Manuscript
More than 700 papers have been published using Lifelines data!
As stated in the signed Data and/or Material Agreement (D(M)TA) of your project, Lifelines would like to receive your manuscript and other products of your Lifelines project (e.g. abstract or poster) at least two weeks before submission. Here you can find information on our review of your manuscript and an overview of all information that should be included in your manuscript.
Process
Pre-submission process
- Submit your product to Lifelines
As stated in the signed Data and/or Material Agreement (D(M)TA) of your project, Lifelines would like to receive your manuscript and other products of your Lifelines project (e.g. abstract or poster) at least two weeks before submission. You can email your product, including possible supplementary material, to our Research Office mentioning your Lifelines project code for correct registration.- Make sure your manuscript (or other product) adheres to the publication guidelines (see below) and follows the standard export guideline, see Export page.
- If your product also contains data from other data sources (either linked to Lifelines participants or to compare with Lifelines participants), you are responsible to check for compliance with their publication guidelines (Lifelines will only check for compliance to our own guidelines).
- Response Lifelines
After you submit your manuscript or other product to Lifelines, an employee from the Research Office will review your manuscript regarding adherence to our guidelines, and will email you one of three possible conclusions listed below.
Important note: Lifelines will not evaluate the scientific content of your paper.- Approval: All guidelines from Lifelines have been met and we approve your manuscript. You can go ahead and submit it to the journal.
- Small revision: The Lifelines reviewer noticed that you missed one or a few small details, e.g. one required reference. We ask you to process the necessary changes before submitting your manuscript to the journal, and this concludes our review.
- Larger revision: The Lifelines reviewer noticed several points that we would like to see adjusted, e.g. several missing references and/or the presence of potentially identifiable results. We ask you to process the necessary changes and email us a revised version of your manuscript for a re-evaluation.
(Possible) Media attention
We would love to think along if you are expecting to receive media coverage of your publication or when you are approaching the media yourself. We could utilize our own media platforms as well, to increase the spread of your publication; since sharing is caring! Additionally, if we are aware of (possible) media attention beforehand, we can prepare ourselves for possible questions from participants or researchers that might follow.
Post-publication process
When your manuscript has been published, Lifelines would like to receive this information at our Research Office including your Lifelines project code and the DOI from your publication (or URL). After we have been notified about a publication we will add the publication to the Lifelines website page listing all publications using Lifelines data, increasing the findability of your paper. Please note, pre-print versions of the publication will not be added on the website.
Have a look at all Lifelines publications
Additionally, your publication might be selected for one (or more) of the actions listed below. Please note, that for some of these communications your own input might be requested as well.
- Sharing of your publication on our social media
- Sharing of your publication in our researcher newsletter
- Sharing of your publication in our participant newsletter
- Interview with the principal investigator of the project and/or the first author of the publication
Publication regulations and guidelines
Below you can find an overview of the mandatory content for your manuscript, as stated in your signed D(M)TA (see Step 3). Additionally, several additional options are listed, based on frequent requests from other researchers and we provide insight into the possible exceptions to these regultations.
Mandatory content
Required acknowledgement of Lifelines and inclusion of standardized paragraph.
Funding statement required.
The use of certain data require additional references when used in your publication. Please do not forget to have a look at these references in the next section on this page.
Non-mandatory content
There are three Lifelines cohort papers available.
If authors wish to express their thanks, the following statement may be used: "The authors wish to acknowledge the services of the Lifelines Cohort Study, the contributing research centres delivering data to Lifelines, and all the study participants."
Lifelines offers a standardized data availability statement.
Lifelines offers a standardized participation statement.
If you would like/need to include Lifelines as a co-author on your manuscript you can include: “Lifelines Cohort Study”.
The general Lifelines protocol has been approved by the UMCG Medical ethical committee under number 2007/152.
Exceptions to guidelines
When submitting another product (i.e. not a manuscript), like an abstract, conference talk, infographic, poster, or report the requirements are less strict.
When submitting a manuscript that includes data from a large number of data sources you are often unable to include all guidelines. Here you can find the required inclusions.
Mandatory additional references
Some available data has been collected or generated with the extensive effort, (financial) support, and/or specific expertise from certain research groups and therefore require additional references when used in your publication (references below in MLA referencing). Common examples of these are: 1) results from an additional questionnaire or measurement, 2) linked data from another, external data source, or 3) secondary variables generated by researchers and returned to Lifelines. Please include the listed references in your manuscript, if you used the associated data:
Additional collected questionnaire data
Two references required.
Two references required.
Three references required.
No reference required, however report with additional information provided.
Banner required.
No reference required.
No reference required. However, paper with additional information provided.
One reference required.
No reference required. However, paper with additional information provided.
No reference required.
No reference required. However, paper with additional information provided.
Two references required.
Secondary data (researcher generated)
No required reference.
One reference required.
Two references required.
No reference required.
No reference required.
One reference required.
One required reference.
No reference required.
No reference required.
No reference required, however download with additional information provided.
One reference required.
One reference required.
No reference required.
No reference required.
One reference required.
No reference required.
No reference required.
No reference required, however paper with additional information provided.
No reference required.
One reference required.
