Article types accepted include review articles, research papers, brief communication, correspondence and Images in Pain Management.

The categories of articles that are published in the Journal are listed and described below. Please select the category that best describes your paper. If your paper does not fall into any of these categories, please contact the Editorial Office.

Editorials generally communicate an opinion or stance on an issue by the journal, one or more of the editors, or a guest editorialist. Please include a title page giving all authors' names, addresses, email addresses, phone and fax numbers, as well as an Acknowledgement statement (see paragraph: Acknowledgements) and signed copyright forms.

Format guide
Word limit: 1500 words
Abstract: no
References: 15 or less
Tables/Figures: 6 maximum

These should aim to provide the reader with a balanced overview of an important and topical issue in research or clinical practice. They should cover aspects of a topic in which scientific consensus exists as well as aspects that remain controversial and are the subject of ongoing scientific research. All articles and data sources reviewed should include information about the specific type of study or analysis, population, intervention, exposure, and tests or outcomes. All articles or data sources should be selected systematically for inclusion in the review and critically evaluated.

Format guide
Word limit: 3500 words
Abstract: unstructured, up to 250 words
References: 100 or less
Tables/Figures: 6 maximum

These articles typically include randomized trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic tests, laboratory and animal studies, cohort studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, case-control studies, and surveys with high response rates, which represent new and significant contributions to the field.

Section headings should be: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments (if any), and References.

The Introduction should provide a brief background to the subject of the paper, explain the importance of the study, and state a precise study question or purpose.

The Methods section should describe the study design and methods (including the study setting and dates, patients/participants with inclusion and exclusion criteria, patient samples or animal specimens used, the essential features of any interventions, the main outcome measures, the laboratory methods followed, or data sources and how these were selected for the study), and state the statistical procedures employed in the research.

The Results section should comprise the study results presented in a logical sequence, supplemented by tables and/or figures. Take care that the text does not repeat data that are presented in tables and/or figures. Only emphasize and summarize the essential features of the main outcome measures, and the main results.

The Discussion section should be used to emphasize the new and important aspects of the study, placing the results in context with published literature, the implications of the findings, and the conclusions that follow from the study results.

Format guide
Word limit: 3500 words
Abstract: structured, up to 250 words
References: 40 or less
Tables/Figures: 6 maximum

These reports should be concise presentations of preliminary experimental results, instrumentation and analytical techniques, aspects of clinical or experimental practice that are not fully investigated, verified or perfected but which may be of widespread interest or application. The Editors reserve the right to decide what constitutes a Brief Communication.

Format guide
Word limit: 1500 words
Abstract: unstructured, up to 150 words
References: 20 or less
Tables/Figures: 2 maximum
No subheadings

These include short case reports, technical clinical notes. The Editors reserve the right to decide what constitutes a Correspondence.

Format guide
Author: 4 or less
Word limit: 500 words
References: 5 or less
Tables/Figures: 1 maximum

Brief letters of constructive comments in response to previously published articles are welcome. Letters should have a title. Ensure that the corresponding author's mailing and e-mail addresses are included. Letters are edited, sometimes extensively, to sharpen their focus. They may be sent for peer review at the discretion of ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF PAIN Editors. Letters are selected based on clarity, significance, and space.

Format guide
Author: 4 or less
Word limit: 400 words
References: 4 or less
Tables/Figures: 1 maximum

Images in Pain Management are succinct submissions that couple an interesting, novel, or highly educational image with brief text designed to highlight the pertinent Pain-focused information displayed by the image. Supplemental video content can be included to expand the visual learning. The focus is the image itself, and key educational points raised in the body of the text should be directly related to observation of the image. This section of the Journal is not to be used as a forum for case reports. This kind of manuscripts are intended to educate medical students, residents, fellows, anesthesiology practitioners, and interested physicians and scientists.

Format guide
Author: 4 or less
Word limit: 500 words
References: 3 or less

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references and for correct text citation. Number references in the order they appear in the text; do not alphabetize, and please mark them with the function in square brackets, such as [15]. In text, tables, and legends, identify references with superscript arabic numerals. When listing references, follow AMA style and abbreviate names of journals according to the journals list in PubMed. List all authors and/or editors up to 6; if more than 6, list the first 3 followed by "et al." Note: Journal references should include the issue number in parentheses after the volume number.

Examples of reference style:

1. Youngster I, Russell GH, Pindar C, Ziv-Baran T, Sauk J, Hohmann EL. Oral, capsulized,frozen fecal microbiota transplantation for relapsing Clostridium difficileinfection. JAMA. 2014;312(17):1772-1778. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.13875
2. Murray CJL. Maximizing antiretroviral therapy in developing countries: the dual challenge of efficiency and quality [published online December 1, 2014]. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.16376
3. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. CMS proposals to implement certain disclosure provisions of the Affordable Care Act. http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/press/factsheet.asp?Counter=4221. Accessed January 30, 2012.
4. McPhee SJ, Winker MA, Rabow MW, Pantilat SZ, Markowitz AJ. Care at the Close of Life: Evidence and Experience. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Medical; 2011.

Manuscript Submission

Online Submission
Manuscripts (meaning all submission items, including all text, tables, artwork, cover letter, conflicts of interest disclosures, and any other required documents/material) must be submitted online to the journal through airiti’s System IPress. This system can be accessed at External link. This site will guide authors stepwise through the submission process . If assistance is required, please refer to the tutorials and/or customer support that are available on the IPress website; you may also contact the Editorial Office. Please do not post, fax or e-mail your manuscripts to the Editorial Office.

