Instructions for Authors

 Updated: 8 May 2021

The Journal of Caring Sciences (JCS) follows the guidelines presented by the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding the authorship principles.  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 the 4 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 including 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 names, we will act according to the Changes in Authorship Flowchart proposed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Accordingly, the corresponding authors are requested to send the following to the 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 recommended by the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of Health Research (EQUATOR) Network for all types 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-randomized evaluations- TREND - Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Non-randomized Designs, http://www.cdc.gov/trendstatement/
• Randomized (and quasi-randomized) 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) (http://www.icmje.org/) and the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines (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 flowchart for plagiarized articles.
• For redundant (duplicate) publications, we follow redundant (duplicate) publication flowchart proposed by the 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: It is written 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, 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 (describes the background and aim of the study); Methods (details of used methods, inclusion and exclusion criteria, samples, relevant clinical and demographic characteristics); Results (reporting the main findings; statistical significance and confidence intervals should be mentioned when needed); and Conclusion (stating the conclusion drawn from the study; it must be logically consistent with the purpose of the study).

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

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

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 following sections:

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 state the institutional committees that have 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 Results 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. Conclusion section must be logically consistent with the purpose of the study.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements section recognizes individuals 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 issues.

Conflicts of Interest

According to the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, 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 conflicts 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, 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 into 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 the Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest form, and send the filled form to the journal office as a supplementary file.

Research Highlight

A section entitled “Study Highlights” should be included before references. The section will contain two subsections: 1) What is the current knowledge? 2) What is new here?
Please prepare these subsections as bulleted points up to about 15-20 words, either in phrases or complete sentences.

Authors’ Contributions

The contributions of all authors must be clearly described. Each author’s individual contribution(s) to the study must be stated based on the COPE authorship guidelines (e.g., conceptualization, data handling, experiments design, data analysis, provision of study materials and equipment, study validation, supervision, data presentation, draft preparation, study consultation, writing and reviewing, and project administration).

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 the National Library of Medicine (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 Examples

5. Peer-Review Process

All articles will undergo double-blind peer review where the article will be sent anonymously to two specialists in the subject area of the article.
Reviewers are requested 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’, and ‘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 its accuracy.
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.