Instructions for Authors

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Papers, written in English, are considered for publication and should be submitted in electronic format to: jhpn@icddrb.org. A print copy of the manuscript may be submitted to Managing Editor, Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition, icddr,b, GPO Box 128, Dhaka 1000 (Mohakhali, Dhaka 1212), Bangladesh. While submitting the manuscript, written approval (either in black and white or by email) of all authors must as well be submitted. Authors may also suggest names of 3-5 potential experts for reviewing the manuscript.

The manuscript must be accompanied with copies of any permissions to reproduce published materials, to use illustrations or report-sensitive personal information of identifiable persons, or to name persons for their contributions.  

EDITORIAL POLICIES

The Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition has adopted the following editorial policies:

The Journal puts emphasis on speedy publication. Most articles are published within 4-6 months of acceptance. There is no absolute rule against articles primarily dealing with industrialized countries; however, preference is given to the articles dealing with issues of developing countries.

The manuscripts that are poorly written are returned without further examination. However, technical editing for grammatical flaws and inconsistency in style elements is done on the accepted papers.

Public-health professionals sometimes report lessons they have learnt from their experience. Often these are important lessons and may be reported in working papers and monographs. While these may be valuable, they may also be biased, and the data may not have sufficient reliability. The Journal prefers articles on studies that are well-designed and substantiated by adequate and reliable data.

To facilitate rapid publication of high-quality articles, the Journal has several section editors who review manuscripts in their areas of expertise. These sections include: Emerging Diseases; Health Systems; Immunization; Nutrition; Population; Reproductive and Neonatal Health; Water and Sanitation; Gender Health and Human Rights; Social Determinants of Health; Chronic Disease; and Case Studies.

The section headings may suggest narrowly-focused articles, but the Journal favours manuscripts that show interactions among different sections and cross-cutting of issues relating to broad aspects of health.

Type of papers published

The Journal publishes articles of authors from any part of the globe but has a special interest in publishing original research of relevance to developing countries. It publishes original research articles, review articles, commentaries, short reports, case studies, and letters on new findings (see Mission and Editorial policies above). Occasionally, the Journal carries an editorial perspective. The aim is to explore diverse perspectives and to offer opinions on controversial subjects. The Journal also publishes theme-based issues.

In principle, a review article should not generally exceed 8,500 words, and an original research article should also not exceed 6,500 words, including the abstract, tables, references, and other appendices. A commentary should not exceed 4,000 words. A short report and a case study should not exceed 2,500 words, including abstract, tables, and references. Letters should be brief (around 1,500 words) and to the point; tables can be included, but graphs and illustrations will not normally be used. References must be kept to a minimum.

Acceptance of paper

All decisions to accept, revise, or refuse a paper will be made by the editors.

Papers are accepted for publication provided these are submitted solely to the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition and are subject to peer review and editorial revision.

Statements and opinions expressed in review articles, original papers, commentaries, short reports, letters, case studies, editorials, special issues, and supplements published in the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition are of the author(s) and not necessarily of the editors or the publisher; the editors and the publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such material. Neither the editors nor the publisher guarantee, or endorse any products or services advertised in this publication, nor guarantee any claims made by the manufacturer of such product or service. 

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Manuscripts should be prepared using double-spacing throughout, including the title page, abstract, text, acknowledgements, references, tables, and legends for illustrations. Number pages consecutively, beginning with the title page.

Manuscripts must be accompanied with a covering letter. This must include: (a) information on prior or duplicate publication or submission of any part of the work elsewhere; (b) a statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all authors (written approval must accompany); (c) the name, address, telephone, fax number, and email address of the first author and also the corresponding author who is responsible for communicating with other authors about revisions and final approval of the proofs.

Manuscripts based on clinical trials must accompany the clinical trial registration information.

Title page

The title page should carry: (a) the title of the article, which should be concise but informative; (b) a short running head or footline of no more than 40 characters placed at the foot of the title page; (c) first name, middle initial, and last name of each author, with highest academic degree(s), and institutional affiliation; (d) name of department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed; (e) disclaimers, if any; (f) sources of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these; (g) name and address of the first author and also the corresponding author responsible for correspondence; (h) name and address of the author to whom requests for reprints should be addressed or statement that reprints are not available from the author(s).

Authorship

All persons designated as authors must qualify for authorship. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content of the article and has consented to be an author.

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to: (a) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; (b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (c) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions (a), (b), and (c) must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is also not sufficient for authorship. Any parts of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author.

The role of each author in the study/manuscript must be spelled out in a separate sheet of paper.

A paper with corporate (collective) authorship must specify the key persons responsible for the article; others contributing to the work should be recognized separately (see .Acknowledgements.).

Abstract and key words

The abstract of no more than 350 words should state the background and purposes of the study or investigation; basic procedures (selection of study subjects; observational and analytical methods); main findings (give specific data and their statistical significance, if possible); and the principal conclusions. Emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations. Use only approved abbreviations.

