Author Guidelines

Publisher’s Ethic Rules

Journal of Ideas in Health (JIDHealth) is an international journal that follows the double-blind peer-review process. All authors, reviewers, and editors in JIDHealth are expected to follow the highest ethical standards while conducting research, submitting manuscripts, and throughout the peer-review process. The publisher, chief-in-editor, and the journal editors believe that the journal's quality would be guaranteed with full respect to ethical guidelines. JIDHealth publishes at the highest scientific level on original research and review articles dealing with general medicine and health. Originality, high scientific quality, and citation potential are the most important criteria for a manuscript accepted for publication.

Journal of Ideas in Health encourages the editors, authors, and reviewers to follow the guidelines based on existing Elsevier policies and COPE "s Best Practice Guidelines. Detailed information about the publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement for editors (PDF), authors (PDF), and reviewers (PDF) are available online or as a PDF file format.

Preparing your manuscript

As a policy of the Journal of Ideas in Health (JIDHealth), authors are encouraged to follow the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ICMJE  when preparing their work for submission.

Page Contents

1. General Principles
2. Reporting Guidelines
3. Manuscript Sections
   1. Title Page
   2. Abstract
   3. Introduction
   4. Methods
   5. Results
   6. Discussion
   7. References
   8. Tables
   9. Illustrations (Figures)
   10. Units of Measurement
   11. Abbreviations and Symbols

 General Principles

Generally, the so-called “IMRAD” structure (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections) is followed to present the articles' text reporting original research. More details about other types of articles are found in the Type of Articles.

Reporting Guidelines 

Depending on the type of designed study, authors in JIDHealth are encouraged to follow the corresponding guideline and as follows; CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and STARD for studies of diagnostic accuracy. Authors of review manuscripts are encouraged to describe the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data; this is mandatory for systematic reviews. Good sources for reporting guidelines are the EQUATOR Network and the NLM's Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

Manuscript Sections 

The Title Page (with author details)

The first page is the title page and should include the followings and in separate lines:

Article title

The title of the article must be specific, concise, and informative. Always try to keep it brief and straightforward enough to condense the article’s content in a few words and capture the readers’ attention. However, in randomized trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, the study design should be a part of the title. For example:

Author information:

Names

List full name (s) of the author (s). To match authors and their affiliations, please insert numerical superscripts, i.e., “1, 2, 3, 4 …” followed by a space after the name and, correspondingly, before affiliation. If all the authors are affiliated with the same organization, any number is no need. For example, Ahmed Ali Khaleel^1*, Layla Taha Hussian²

Affiliation (where the actual work was done), see also the "authors' details."

Different affiliations shall be listed on separate lines. Do not insert any punctuation at the end of each affiliation. If all the authors are affiliated with the same organization, type that affiliation just once. The footnote should state the author's academic affiliation (departments, institutions, city, country, and email address). For example:

^*1 Department, Institutions, City, Country name and, if available, the valid e-mail address

² Departments, Institutions, City, Country name and, if available, the valid e-mail address

Corresponding author

Full name with contact details (the mailing address, telephone, fax numbers, and e-mail address). Do not forget to denote the corresponding author with a superscript asterisk (*).

“ICMJE encourages the listing of authors’ Open Researcher and Contributor Identification (ORCID)”.

Source(s) of support

Please clarify if any grants, equipment, drugs, and/or other support have been used to facilitate conducting the work.

Word count

A total word count for the article's text, excluding its abstract, acknowledgments, tables, figure legends, and references, should not exceed 5000 words. “A separate word count for the abstract is useful for the same reason” (limited to 300 words).

Number of figures and tables

As far as necessary to cite the study results, the number of Figures and Tables is allowed. However, authors are encouraged to use Figures and Tables and avoid doubling the data in the main text and figures or tables.

The main manuscript text (no author details):

The second page is the blinded manuscript where the paper's main body, including the abstract, keywords, the paper body text, references, figures, tables.

Note: the main manuscript text should not include any identifying information, such as the authors' names or affiliations).

Abstract

The abstract where most of the researchers rely on to cite the article. That is why special attention should be given to write the abstract in a way that should reflect the whole manuscript with adequate and sufficient details. A structured abstract is preferred with no more than 300 words. References are not allowed. Only the necessary abbreviations are used. The following subheadings must be included:

Background: the context and purpose of the study.

Methods: describe how the study performed and statistical tests used.

Results: indicate the main findings.

Conclusions: briefly describe the summary and potential implications.

