Review Paper Guidelines

A review is a scientific, authoritative, and fair overview of recent advancements in a biomedical research field. Clinically focused reviews have practical value in biomedical journals since practitioners may utilize these papers as guidelines for remaining current with clinical knowledge and helping inform clinical diagnostic and treatment decisions.

A review's scope should be sufficiently broad to prevent the dominance of any individual laboratory's work, especially the authors' own work.

Standard Review Paper Structure

All format requirements are the same as those for original research articles, except for minor changes. The review paper should be written with the following sections in order:

  • Abstract (Background, Methods, Discussion, Conclusion, Keywords)
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Conflict of Interest
  • Acknowledgement
  • References
  • Figures
  • Tables

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Structure

The systematic review and meta-analysis should be written in the following order:

  • Abstract (Background, Methods, Discussion, Conclusion, Keywords)
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Conflict of interest
  • Data availability statement
  • Acknowledgement
  • References
  • Figures
  • Tables

Additional Requirements

  • The abstract should not be longer than 250 words.
  • There should be five to ten keywords added in the "Keywords" section of the abstract.
  • The main text should be divided into sub-headings with informative and concise headings.
  • The word count of the review should not exceed 3500 words (excluding abstract, references, tables, and figures).
  • References should not exceed 150, and citations should be selective.
  • Authors are urged to conduct significant research (fewer than 10% of all references) and include succinct comments outlining why these are the main contributions.
  • For systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the PRISMA statement or any other appropriate alternative guideline for study design must be used, along with a complete checklist and flow diagram included in the main text.
  • If a protocol exists for the systematic review, authors must include it in the "Methods" section as part of their publication, and a copy of the protocol must be included as supporting documentation.