Below the abstract, provide and identify as such 3 to 10 key words or short phrases that will assist indexers in cross-indexing the article and may be published with the abstract. Key words or short phrases should be sufficient to describe the content of the text. Use terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of the Index Medicus, published by the U.S. National Library of Madicine (NLM), USA; if suitable MeSH terms are not yet available for recently-introduced terms, present terms may be used.

Text

The text should be divided into sections with the following headings: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion.

Introduction: The background and purpose(s) of the study should be clearly stated. Summarize the rationale for the study or observation. Give strictly pertinent references only, and do not review the subject extensively. Do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported.

Materials and methods: Describe your selection of the observational subjects clearly. Identify the methods, apparatus (names and addresses of manufacturers in parenthesis), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods (see below); provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well-known; describe new or substantially-modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations.

Ethics: When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the committee on human experimentation of the institution in which the experiments were done or in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. Do not use names of patients, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in any illustrative material. Please indicate which Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the research and provided ethical clearance. When reporting experiments on animal subjects, indicate whether the institution.s or the national research council.s guide for, or any national law on, the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

Statistics: Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence interval). Avoid sole reliance on statistical hypothesis testing, such as the use of p value, which fails to convey important quantitative information. References for study design and statistical methods should be made to standard works (with pages stated) when possible rather than to papers where designs or methods were originally reported. Specify any general computer programmes used.

Include general descriptions of methods in the Materials and Methods section. When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used for analyzing them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Avoid non-technical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as .random. (which implies a randomizing device), .normal., .significant., .correlations., and .sample.. Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols used.

Before submission, if appropriate, get the manuscript reviewed by an expert statistician.

Clinical trial registration: For clinical trials, the name of the trial registration, registration number, and the URL of the registry must be included.

Results: Present results of your study in logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations. Do not repeat in the text all data in the tables or illustrations, or both: emphasize or summarize only important observations.

Discussion: Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and conclusions that follow from them. Highlight the important/major findings first, then highlight the less-important findings. Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction section or the Results section. Include in the Discussion section the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research. Relate the observations to other relevant studies. Link the conclusions with the goals of the study but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by your data. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. State new hypotheses when warranted but clearly label them as such. Recommendations, when appropriate, may be included.

Acknowledgements: One or more statement(s) should specify: (a) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chairman; (b) acknowledgements of technical help; (c) acknowledgements of financial and material support, specifying the nature of support; (d) financial or other relationships that may pose a conflict of interest.

Persons who have contributed intellectually to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be named and their function or contribution described. Such persons must have given their permission to be named. Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission from persons acknowledged by name because readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions.

Technical help should be acknowledged in a paragraph separate from those acknowledging other contributions.

References:Number references consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by arabic numerals in parentheses. References cited only in text, tables, or legends to figures should be numbered in accordance with a sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or illustration. Use the style of the examples below, which are based on the formats used by the U.S. National Library of Medicine in the PubMed/Index Medicus. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in the Index Medicus/ PubMed. Consult the List of Journals Indexed in the Index Medicus/PubMed. Try to avoid using abstracts as references; .unpublished observations. and .personal communications. must not be used as references, although references to written, not oral, communications may be inserted (in parenthesis) in the text. Include among the references papers accepted but not yet published, designate the journal, mention the year, and add .in press. (in parenthesis).

The references must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents. Examples of correct forms of some references are given here.

Examples of correct forms of references

Journals

(1) Standard journal article (list all authors when six or less; when seven or more, list only first six and add et al. in italics)

Rahman MM, Alvarez JO, Mahalanabis D, Wahed MA, Islam MA, Unicomb L et al. Effect of vitamin A administration on response to oral polio vaccination. Nutr Res 1998;18:1125-33

(2) Corporate author

World Health Organization. Scientific Working Group. Rotavirus and other viral diarrhoeas. Bull World Health Organ 1980;58:183-98

(3) No author given

Defining the limits of public health (editorial). Lancet 2000;355:587

(4) Journal supplement

Hebbelinck M, Clarys P, De Malsche A. Growth, development, and physical fitness of Flemish vegetarian children, adolescents, and young adults. Am J Clin Nutr 1999;70(Suppl):S579-85

(5) Journal paginated by issue

Kitua AY. Field trials of malaria vaccines. Indian J Med Res 1997;106(Aug):95-108

Books and other monographs

(6) Personal author(s)

Walker-Smith J. Diseases of the small intestine in childhood. 2d ed. Kent: Pitman Medical, 1979:171-249

(7) Editor, compiler, chairman as author

Vaughan VC, III, McKay RJ, Jr., Behrman RE, editors. Nelson Textbook of pediatrics. 11th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 1979:1-9

