Please send your submissions to jahs@jahs.eu

Author guidelines

Author guidelines in pdf format can be downloaded here.

 

Journal of Applied Health Sciences completely follows the “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals”, published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (see: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

 

GENERAL INFORMATION

 Journal scope and publication criteria

Journal of Applied Health Sciences (JAHS) is an international peer reviewed journal open to scientists from all fields of biomedicine and health related professions that publishes the following article types: editorials, original scientific articles, short communications, professional articles, reviews, mini-reviews, case reports and letters to the editor.

 

Authorship and scientific conduct and honesty

 JAHS completely follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

According to the ICMJE recommendations, authorship is 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.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

It is the collective responsibility of the authors to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria.

All authors must sign the Affirmation of Authorship Form that is available from JAHS web page and submit the completed form together with manuscript.

All submissions are accepted with the understanding that they have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere substantially in any format. Also, there should be no ethical concerns with the content or data collection. JAHS reserves the right to request any research materials on which the paper is based.

If authors request removal or addition of an author after manuscript submission or publication, the Editor-in-Chief will seek an explanation and a signed statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author to be removed or added.

The Journal will correspond with only one author on each submission. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the Journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the Journal’s administrative requirements are properly completed. It is the responsibility of the designated corresponding author to communicate with the co-authors and in his/her own and the name of the co-authors takes full responsibility for the paper. By submitting a manuscript, the correspondent in his/her name and the name of all co-authors gives JAHS the consent for publishing the names and surnames of all co-authors of the work, the names and addresses of the affiliation institution, and the address, email and fax number of the correspondent in the printed and electronic works.

When scientific misconduct is alleged, or concerns are otherwise raised about the conduct or integrity of work described in submitted or published articles, the Editor-in-Chief will initiate appropriate procedures detailed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

 

Conflict of interests

As for the conflict of interest, all authors must sign Uniform ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest (http://www.iCMJe.org/coi_disclosure.pdf) and submit the completed form to JAHS together with manuscript.

Agreements between authors and study sponsors that interfere with the 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 represent conflicts of interest.

All reviewers, editors, Editorial Board members, included in the publication process have to disclose any potential conflict of interest regarding the manuscript they are asked to review.

 

 Open access and copyright policy

Although JAHS is a Diamond Open Access journal, the copyright of all material published is vested in JAHS. Open access articles are freely available to read, download and share from the time of publication under the terms of the Creative Commons License Attribution‐NonCommerical-No Derivative (CC BY‐NC‐ND) license. This license does not permit reuse for any commercial purposes nor does it cover the reuse or modification of individual elements of the work (such as figures, tables, etc.) in the creation of derivative works without specific permission of JAHS and appropriate acknowledgement of its source.

Papers published in JAHS are allowed to be stored in institutional and thematic repositories by providing links to the website of the Journal and Hrcak.

In case figures, tables, and any other materials are owned by another party, the authors are responsible for obtaining permissions. They must provide a full citation for the previous publication and a letter from the owner of the copyright granting permission for JAHS to reproduce the copyrighted material or a completed permission form stating the date when permission was requested and the approximate date when the permission is expected to be received. Any permission fees that might be required by the copyright owner are the responsibility of the authors requesting use of the borrowed material, not the responsibility of JAHS.

JAHS does not charge any financial fee to the authors nor does offer any financial rewards to the reviewers. The author(s) shall receive no royalty or other compensation for the published manuscript.

All authors must sign the Author(S) Agreement & Copyright Transfer Form that is available from JAHS web page and submit the completed form together with manuscript.

 

Review process and plagiarism detection

Identity of the authors and reviewers is known to the Editor‐in‐Chief and the Senior Editorial team only. Each manuscript undergoes expert peer review (by two independent experts in the field) and statistical review (if necessary). The peer review process (before the final decision) usually takes up to 8 weeks.

Manuscripts are checked for text similarity and manually verified by the research integrity editor. JAHS uses CrossRef Similarity Check software

(https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity‐check/) Any manuscript suspected on plagiarism is dealt with by following the COPE flowcharts

(http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts) and ICMJE guidelines.

 

Ethical requirements and ethical standards

When reporting experiments on people, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the latest revision of the Helsinki Declaration. If necessary, JAHS may ask for a copy of the institutional review body approval. Also, special consideration should be given to the protection of privacy and data confidentiality, in accordance with the EU Recommendation No. R (97) 5 on the protection of medical data (1997) as well as to the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation).

Studies using animal models will be considered only providing that clear relevance to the clinical science can be demonstrated. Authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed (the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare).

 

Editorial freedom

According to ICMJE and the World Association of Medical Editors, Editorial freedom holds that the Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire content of the Journal and the timing of publication of that content. Editor-in-Chief will base decisions on the validity of the work and its importance to JAHS’s readers.