Important Information

Articles should be in Microsoft Word document format and prepared in the simplest form possible. We will add in the correct font, font size, margins and so on according to the journal's style.
You may use automatic page numbering, but do NOT use other kinds of automatic formatting such as footnotes, headers and footers.
The corresponding author is required to provide the email address of all co-authors. Notifications of the following status, "Send Back to Author", "Manuscript number notification" & "Decision letters", will automatically be communicated to all authors. Put text, references, table headings and tables, and figure legends in one file. Figures must be submitted as separate picture files, at the correct resolution and named according to the figure number, e.g., "Fig1.tif", "Fig2.jpg". Please see section Figures for more information.

Ethical Approval of Studies and Informed Consent

For human or animal experimental investigations, appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee approval is required, and such approval, including the official approval code, should be stated in the methods section of the manuscript. For those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed (World Medical Association. Declaration of Helsinki: ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects.

For work involving animals, the guidelines for their care and use that were followed should be stated in the methods section of the manuscript. For those investigators who do not have formal institutional guidelines relating to animal experiments, the European Commission Directive 86/609/EEC for animal experiments should be followed and the same should be stated in the methods section of the manuscript.

Reviews and revision

All manuscripts are subjected to at least two international peer reviews. Manuscripts which are returned to the authors for revision should be resubmitted within 2 months; otherwise they will be considered withdrawn.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (see more information on this). An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.

Open Access

Asia Pacific Journal of Pain is a peer reviewed, subsidized open access journal where Taiwan Pain Society pays for the publishing costs incurred by the journal. Authors do not have to pay any Article Processing Charge or Open Access Publication Fee. APJP is an open access journal since the beginning of its launch in 2004 and will remain unchanged after the name change in 2022.

• Access Rights All articles published open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy and distribute.
• User Rights Permitted third party reuse is defined by the following user license:
• No special permission is required to reuse all or part of article published by APJP, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. Reuse of an article does not imply endorsement by the authors or APJP.
• Publishing Schedule This journal is published two times a year in March, September by Airiti

The Editorial and Peer Review Process

As a general rule, the receipt of a manuscript will be acknowledged within 1 week of submission, and authors will be provided with a manuscript reference number for future correspondence. If such an acknowledgment is not received in a reasonable period of time, the author should contact the Editorial Office.

Manuscripts are reviewed by the Editorial Office to ensure that the submission contains all parts. The submission will not be accepted if the author has not supplied all parts of the manuscript as outlined in this document. Manuscripts are then forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief, who makes an initial assessment of it. If the manuscript does not appear to be of sufficient merit or is not appropriate for the Journal, then the manuscript will be rejected promptly without review.

Manuscripts that appear meritorious and appropriate for the Journal are reviewed by at least two Editorial Board members or expert consultants assigned by the Editor-in-Chief. Asia Pacific Journal of Pain follows a Double-blind peer review process. The editors and reviewers will not disclose any information about a manuscript or its review to anyone except the manuscript's corresponding author.

For manuscripts that are judged by Asia Pacific Journal of Pain Editors to be written in poor English but otherwise worthy of consideration for publication, authors are required to pay for the English polishing of their manuscript. Otherwise, their manuscript will be rejected.

The corresponding author will usually be notified within 12 weeks of whether the submitted article is accepted for publication, rejected, or subject to revision before acceptance (however, do note that delays are sometimes unavoidable). If revisions are required, authors are asked to return a revised manuscript to the Editorial Office via the iPress within 90 days. Please notify the Editorial Office in advance if additional time is needed or if you choose not to submit a revised manuscript.

Preparation for Publication

Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, authors should submit the final version of their manuscript in MS Word format, with all tables/figures as applicable, via the iPress. It is a basic requirement that the manuscript be prepared using good English. The Editorial Office reserves the right to edit poor English as suggested by the reviewer(s) and/or Editorial Board before the final version is decided. The editing fee will be charged to the authors.Accepted manuscripts are then presented to the Publisher to be copyedited according to the Journal's style.

Online proof correction

Corresponding authors will receive an e-mail with a link to our online proofing system, allowing annotation and correction of proofs online. The environment is similar to MS Word: in addition to editing text, you can also comment on figures/tables and answer questions from the Copy Editor. Web-based proofing provides a faster and less error-prone process by allowing you to directly type your corrections, eliminating the potential introduction of errors.
If preferred, you can still choose to annotate and upload your edits on the PDF version. All instructions for proofing will be given in the e-mail we send to authors, including alternative methods to the online version and PDF.
We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility.

Plagiarism, Data Fabrication and Image Manipulation

Plagiarism is not acceptable in APJP journals. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving credit to the original source. Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotation marks and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous studies, these studies must be explicitly cited.

All APJP submissions are checked for plagiarism using the industry standard software iThenticate. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation will take place and action taken in accordance with our policies. Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image. Irregular manipulation includes 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image, 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels), or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper. Data presented must be original and not inappropriately selected, manipulated, enhanced, or fabricated. This includes 1) exclusion of data points to enhance significance of conclusions, 2) fabrication of data, 3) selection of results that support a particular conclusion at the expense of contradictory data, 4) deliberate selection of analysis tools or methods to support a particular conclusion (including p-hacking). We strongly recommend preregistration of methods and analysis.