(8) Chapter in a book

Heird WC, Cooper A. Nutrition in infants and children. In: Shils ME, Young VR, editors. Modern nutrition in health and disease. 7th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Febiger, 1988:944-68

(9) Published proceedings paper

Sack DA. Bacteriological and clinical variation of acute diarrheal disease. In: Mazumder DNG, Chakraborty AK, De S, Kumar AK, editors. Proceedings of the 8th National Conference on Communicable Diseases. Calcutta: All-India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, 1980:89-93

(10) Monograph in a series

Philips SF, Gaginella TS. Effects of fatty acids and bile acids on intestinal water and electrolyte transport. In: Binder HJ, editor. Mechanisms of intestinal secretion. New York, NY: Liss, 1978:287-94. (Kroc Foundation series, v. 12)

(11) Agency publication

Hamill PW. NCHS growth curves for children birth.18 years.United States. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 1977. iv, 74 p. (DHEW publication no. (PHS) 78-1650; Vital and health statistics, series 11, no. 165)

(12) Dissertation or thesis

Rahman ASMM. Village practitioners of Bangladesh: their characteristics and role in an oral rehydration programme. London: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 1980. 84 p. (Dissertation)

Other articles

(13) Newspaper article

Azad AS. Water pollution and health hazards. Bangladesh Observer 1982 Dec 11:5(col 3-5)

(14) Magazine article

Roueche B. Annals of medicine; the Santa Claus culture. The New Yorker 1971 Sep 4:66-81

Tables

Type each table double spaced on a separate sheet. Do not submit tables as photographs. Number tables consecutively and use a brief title for each. Mention in each column a short or abbreviated heading. Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations that are used in each table. For footnotes, use these symbols in this sequence: *, ., ., ¶, §, **, .., .., etc. Identify statistical measures of variations, such as standard deviation (SD) and standard error of the mean (SEM). Internal vertical rules should not be used. Cite each table in the text in consecutive order. If you use data from another published or unpublished source, obtain permission, acknowledge fully, and submit permission obtained.

Illustrations and legends for illustrations

Illustrations

Figures should be professionally drawn. Letters, numbers, and symbols should be clear and even throughout. Titles and detailed explanations should belong in the legends for illustrations, not on the illustrations themselves.

Photomicrographs may have internal scale markers. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in the photomicrographs should contrast with the background.

If photographs of persons are used, either the subjects must not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use the photographs.

Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text. If a figure or a table has been published, acknowledge the original source, and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the materials. Permission is required, regardless of authorship or ownership by virtue of being the publisher, except for documents in the public domain. Colour photographs are not encouraged. But, if necessary, colour photographs can be reproduced if paid by the author.

Legends for illustrations

Type legends for illustrations double-spaced, with arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations. When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used for identifying parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend. Explain the internal scale, and identify method of staining in photomicrographs.

Units of measurements

Measurements of length, height, weight, and volume should be reported in metric units (metre, kilogramme, litre) or their decimal multiples. Temperature should be given in degrees Celsius (e.g. 37 ºC). Editors may request that alternative or non-SI units be added by the authors before publication.

Abbreviations and symbols

Use only standard abbreviations. Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.

For further information, authors are referred to: .Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. prepared by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. (http://www.icmje.org).

Copyright

Manuscripts submitted for publication in the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition must not have been previously submitted or published. Accepted papers become the permanent property of the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition of icddr,b. By submitting a manuscript, the authors(s) agree that copyrights for their articles are automatically transferred to icddr,b, if and when the articles are accepted for publication.

The copyright gives the publisher (icddr,b) of the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, photographic reproductions, microforms, or any other reproductions of similar nature, and translations.

The Article-Fee Code on the first page of an article in this journal indicates the consent of icddr,b that copies may be made for personal or internal use, provided the stated fee for copying is paid through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachusetts 01923, USA. Fax (508) 750-4744). The copyright owner.s consent does not, however, extend to copyright for general distribution, for promotion, for creating new works, or for resale. Specific written permission must be obtained from icddr,b for such copying.

The use, in this journal, of registered trade names, trademarks, etc. without special acknowledgement does not imply that such names, as defined by the relevant protection laws, be regarded as unprotected, and, thus, free for general use.

Galley-proof

Uncorrected galley-proofs will be sent to the corresponding author for return within 48-72 hours. It is the author.s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of these proofs. Correction other than printing errors should be kept to a bare minimum. Rewriting is totally unacceptable.

Reprints

No free reprints will be supplied to the authors for their articles published in the JHPN. Each author of a particular article will get one copy of the journal issue containing the article but a maximum of 5 copies in total. All copies will, however, be sent to the corresponding author.

Reprints may be ordered at the time when corrected proofs are returned. The order form with ordering procedures and price list will be sent to the corresponding author with the galley-proof. Payment must be made upon receipt of an invoice from the publisher, if a cheque for correct amount is not sent when returning the galley.