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Author Guidelines

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Medical Management Advances (MMA), established in 2025, is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access general medical journal. MMA is an official journal of the Health Commission of Shandong Province. MMA is published Quarterly in English both in print and online issues. The journal aims to report the latest research findings, practical experiences, and theoretical discussions related to clinical practice and management in the field of healthcare management. It also serves the objective of international academic exchange. The journal allows free access to its contents and permits authors to self-archive final accepted version of the articles on any OAI-compliant institutional/subject-based repository.

SCOPE OF THE JOURNAL

The journal covers the following sections: healthcare quality management, hospital human resources management, hospital operations and financial management, hospital quality and safety management, patient safety and protection of patient rights, clinical pathways and evidence-based medicine, clinical research methods, and evidence-based decision-making practices.

THE EDITORIAL PROCESS

A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to MMA alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with MMA for all matters related to the manuscript. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding for formal peer-review. Manuscripts that are unlikely to be of interest to the MMA readers are also liable to be rejected at this stage itself.

Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in MMA are sent to two or more expert reviewers. The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. Every manuscript is also assigned to a member of the editorial team, who based on the comments from the reviewers takes a final decision on the manuscript. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/rejection/amendments in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point by point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.

Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within seven days. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The whole process of submission of the manuscript to final decision and sending and receiving proofs is completed online. To achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the journal publishes articles online as “Ahead of Print” soon after acceptance.

CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRY

MMA requires registration of clinical trials. MMA would consider publishing clinical trials that have been registered with a clinical trial registry that allows free online access to public. Registration in the following trial registers is acceptable:

and any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP; www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/index.html).

DATA SHARING

We encourage authors to include a data sharing statement at the end of every research manuscript when submitting their article, in order to follow the requirement of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) about data sharing for clinical trials.

Data sharing statements must indicate the following: whether individual deidentified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared; what data in particular will be shared; whether additional, related documents will be available (study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.); when the data will become available and for how long; by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism).

If no such further data are available, please use this wording: "Data sharing: no additional data available."

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA

  • As stated in the ICMJE Recommendations, credit for authorship requires:
  • Substantial contributions to the conception and design, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data;
  • The drafting of the article or critical revision for important intellectual content;
  • Final approval of the version to be published;
  • 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 article are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the four components mentioned above. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors. Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The corresponding author takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review.

Changes in authorship

Authors should determine the order of authorship among themselves and should settle any disagreements before submitting their manuscript. Changes in authorship (i.e., order, addition, and deletion of authors) should be discussed and approved by all authors. Any requests for such changes in authorship after initial manuscript submission and before publication should be explained in writing to the editor in a letter or email from all authors and should send the original signed written consent of all authors with authorized unit stamp.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST/COMPETING INTERESTS

All authors must disclose any and all conflicts of interest, they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript. A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence (or bias) the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript.

PROTECTION OF PATIENTS’ RIGHTS TO PRIVACY

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients’ names from figures unless they have obtained written informed consent from the patients. MMA abides by ICMJE guidelines:

  1. Authors, not the journals nor the publisher, need to have the patient consent form before the publication related to patient privacy and have the form properly archived by the author.
  2. If the publication includes some facial images that make the patients identifiable, a statement about the patient’s consent needs to be present in the manuscript.

SENDING A REVISED MANUSCRIPT

The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, the “referees” remarks along with point to point clarification at the beginning in the revised file itself. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article.

RETRACTION POLICY

MMA should consider retracting a publication if:

  • Editors have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication) or honest error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error).
  • The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication).
  • It constitutes plagiarism.
  • It reports unethical research.

MMA abides by Retraction Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (http://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines_0.pdf).

Article Processing Charges

All journals published by AUBER SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING PTE. LTD. are open access. Articles in this publication are Open Access and distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which allows users to browse, search, download, copy, distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, provided that the citation details of the original work are identified, with the authors and journal source are properly credited.

Currently, there is no article processing charge (APC) for papers accepted after peer review. Authors incur no fees for submitting, processing, or publishing manuscripts, including the use of color images.

Submission Preparation Checklist

CHECKLIST

Covering letter

  • Signed by all contributors;
  • Previous publication/presentations mentioned;
  • Source of funding mentioned;
  • Conflicts of interest disclosed.

Authors

  • Last name and given name provided along with Middle name initials (where applicable);
  • Author for correspondence, with E-mail address provided;
  • Identity not revealed in paper except title page (e.g., name of the institute in Methods, citing previous study as “our study”, names on figure labels, name of institute in photographs, etc.).

