Sexually Transmitted Infections Submission Guide

Describe recruitment, care or community setting, symptoms, testing access, age, sex and gender variables where relevant, geography, exclusions, and missingness without turning sensitive characteristics into stigma. Explain who the evidence does not represent and why that matters to the intended decision.

For partner, network, or contact-tracing studies, state the unit of analysis and dependence structure. For surveillance, show how test availability, case definition, and reporting changed over time.

1. Confirm the current article type and live limits on the official author page.
2. Apply a design-matched reporting guideline through EQUATOR.
3. Reconcile eligibility, consent, ethics, privacy, registration, outcomes, denominators, missingness, and sensitivity analyses.
4. Check that terminology is accurate, non-stigmatizing, and consistent across title, tables, figures, supplement, and patient-facing material.
5. Verify the current submission route immediately before upload.

A new point-of-care test may show high sensitivity and specificity in stored samples. That does not prove usefulness in a clinic. The manuscript should identify the intended setting, reference standard, spectrum of infection, indeterminate results, prevalence, turnaround time, treatment pathway, and consequences of false results. If workflow performance was not tested, describe analytical or clinical accuracy and name implementation as the next evidence step.

We use an infection-to-action trace: pathogen or condition, represented population, measurement, comparison, outcome, uncertainty, and the specific clinical or prevention decision. The trace catches a common problem in which strong laboratory or surveillance evidence is made to carry a broader claim about behavior, treatment, or population impact.

When the trace breaks, the repair is specific: define intended use, add an external setting, preserve indeterminate results, model ascertainment change, narrow the inference, or choose the specialist readership that owns the actual job.

In our analysis of the current official guidance and the manuscript decision implied by it, we found three checks that a generic publisher summary does not resolve. In our editorial analysis, the recurring failure pattern is a cascade jump: diagnostic performance, treatment response, or prevention uptake is presented without the population, reference standard, care pathway, follow-up, or access conditions needed to interpret it. The stronger submission traces who is represented, what decision occurs, what comparator applies, what harm or benefit was measured, and where equity or implementation changes the inference.

Inference jump. Test whether the conclusion moves from an observed result to mechanism, clinical use, or policy without the required comparison and validation.

Population jump. Compare the title, abstract, figure, methods, and conclusion for a change in the represented population, setting, model, or time horizon.

Package contradiction. Reconcile the main claim with the protocol, source files, supplement, data statement, ethics boundary, and cover letter before upload.

Observational studies can use the STROBE explanation; trials should check CONSORT 2010; systematic reviews should check PRISMA 2020. Apply only the guideline that matches the design, and confirm the journal's current article-type requirements separately.

This source-backed synthesis cannot predict acceptance or editorial priority. It identifies a manuscript-level decision that the publisher instructions do not make for an author.