Canada Communicable Disease Report
Author's Checklist

The monthly, bilingual Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR) specializes in timely information on surveillance of infectious diseases, outbreak investigations, immunization, infection control, tropical health and quarantine information, and other disease control activities.

The maximum articles length is 3,200 words in total (including acknowledgments, references, source, figures, and tables) and manuscripts may be submitted in English or French (maximum 3,400 words if in French).

CHECKLIST:

If you want to save time and trees, review the following before you start writing. More detailed information and examples can be found in Guidelines for Authors Contributing to the Canada Communicable Disease Report.

Submission

• Ensure internal and/or external clearances before submitting the article (this is extremely important).

• Identify the corresponding author, with telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address included, and a backup contact.

• Submit the manuscript electronically - text and tables in WordPerfect or Word, and figures in Excel, Power Point, Harvard Graphics or Corel Draw.

• Do not incorporate tables and figures into the text - save them in a separate file.

• Provide hard copy of tables and figures by fax, hand, or mail to confirm the electronic version.

Content - Text

Organize reports of epidemiologic field investigations as follows:

Introduction - State the problem (describe who, what, when, where, how, and, perhaps, why).

Methods - Briefly describe the investigation and outline how activities were conducted.

Results - Provide clinical, epidemiologic, laboratory, analytic, and other investigational findings.

Discussion - Emphasize the important aspects and subsequent conclusions, and highlight public-health actions.

Content - Tables and Figures

Tables and figures emphasize or summarize important data in the text. They should be able to stand alone and still make sense (the meaning should be clear and present the key findings).

• Cite each figure and table in the text, and number them (separately) in the sequence that they are cited in the text.

• All terms/acronyms should be spelled out in the title

• Provide a brief title for each table and figure, and a short heading for every column in a table. Use footnotes to expand or clarify titles and headings, if necessary.

• Use legends to identify and explain each symbol, arrow, or letter used to identify parts of a figure or expand on information in a table.

• Use the symbols for footnotes and legends. Do not use numbers.

• Label rows and columns clearly.

• Use the international system (SI) for units of measurement.

• Cite sources of data.

• Obtain permission from the appropriate source and publisher for the use of previously published material. Written permission must be submitted to the CCDR editor.

Acknowledgements

The acknowledgements section lists individuals, groups, and institutions that have assisted the authors and/or contributed to producing the article.

• Provide the last name and first initial (preceded by Dr. if the individual is a doctor), affiliation, or full name of the association or institution, and the geographic location.

• Acknowledge the contribution of laboratories if there was any lab-work done or assistance given.

References

• Number references in the order they appear in the text. Please, do not use any endnote or footnote word-processing feature to generate a reference list, this makes it very difficult for us to work with.

• Place reference numbers in brackets and superscript at the appropriate place in the text, usually at the end of the sentence (i.e., Toronto, Ontario in 1995⁽²⁾).

• Follow the style of Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (and Supplemental Statements from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors), which can be found on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Web site at <http://www.icmje.org/index.html (External link) >(e.g., for journals, names of author[s] with initials as they appear in the publication, name of article in italics, name of the publication in the abbreviated form, year, volume number, inclusive page numbers). The quality of referencing has a direct impact on how quickly we are able to prepare a manuscript for publication.

• Use abbreviations for journals according to the List of Serials Indexed for Online Users originating from the United States Library of Medicine which can be found at <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lsiou.html (External link) >.

• Only use the names of first three authors, then add "et al."

• For electronic references, list the authors, name of the article and any other available information about its source, the universal resource locator (URL), and the date of access.

• Cite references to personal communications in the text in brackets (indicate as personal communication and provide the last name with the first initial, indicate if a doctor, affiliation, or full name of the association or institution, geographic location, and year).

• Cite references to unpublished data in the text in brackets (indicate as unpublished observations or data and provide information as listed above for personal communication).

Source

The source section lists the authors. Authors are responsible for the order of the presentation of the names of individuals and/or organizations.

• Provide the first and last name of each author, his academic degrees, full name of the affiliation or institution and it's geographic location.