IMPORTANT CHANGES to the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation: 2013
Dear Colleagues:
The Journal is engaging in a few structural and logistic changes beginning April 1st 2013 as follows.
I.Open access
The journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article on your own website. More information can be found here:
II. NewEditorial Office Contact
Any question may be directed to our office by e-mail to or via phone to the editorial office at 617-732-8534 (Ms. Michelle Kraft, JHLToffice manager).
III. Changes to Manuscript Categories
Please note that the “Clinical Dilemma” series is being discontinued as of April 2013 – Generally, the acceptance rate for such a category was too low (5-8%) and as such we have moved this to the “letters section under Case Anecdotes, Comments and Opinions”. We believe that a case based observation should be described in a succinct and clear manner without over speculation and discussion.
For Original Research Communications we ask authors to adhere to the following policy in order to maximize the number of articles available in each issue. A 3000 word limit for text plus abstract (excluding tables, figures, and references), on average 8 journal pages per article, will be permitted. A total of 8 figures/tables will be allowed.
Innovation articles should be no more than 1500 words. The entire double-spaced, typewritten manuscript, including tables, figures, and references should be five to seven pages, and the abstract should be no more than four sentences.
Research Correspondence and Case Anecdotes,Comments and Opinions should be no more than 1000 and 500 words respectively (in total main text). The research correspondence papers must contain substantive information concerning experimental or clinical studies, accompanied by a brief reference list (of no more than five references) and one or two tables and/or figures. It should be titled, and double-spaced. Only 5 authors are allowed for Research Correspondence and 3 for the Case Anecdotes, Comments and Opinion category. This communication is retained and indexed in the Cumulated Index Medicus.
We also welcome receiving State-of-the-Art reviews (2500 words) and Perspective pieces (1500 words) for publication in the journal. The editorial process would be greatly enhanced if prospective authors would contact the editors for questions regarding such submissions. We shall be glad to provide you direction on whether the journal would be interested in reviewing your work or if a similar line of work has already been processed or commissioned by the editorial office. Typically, a Perspective piece can be a discussion or debate on any ongoing clinical or scholarly issue in the field or a look into the future. Please note that your experience and scholarly standing will be paramount in our review process of these areas of work.
Any prospectively initiated Clinical Trial (any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome) must be registered before the start of patient enrollment. Trials in which the primary goal is to determine pharmacokinetics are exempt. A list of acceptable registries may be found at . You must indicate the trial registry and its access mechanism at the time of submission. Exceptions are granted on a case-by-case basis by the Editor-in-Chief.
IV. New JHLT Online Audio Slides
AudioSlides are short, webcast-style presentations that are shown next to the online article on ScienceDirect. The AudioSlides Authoring Environment enables authors to create an interactive presentation from their own slides and add voiceover audio recordings, using only a web browser and a computer with a microphone. When it's ready, their presentations will be made available next to their published article on ScienceDirect. For more information about this project, please visit
The editorial team of JHLT is very grateful to the ISHLT, members and international fraternity of academic friends for their ongoing support as we rapidly continue to offer these enhanced services.
Sincerely yours,
Mandeep R. Mehra, MD
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation