Submissions

Author Guidelines

Journal of Latin American Medical Sciences (Latin MED) is a bilingual, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal dedicated to advancing medical knowledge and fostering interdisciplinary dialogue in Latin America and beyond. Founded in 2025, Latin MED publishes original research, critical reviews, and innovative perspectives addressing the interface between medicine, science, and society.

The journal promotes dialogue between biomedical sciences and areas such as social sciences, technology, environmental health, medical education, and public policies, connecting diverse disciplines to understand and confront contemporary health challenges. Its target audience includes healthcare professionals, researchers, educators, managers, policymakers, and students from various health-related fields.

With emphasis on scientific rigor, ethical standards, and social relevance, Latin MED aims to contribute to more equitable health systems and evidence-based practices, encouraging collaboration and knowledge exchange across geographical and disciplinary boundaries.

The journal accepts high-quality original submissions written in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, reflecting the linguistic and cultural diversity of the region.

The journal follows the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication," developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Therefore, all articles must comply with these requirements.

Articles must be original and submitted exclusively to the Journal of Latin American Medical Sciences, with simultaneous submission to other journals prohibited. The information and/or opinions expressed in the articles are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Conflicts of interest must be disclosed by the authors during the article submission process and, if present, will be described in the published manuscript.

Peer Review Process

The journal has an Editorial Board composed of Brazilian and international researchers with scientific production in the journal’s field. The evaluation process begins with checking the manuscript's compliance with publication standards. If approved, it will be sent to at least two Ad Hoc Reviewers selected based on the article’s specialty. Peer review is conducted under a "blind review" system (scientific evaluation without identifying authors or reviewers). If there are discrepancies in the reviews, a third Reviewer will be requested for an additional opinion. Editors and Editorial Board members may publish up to two co-authored articles per issue with other researchers and students. In these cases, evaluation requires three reviewers under the blind-review system, with manuscript approval in at least two reviews.

After evaluation, articles may be classified as:
a) Accepted without changes: the article proceeds to editing, proofing, and publication in the designated issue;
b) Accepted with changes: the article is returned to the authors with requested adjustments via email. After revisions, the manuscript must be resubmitted along with a letter explaining changes made or justifying those not made. If no response is received within the deadline, the article will be archived;
c) Rejected: authors receive a rejection notification via email.

Approved articles will be published according to the journal’s editorial flow and schedule. Once classified for publication, articles undergo review, layout, translation, and electronic publication.

Article Categories

• Editorials: Written by invitation or suggestion of the Editorial Board or its members. Maximum 3 pages (including references and illustrations), with no more than 10 references.

• Original Articles: Present results from empirical or experimental research, studies with secondary data, qualitative methodology, and theoretical formulations. Maximum 15 pages (including references and illustrations), up to 25 references.

• Systematic Review and Meta-analysis: Systematic and updated literature reviews on specific topics, including integrative, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. Maximum 20 pages (including references and illustrations), up to 40 references.

• Literature Review: Systematic and updated literature reviews on specific topics, including integrative, systematic, and meta-analyses. Maximum 20 pages (including references and illustrations), up to 40 references.

• Reflection Articles: Theoretical discourse studies based on solid foundations about the current state of a research topic. Includes manuscripts revealing thoughts, opinions, and issues that logically contribute to deepening health-related subjects. Maximum 10 pages, including references and illustrations, with up to 15 references.

• Experience Reports: Studies involving conceptual implications, descriptions of health intervention strategies, or methodological evidence related to care, management, and health education. Maximum 15 pages (including references and illustrations), with no more than 20 references.

• Essays: Papers that provide reflection and discussion on topics that may raise questions and hypotheses for future research. Maximum 12 pages, including references and illustrations, up to 15 references.

• Case Studies: Detailed description and critical analysis of one or more typical or atypical cases based on broad and current bibliographic review. Structure should include introduction, brief literature review, case report, discussion, and conclusions with possible recommendations. Maximum 15 pages (including references and illustrations), up to 20 references.

• Brief Communications: Articles reporting findings or research results in a summarized format, ideal for initial results or information not justifying a full article. Must follow the same norms as original articles. Maximum 10 pages (including references and illustrations), up to 15 references.

