Information for Authors

1. Journal focus
2. Types of contribution
   • Articles
     • Research Reports
     • General Articles
     • Position Papers
   • Short contributions
     • Practical Advice Papers
     • Brief Communications
     • Letters to the Editor
     • Articles in specific formats
3. General requirements
   • Style
     • Writing articles for online publication
     • Article length
     • Spelling
     • Abbreviations
   • Sections of the article
     • Title page
     • Abstract
     • Keywords
     • Main text
     • References within the text
     • Acknowledgements
     • List of references
     • Tables and Figures
4. Manuscript submission
5. Review process
6. Ethics, authorship and copyright
   • Ethical concerns
   • Authorship
   • Copyright
7. Publication
8. Presubmission checklist
9. Communicating with the journal staff
10. Indexing and abstracting services
11. Useful websites for authors

Education for Health: Change in Learning and Practice (EfH) is the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of The Network: Towards Unity for Health. Our readers are health professionals, health professions educators and learners, health care researchers, policymakers, community leaders and administrators from all over the world. We publish original studies, reviews, think pieces, works in progress and commentaries on current trends, issues, and controversies. We especially want to provide our international readers with fresh ideas and innovative models of education and health services that can enable them to be maximally responsive to the healthcare needs of the communities in which they work and learn. We are interested in manuscripts that include, but are not limited to, one or more of the following topics:

• Innovative models of education targeted to health professions students and practitioners to provide high quality health care that meets the needs of individuals, families, and communities
• Innovative models of community-based health care delivery and studies of the impact and effectiveness of these models
• Programs and research on collaborations between academia and health services, with the goal of community health improvement
• Interdisciplinary approaches to health professions education and service delivery
• Models and systems of education, research, and service delivery that link, and have implications for, both economically advantaged and economically disadvantaged countries.

Note!: During the process of submitting your manuscript online, please indicate the type of contribution you are submitting.

Articles

Research Reports:
Research Reports present original research or reviews of the literature on projects and topics relevant to the focus of the journal. Reports of qualitative research can be up to 4,000 words long. All other Research Reports should not exceed 2,500 words.

Reports of original research should include: (1) sources of funding for the work; (2) detailed explanations of methodologies not commonly used, including references that support these methodologies; (3) copies of non-standard questionnaires used in the research; and (4) sufficient descriptions of statistical methods and any software used that allow readers with access to the original data to verify the reported results.

General Articles:
General Articles present and analyze broad topics, such as policies and trends that have implications for community-based health professions education and service delivery. These are limited to 2,500 words.

Position Papers:
Position Papers are carefully argued and appropriately referenced statements of a point of view. Typically, these papers are between 1,000 and 2,000 words.

Short Contributions

Practical Advice Papers:
Practical Advice papers are informative articles on broad topics that present practical tips and lessons learned. These papers are limited to 2,000 words with an abstract of up to 200 words.

Brief Communications:
Brief Communications are descriptions of projects and research that are in process or limited in scope. Structured abstracts of no more than 200 words are required. Brief Communications can include up to two tables and/or figures, and up to 10 references. Excluding the abstracts, and tables/figures, Brief Communications are limited to 1,200 words.

Letters to the Editor:
Letters to the Editor are accepted on topics determined to be of interest to our readership. There is a limit of 500 words, with one table and/or figures, and up to five references.

Articles in specific formats:
Education for Health regularly publishes additional papers in specific formats, e.g. Commentaries, Interviews, Personal Views, Book Reviews, Conference Reports, Obituaries, etc. Authors are referred to recent issues of the journal and asked to copy the format therein. Alternatively, the journal office can be contacted for further details on how to construct these articles. Book reviews should begin by citing the book reviewed, with full bibliographic information including full title and subtitle, authors and/or editors (please include first names), publisher, place of publication, copyright date, number of pages, ISBN number, price if available, and whether the book is case bound or soft covered. Please include in the file the name and institutional address of the book reviewer.

General requirements

Any word-processing package may be used to prepare your manuscript, but files in Microsoft Word are preferred. Please avoid using automatic formatting.

Style

Manuscripts should follow the style of the American Psychological Association as detailed in the 5th edition of APA's Publication Manual (2001). For more detailed information, go to http://apastyle.apa.org/

Writing articles for online publication: Keep in mind that readers will view your article on a computer screen. Some people read more slowly and with less comprehension online than on paper. Therefore, consider avoiding unnecessarily long articles. Write clear, short sentences. Where possible, use bullets or numbered lists instead of complex sentences. Break the text into mainly brief paragraphs of up to 7 sentences. Provide frequent section headings that alert readers to the content of the paragraphs that follow.

