For Authors

  1. “Emergency Medical Service” is a quarterly Journal. Original studies, review papers as well as case reports are published.
  2. The cost of publishing the manuscript is PLN 500 plus 23% VAT (for foreign authors: 100€). ALUNA Publishing House does not pay bank transfer costs.
  3. Articles in English are preferred. The editors may assist in finding professional translation or proofreading services.
  4. Manuscripts must be submitted via the online Editorial System available at https://emergencymedicalservice.pl. Free registration is required. After registration, authors should follow on-screen instructions.
  5. All editorial communication, submission, peer review, and correspondence take place through the Editorial System. In exceptional cases (e.g. technical difficulties), the editor may authorize communication outside the system.
  6. For studies involving humans or animals, manuscripts must include a statement of Ethics Committee approval.
  7. The Editorial Board follows the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and the Interdisciplinary Principles and Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research, Testing and Education (New York Academy of Sciences, Ad Hoc Committee on Animal Research). All human or animal research must comply with institutional and international ethical standards.
  8. Authors must provide a signed statement confirming that the manuscript has not been published or submitted elsewhere and accepting full responsibility for its content. The statement must disclose any potential conflict of interest, including:
    1. financial relationships (employment, paid expertise, consultancy, shareholding, fees);
    2. personal relationships;
    3. academic or professional competition;
    4. sponsorship of the study (design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing).
  9. Authors must specify their individual contributions using the following categories:
    A – concept and study design
    B – data collection and analysis
    C – statistical analysis
    D – manuscript writing
    E – critical revision
    F – final approval of the manuscript.
  10. Authors are required to provide their ORCID iD together with their institutional affiliation.
  11. Manuscripts must comply with the publisher’s technical and formatting requirements, including the structure of a scientific paper and reference style (see Annex 1).
  12. Acta Balneologica uses a double-blind peer-review process. Manuscripts are evaluated by two independent reviewers and approved for publication by the Editor-in-Chief. Authors receive anonymized reviews with a request for revision or a rejection notice. The review process follows the guidelines of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Good Practices in Review Procedures in Science, Warsaw 2011) and COPE Core Practices (see Review Rules section).
  13. All manuscripts are screened for plagiarism.
  14. Authors receive proofs for approval. Corrections must be returned within the indicated deadline; lack of response implies acceptance. Deadlines may be adjusted in justified cases.
  15. Acceptance for publication implies transfer of copyright to ALUNA Publishing House (Aluna Anna Łuczyńska, NIP 5251624918).
  16. Articles are published in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, allowing users to download and share the work with proper attribution, but without alterations or commercial use.
  17. Authors receive a complimentary PDF of the issue containing their article and, upon request, a printed copy sent to the correspondence address provided.
  18. Manuscripts not compliant with these instructions will be returned for correction.
  19. The editors do not return unsolicited manuscripts.
  20. The editors accept no responsibility for the content of advertisements.
  21. Authorship should be based on the four ICMJE criteria. All four criteria must be met.
    • (1) substantial contribution to the conception, design, acquisition, or analysis of data;
    • (2) drafting or critical revision;
    • (3) final approval of the version to be published;
    • (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
  22. Any change to the list of authors (addition, removal, or re-ordering) after submission requires a written, signed explanation from all authors and the Editor-in-Chief’s approval.
  23. Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet authorship criteria (technical, editorial, or financial assistance) should be listed in an Acknowledgements section.
  24. All clinical trials must be registered in a publicly accessible database (e.g. ClinicalTrials.gov, EU Clinical Trials Register) before the enrollment of participants. The registration number should be included in the manuscript.
  25. Authors should include a statement describing where supporting data are available, or explain why data cannot be shared due to confidentiality or legal restrictions.
  26. The journal doesn’t accept submissions of articles previously posted as preprints.
  27. The use of AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Bard) in writing or data analysis must be transparently disclosed in the manuscript. AI tools cannot be listed as authors and remain the responsibility of the human contributors.
  28. References must follow the Vancouver style and include the DOI where available.
  29. Emergency Medical Service adheres to the COPE Core Practices, the ICMJE Recommendations, and the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Technical and Formatting Requirements

  1. Articles must be written entirely in English. Any text in figures or charts must also be in English.
  2. Acceptable file formats:
    • Manuscript – DOC, DOCX, RTF, ODT
    • Tables – DOC, DOCX, RTF, ODT
    • Figures – JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG (min. 300 dpi)
    • Captions – submitted as separate files.
      All elements should be uploaded separately via the Editorial System. Metadata (titles, abstracts, keywords, references) are entered manually in designated fields.
  3. Maximum length:
    • Original papers – 21 600 characters (≈ 12 pages)
    • Review papers – 28 800 characters (≈ 16 pages), including references and figures.
  4. Structure: Introduction, Aims, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (the latter should not duplicate the abstract).
  5. Define abbreviations at first use.
  6. Abstract: 150–250 words, structured for clinical or experimental papers (Aims, Material and Methods, Results, Conclusions). Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract.
  7. Provide 3–5 keywords according to MeSH (Medical Subject Headings).
  8. Illustrations may be black-and-white or color, with good contrast and clarity. Printed issues are produced in grayscale unless stated otherwise.
  9. In-text citations: references in square brackets [e.g. 1, 3–6]; figures and tables in round brackets (e.g. Fig. 1).
  10. References must include only cited works, listed in citation order.
    • Original papers – max 30 items
    • Review papers – max 40 items.
      Each reference should include: authors’ surnames and initials, title, abbreviated journal name (Index Medicus), year, volume, pages, and DOI (if available). For books: author(s), chapter title, book title, publisher, place, year. Websites should include URL, access date, and author(s) if known. Follow the Vancouver referencing style.
  11. Disable automatic fields (bibliography generators, footnotes, endnotes). Manuscripts using them may be returned for correction.


Ⓒ 2019 Aluna