Presentation and format

  • Use only 10- or 12-point font size;
  • Page numbers included at the bottom;
  • Title page contains all the desired information;
  • Abstract page contains the full title of the manuscript;
  • Abstract provided (structured abstract of 300 words for original articles, meta analysis [Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions] and review articles [Objective, Data sources, Study selection, Results, Conclusions]);
  • Key words provided (three to six words) Introduction should be short and arresting. State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale for the study or observation. Give only strictly pertinent references;
  • The references cited in the text should be after punctuation marks;
  • References according to the journal’s instructions, punctuation marks checked;
  • Send the article file without “Track Changes”.

Language and grammar

  • Uniformly American English;
  • Write the full term for each abbreviation at its first use in the title, abstract, keywords and text separately unless it is a standard unit of measure. Numerals from 1 to 10 spelt out;
  • Numerals at the beginning of the sentence spelt out;
  • Check the manuscript for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors;
  • If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer’s name and address (city and state/country);
  • Species names should be in italics.

Tables and figures

  • No repetition of data in tables and graphs and in text;
  • Actual numbers from which graphs drawn, provided;
  • Figures necessary and of good quality (color);
  • Table and figure numbers in Arabic letters (not Roman);
  • Figure legends provided (not more than 40 words);
  • Patients’ privacy maintained (if not permission taken);
  • Credit note for borrowed figures/tables provided;
  • Write the full term for each abbreviation used in the table as a footnote.

Additional resources

Copyright Notice

COPYRIGHTS
The copyright on all published articles will be retained with the authors unless stated otherwise. Authors grant Auber Scientific Publishing the sole, worldwide, and exclusive right to publish (i.e., print, publish, sell, and otherwise commercially exploit), reproduce, display, and store the published articles.

Privacy Statement

AUBER SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING PTE. LTD. and its subsidiary and affiliate companies (collectively, “ASP,” “we,” “us” or “our”) recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of its services and taking reasonable steps to maintain the security, integrity and privacy of any information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. By submitting your information to ASP, you consent to the practices described in this policy. If you are less than 18 years of age, then you must first seek the consent of your parent or guardian prior to submitting any personal information.

This Privacy Policy describes how ASP collects and uses the personal information you provide to ASP. It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and how you can access and update this information.

How We Collect Information

ASP may collect personal information about you in the following ways:

  1. Directly from your verbal or written input (such as by consenting to receiving marketing emails) or indirectly through third parties with whom we work closely (see below “Information We Receive From Other Sources”);
  2. Automatically through ASP’s website technologies including tracking online, such as by Web cookies (which are small text files created by websites that are stored on your computer), by smart devices, by combining data sets, by collecting data from a browser or device for use on a different computer or device, or by using algorithms to analyze a variety of data such as records of purchases, online behavioral data, or location data; or
  3. By closed-circuit television (if visiting our premises).

Information You Provide

The types of information that ASP collects directly from you or through your use of our websites and services may include the following (depending on how you interact with ASP):

  • Contact details, such as your name, email address, postal address, username, and telephone number;
  • Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses used to connect your computer to the Internet;
  • Educational and professional interests;
  • Tracking codes such as cookies;
  • Usernames and passwords;
  • Payment information, such as a credit or debit card number;
  • Comments, feedback, posts and other content you provide to ASP (including through ASP websites);
  • Communication preferences;
  • Purchase and search history;
  • Location-aware services, the physical location of your device in order to provide you with more relevant content for your location;
  • Information about your personal preferences and interests; and
  • Communications with other users of ASP’s services.

In order to access certain content and to make use of additional functionality and features of ASP’s websites and services, we may ask you to register for an account by completing and submitting a registration form, which may request additional information.

If you choose to register and sign in by using a third-party account (such as your Facebook account), the authentication of your login is handled by the third party. ASP will collect your name, email address and any other information about your third-party account that you agree to share with us at the time you give permission for your ASP account to be linked to your third-party account.

Information We Receive From Other Sources

ASP may receive information about you if you use any of the websites we operate or the other services we provide. We also work closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners and sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services; advertising networks; data and analytics providers; academic institutions; journal owners, societies and similar organizations; search information providers, and credit reference agencies) from whom ASP may receive information about you.

