Guide for Authors
Journal of Men's Health (jmh) is an international inter-disciplinary
journal, published quarterly, which accelerates the transfer of knowledge from bench to bedside and bedside to bench, provoking debate
or highlighting wider social issues of concern to readers interested in men's health and gender medicine all over the world.
It is
important that papers are well written in a readable style. Articles may be written in British English (according to the Concise Oxford
Dictionary) or American English (according to Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary). The editorial office will provide assistance in
polishing articles to achieve high-quality communication.
Submission of a paper to
jmh is understood to imply that it is
not being considered for publication elsewhere and that the Author(s) permission to publish his/her article(s) in this journal implies
the exclusive authorisation of the journal to deal with all issues concerning the copyright therein. Authors will be required to sign
a declaration of authorship, and a conflict of interest statement disclosing financial interests that are recognised as having the potential
to lead to biased reporting in biomedical articles. Disclosures will be published with the article if they are considered important to
readers in evaluating the article.
Online Submission Papers should be submitted online via the jmh web site at
http://ees.elsevier.com/jmh).
All articles undergo peer review, managed by the jmh editorial office (jmh-office@ismh.org), using this web site. See also "Submission
Checklist" below.
Ethics in publishing
For
information on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics
and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
Conflict of interest
All authors
are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with
other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived
to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission
declaration
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form
of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that
its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and
that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language,
without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Changes to authorship
This policy concerns
the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before the accepted manuscript
is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal
Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed,
or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition,
removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.
Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must
follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2)
publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.
After the accepted manuscript
is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue
will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Copyright
Upon
acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright
see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information.
An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'
form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles
including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution
outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions).
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: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Authors contributing a manuscript do so on the understanding that once it is accepted for publication, copyright in the
article, including the right to reproduce it in all forms of media shall be assigned exclusively to the journal. The journal will not
refuse any reasonable request by the author to reproduce any of his or her contribution elsewhere.
Retained
author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the funding source
You are requested
to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe
the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report;
and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.
Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier
has established agreements 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.
Language and language services
Please
write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information
about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices or our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com for more information.
Submission
Submission
to this journal proceeds totally online and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system
automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even
though manuscript source files are converted to PDF files at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further
processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place
by e-mail removing the need for a paper trail.
Online Submission
Papers should be submitted
online via the jmh web site at
http://ees.elsevier.com/jmh). All articles undergo peer review, managed by the jmh editorial
office (
jmh-office@ismh.org), using this web site. See also "Submission Checklist" below.
TYPES
OF MANUSCRIPT
The following is a guide to types and length of submissions:
Original Papers
Original reports of basic
research and clinical work including social health:
Full-length <3500 Words
References <80 References
Reviews and
Editorials
Where applicable the guidelines for Original articles apply to Reviews and Editorials. Otherwise the format of these
articles is at the discretion of the author.
Reviews should be submitted with an abstract which should give the core message
of and conclusions reached in the article, indicating unanswered and unanswerable questions.
Reviews
Reviews, mini-reviews
Full-length <3500 Words
References <100 References
Mini-reviews <2500 Words
References <50 References
Full length, mini, and systematic review articles will be published and can be submitted or invited by the Editor. Systematic reviews
should be written according to the
Cochrane Collaboration guidelines. The format is at the discretion of the author but a
summary
which should give the core message of and conclusions reached in the article, indicating unanswered and unanswerable questions must be
included at the end of the article.
Editorials
Editorials: <1500 Words, <20 References
Letters to the Editor
Comments on recent publications in
jmh, short case report or pertinent observation: <800 Words, <6 References
Two types
of Letters will be considered for publication. The word limit excludes references, name(s) and address(es) of the signer(s), and the
phrase
To the Editor. Letters should be address
To the Editor and should have a title.
A Letter to the Editor
commenting on an article that has appeared in the Journal should be brief and directly related to the published article. Letters may
be published together with a reply from the original author.
A brief case presentation or a short report of a pertinent
observation in the form of a Letter to the Editor will be considered for publication.
Continuing Medical
Education
Educational Series
Book Reviews: <600 Words
Events Calendar
Medical or non-medical
local and national events related to gender medicine are invited. Please submit to
eventcalendar@ismh.org
Points of
Style
•Abbreviations should not be overused, i.e. usually abbreviations are not necessary unless used more than three times
in the article.
•Jargon should be avoided.
•There is a tendency to overuse the passive voice in scientific writing.
The passive can be useful in the Subjects, materials and methods section but otherwise over-indulgence in the passive voice makes for
dullness in scientific writing.
•Please use "men" and "women", and "boys "girls" or "youths" when writing about humans and avoid
the use of "male" and "female" except as adjectives.
•Choose shorter words with the more correct meaning whenever possible,
e.g. "did" rather than "performed", "show" rather than "demonstrate", "gave", "injected" or "treated" rather than "administered", "used"
rather than "employed" or "utilised".
•Name dropping, i.e. mentioning researchers by name rather than relying solely on a citation, is to be avoided, e.g. The sentence "We confirmed the findings of P.W. Edwards and colleagues that . . . [3]" can be changed to "We confirmed
that . . . [3]".
Essential title page information
•
Title.
Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae
where possible.
•
Author names and affiliations.
Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name),
please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all
affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide
the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also
post-publication.
Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address
and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
•
Present/permanent
address.