Protocols of Systematic and Scoping Reviews

Includes studies focused on planning systematic or scoping review studies. These must follow methodological rigor consistent with standards for the type of research presented (PRISMA-P protocol for systematic reviews and PRISMA-ScR for scoping reviews) and be registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) for systematic reviews and scoping reviews. Registration in the Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://osf.io/) is also encouraged.

Protocols of Randomized Clinical Trials

Includes studies focused on planning randomized clinical trial (RCT) studies. These must follow methodological rigor consistent with standards for the type of research presented (SPIRIT protocol) and be registered in ReBEC or another applicable clinical trial registry.

Citations

Use a numeric system to identify cited works. Cite them in the text with numbers without parentheses or superscripts, immediately after the period, without space. Authors' names should not be mentioned in the text.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments should appear before references. For financial support from public or private institutions, technical assistance, or other aid, the project name, process number, and funding agency must be specified. If no funding was received, authors must state: “This research received no funding.” These details should be included on the manuscript title page.

References

References must be cited in the order they appear in the text, numbered sequentially, and formatted according to the Vancouver style (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html). Journal titles should follow abbreviations listed in the “List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus” (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/). For national and Latin American journals, consult http://portal.revistas.bvs.br.

Article Preparation

Articles must be written in Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, or English, formatted in A4, Arial font, size 12, 1.5 line spacing in the text and single spacing in the abstract, with 2.0 cm margins. Articles should follow this structure: introduction, objective, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgments (optional), and references. All pages must be numbered at the bottom right, starting from the title page. Headers and footers are not permitted. Articles must be submitted in Microsoft Word, written in the third person and impersonal style.

Title Page

The title page must contain the following, in order:

• Title in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, complete and with a maximum of 15 words. Use lowercase letters with only initial capitals, except for proper names, centered and bold;

• Full names of authors separated by commas. Maximum of eight authors per article regardless of category. After each author's credentials on the title page, include their Orcid ID (https://orcid.org/) and Research ID (http://www.researcherid.com/);

• Numbered institutional affiliations of all authors (up to three hierarchical levels, descending order, e.g., University A, Center B, Department C);

• Name, address, phone, and email of corresponding author;

• Abstracts in three languages;

• Acknowledgments of support sources, grants, and equipment mentioning process numbers;

• Statement of absence of conflicts of interest.

Abstracts

Abstracts in Portuguese, Spanish, and English must be structured, with bold headers and single spacing, and no more than 250 words. They should include: Objective/Objetivo; Method/Método; Results/Resultados; Conclusions/Conclusiones; and Descriptors/Descriptores (indicating three to five descriptors).

To select descriptors, consult the “Health Sciences Descriptors” (DeCS) - Bireme (http://decs.bvs.br/) or “Medical Subject Headings” (MESH) - Index Medicus (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh). If terms are not present, authors may use accepted terminology.

Illustrations

Tables, graphs, and figures should be inserted in the manuscript according to the order cited in the text. All illustrations must be consecutively numbered in Arabic numerals, with titles above, and placed immediately after their citation in the text. If previously published tables or illustrations by other authors are included, authors must provide written permission signed by copyright holders. Footnotes should be indicated by asterisks and limited to essential information.

Article Submission to the Journal

Articles must be submitted via the journal’s platform with the full text in Word format, without authorship details. Supplementary items must be attached as separate documents.

Required supplementary documents include:

• Declaration of Public Responsibility and Transfer of Copyright (template available) signed by all authors and scanned as jpeg or pdf;

• Title page as described above;

• Ethics committee approval letter (CEP) for research involving primary and/or secondary data with human subjects;

• For clinical trials, registration number from the Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry (ReBEC) must be included in the text;

• Completed checklist by authors (template available).

Authorship Criteria

All authors must have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for its content. Authorship credit is based on contributions including:
a) conception, design, analysis, and interpretation of data;
b) drafting or critically revising important intellectual content;
c) final approval of the version to be published.

Translation Process

After acceptance, the article must be sent to one or more translators approved by the journal. Authors must request a translation budget, with costs borne by the authors. Translations by non-approved professionals will not be accepted. Translators will send the translated manuscript directly to the Latin MED editor with copies to authors within the established deadline.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content, following the principle that free availability of scientific knowledge promotes worldwide democratization of knowledge.

All content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.