 

Disclaimer

The Publisher, Editor-in-Chief and other members of the Editorial staff cannot be held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in JAHS. Statements and opinions contained in the articles in JAHS are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Applied Health Sciences. The Publisher, Editor-in-Chief, and other members of the Editorial staff disclaim all responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in articles contained in JAHS. If and when an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

 

GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Paper structure

 Original research papers should use the general scientific paper format, in the sense that they are subdivided into several sections: Introduction which states the topic of the paper; Methods which specifies the methods used, materials and groups of patients and which enables the replication of research; clearly stated research Results and Discussion of the research and results with its Conclusions. Authors can get information on the format of original research papers from the provided links, as well as in the series of books and articles published on the topic of quality writing of scientific and research papers. Other types of papers (theoretical, methodological, review papers) should have adequate format which clearly presents the basic idea and the sequence of conclusions, but the Editorial Board reserves the right to suggestions and structural corrections. The length of the paper should be from five up to 20 standard pages (one standard page is 1800 characters with spaces). All papers should have an abstract of up to 250 words, which follows the structure of the text and which briefly describes the relevant parts of the paper, with the most important results and conclusions.

 

Title page

 Title page should contain:

  • The title of the paper
  • Authors’ names preceded by a superscript number denoting their institutional affiliation, e.g.1Name Surname
  • Institution’s name preceded by a superscript number denoting the author e.g.1Name of the institution
  • Abstract, up to 250 words, written according to the abovementioned instructions. The word “Abstract”should be written in bold
  • Keywords, divided by commas, as in the example:Keywords: keyword1, keyword2, “Keywords” should be typed in bold.
  • Beneath you should type the corresponding author’s/authors’ contact details. Type the author’s name and surname, email address, phone number and address.

 

Paper size, margins and spacing

Paper size should be A4 (21 cm x 29,7 cm), with 2,5 cm margins on all sides. The text of the article follows the title page. The first paragraph after each heading has no indentation, and each subsequent section should be indented by 0.63 cm. The text should be single-spaced, with an empty line between each paragraph, and two empty lines before each subheading.

 

Font styles, alignment, headings and subheadings

The use of 12 pt. Times New Roman font is recommended. For the alignment of the abstract and the body of the text the authors should use „justification“. The title, names of the authors and institutions, subheadings and table content shoud be flush-left. The headings and subheadings should be numbered in the following manner – e.g. 4., 4.1., 4.1.1…

 

Tables

Tables should be aligned along the left margin. Each table must have a caption or title beginning with Table and a number (e.g. Table 1. Number of patients with coronary disease).

Tables are to be sent as a separate file in a Microsoft Excel .xls or .xslx format, or Microsoft Word .doc or .docx format.

 

Images and illustrations

Images, graphs, charts or diagrams must have a caption or a title beginning with Figure and a number(e.g. Figure 1.The relationships of patients in the course of a ten-year period…)

All images and illustrations are to be sent as a separate file in a .jpg or .png format.

 

Symbols and equations

The standard Symbol font is recommended for the use of symbols and Microsoft Equation Editora for equations.

 

Using references

 

References in the article are cited using the Vancouver citation style. It is necessary to mark the cited paper in the text using a superscript number (e.g. Information on referencing1)

 

Using Croatian and English language

The papers can be published in Croatian or English language. If the article is written in the Croatian language, the abstract has to be written in the English language as well. If the article submitted is written in English, the abstract will be translated into Croatian.

Abstracts written in English, together with the corresponding title in English, author names, names of institutions, keywords and author contact information in English, should be written after the abstract and title in the Croatian language.

In exceptional cases can papers be published in one of the official EU languages, and it is necessary to compile a summary and description of the keywords in both Croatian and English.

 

Paper submission

 Papers are to be sent to the email address jahs@jahs.eu in MS Word.doc or .docx format, and the text must be accompanied by tables and/or figures, as indicated above. Submitted papers

cannot be simultaneously sent for publication or published in another journal.

Initial review of all articles includes a technical review by the Editor-in-Chief and/ or members of the Editorial Board, as well as the assessment of the topicality and importance of the subject, clarity of presentation and relevance to the audience.

 

References

In the manuscript text, tables, as well as table and figure titles, the references are written as superscript Arabic numbers, without parentheses, and are numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. In the text, references are numbered before the full stop, without spaces from the last letter in the sentence. If more than two consecutive references are encountered, they should be separated with a dash. At the end of the manuscript text, all references must be listed as full citations in numerical order corresponding to the order of citation in the text in a separate section entitled References. Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the style used for MEDLINE. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their references. Manuscripts not meeting these specifications will be returned for revision.

  1. Patrias K. Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers [Internet]. 2nd Wendling DL, (ed.). Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007 [cited 2015 Mar 3]. Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine

 

 

 

*Instructions to authors of  JAHS  are in accordance with the “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals”, published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Authors, please follow the instructions for preparation and submission of manuscript, including obligatory forms that can be found at web page (www.jahs.eu) which will expedite the reviewing and publication procedures.