If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address'
(or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work
must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Abstract
Abstracts should be structured into the following four paragraphs: Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions. The information in
the abstract must correlate with that in the main text. Abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and should be written out in full the
first time they are used followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. No references should be cited in the abstract. Abstracts should
not exceed 250 words in length.
Keywords should preferably be taken from the MESH index of Index Medicus.
Introduction
The introduction should explain the state of knowledge before the investigation and contain a clear statement of the aim and novelty
of the study. It should neither include results nor conclusions.
Subjects, Materials and Methods
Sufficient information
should be given to permit repetition of experiments.
Patients and the criteria for their selection must be described. The
reasons for any dropping out of the study must be fully explained.
Animals age, sex and source and, where appropriate, genetic
background should be given.
Chemical substances must be identified and unless they are standard laboratory chemicals the
name, town and country of the supplier must be provided.
Drugs must be identified by their generic or official name. Proprietary
names may follow in parentheses (include both English and American names if different). Great care should be taken in describing the
use of drugs and details of the regimen should be thoroughly checked.
Units. The International System of Units (SI) should
be applied. For abbreviations, capitals without full stops are preferred. If uncommon abbreviations are used they should be defined at
first mention.
Genes. Gene names should be those approved by the Human Gene Nomenclature Committee (
www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature).
Italic characters should be used for gene symbols to distinguish them from protein symbols. New gene sequences should be deposited in
a public database (GenBank, EMBL or DDBJ), and the accession number provided.
Results
Only
important observations should be reported and reference made to details documented in tables and figures. Repetition of data between
tables, figures and text must be avoided.
Figures. Instructions on submitting figures online are provided under
http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork
All authors wishing to use illustrations already published must first obtain the permission of the author and publisher and/or copyright
holder and give the precise reference to the original work. If colour illustrations are essential, please inform the Editorial Office
immediately of your requirements; colour figures will be published online at no cost but a charge will be levied to the author to cover
print production costs.
Figure Legends. Figure legends should be short but contain sufficient detail to explain the figures
and enable them to stand as a separate entity from the text. Details of methods should not be included. These should only be given in
the subjects, materials and methods section.
Tables. Authors are encouraged to use tables to show precise numerical details,
data, and information (e.g. the general characteristics of the subjects), when these cannot be clearly presented as narrative. A table
should have at least three interrelated columns and three rows; a table with less can probably be narrated in the text. Tables should
be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals in the order in which they are cited in the text. Each table should be typed in double
spacing and given a brief explanatory caption.
Discussion
The discussion should compare the state of previous knowledge
mentioned in the introduction with the new information provided by the results, but without repeating them. It should fairly assess the
results and discuss the relevant literature both supporting and contending the findings. The clinical application of the results is important
and should be clearly explained.
The discussion and results may be combined in
short reports.
Acknowledgements
Only those people who qualify as contributors not meeting the Uniform Requirements for Submission of Manuscripts to Biomedical journal's
criteria of authorship (
http://www.icmje.org) should be listed. The source of grant support, equipment and drugs must also
be included.
Reference List
Reference Format. These should represent the most recent and pertinent literature
available. It is essential that references are thoroughly checked to eliminate inaccuracies.
•A maximum of 50 references should
be included. •References should be provided in the Vancouver system.1. •Indicate reference(s) in the text with a number in
square brackets [1] to [80]. •At the end of the manuscript provide a corresponding numbered reference list. This should not be alphabetised,
but should appear in the same sequence as the numbers in the text. •Names of journals should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus
(
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html)
Examples:
1. Books: [1]Zucherman AJ, Smith O, Clark J et al.
Infectious mononucleosis. In Top FH and Wehrle PF (eds) Communicable and Infectious Diseases. 2nd edn, St Louis: CV Mosby, 1990, pp 558-9.
2. Journals: [1]Greenland KJ, Zajac JD. Kennedy's disease: pathogenesis and clinical approaches. Intern Med J 2004;34:279-86.
Papers
that have been accepted but not yet published should be included in the reference list followed by "(in press)". Those in preparation
including those already submitted for ublication, personal communications and unpublished observations should be referred to in the text
only.
Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering
and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as 'graphics' or enclose the font.
• Only use the
following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence
in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.
A detailed
guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are
urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
Regardless of the
application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please 'save as' or convert the images to one of the following formats (note
the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS: Vector drawings. Embed
the font or save the text as 'graphics'.
TIFF: Color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF:
Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a minimum of
500 dpi is required.
If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please
supply 'as is'.
Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the
resolution is too low;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately
large for the content.
Submission checklist
The following list will be useful during the
final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details
of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author with
contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files
have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description,
footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'
• References are
in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)
• Color figures
are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print, or to be reproduced in color on
the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the Web is required, black-and-white versions of
the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please visit our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com.
Proofs
Proofs will be sent electronically as a pdf file to the corresponding author, unless otherwise
indicated. Only corrections of typographical errors will be accepted at this stage. Please therefore ensure that when you submit your
manuscript it is accurate and complete.
Use of the Digital Object Identifier
The Digital
Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string
which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore,
it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic
information. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters
B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059
When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, the DOIs are
guaranteed never to change.
For inquiries relating to the submission of
articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal's homepage. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance
of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher. You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle.
You can also check our Author FAQs (
http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ) and/or contact Customer Support via
http://support.elsevier.com.
