Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission preparation

Before submitting, please ensure your manuscript and supporting materials meet the requirements set out below. A completed checklist is required at submission.

Authorship (ICMJE + CRediT)

Authorship at Synthēsis follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations. To qualify as an author, an individual must meet all four of the following criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data;
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version to be published;
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Each author must provide an ORCID iD at submission. Contributor roles must be declared using the CRediT taxonomy and are printed in the published article. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria are named in the Acknowledgements with permission. Artificial-intelligence tools cannot be listed as authors (see AI Policy).

Research ethics

All research must conform to the Declaration of Helsinki (most recent revision) for human studies and to the Basel Declaration / ARRIVE 2.0 guidelines for animal studies. Manuscripts reporting research on humans, human data, or human tissue must include the ethics committee name and approval reference number. Written informed consent is required from participants and from patients in any identifiable case material, including case-based teaching submissions.

Animal research must comply with national and institutional regulations and be reported per ARRIVE 2.0.

Sex and gender must be reported in line with the SAGER guidelines. A Patient and Public Involvement statement is required (an honest "no PPI" declaration is accepted). Research with Indigenous communities must follow the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance alongside FAIR.

Conflict of interest

Authors must complete the ICMJE Disclosure of Interest form at submission. A summary disclosure is printed in the article. Reviewer and editor COI policies are described under Reviewer Guidelines and Editorial Team respectively.

Funding

Authors must disclose all funding sources, grant numbers, and the role (if any) of the funder. Where there is no external funding, this must be stated.

Data sharing (ICMJE + FAIR)

Authors must share the data underlying their results to the fullest extent compatible with consent, ethics, and law, in a reputable open repository with a persistent identifier. Clinical trial reports must include an ICMJE Data Sharing Statement. All articles should align with the FAIR principles. The E156 evidence capsule is the journal's recommended mechanism and exceeds standard data-sharing expectations.

Reproducibility

For empirical and methodological articles authors are expected to provide: all analysis code in a public OSI-licensed repository; cleaned analysis-ready datasets; a list of materials, instruments, or pre-trained models with versions; and an automated test or runnable notebook that produces the article's key numbers. The bronze / silver / gold Assurance badge recognises the completeness of this material.

Reporting guidelines

A completed checklist from the relevant EQUATOR Network guideline must be uploaded:

• CONSORT 2010 — RCTs (with relevant extensions)
• STROBE — observational studies
• PRISMA 2020 — systematic review / meta-analysis
• SPIRIT — trial protocols
• STARD — diagnostic / prognostic accuracy
• TRIPOD — prediction model development / validation
• CARE — case reports
• CHEERS — economic evaluation
• SRQR or COREQ — qualitative research
• SQUIRE — quality improvement
• ARRIVE 2.0 — preclinical animal
• TRIPOD-AI / CONSORT-AI / SPIRIT-AI — AI/ML clinical, as appropriate

Preprint policy

Preprints on bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, OSF Preprints, ResearchSquare, and equivalents are welcomed and do not constitute prior publication. Authors must disclose the preprint server, DOI, and posting date in the cover letter and on the manuscript title page, and must update the preprint with a link to the version of record on publication.

Artificial-intelligence and large-language-model disclosure

Use of generative AI or LLM tools in the conception, design, conduct, analysis, drafting, illustration, or revision of the work must be disclosed in a dedicated "AI Assistance" subsection of the Methods or in the Acknowledgements. Disclosure must specify the model, version, task, and extent of subsequent human editing. AI tools cannot be authors. Authors who used AI in any drafting capacity must independently verify every citation. The full AI/LLM Disclosure Policy is published as a separate page.

Image manipulation

Figures must be a true and accurate representation of the original data. Globally applied adjustments are permitted only where they do not obscure, remove, or enhance information. Selective adjustment, cloning, splicing, or insertion/removal of features is prohibited. Authors must retain the original unprocessed image files and supply them on request.

Plagiarism and text recycling

Submissions are screened for textual overlap with the published and preprint literature using Crossref Similarity Check (integration is being configured; interim screening is editorial + free-tool based). Substantial overlap with previously published material is grounds for rejection, retraction, or institutional notification per the COPE flowcharts.