Article length:

• Editorial: up to 2000 words
• Original research paper: up to 2500 words
• Qualitative research paper: up to 4000 words
• Brief communication: up to 1200 words
• Practical advice: up to 2000 words
• Commentary: up to 1000 words
• Conference report: up to 800 words
• Personal view: up to 1000 words
• Interview: up to 3000 words
• Biography, Tribute or Obituary: up to 800 words
• Book review: up to 800 words
• Letter to the Editor: up to 500 words
• Letter via on-line forum: up to 500 words

Abbreviations: All abbreviations and acronyms should be spelled out at first use. Abbreviations should not be used in the Abstract unless the term is used there more than once.

Sections of the article

Title page: On the first page, identify the type of article you are submitting. Give the paper's full title. Concise titles are easier to read than long, complex ones. However, titles should include enough information so that electronic retrieval of the article can be both sensitive and specific. Provide the names of all authors, their position titles, their email addresses and current institutional affiliations. The highest academic qualification of each author should be given. If any of their institutional affiliations were different at the time that the reported project was done, also indicate that prior affiliation. Indicate the name and full contact information (email address, postal address as well as fax and phone numbers) of the corresponding author.

Abstract: Provide a structured abstract with headings. Abstracts are the only substantive portion of the article indexed in many electronic databases, so the abstract needs to reflect the content of the text clearly and accurately. Even when the entire article is available, many readers only look at the abstract. To increase the likelihood that they will grasp the primary issues presented in the article or even decide to read the entire article, your abstract needs to outline the key information, highlighting new findings and strategies and other intriguing information.

Typical headings for a Research Report are: Context, Objectives, Methods, Findings, Discussion, and Conclusions. (These headings should also be found in the full text to facilitate linking).

Abstracts can have up to 250 words, except for Brief Communications and Practical Advice papers, for which the abstracts are limited to 200 words.

Keywords: Assign up to 10 keywords (or phrases) for indexing purposes. As well as selecting from the keyword screen at the prompt when submitting, terms from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/introduction2004.html should be considered. The key words will be used for search and as article alerts for those registered with the journal; they will also assist in cross-indexing the article at abstracting services.

Main text: Within the text, make headings and subheadings following the journal pattern. For greater clarity and for linking purposes, use the headings of the abstract as main headings in the text. Explain all technical terms the first time that you use them. Also, spell out abbreviations and acronyms at first use.

References within the text: Education for Health uses the American Psychological Association style for all references. Within the text, cite references by putting the first one or two authors' last names and year of publication in parentheses, e.g. (Anderson, 2006) or (Laing & Howell, 2005). If there are more than two authors, use: (Gallico et al., 2005).

When citing several references consecutively in the same place in the text, present them in chronological order, e.g. (Sanderson, 2002; Laing & Howell, 2005), or if all are in a single year, present them alphabetically (e.g., Anderson, 2006; Cohen-Cole, 2006; Murray, 2006). For multiple papers in the same year by the same author(s), append letters to the dates: e.g., 2007a, 2007b. Avoid citing a “personal communication” unless it provides essential information not available from a public source. If you do cite a personal communication, give the name of the person and the date of communication in the text.

Acknowledgements: Immediately after the text, provide the names of people who have made a significant contribution to the project but do not qualify as authors. Also, if applicable, cite sources of funding or other resources for the reported work.

As a separate section following the acknowledgements, cite any conflicts of interest, if applicable.

List of references: Provide the list of references immediately following the text or the acknowledgements. Present the references alphabetically by first author. Do NOT number the references. Be sure that all the references were mentioned in the text. Journal titles should NOT be abbreviated.

