Review Article

Review Articles provide summary, analysis, and comparison of the existing literature in a specific field. They debate the current state and progress in a particular area, and may provide recommendations for future research. They are often written by leading authorities in a certain discipline, and highlight the recent trends, problems and gaps in that discipline.

The information below details the section headings that must be included in a review article. However, it is strongly recommended that systematic reviews and meta-analyses follow the comprehensive guidelines provided by PRISMA.

Structure

• Abstract (structured or unstructured with the following sections)

1. Background
2. Methods
3. Results
4. Conclusion

• Introduction:  In this section the authors explain the issues/questions being addressed, and their significance in relevant areas of research.
• Methods: This section specifies the data sources, and explains the data acquisition and search process in detail. This process includes search strategies, timing of the study (and other search limits), study selection, and methods of data extraction. Other methods of data acquisition, such as the subsequent reference searches of retrieved articles should be indicated as well. The applied methods for quality assessment and the inclusion of identified articles will also be explained. To better organize their manuscripts (especially the subheadings of the Methods section) authors are encouraged to consult the Checklists for different study types.
• Results: This section provides the number of screened studies, their characteristics, selection procedures, and an assessment of the risk of bias. The results of the individual studies are synthesized, and the major findings are explained. These findings are presented as the evidence-based and objective results of the of the review article.
• Discussion:  Here the major findings are analyzed and developed to address the target questions of the research. The findings in other studies are either mentioned as support and evidence, or as a backdrop to compare the new findings. Finally, a general interpretation of the results, their contribution to other studies, and their implications for future research are discussed.
• Conclusion should state the final result and recommendation that the author(s) has (have) reached. Such results and recommendations should be derived from the researcher’s own study and the results of other studies should not be stated in this section.
• Authors’ Contribution: Authors specify their individual contributions to the research process and writing of the manuscript. They indicate their contributions to different aspects of a project such as conceptualization, study design, experimentation, data acquisition, statistical analysis, preparing the manuscript, etc. Please note that the authors’ initials, rather than full names, should be used for identification.

• Conflict of Interest: Authors must disclose any financial and non-financial competing interests in advance of the review process. They need to declare if they received financial payment for the research, or if they have close relationships with people or entities that could inappropriately influence (bias) their study. Non-financial interests may include the disclosure of any personal, political, religious, ideological, academic and intellectual interests that might bias a study.

  If there are no competing interests, add the following statement: “The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper”.

• Funding/Support: declare the sources of funding and the role of funders

• References: references conform to the style outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), also referred to as the “Vancouver” style.

References in the text should be numbered sequentially and placed in parentheses. At the end of the manuscript, references are listed in numerical order as they appear in the text.

At least 80% of the references must have article identifiers, such as digital object identifier (DOI) or PubMed PMID (or PubMed Central PMCID). Please add these identifiers at the end of your references when available. You can visit the following link to search for DOIs and PMIDs of articles: http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery. It is highly recommended to use EndNote software for writing and managing references.