Use of Your Information

Depending on how you interact with ASP, ASP may use your personal information in the performance of any contract or transaction we enter into with you, to comply with legal obligations, or where ASP has a legitimate business interest. Legitimate business purposes include but are not limited to one or all of the following:

  • Providing direct marketing and assessing the effectiveness of promotions and advertising;
  • Modifying, improving or personalizing our services, products and communications;
  • Detecting fraud;
  • Investigating suspicious activity (e.g., violations of our Terms of Use) and otherwise keeping our site safe and secure; and
  • Conducting data analytics.

In addition, with your prior, explicit consent (where required), we may use your information in the following ways:

  • To provide you with information about products and services that you request from us;
  • To send you periodic catalogues from ASP;
  • To provide you with information about other products, events and services we offer that are either (i) similar to those you have already purchased or inquired about, or (ii) entirely new products, events and services;
  • For internal business and research purposes to help enhance, evaluate, develop, and create ASP’s websites (including usage statistics, such as “page views” on ASP’s websites and the products therein), products, and services;
  • To notify you about changes or updates to our websites, products, or services;
  • To provide, activate and/or manage our services;
  • For internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, machine learning, testing, statistics, and survey purposes;
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service; and
  • For any other purpose that we may notify you from time to time.

Personal information will not be kept longer than it is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. This means that, unless information must be retained for legal or archival purposes, personal information will be securely destroyed, put beyond use or erased from ASP’s systems when it is no longer required or, where applicable, following a request from you to destroy or erase your personal information.

Disclosure and Sharing of Your Information

ASP will not disclose to or share your personal information with any unaffiliated third party except as follows:

  • Where necessary in connection with services provided by third parties who:
    • Provide us with a wide range of office, administrative, information technology, website and platform hosting, editing, production, payment, business management, analytics, content management, indexing, archiving, or marketing services; and
    • Are required to comply with applicable privacy laws;
  • Where you voluntarily provide information in response to an advertisement from a third party;
  • Where a third party such as an academic institution, school, employer, business, publisher or other entity has provided you with access to an ASP product or service through an integration or access code, information may be shared with that third party regarding your engagement with the service or product, results of assessments taken, and other information you input into the product or service;
  • Where you participate in a program in which we partner with third parties, we may share your information with those third-party partners;
  • Where ASP’s rights to publish, market and/or distribute a specific journal or other publication are transferred to another entity, and you have subscribed to or requested to receive electronic alerts related to that journal or publication;
  • Where you have subscribed to journals, elected to receive electronic alerts about journals or your contribution to one of our journals has been accepted for publication, we may share your information with the journal owner or a society or organization associated with the journal;
  • Where you have attended an event, webinar, or conference, we may share your information with the sponsor of the activity;
  • Where third-party companies serve ads and/or collect certain information when you visit our websites. These companies may be placing and reading cookies in the cookie file of the browser on your computer’s hard disk or using web beacons or other technologies to collect information in the course of ads being served on this website. These companies may use information other than personal information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to these and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you;
  • Where ASP is required to disclose personal information in response to lawful requests by public authorities and government agencies, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; to comply with a subpoena or other legal process; when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, to enforce our Terms of Service, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our services, users or others; and to investigate fraud;
  • Where all or substantially all of the business or assets of ASP relating to our services are sold, assigned, or transferred to another entity; or
  • Where, even if not described above, you have consented to such disclosure or ASP has a legitimate interest in making the disclosure.

ASP also may disclose navigational and transactional information in the form of anonymous, aggregate usage statistics and demographics information that does not reveal your identity or personal information.

Cross Border Transfers

ASP may transfer your personal information outside of your country of residence for the following reasons:

  • In order to process your transactions, we may store your personal information on our servers and those servers may reside outside the country where you live. ASP has servers in the United States and CDN (Cloudflare) in global presence (see Cloudflare Network). ASP also has service providers located in the United States. Such processing may include, among other things, the fulfillment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services.
  • In order to satisfy global reporting requirements, ASP may be required to provide your personal information to ASP affiliates in other countries.

By submitting your personal information, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing of your information. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and all applicable data protection laws.

Security

We will use appropriate physical, technical and administrative safeguards to protect your data. Access to your personal data will be restricted to only those who need to know that information and are required to perform their job function. In addition, we train our employees about the importance of maintaining the confidentiality and security of your information.

Disclosure in Chat Rooms or Forums

You should be aware that identifiable personal information – such as your name or e-mail address – that you voluntarily disclose and that is accessible to other users (e.g., on social media, forums, bulletin boards or in chat areas) could be collected and disclosed by others. ASP cannot take any responsibility for such collection and disclosure.

