Homeopathy

Guide for Authors

Homeopathy invites papers for publication. These should be original and not published elsewhere. All contributions are subject to peer review by independent experts and the Editor's decision concerning publication is final. We pay a fee for reviews and also for transcriptions of lectures, seminars, debates etc. A detailed outline is required before we will agree to commission such articles.

Authorship: All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

Acknowledgements: All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above 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. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Conflict of interest: At the end of the text, under a subheading "Conflict of interest statement" all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

Role of the funding source: All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

English language help service
Upon request, Elsevier will direct authors to an agent who can check and improve the English of their paper (before submission). Please contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for further information.

Manuscript Submission
Authors are requested to submit their original manuscript and figures online via http://ees.elsevier.com/homp/. This is the Elsevier web-based submission and review system. You will find full instructions located on this site - a Guide for Authors and a Guide for Online Submission. Please follow these guidelines to prepare and upload your article. Once the uploading is done, our system automatically generates an electronic pdf proof, which is then used for reviewing. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revisions, will be managed via this system.

Paper submissions are not normally accepted. If you cannot submit electronically, please email the editorial office for assistance on journal@trusthomeopathy.org

Papers should be structured as follows: (a) Title page, (b) Abstract, (c) Keywords, (d) Text, (e) References, (f) Figure and Table Legends, (g) Figures and (h) Tables.

Title page. List the title and full names of all the authors' institutional affiliations, the corresponding author's names, full postal address, telephone, fax and e-mail, three to six keywords and suggestions for a short running title.

Text. Use the standard format (Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References). Abbreviations and Contractions should be defined in the text when first used.

Homeopathic medicines. The names of homeopathic medicines, books and journals appear in italics. The binomial system and abbreviations are used for homeopathic medicines e.g. Nat-m, Kali-ar. Homeopathy potencies are indicated as 6x, 30c, 1M 10M (or dH, cH, MK etc where the method of dilution is specified).

Clinical Case Histories. Cases should be well presented and concise (maximum of 1500 words per case). Cases should address a specified therapeutic and/or management issue. Discussion should be critical and reflective rather than doctrinaire. Case analysis (symptom selection, prescribing strategy, etc) should be transparent and well justified. Case histories should discuss the materia medica involved, and the rationale of any differential diagnosis. Case analysis and materia medica should be illustrated with tables and figures where appropriate. Case histories should include adequate follow-up to demonstrate sustained improvement. Documentation and independent evidence strengthen case reports, and as much of such evidence as possible should be presented. This includes results of pathology and other investigations, images (including photographs), physical examination, ability to work and fulfil social roles, educational performance, assessments by other health professions and agencies etc.

Clinical trials: All clinical trials submitted for publication in Homeopathy should include a CONSORT flow chart ( http://www.consort-statement.org/) and conform to the RedHot Guidelines which supplement CONSORT for homeopathy ( http://www.redhot-homeopathy.info/).

Homeopathy has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which require registration in a public trials registry ( www.icmje.org). If you do not have arrangements for registering clinical trials you can do so free of charge at http://prsinfo.clinicaltrials.gov/. Registration at this website meets the ICMJE requirements. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes are exempt.

Ethics: Work on human beings published in Homeopathy will comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki: Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects as amended by the 52nd WMA General Assembly, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2000. ( www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm). The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committee or institutional review board and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines.

Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in your paper. Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients' images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

References. Only papers relevant to the published work should be cited. References should be numbered according to their first appearance in the text. At the end of the paper they should be listed in numerical order corresponding to the order of citation in the text. The form of references should be:

Journals Name of author(s) followed by initial (if more than six authors, give the first three and add et al), full title of paper, abbreviated title of the journal, year of publication, volume number, page number(s).

1. Walach H, Van Asseldonk T, Bourkas P, et al. Electric measurement of ultra-high dilutions - a blinded controlled experiement. Br Hom J 1998; 87: 3-12.

Books Name of author(s)followed by initials (if more than six authors as above), chapter title, name and initial of editor(s), full title of the book, volume, edition, place of publication, publisher, year of publication, page number or span.

2. Hahnemann S. Organon of medicine, 6th edn, New Delhi: B. Jain Publishers 1970, pp 63 - 68.

3. McMichael DF. Mollusks - Classification, distribution, venoms apparatus and venoms, symptomatology of stings. In: Bucherl W and Buckley EE (eds) Venomous Animals and their Venoms, Vol III Venomous Invertebrates. New York: Academic Press, Inc, 1971 Chap 57, pp 373-393.

Graphs, tables and illustrations must be on separate pages, numbered at the back. Legends should be included for all of these. Colour photographs can be reproduced at extra cost to the author but will be included online free of charge.

Copyright: Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a "Journal Publishing Agreement" (for more information on this and copyright see http://authors.elsevier.com). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An email (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a "Journal Publishing Agreement" form.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Tel. (+1) 215 238 7869; Fax (+1) 215 238 2239; email healthpermissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. Proofreading is the responsibility of authors, we may proceed with the publication of articles if no corrected proofs are received.

Offprints: The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

Business matters
Business correspondence and enquiries relating to advertising, subscriptions, back numbers or reprints should be addressed to the Publisher.