The Journal of Smooth Muscle Research publishes papers reporting original scientific and clinical research in the field of smooth muscle studies. The journal publishes full papers and reviews, under the sections of “Original” and “Review” or “Invited Review”, respectively. In addition, the Journal publishes papers that describe methods and protocols of experimental and clinical studies that will help scientists push their inquiries of smooth muscle research forward, under the section of ”Protocols”.

This is an open access online journal and no hard copies are printed. The authors, however, can order the offprints of their articles by completing the offprints order form provided with the proof.

All received manuscripts are subject to peer review by at least two referees appointed by the editor. When the editor recommends revisions, the authors must submit a revised version within 3 months after receiving the review results. Otherwise the submission will be treated as having been retracted by the authors.

The use of automated assistive writing technologies and tools (commonly referred to as artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence, or machine learning tools) is permitted provided that their use is documented and that authors assume responsibility for the content. Authors are responsible for the accuracy, validity, and originality of computer-generated content.

This journal does not permit the use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter figures, images and artwork in submitted manuscripts.

Per ICMJE Authorship Criteria, automated assistive writing technologies do not qualify for authorship as they are unable to provide approval or consent for submission. Per ICMJE recommendations for writing assistance, these tools should be listed in the Acknowledgements; if involved in the research design, the tools should be documented in the Methods. For additional information, see the World Association of Medical Editor recommendations.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers, provided that the link to the preprint version is provided during the submission process.

Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time throughout the submission process. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

When the submitted article is accepted and published in this journal, the preprint should link to the published version.

This journal does not allow the citation of preprints as references.

Submission of a manuscript is subject to the following restrictions:

1. The submission has not been previously published (except as a conference abstract or as a component of a lecture or academic thesis), nor is it before another journal for consideration.
2. All authors and responsible authorities of Institutes where the work was undertaken have approved publication of this research.

The publisher will not be legally responsible in case of compensation claims.

All copyrighted materials in the manuscript must be accompanied by the written permission from the copyright holders unless they are free to be reused. The written permission may be an original document file or a scanned original letter. All other materials will be assumed to be the authors' original ones which have never been published previously.

Authors should submit their manuscripts online through Open Journal System. Once registered, the authors can log in and submit their manuscripts. Please consult the section of authoring in OJS-3-user-guide for details. If the authors encounter any problem while submitting their manuscripts, send an e-mail to the editor.

E-mail address of the Editorial Office

Dr. Katsuya Hirano
Editorial Office, The Journal of Smooth Muscle Research
E-mail address: editorjssmr.jp
(Replace to "@".)

Manuscripts should be written in English and be submitted in double-spaced Microsoft Word file format (.doc or .docx).

For details, consult The NCBI Style Guide (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK988/).

Title page

Abstract

Text

Terminology

References

Tables

Figures

All animal and human research must have an explicit statement confirming that appropriate ethical clearance licenses as provided by the specific relevant Institutional Committee(s) were obtained for the research. Where relevant, a statement must be included that informed consent was provided by all human subjects. Details that could identify subjects must be omitted.

Submissions that do not fulfil these obligations may be rejected according to the discretion of the Editors. Authors will be held responsible for false statements.

Authors must indicate whether or not they have a financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research. This note should be added in a separate section before the reference list.

If no conflict exists, authors should state: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

In addition to that, provide the ICMJE Conflict of Interest forms, completed by all authors. Please submit forms for the number of authors. If the downloaded form is not fillable, click the "View" tab and select the edit mode.

All data supporting the findings of the study should be available by either depositing the data to the public data repository, providing the data as supplementary information, or making the data available from the authors upon reasonable request.

Data availability statement should be mentioned in a separate section before the reference list and describe how the data supporting the results reported in your article can be accessed. Data availability statements can take one of the following forms:

• The data are available in the [Name] repository, hyperlinks and persistent identifiers (e.g. DOI or accession number) for the data where available. Note that the data deposited to the public data repository should be publicized by the expected date of publication of the relevant article.
• The data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• All data are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
• The data are not publicly available due to [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• The data are available from [third party name] but restrictions may apply to the availability of the data. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
• Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

J-STAGE Data, a data repository developed and managed by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), is a recommended data repository of the Journal. Authors who intend to deposit the data to J-STAGE data, please first contact the editorial office, then the URL will be issued for you to upload the data. Once you uploaded the data, you may not access the data. The uploaded data are subjected to review by at least two editorial board members of the Journal for the adequacy of publicization. The accepted data are publicized as open access under the terms of the latest version of CC BY-NC defined by the Creative Commons Attribution License. The copyright of the data publicized on J-STAGE is transferred to the Publisher, the Editorial Office of The Japan Society of Smooth Muscle Research. Please refer to the following website for the detail of J-STAGE Data.

The copyright of the article published in the Journal is transferred to the Publisher, the Editorial Office of The Japan Society of Smooth Muscle Research upon acceptance of the manuscript. The publisher has the copyright of all articles published in the Journal.

Although the publisher has the copyright, reuse of the contents is free. Please read "Reuse of the contents" section below.

The purpose of the galley proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum.

There are no submission or page charges for this journal. Color illustrations are also free of charge.

The Offprint Order Form will be sent with the galley proof. The price of offprint depends on the number of pages. Approximate price of offprint (without cover) is 16,000 JPY/50 copies. If the article has color figures, there is some additional press charge. But remember once the paper is published, anyone can download the full paper in the PDF format free of charge.

All articles are distributed under the terms of the latest version of CC BY-NC defined by the Creative Commons Attribution License, which is allowing others to download the material and share it (either whole or parts of it) with others without any permission as long as they credit the original source and indicate if modifications were made, but they can't use the material commercially. The original source should also be included in the reference list, if any. For commercial use of a whole paper, contact Japan Academic Association For Copyright Clearance. For commercial use of the part of a paper, contact the Press Office.

Dr. Brian Quinn

Japan Medical Communication (JMC)

E-mail: info＠japan-mc.co.jp

URL: https://www.japan-mc.co.jp/

Note: The authors, who are requested for English editing during review process, may obtain a discount for English editing from JMC. Please contact the Editorial Office for the details, if you wish to have assistance from JMC. Authors are highly recommended to have English editing before submission.