References should be in the American Psychological Association style, with capitalization and punctuation as indicated. For more detailed information, go to: http://apastyle.apa.org/. For the format of electronic references, go to: http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html

Following are citation examples:
Journal Articles
Anjum, Q., Siddiqui, H., Ahmed, Y., Rizvi, S. & Usman, Y. (2005). Knowledge of students regarding hepatitis and HIV/AIDS of a private medical school in Karachi. Journal of Pakistan Medical Association, 55, 285-288.
Online Journal Articles
Burdick W.P., Morahan P.S., & Norcini J.J. (2007). Capacity building in medical education and health outcomes in developing countries: the missing link. Education for Health, 20(3), Article 65. Retrieved November 4, 2008, from:http://www.educationforhealth.net/articles/subviewnew.asp?ArticleID=65
Books
Gillham, B. (2000). The research interview. London/New York: Continuum.
Chapter within Edited Books
Warren, B. (2002). Qualitative interviewing. In, J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research. Context and method (pp. 83-102). Thousand Oaks California / London: Sage Publications.
Website references
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) (1999). Outcome Project: Enhancing residency education through outcomes assessment. Retrieved September 14, 2006, from http://www.acgme.org/outcome/comp/compMin.asp

NOTE: References that are not available to the general academic public in regular libraries or through standard bibliographic services, such as personal communications or organizational reports, should not be included in the List of References. These should be cited in the text only. Example: (T.K. Lukes, personal communication, April 18, 2007).

Tables and figures: Include tables and figures immediately after the references. Use Arabic numerals to number the tables and figures, according to their sequence of citation. Provide a short, self-explanatory title for each table and figure. Text used in tables/figures should be Arial font and 9pt in size. Headings should be bold. Text should have single spacing. Within the text, indicate where each table and figure belongs (for example, "Insert Table X about here"). Typically tables and figures belong after the paragraph where they are first cited.

Should it be impossible to integrate the tables and/or figures into the same file as that of the contribution, then the graphs can be added separately during the online submission process. Please note, however, that only files in jpg- and gif-format can be uploaded separately.

Tables: Use the tables feature of your word processing program to create the tables, rather than using the space bar or tabs and tab stops to separate columns of data. Do not use vertical rules to separate columns. Units should be in parentheses in the column heading but not in the body of the table. Put explanatory notes, labeled with superscript (a, b, c, etc.), at the bottom of the table. Ensure that tables are sufficiently comprehensive so that readers can understand them without referencing the text. Be sure to spell out abbreviations or acronyms, even if you have already done so in the text.
Figures: All illustrations (photographs, graphs, and diagrams) should be called 'Figures'. Make sure that figures can be interpreted without reference to the text. Include keys to symbols in the captions. Figures should be professionally drawn, of publication quality, and capable of proportional reduction. Keep in mind that figures should be meaningful, rather than decorative. If you have figures or photos in jpg or gif format that are not included in your article, these can be submitted in a separate submission area during the article submission process. Always keep a copy of what you submit in case of file corruption.

Manuscript submission

As of May 2007, all submissions to Education for Health should be made online. Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript. The submitting author, who is usually the corresponding author, takes responsibility for the article during the submission and review process.

For new users: Before you can submit an article, you need to register with the journal via the button “Login/Register” on our homepage at www.educationforhealth.net.

To submit a manuscript, you first need to log in, and the “Contribute” button on the homepage will connect you to our online submission and reviewing system. You will be led step by step through the manuscript submission process.

Be prepared to submit for each author: full name, highest academic qualification, position title, organization (current at the time of article preparation), phone contact and current email address, contribution to the manuscript and whether a journal registered user. Following that screen, you will be asked to upload your manuscript (as a Word document) and any non-embedded figures into our Online Article Submission Form.

Automatic acknowledgement will be sent after successful submission.

If you have questions or come across problems while uploading your manuscript, you are encouraged to seek assistance from EfH’s journal team at: efh@network.unimaas.nl

Review process

In May 2007, Education for Health has started using online peer review to speed up the publication process.

Education for Health has a double blinded peer-review process, concealing the identities of authors from reviewers and reviewers from authors. If you want your identity concealed from the reviewers of your paper, please do not provide any authors’ names, institutions, or other identifying information on any page after the first page of your manuscript.

Once your manuscript has been submitted it will be streamed into our journal's reviewing process. Please view the review process diagram via the link on the Contribute page of the website.

You are expected to prepare your manuscript according to our journal’s guidelines and requirements as detailed in these instructions. Papers that fail to conform in major ways will be returned before they are processed.

Each submission that meets our journal’s guidelines is initially reviewed by one of our Associate Editors, who decides whether a manuscript is ready for external peer review. At this stage, your manuscript may be returned with guidance on recommended revision and a request to resubmit before the manuscript is sent out for review.

If your manuscript is ready for external review, it will be sent to at least 3 peer reviewers.