“The ICMJE recommends that journals publish the clinical trial registration number at the end of the abstract. The ICMJE also recommends that when a registration number is available, authors list that number the first time they use a trial acronym to refer to the trial they are reporting or other trials mentioned in the manuscript. If the data have been deposited in a public repository and/or are being used in secondary analysis, authors should state at the end of the abstract the unique, persistent data set identifier, repository name, and the number”.

Keywords

For indexing purposes, (3-10) keywords representing the article's main content should be provided below the abstract. Try to avoid general and plural terms and multiple concepts such as ‘with’, ‘in’, ‘of’, ‘and’.

The paper Body Text

The paper body text should be arranged with the following subtitles:

Background 

Provide a context or background (introduction) for the study (that is, the nature of the problem and its significance). A brief literature review is encouraged. Cite only directly pertinent references and do not include extra data or conclusions from work being reported. State the specific purpose or research objective of, or hypothesis tested by, the study or observation.

Methods

The methods, tools, and procedures used to conduct the study, including the apparatus (manufacturer’s name and address), should be sufficiently detailed to the extent that other researchers would be able to reproduce the results when they accessed the data. Specific attention should be given to state the names of all drugs and chemicals used, including the generic name(s), dosage(s), and route(s) of administration. “If an organization was paid or otherwise contracted to help conduct the research (examples include data collection and management), then this should be detailed in the methods”. The statistical methods and any computer software should also be mentioned. The statistical significance has to be identified using superscripts (* and **) following the data (*P < 0.05, **P < 0.01). “In general, the section should include only information that was available at the time the plan or protocol for the study was being written; all information obtained during the study belongs in the Results section”.

Results 

Researchers need to present their findings logically, giving the main or most important findings first when appropriate tables or illustrations must be used. “Do not repeat all the data in the tables or figures in the text”. A precise check should be given to the accuracy and readability of all statistical tests' calculations.

Discussion

“It is useful to begin the discussion by briefly summarizing the main findings and explore possible mechanisms or explanations for these findings”. Researchers have not to repeat the results, review literature and textbook knowledge. Still, they have to interpret their results in light of other studies with special focus given to the study's new and important aspect. Also, it is important to include the implications of the findings and the study limitations.

Conclusion 

Relate the conclusions with the aims of the study but avoid conclusions not supported by the data.

Technical points

At the end of the manuscript, after the conclusion section, the following points should be considered:

Abbreviations

At the first appearance in the abstract and the text, abbreviations should be preceded by words for which they stand.

Acknowledgments

Authors should Acknowledge the grant awarded in aid of the study (state the number of the grant, name, and location of the institution or organization), as well as persons who have contributed significantly to the study.

Funding

Authors are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the study; otherwise, they should state that " The author (s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 

Availability of data and materials

In line with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases, authors may be asked to provide the raw data connected with a paper for editorial review. Authors should provide the e-mail address for whom the data is available. 

Authors’ contributions

Each author is required to declare his or her individual contribution to the article. All authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so all authors' roles should be described. The statement that all authors have approved the final article should be true and included in the disclosure.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

In this section, researchers have to specify the ethical permission approval by an independent local, regional, or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board) as set out by the Helsinki Declaration.

Competing interest

Information about the conflict of interest for each author needs to be part of the manuscript. The ICMJE has developed a uniform conflict of interest disclosure form for ICMJE member journals, and the ICMJE encourages other journals to adopt it. All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript; otherwise, they should state that "The authors declare that they have no competing interests".

Authors’ Details

Affiliation (where the actual work was done)

Different affiliations shall be listed on separate lines. If all the authors are affiliated with the same organization, type that affiliation just once. The footnote should state the author's academic affiliation (departments, institutions, city, country, and email address). For example:

