switched to continuous publication. When articles are ready, they are posted on the homepage and at the end of the month they are collated into a monthly issue and indexed in Archive (see here for English Archive and see here for Spanish Archivo). There are collated issues in English only from 2015 onwards, as previously we only published in Spanish. Medwave publishes 11 issues a year.
We inform authors who are interested in submitting a manuscript to our journal that our current rejection rate is consistently over 40% of all non-solicited manuscripts, excluding letters to the editor.
Journal indicators, comparing 2020 to 2018, taking into account only unsolicited submissions.
Note: in 2019 the publication fee was increased; during 2020 a Call for COVID-19 papers was issued.
2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
Submissions | 90 | 159 | 205 |
Manuscripts with final editorial decision | 70 | 149 | 201 |
Proportion of rejected manuscripts | 60% | 42% | 45% |
Average days between submission and final editorial decision | 87 | 89 | 96 |
Average days between first editorial decision and final editorial decision | 38 | 29 | 37 |
Average days between submission and first editorial decision | 41 | 59 | 59 |
Average days between final editorial decision and publication | 33 | 36 | 35 |
Average days between submission and publication | 115 | 160 | 149 |
Medwave acknowledges author credits and responsibility for the contents of the published articles, including text, data and images, and assumes that they are an honest reflection of research conduct.
Medwave acknowledges authorship to anyone who has made a significant intellectual contribution to the study on which the article is based, e.g. study question, study design, data analysis or interpretation, wording and copyediting. We recommend to not omit any authors who have contributed in this manner. Notwithstanding, we do believe that the most useful definition of authorship is the one provided by the ICMJE:
The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:
Medwave does not consider that providing technical or administrative services, financial support, translation, identifying and recruiting patients, or any of the like, to qualify for authorship, although we do recommend that these contributions be duly acknowledged. In these cases, we recommend that each contributor be named together with a brief explanation of what they did in the course of preparing the manuscript. This information can be included under the heading “Notes” of published articles.
It is not considered to be appropriate to include persons as authors based only upon their reputation, position, authority status or friendship. The lead author must assume full responsibility for the integrity of the work that was done. Notwithstanding, all authors must approve the final version of the manuscript that is submitted for editorial review. All authors must be aware of our editorial policies.
Medwave does not limit the number of authors listed. Under some conditions, some authors may be by listed, or corporate names may be used. The authors themselves must decide the order in which authors are listed.
Medwave will not engage in authorship disputes between investigators who have submitted manuscripts to the journal. We have established the requisite that each author must consent to the submission and possible publication of their manuscript to our journal. The final version of an accepted manuscript must be approved by all listed authors, which is why we copy all authors in our correspondence before publishing.
Medwave does not accept duplicate or salami publications. We will be strict in our plagiarism check and we will reject plagiarized manuscripts. If your manuscript has been previously published in any manner, please inform this to the editor in your cover letter.
All authors must disclose potential conflicts of interests when submitting to Medwave.
The ICJME has identified four possible sources of conflicts of interests: financial or funding relationships; personal relationships or rivalries; academic competition; and intellectual beliefs. The authors must be explicit about any of these and disclose them during their submission, especially financial support (including the role that funders had in the conduct of the study) and institutional affiliations of the investigators.
Medwave recommends using the ICJME "Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest" (see here).
Medwave adheres to and especially upholds the following statements and recommendations:
Since April 2017 Medwave is a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).
Medwave complies with the Declaration of Helsinki regarding research in human beings. Medwave does not publish basic science articles or any kind of articles based on experiments in animals.
If you have any doubt about your research and its compliance with the declaration of Helsinki, you should explain in your cover letter the rationale and circumstances of the possible non-compliance and you should be able to prove that an institutional ethics committee explicitly approved all aspects of your research protocol before any measurements or data acquisition were done on the patients or participants.
Authors should also explicitly state that voluntary informed consent has been obtained from all patients or participants involved in the study prior to any data acquisition or field work.
All primary research studies must declare that they had institutional ethics committee approval, state the full name of the ethics committee, attach the corresponding ethics committee certificate or letter, and in the manuscript specifically report that the study subjects voluntarily signed informed consent forms.
The opinions that authors express in the articles that the journal publishes are always the author’s views and are not necessarily endorsed by the journal nor correspond to the journal’s stance or policies.
INFORMED CONSENT FORM. Patients and participants must sign informed consent forms. These forms must have been previously approved by an institutional ethics committee.
FOR CASE REPORTS. Patients who are covered by case reports must sign forms that specifically authorize publication of their case in the journal. You may use the one suggested by Medwave found here.
Medwave has an explicit policy for corrections and errata in order to correct errors in our published articles in a timely fashion. Corrections and expressions of concern are published in a special section called “Errata” (see here for Spanish and here for English).
Whenever a correction or expression of concern has to be issued, it will be posted in the journal’s cover page of the issue in which the article appeared, thus effectively becoming part of the issue’s table of contents.
The correction will include the full linked citation of the corrected article. The correction will state the date in which the correction was made. The correction will also be posted in “Historial” (Spanish) or “History” (English) of the article.
Expressions of concern follow the same procedure.
This is an example of a correction and this is the index page for errata.
We follow COPE guidelines.
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.
Whenever an author considers that his or her manuscript has not been properly handled by the journal, Medwave upholds their right to submit a complaint or a request for reconsideration. It is our responsibility to take action as promptly as possible.
We define a complaint as any situation that affects a user of the journal (reader, author or reviewer) and is perceived by the user as being a complaint, or that the complainant legitimately considers that there has been a breach of due process. Furthermore, the subject matter of the complaint must be related to something that the journal has the power to solve.
The complaint should be submitted to the following email address: complaint@medwave.cl or to the editor or contact person that the complainant considers most pertinent.
Complaints will be dealt with by whoever is most pertinent to the matter of the complaint, or may be referred to the editor-in-chief. Complaints will be answered within 1 or 2 working days. As the journal has a small editorial office, the person that can make relevant decisions usually is the editor-in-chief herself.
September 30, 2021