All submitted articles are rated on each of the following criteria:

1. The focus of this paper is consistent with the mission of EfH.
2. This paper presents useful ideas/lessons for readers of EfH.
3. The abstract accurately reflects the text.
4. The context/rationale for the program/study is clear.
5. Credit is given to the relevant work of others.
6. The paper's objectives/purposes are clear.
7. The paper's objectives/purposes are worthy.
8. The paper is clearly written.
9. The project or study is well-designed.
10. The findings/ideas/recommendations are original.
11. Any research reported was appropriate and well-conducted.
12. For quantitative studies, any statistics reported are appropriately used.
13. For qualitative studies, findings are grounded in the data.
14. For innovative programs, the process of innovation is clearly described.
15. Limitations/problems are reported and addressed.
16. The conclusions are consistent with the study results.
17. The presentation is sensitive to our international audience.

1. Accept the paper.
2. Accept after minor modifications
3. Reconsider after major revisions
4. Reject the paper for failing to meet the journal’s criteria

The ultimate responsibility for any decision lies with the Co-Editor-in-Chief, to whom any appeals against rejection should be addressed.

Ethics, authorship and copyright

Ethical concerns

Submission of a manuscript to Education for Health implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that approval of research has been obtained from an ethics committee (where appropriate), in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm.

The manuscript must be the authors' original work, not previously published in printed or electronic form, nor under consideration by any other print or electronic journal. Manuscripts that are derived from papers presented at conferences can be submitted unless they have been published as part of the conference proceedings in a peer reviewed journal. However, submissions of articles based on published abstracts, or verbal or poster presentations at conferences or meetings are also welcomed.

Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Competing interests:
A competing interest exists when your interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by your personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment were they to become public after the publication of the manuscript. We ask authors of Education for Health to list all competing interests at the end of their article, as a separate section following the Acknowledgements. If there are no competing interests, you should state that: 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

Authorship

All authors should be listed on the title page or first page of your manuscript. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for some part of the content. One (or more) author(s) should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole. Usually, this is the corresponding author’s responsibility.

Immediately after submission of your article, all co-authors will be requested by email to confirm authorship of the article, and thereby acknowledging that they qualify as an author for this manuscript.

An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to the article. To qualify as an author you should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.

For a full definition of authorship, please access the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” on the website of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: http://www.icmje.org/.

Copyright

Authors who publish in Education for Health retain copyright to their work.

They are required to have obtained permission to use any copyright-protected material in their submitted paper, including material in the form of figures or tables. Please ensure that you have avoided any libellous statements, because authors are liable for any subsequent legal action.

While you retain copyright of your original material, by publishing on the EfH site you will have agreed to the following contractual terms:

• The article is the original work of the stated author(s)
• The work has not been published previously
• The journal Education for Health may use the article for publicity purposes
• The journal Education for Health may publish the article on third-party sites
• Any subsequent publication of the article by the authors will carry the acknowledgement: ‘First published in Education for Health [http://www.educationforhealth.net]’

Prior to publication of your article, you will be requested to log in to the journal site, accept and agree to the final, edited version of your article and also to indicate agreement to these terms.

A notice of conditions placed on site users to protect your original material is available at the foot of each journal page.

Permissions: Enquiries regarding reproduction and re-use of the material contained in this site should be directed to:

1. EfH [efh@network.unimaas.nl], regarding permission to use our version of the material.
2. The copyright holder (in most instances the author), regarding re-use of their original material.

Once the article has been submitted, you will be able to check its progress by logging in to the journal site http://www.educationforhealth.net and accessing your article’s status page (select the button “Status Page /User Profile” from the menu bar) where article-specific editorial correspondence is accessible.

Editing: All accepted manuscripts will be substantively edited for content and overall presentation, so authors should be prepared for further revisions during editing. The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the final, edited version, which the corresponding author approves of on behalf of all authors, either after consulting with all co-authors, or by obtaining their advance authority to approve the final version on their behalf.

Electronic proofs: Prior to publication, the corresponding author will receive email notification when electronic proofs are ready. He/she will be requested to agree to the journal's copyright conditions and approve the edited article.

Publication will occur once this task is completed. Your article will be published in both fully browseable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Presubmission checklist

Before uploading your article onto our website, please ensure that you have completed all the items in this checklist. If you have any questions at this stage, please contact efh@network.unimaas.nl and we will be pleased to assist you.