Cookies

As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically. This information may include IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (“ISP”), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer the site.

ASP and its partners use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or services.

For more information on cookies, please see our cookie settings on our website.

Your Rights

You have the right to make a written request to be informed whether or not we hold or process any of your personal information (by emailing editorialoffice@auberpublishing.com). In your written request, you may:

  • Request that we provide you with details of your personal information that we process, the purpose for which it is processed, the recipients of such information, the existence of any automated decision making involving your personal information, and what transfer safeguards we have in place;
  • Request that we rectify any errors in your personal information;
  • Request that we delete your personal information if our continued processing of such information is not justified;
  • Request that we transfer your personal information to a third party;
  • Object to automated decision-making and profiling based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest (in which event the processing will cease except where there are compelling legitimate grounds, such as when the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract between us);
  • Object to direct marketing from us; and
  • Object to processing for purposes of scientific, historical research and statistics.

Where applicable under your local laws, we will not use your personal information for marketing purposes, nor disclose your information to any third parties, unless we have your prior consent, which we will seek before collecting your personal information. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the consent forms we use when collecting your personal information. If at any point you wish to review or change your preferences, you can use the “opt-out” or unsubscribe mechanism or other means provided within the communications that you receive from us or by sending an email to editorialoffice@auberpublishing.com. Note you still may receive transactional communications from ASP.

Your California Data Privacy Rights

Information About Data We Have Collected or Disclosed About You

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) provides additional data privacy rights to California residents. You have the right to request that we provide, not more than twice every 12 months, certain information about the data we have collected or disclosed about you over the past 12 months, including:

  • The categories of personal information about you we have collected;
  • The categories of sources from which we have collected your personal information;
  • The business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information;
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share your personal information;
  • The specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you; and
  • The categories of personal information that we have disclosed about you for a business purpose.

For the purposes of your rights as a California resident, “personal information” means any non-publicly available information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked with you or your household, such as biometric information or information about your location.

Disclosure of Personal Information

For certain of our business functions, we may disclose personal information for a business purpose. When we disclose personal information for a business purpose, the third party must agree to retain, use, or disclose the personal information solely for the business purpose. We prohibit the third party from selling the personal information that we provide [for a business purpose]. In the past 12 months, depending on how you interact with ASP, we may have disclosed your information as set forth in the section above entitled “Disclosure and Sharing of Your Information.”

Deletion of Data

California residents also have the right to request that we delete the personal information we have collected from you (and direct our service providers to do so), except where retaining your personal information is necessary for ASP to:

  • Complete your transaction, provide a good or service you requested, or perform a contract between you and us;
  • Protect you or us from security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for that activity;
  • Fix errors in our systems;
  • Protect your, our, or others’ right to free speech, or exercise another right provided for by law;
  • Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (California Penal Code Section 1546 and following);
  • Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws;
  • Use your personal information internally in a way that is reasonably aligned with your expectations based on your relationship with us or in another lawful manner that is compatible with the context in which you provided the information; or
  • Comply with a legal obligation.

“Do Not Track” (for California and Delaware Residents)

Please note that we do not respond to or honor “do not track” (a/k/a/ DNT) signals or similar mechanisms transmitted by web browsers. For more information about “do not track”, go to allaboutdnt.com.

How to Exercise Your Rights

To exercise your rights under CCPA, you may submit a verifiable consumer request to us by email at editorialoffice@auberpublishing.com. Only you, a person registered with the Secretary of State authorized to act on your behalf, or you on behalf of your minor child may submit a verifiable consumer request. The request must provide enough information for us to reasonably verify you are, or are the authorized representative of, the person about whom we collected personal information.

Links to Third-Party Websites

ASP’s websites or services may include links to third-party websites. In using such links, please be aware that each third-party website is subject to its own privacy and data protection policies and is not covered by our Privacy Policy.

Recourse

Any comments, complaints or questions concerning this policy or complaints or objections about our use of your personal information should be addressed by directing your comments to ASP’s Data Protection Officer, whose contact information is found here.

Updates to this Privacy Policy

Please note that ASP’s Privacy Policy is reviewed periodically. ASP reserves the right to update its Privacy Policy at any time without notice. Any changes to the Privacy Policy will be posted on this page and will become effective as of the Effective Date above. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

Update: March 11, 2025