^*1 Department, Institutions (for example, the university), City, Country name 

² Departments, Institutions (for example, the university), City, Country name 

References

1. Please list References at the end of the manuscript and ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa).
2. Make sure the parts of the manuscript are in the correct order before ordering the citations.
3. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of cited references and are precisely listed according to the journal's standard reference style (NLM style (PubMed)).
4. References will be linked electronically; that is why they may need to be retyped and carefully proofread if they were not in the correct style.
5. Only papers published or in press (accepted articles) should be included in the reference list. However, manuscripts on preprint servers, providing the manuscript has a citable DOI or arXiv URL, are also acceptable.
6. Personal communications, unpublished results, and unavailable work (submitted but not yet accepted or data not shown) are not recommended in the reference list and the text. Instead, such data could be included as supplementary material or deposited data in a publicly available database.
7. Do not include citations in abstracts or author summaries.
8. References cited in figures or tables (or in their legends and footnotes) should be numbered according to the place in the text where that table or figure is first cited.
9. References Citation in text should be indicated by Arabic number(s) in square brackets in line with the text and sequentially as they appear in the text. All reference numbers must be before the punctuation. Example: '...had graduated every year [42,50]. Saad and Ali [8] found a different result ....'
10. More than one reference is cited, separated by a comma, for example: …of healthcare workers [1,14-17]. For sequences of consecutive numbers, give the first and last number of the sequence separated by a hyphen, for example: ...word [2-5].
11. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given. Example: Saad and Ali [8] found a different result...
12. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to those found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases and used for MEDLINE, also; for more information about the Journal names abbreviations, please refer to the CAS Source Index (CASSI) Search Tool abbreviations: Journal of Ideas in Health uses “Vancouver” Style outlined NLM's International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals: Sample References webpage and detailed in the US National Library of Medicine NLM’s Citing Medicine, 2nd edition.
13. More than six authors: List the first six authors followed by et al. (Note: NLM now lists all authors).
14. Example formats are listed below. For more information about other types of references such as electronic media, newspaper items, etc., please refer to ICMJE Guidelines. 
15. For more information about other types of references such as electronic media, newspaper items, etc., please refer to ICMJE Guidelines.

Formatting references

A reference management tool, EndNote, offers a specific style that can assist you with your references' formatting.

Because all references will be linked electronically as much as possible to the papers they cite, proper formatting of the references is crucial. References should be formatted as follows:

Standard format for citation is NLM style "PubMed"

#. Author of article AA, Author of article BB, Author of article CC. Title of the article. Abbreviated Title of Journal (when available). Year; vol(issue):page number(s).

Published articles
Ali Jadoo SA, Alhusseiny A, Yaseen S, Al-Samarrai M, Al-Rawi R, Al-Delaimy A, et al. Knowledge, attitude, and practice toward COVID-19 among Iraqi people: a web-based cross-sectional study. Journal of Ideas in Health. 2020;3(Special2):258-65. https://doi.org/10.47108/jidhealth.Vol3.IssSpecial%202.59

Note:  Shortened DOI or the URL is not acceptable.

Note: Use of a DOI number for the full-text article is acceptable as an alternative to or in addition to traditional volume and page numbers. 

Devaraju P, Gulati R, Antony PT, Mithun CB, Negi VS. Susceptibility to SLE in South Indian Tamils may be influenced by genetic selection pressure on TLR2 TLR9 genes. Mol Immunol. 2014 Nov 22. pii: S0161-5890(14)00313-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molimm.2014.11.005.

Accepted, unpublished articles

Same as published articles, but substitute “Forthcoming” for page numbers or DOI.

Online articles

Huynen MMTE, Martens P, Hilderlink HBM. The health impacts of globalization: a conceptual framework. Global Health. 2005;1: 14.  https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-1-14

Books

Bates B. Bargaining for life: A social history of tuberculosis. 1st ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; 1992.

Book chapters

Hansen B. New York City epidemics and history for the public. In: Harden VA, Risse GB, editors. AIDS and the historian. Bethesda: National Institutes of Health; 1991. pp. 21-28.

Deposited articles (preprints, e-prints, or arXiv)

Krick T, Shub DA, Verstraete N, Ferreiro DU, Alonso LG, Shub M, et al. Amino acid metabolism conflicts with protein diversity; 1991. Preprint. Available from: arXiv:1403.3301v1. Cited 17 March 2014.

Published media (print or online newspapers and magazine articles)

Fountain H. For Already Vulnerable Penguins, Study Finds Climate Change Is Another Danger. The New York Times. 29 Jan 2014. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/science/earth/climate-change-taking-toll-on-penguins-study-finds.html Cited 17 March 2014 [Accessed on 13 November 2019].

New media (blogs, websites, or other written works)

Allen L. Announcing PLOS Blogs. 2010 Sep 1. In: PLOS Blogs [Internet]. San Francisco: PLOS 2006 -. [about 2 screens]. Available from: http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2010/09/announcing-plos-blogs/ [Accessed on 13 November 2019]

Masters' theses or doctoral dissertations

Wells A. Exploring the development of the independent, electronic, scholarly journal. M.Sc. Thesis, The University of Sheffield. 1999. Available from: http://cumincad.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?2e09 [Accessed on 13 November 2019]

Databases and repositories (Figshare, arXiv)

Roberts SB. QPX Genome Browser Feature Tracks; 2013. Database: figshare [Internet]. Available from: http://figshare.com/articles/QPX_Genome_Browser_Feature_Tracks/701214 [Accessed on 13 November 2019]

Multimedia (videos, movies, or TV shows)

Hitchcock A, producer, and director. Rear Window [Film]; 1954. Los Angeles: MGM.

