Instructions for Authors

The Journal of Caring Sciences (J Caring Sci) endorses the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guideline for role of authors and contributors authorships.  ICMJE recommends that all authors should meet the criteria for authorship based on the following 4 criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

• Final approval of the version to be published; AND

• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

ICMJE recommends that Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading (e.g. "Clinical Investigators" or "Participating Investigators"), and their contributions should be specified (e.g., "served as scientific advisors," "critically reviewed the study proposal," "collected data," "provided and cared for study patients", "participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript").

Authors should carefully consider the list and order of authors prior to submitting a manuscript. For any deletion, addition, or rearrangement of author’s names we will act according to the Changes in Authorship Flowchart proposed by COPE. So, corresponding author must send the following to editorial board: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the changes.

2. Reporting guidelines

All manuscripts must adhere to reporting guidelines which is relevant to the research design. Authors should follow the relevant checklists which recommended by Enhancing the QUality and Transparency Of health Research(EQUTOR) Network for each type of manuscripts as listed below:

• Observational cohort, case control and cross sectional studies- STROBE - Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology, http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/strobe/
• Quasi-experimental/non-randomised evaluations- TREND - Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Non-randomized Designs, http://www.cdc.gov/trendstatement/
• Randomised (and quasi-randomised) controlled trial- CONSORT - Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials, http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/consort/
• Study of Diagnostic accuracy/assessment scale- STARD - Standards for the Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies, http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/stard/
• Systematic Review of Controlled Trials- PRISMA - Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma/
• Systematic Review of Observational Studies- MOOSE - Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10789670
• Qualitative studies - COREQ - Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research, http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/coreq

3. Ethics

3.1. Ethics in research

• The JCS publishes the manuscripts according to the ethical guidelines proposed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of conduct for editors which can be found at http://www.icmje.org/, and International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guideline at:  http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/manuscript-preparation/preparing-for-submission.html#two

• The research described in your manuscript must have been done in accordance with the code of ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans; This must be declared at the section of ethical consideration in the article. http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/

• Studies on volunteers or patients require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be stated in the paper. Written consents must be obtained from all participants.

3.2. Ethics in publication

• Manuscripts are checked for their adherence to JCS author guidelines and for their similarity to other sources (using iThenticate) for detection of plagiarism. Manuscripts not conforming to JCS author guidelines will be returned or rejected. We will follow the COPE flowchartfor plagiarized articles.

•  Also, for redundant (duplicate) publication, we follows redundant (duplicate) publication flowchart proposed by COPE.

4. All Submissions

The following documents are needed for all submissions. Where an abbreviation is used, it should be written out in full on first use.

Title page(with author details) – This should include the title, authors' names and affiliations, and a complete address for the corresponding author including telephone and e-mail address.

Covering letter– to the editor in which you detail authorship contributions and other matters you wish the editors to consider.

Main manuscript (no author details) – The main body of the paper (including the title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, , figures, tables and any Acknowledgements, and references) should not include any identifying information, such as the authors' names or affiliations. Please ensure that the manuscript includes page numbers in all pages.

Abstract
Abstracts should be less than 250 words, and should not include references or abbreviations. Abstracts of research papers must be structured and should adopt the headings suggested by the relevant reporting guidelines (see below). Use a structured format for the abstract. In general they should include the following: Introduction; Methods (details of how selected, inclusion and exclusion criteria, numbers entering and leaving the study, relevant clinical and demographic characteristics); Results, report main outcome(s)/findings including (where relevant) levels of statistical significance and confidence intervals; and Conclusions, state the conclusions drawn from the study.  Conclusions must be logically consistent with the purpose of the study.

Keywords
Provide between four and six key words which accurately identify the paper's title, content, purpose, method and focus. Use the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) thesaurus for selecting of keywords.

 (See Mesh Subheadings at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html).

4.1.Main Manuscript

The main manuscript will be submitted as a separate file when you are instructed to attach files to the submission. The main text should include the followings:

Introduction

This section should clearly and briefly provide an adequate background with relevant references, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. The last paragraph should address the main objectives of the work.

Materials and Methods

This section should provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced, with details of supplier (i.e., company’s name, city, country) and catalog number when appropriate. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described. The company’s name, city and country of manufacturer of the major equipment should be given. Unexpected hazards encountered during the experimental work should be noted. Any unusual hazards inherent in the use of chemicals, procedures or equipment in the investigation should be clearly identified. In cases where a study involves the use of live animals or human subjects, the author should include a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines, and also state the institutional committee(s) that has approved the experiments. They should also include a statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects.

Results

Results should be clear, descriptive and concise. Attention should be paid to the matter of significant figures and tables. 

Put the tables and figures at the end of result section, not as a separate file. 

Discussion

The discussion should explore the significance of the results of the work (without repeating them) in comparison with other similar reports.

Conclusion

State the conclusions drawn from the study.  Conclusions must be logically consistent with the purpose of the study.

Acknowledgement

Acknowledgements recognize persons whose contributions do not rise to the level of authorship.  Persons noted in acknowledgments must give their permission to the author to be named.

Ethical Issues

If there are some ethical issues, write them in this part. Otherwise, state that there are no ethical issue.

Conflicts of Interest

According to the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guideline, a conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients' welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.

Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership or options, honoraria, patents, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and intellectual beliefs. Authors should avoid entering in to agreements with study sponsors, both for-profit and non-profit, that interfere with authors’ access to all of the study’s data or that interfere with their ability to analyze and interpret the data and to prepare and publish manuscripts independently when and where they choose.

When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work. The ICMJE has developed a Form for Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest to facilitate and standardize authors’ disclosures. ICMJE member journals require that authors use this form, and ICMJE encourages other journals to adopt it. Therefore, the corresponding author should download Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest form, fill it and send this form to the journal office as a supplementary file.

References

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references.  Cite the references in the order of appearance.  References should be listed at the end of the paper according to NLM Style by using EndNote software. Citation in the manuscripts must be arranged by EndNote software. For more information about reference management, see the recently published articles in JCS.More Exampel

5. Peer review process

All articles will undergo double-blind peer review where the article will be sent anonymously to two people who are specialist in the subject area of the article.
Reviewers are asked to return their constructive comments within two to three weeks. Feedback is returned to authors and a decision made about how to proceed in the following categories: accept, accept with minor revisions, accept with major revisions, revise and resubmit, reject. Where an article receives two conflicting reviews, the editor will make the final decision.

Proofs
Once the article has been accepted for publication, the corresponding author will receive a PDF copy of the final edited article. The corresponding author is then responsible for reviewing content and proofreading the article to ensure accuracy of the article.
There may be a delay of some months from the date of acceptance to publication date, depending on scheduling. However, we aim for this delay to be no longer than six months and in most cases it will be considerably shorter.