• Read these Instructions for Authors carefully.
• Make sure to supply all author details, including institutional and current addresses.
• Indicate the correspondence author.
• Indicate the type of article.
• Make sure that your abstract is appropriately structured.
• Explain all abbreviations and technical terms the first time they are used.
• Observe the appropriate word limit for the type of submission.
• Assign up to 10 keywords (or phrases) for indexing purposes.
• Check that all references are complete, accurate, and set in APA style of referencing.
• Place up to 6 tables and/or figures after the references in the body of the text.
• Cite sources of funding, if applicable.
• Cite conflicts of interest, if applicable.

All email communications should be sent to the journal office at: efh@network.unimaas.nl

Postal address:
Education for Health
The Network: Towards Unity for Health
P.O. Box 616
6200 MD Maastricht
THE NETHERLANDS

Phone: +(31) 43 388 5636
Fax: +(31) 43 388 5639

Books to be reviewed for Education for Health should be sent to the
Book and Electronic Media Review Editor:
Judith A. Gravdal, MD
Chair, Department of Family Medicine
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital
1775 Dempster St.
Park Ridge, IL 60068
USA
Email: Judith.Gravdal-MD@advocatehealth.com

Indexing and Abstracting services

Education for Health is currently noted in Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA), Australian Education Index (AEI), British Education Index, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), EBSCO Online, Educational Research Abstracts online (ERA), EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, ERIC, Family Index Database, Current Index to Journals in Higher Education (CIJE), Index Medicus/MEDLINE, INFORCYT, PsychINFO, Research in Higher Education Abstracts, National Database for Research into International Education(NDRI), SIIC Databases and Sociological Abstracts.

Useful websites for authors

Research and statistical support for authors can be found at the following websites:
The Statistics Homepage: http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html
Research Methods Knowledge Base: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/contents.php
Survey & Questionnaire Design: http://www.statpac.com/surveys/
Research Methods Tutorials: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/tutorial/tutorial.htm
DMAA Research Documents: http://www.dmaa.org/research_documents.asp

Open Access The Budapest Open Access Initiative was started at a meeting in Budapest in 2001 convened by the Open Society Institute. The aim of the initiative was to accelerate progress in making research articles freely available on the Internet, using two strategies: (1) Self-archiving, where researchers can upload the results of their research, to certain prescribed standards, on the Internet; (2) The establishment of open access peer-reviewed Internet journals.

BioMed Central provides free access to peer-reviewed biomedical research, in the spirit of Budapest Open Access Initiative. Directed by a Board of Trustees, BioMed Central consists of many journals from various scientific disciplines. In most cases the authors pay for publication of their research, instead of subscribers paying for access. While original research articles are available online without charge, access to review articles is still limited to those who can pay.

The CONSORT site is a great resource for those interested in randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology, either as author or reader. CONSORT provides a checklist and flow diagram for RCT. The checklist includes items that need to be addressed; the flow diagram gives a clear picture of the progress of participants in a trial. The CONSORT site also has links to PDFs of similar guidelines for QUOROM (systematic reviews and meta-analyses), MOOSE (meta-analysis of observational studies) and STARD (studies of diagnostic accuracy).

The Cochrane Library, published quarterly and available on CD-ROM and the internet, is a regularly updated collection of high quality, evidence-based medicine databases, including The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

International Council of Medical Journal Educators provides "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals". The basis for these guidelines was the 1978 Vancouver Group meeting of medical journal editors. These guidelines are regularly updated and are accepted by many as the industry standard. An article prepared to these requirements would be acceptable to any biomedical peer-reviewed journal.

Système Internationale (SI) units, or the International System of units, is the modern metric system of measurement and is used universally in scientific and biomedical publications.

MEDLINE. MEDLINE's "Citation Matcher for Single Articles" allows a search for the abstract of any article in any journal indexed by MEDLINE.

The World Association of Medical Editors site has a collection of articles on journal writing and editing - click on "Resources for Editors" in the side panel of the home page and then select "Journal resources".

The British Medical Journal site has a free access collection of archived articles. Click on "Collected Resources", scroll down to "Non-clinical" resources and under "History" select "Journalology" for articles on many aspects of peer-review publication. From the Home page click on "Netprint" for an example of Open Access's self-archiving.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS: Revised 17 April 2009
(These instructions will be updated throughout the year.)