Figures and Tables

Tables 

Tables should be provided as Word files (*.doc). No TIFF and JPG files are acceptable for table submission. 

Number tables consecutively in their first citation in the text and supply a title for each. Titles in tables should be short but self-explanatory, containing information that allows readers to understand the table's content without going back to the text.

 Be sure that each table is cited in the text.

When submitting tables in the Microsoft Word table function, no tab, space, or colors should be used. Tables should contain a maximum of 10 columns. 

Tables submitted in landscape orientation will not be accepted. 

Tables should include a title, table legend, and, if necessary, footnotes. Include tables in the submitted manuscript as a separate section.

Figures

 All graphics submitted to JIDHealth should be sent at their actual size, which is 100% of their print dimension and portrait orientation.

Two standard widths are used, and figures should fit in one (8.5 x 23.5 cm) or two (17.5 x 23.5 cm) columns.

Figures should be supplied in the following preferred file formats: PDF (*.pdf), PowerPoint (*.ppt), Photoshop (*.psd) files in grayscales or RGB color mode.

Photographs (scans, immunofluorescences, EM, and histology images) should be submitted as:

1) JGP (*.jpg) or TIFF (*.tif) with a resolution of at least 300 pixels per inch, or

2) Illustrator compatible EPS files with RGB color management (*.eps),

3) Photoshop (*.psd) or PDF (*.pdf) files (grayscales or RGB) at the appropriate resolution, which is:

• * 300 dpi for color figures
• * 600 dpi for black and white figures
• * 1200 dpi for line-art figures

For all photomicrographs, where possible, a scale should appear on the photograph. Photographs of identifiable patients should be accompanied by written permission to publish from the patient(s).

Furthermore, panel lettering should be in Arial bold 14 pt, capitalized and no full stop (A, B) while lettering in figures (axes, conditions), should be in Arial 8 pt, lower case type with the first letter capitalized and no full stop. No type should be smaller than 6 pt.

Note: If, after acceptance, the quality of the figures does not match the Journal's standards, the authors will be asked to resubmit the figures at the required quality.
Figure Legends 

Figure legends should be listed one after the other, as part of the text document, separate from the figure files. Please do not write a legend below each figure. Each figure legend should have a brief overarching title that describes the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a description of each panel and the symbols used. Enough information should be provided in the figure legend text to permit figures' interpretation without reference to the text. Still, it should not contain any details of methods or exceed 100 words.
The abbreviated word for the figure “Fig.” should be typed and bolded, followed by the figure number and a period (i.e.., “Fig. 1.”). Every figure legend should have a Title written in bold. If a figure contains multiple sections (i.e., A, B, C, D), the letter for these subsections should be in capital letters. Within the figure legend text, the capital letters should be surrounded by parenthesis [i.e. (A)(B)(C)(D)]. Figures should be numbered according to the order of citation.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material can be uploaded during the submission process. The Supplementary material should have a manuscript title, list of authors, a table of contents, followed by the list of investigators (if there is one), text (such as methods), figures, tables, and then references. 

The supplementary material must be prepared as a single Word file with pages numbered (including references, tables, and figure legends) using Times New Roman or Arial 12 pt double-spaced). Sections have to be 12 pt bold. Subsections have to be 12 pt, italics. For mathematical symbols, Greek letters and other special characters use normal text, NOT symbols.

Figures have to be included with legends below each figure. Figure legends consist of a title (bold) and separate descriptions for the reach panel, labeled by capital letters in parenthesis.

Tables have to be included with Table titles (bold) on top of the Table and footnotes below. Extensive Tables (e.g., microarray data) should be submitted as an Excel file.
The Supplementary material will not be edited for style

Units and Symbols 

Please use the International System of Units (SI units). All the names of SI units are always written in lowercase. However, the symbols of units named after a person are capitalized (e.g., ampere and A). These symbols are not abbreviations, so periods are not required. Additionally, space should always be included between a number and the SI unit, except for the degree symbol. Italics are usually not used with SI units.

NOTE: Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text; otherwise, they will be lost during PDF conversion.