MISSION STATEMENT

Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine is committed to providing everything a busy cardiologist needs to follow advances in the field. We publish clinical and translational original research of the highest quality, along with comments from experts to put the findings into context. With a growing number of original research reports being published, we aim to provide cardiovascular physicians with easy access to the robust studies that will extend their current knowledge and help them enhance their everyday practice in a variety of settings.

ARTICLE TYPES CONSIDERED

Types of studies

We will consider studies that meet one or more of the following criteria, but priority will be given to those whose conclusions substantially advance understanding about therapy or disease and/or are likely to change clinical practice.

Phase I–IV studies: we strongly encourage phase I studies to show novel mechanisms or notable, unexpected beneficial or adverse effects. Positive findings should be robust enough to contribute to the design of valid phase II studies.
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs): data should preferably be reported <1 year after completion of follow-up.
Epidemiological studies (cohort, case–control, cross-sectional etc.): data should be reported preferably 4 years after completion of the study.
Systematic reviews/meta-analyses: systematic reviews should be based on a clearly stated question. Authors should ensure that sources are as current as possible at the time of analysis, although updating might be possible after submission if highly relevant evidence becomes publicly available. In meta-analyses the studies considered must all have related hypotheses and similar statistical approaches.
Public-health studies
Translational research

Authors submitting articles containing older data than stated above will be asked to justify in their cover letter why the results remain relevant to current practice and thinking.

Trial registration

Interventional trials enrolling human participants before and up to 1 July 2005 should have been retrospectively registered with a primary registry before submission of the manuscript. For all interventional trials in which enrolment started on or after July 1 2005, registration should have taken place before any patients were enrolled. The date of registration should be noted within the article at submission.

We class primary registries to be those approved by the ICMJE (International Council of Medical Journal Editors) and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform

Ethical approval and informed consent

Ethical approval or review and waiver must have been obtained from an appropriate institutional review board and/or ethics committee. If no review board is available for approval, research is expected to have been conducted according to the current Declaration of Helsinki. A relevant statement should be included at the start of the methods section.

The way in which informed consent was obtained from participants should be described in the methods section.

ARTICLE PREPARATION

Presubmission inquiries

Presubmission inquiries may be made but are not required for Clinical Research articles. If you wish to formally submit a presubmission inquiry, please do so via our online submission system and select the article type "Proposal". Please do not include the entire manuscript. Inquiries should be submitted in the form of a summary of less than 250 words, outlining the aim and objectives, main results and conclusions of the study. Sample references may be supplied in the manuscript comments box.

Although we will try to respond constructively to authors' inquiries, they can be difficult to assess reliably. We cannot, therefore, make an absolute commitment to have any contribution peer-reviewed before seeing the entire paper.

Key components

Clinical Research articles should be less than 3,000 words with up to 40 references and should be structured as follows:

Summary: the summary should be structured with the subsections Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions and be ≤250 words.
Introduction: contains the background for the topic and a clearly stated study objective or hypothesis.
Methods: states and describes the study design, patients/participants, inclusion and exclusion criteria, features of the intervention, therapy etc. being assessed, data sources (meta-analysis/systematic reviews), outcome measures, and features of the statistical analysis.
Results: provides the main results of the study for all features prescribed in the study design and important unexpected findings (may be enhanced by tables, boxes and/or figures; patients' consent will need to be obtained and signed documentation provided to the journal for any individual patients who are necessarily identifiable, for example in photographs and pedigrees. Please see our Consent & permissions policy).
Discussion: places the primary results in context with selected published literature, addresses study strengths and limitations, as appropriate, and states the conclusions.

NB Although we do not ask authors of any trials to also submit protocols, we request that they provide proof of supporting information if requested.

Key guidelines

CONSORT guidelines for RCTs

All RCTs should be reported in line with the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) Statement.¹,² In accordance with these guidelines, we request that RCTs to be submitted with the relevant flow diagram and a CONSORT checklist. Extensions to the CONSORT guidelines should be consulted for particular RCT designs, such as cluster studies.

1. Moher D et al. (2001) The CONSORT statement: revised recommendations for improving the quality of reports of parallel-group randomized trials. JAMA 285: 1987–1991

2. Altman DG et al. (2001) The revised CONSORT statement for reporting randomized trials: explanation and elaboration. Ann Intern Med 134: 663–694

STROBE Statement for observational studies

We encourage uptake of the STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology)¹ when preparing observational reports. We suggest that authors complete the STROBE checklist for submission with their articles.

1. Vandenbrouke JP et al. (2007) Strengthening the Report of Observation Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE): explanation and elaboration. PLOS Medicine 4: 1628–1654

QUORUM and MOOSE guidelines for meta-analyses

For meta-analysis of RCTs, we encourage authors to follows the QUORUM (Quality of Reporting Meta-analyses) Statement¹ and complete a QUORUM checklist and flow diagram for submission with articles. For meta-analyses of observation studies, authors might find the MOOSE (Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) recommendations useful.²

1. Moher D et al. (1999) Improving the quality of reports of meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials: the QUORUM statement. Lancet 354: 1896–1900

2. Stroup DF et al. (2000) Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology: a proposal for reporting. JAMA 283: 2008–2012

STARD Statement for diagnostic studies

As a standard of accuracy and completeness of reporting, we invite authors to apply the STARD (Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy) Statement¹ to diagnostic study reports. Please submit a completed checklist and flow diagram when submitting articles.

1 Bossuyt PM et al. (2003) Toward complete and accurate reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy: the STARD initiative. Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy. Ann Intern Med 138: 40–44

The main article file should contain the Summary, the main text, the reference list and all tables and boxes, and should be submitted as a Word file. Figure files, including those related to trial guidelines, should be submitted in their original format. Checklists may be submitted as Word or PDF files. Please submit all files via our online submission system.

CLINICAL CONTEXT ARTICLES

These short articles are commissioned by the journal team to accompany selected Clinical Research articles. They are written by experts in the field and discuss topics such as how the findings of the study might affect day-to-day practice, whether they have any broader implications, or how they might affect the direction of future research.

EMBARGO

All Clinical Research and Clinical Context articles are subject to embargo.

Questions? E: ncpcardio@nature.com T: +44 (0)20 7843 3694