Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health
- Peer review policy
- Article types
- How to submit your manuscript
- Journal contributor’s publishing agreement
4.1 SAGE Choice - Declaration of conflicting interests policy
- Other conventions
6.1 Informed consent
6.2 Ethics - Acknowledgments
7.1 Funding acknowledgement - Permissions
- Manuscript style
9.1 File types
9.2 Journal style
9.3 Reference style
9.4 Manuscript preparation
9.4.1 Keywords and abstracts: Helping readers find your article online
9.4.2 Corresponding author contact details
9.4.3 Guidelines for submitting artwork, figures and other graphics
9.4.4 Guidelines for submitting supplemental files
9.4.5 English language editing services - After acceptance
10.1 Proofs
10.2 E-Prints and complimentary copies
10.3 SAGE production
10.4 OnlineFirst publication - Further information
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes high quality research on all aspects of global public health. It is the official journal of the Associations of Public Health in the Nordic Countries.
1. Peer review policy
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health operates a conventional single-blind reviewing policy in which the reviewer's name is always concealed from the submitting author. Decisions of publication of full length original contributions are based on the assessment of at least two external reviewers. All manuscripts are reviewed as quickly as possible, we endeavour to reach an editorial decision within 3 months, though on average it takes just 30 days to reach a decision.
Authors are requested to suggest the names, affiliations and contact information, including email address, of 3-4 individuals who may be suitable to serve as reviewers. These individuals should have no conflict of interest, i.e. close links with the study or author and preferably be from a different country to the author(s). However, the Editors are under no obligation to use any of the suggested individuals as reviewers.
All manuscripts are reviewed initially by the Editors and only those papers that meet the scientific and editorial standards of the journal, and fit within the aims and scope of the journal will be sent for outside review.
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health publishes original research, review and study design articles on all aspects of public health. The Journal considers the following kinds of article for publication:
- Original articles, describing new experimental findings.
These articles should not normally exceed 3000 words. The word limit does not include text in the abstract, headings, references, figures and tables. For manuscripts exceeding five printed pages (including abstract, tables, figures and references) the charge is $100 USD (excluding VAT) per excess page. As a guide, one journal page is approximately 800 words. - Review articles. These articles should not normally exceed 3000 words. The word limit does not include text in the abstract, headings, references, figures and tables. For manuscripts exceeding six printed pages (including abstract, tables, figures and references) the charge is $100 USD (excluding VAT) per excess page. As a guide, one journal page is approximately 800 words.
- Design articles. The Editors wish to encourage the submission of study design articles. These articles should include the rationale for the study, design and measurement procedures, population and sample size considerations and some basic characteristics of the study. The articles should end with a discussion on the potential of the study.
These articles should not normally exceed 3000 words. The word limit does not include text in the abstract, headings, references, figures and tables. For manuscripts exceeding six printed pages (including abstract, tables, figures and references) the charge is $100 USD (excluding VAT) per excess page. As a guide, one journal page is approximately 800 words. - Letters to the Editors. The decision to publish is made by the Editors.
These articles should not normally exceed 800 words - Short communications, Debate articles.
These articles should not normally exceed 1200 words and have no more than 3 tables/figures. - Supplements. Thematic sets of papers, symposium reports as well other documents of Public Health relevance may be published as supplements, the full cost being borne by the authors. Please contact the Editorial Office for further information.
3. How to submit your manuscript
Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you carefully read and adhere to all the guidelines and instructions to authors provided below. Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines will be returned. If you require more information concerning these manuscript guidelines, please contact the editorial office (see below).
The Scandinavian Journal of Public Health is hosted on SAGE track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne Manuscripts.
Please read the Manuscript Submission guidelines below, and then simply visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/spub to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you or your co-authors already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help on the Sage track system. The Online Help button is on the top left-hand corner of the page.
All papers must be submitted via the online system.
Before submitting your manuscript please ensure that it adheres to the following:
- a TITLE PAGE with the full postal address and email of the corresponding author and co-authors' affiliations.
- a STRUCTURED ABSTRACT (Aims, Methods, Results and Conclusions).
- a list of up to 10 KEYWORDS.
- no more than 30 REFERENCES, following the VANCOUVER SYSTEM (not relevant for review articles).
- no more than 5 FIGURES/TABLES.
- no footnotes or appendices.
- no pdf files.
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health
Editorial Office
Asli Anik
Editorial Assistant
sjpheditorial@sagepub.com
4. Journal contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor's Publishing Agreement. For more information please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and SAGE take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the journal. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked using duplication-checking software. Where an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article (removing it from the journal); taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; banning the author from publication in the journal or all SAGE journals, or appropriate legal action.
If you wish your article to be freely available online immediately upon publication (as some funding bodies now require), you can opt for it to be included in SAGE Choice subject to payment of a publication fee. The manuscript submission and peer reviewing procedure is unchanged. On acceptance of your article, you will be asked to let SAGE know directly if you are choosing SAGE Choice. For further information, please visit SAGE Choice.
5. Declaration of conflicting interests
Within your Journal Contributor's Publishing Agreement you will be required to make a certification with respect to a declaration of conflicting interests. It is the policy of Scandinavian Journal of Public Health to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please include any declaration at the end of your manuscript after any acknowledgements and prior to the references, under a heading 'Declaration of Conflicting Interests'. If no declaration is made the following will be printed under this heading in your article: 'None Declared'. Alternatively, you may wish to state that 'The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest'.
When making a declaration the disclosure information must be specific and include any financial relationship that all authors of the article has with any sponsoring organization and the for-profit interests the organization represents, and with any for-profit product discussed or implied in the text of the article.
Any commercial or financial involvements that might represent an appearance of a conflict of interest need to be additionally disclosed in the covering letter accompanying your article to assist the Editor in evaluating whether sufficient disclosure has been made within the Declaration of Conflicting Interests provided in the article.
For more information please visit the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
Submitted manuscripts should be arranged according to the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals". The full document is available at http://icmje.org. When submitting a paper, the author should always make a full statement to the Editor about all submissions and previous reports that might be regarded as redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work.
Ethical considerations: All research on human subjects must have been approved by the appropriate research body in accordance with national requirements and must conform to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki (http:/www.wma.net) as well as to the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects and the International Guidelines for Ethical Review for Epidemiological Studies (http:/www.cioms.ch). An appropriate statement about ethical considerations, if applicable, should be included in the methods section of the paper.
When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) or with the Declaration of Helsinki 1975, revised Hong Kong 1989. Do not use patients' names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate which guideline/law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an `Acknowledgements' section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.
7.1 Funding Acknowledgement
To comply with the guidance for Research Funders, Authors and Publishers issued by the Research Information Network (RIN), Scandinavian Journal of Public Health additionally requires all Authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit Funding Acknowledgement on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway for funding acknowledgement guidelines.
8. Permissions
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
Only electronic files conforming to the journal's guidelines will be accepted. Acceptable formats for the text is MS Word and for figures and tables Excel, PowerPoint, .eps, .tiff or .jpeg. Please also refer to the additional guidelines on submitting artwork and supplemental files given below.
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health conforms to the SAGE house style. Click here to review guidelines on SAGE UK House Style.
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health adheres to the SAGE Vancouver reference style with an exception: please note that square brackets should be used for references in text. Click here to review the guidelines on SAGE Vancouver to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style. EndNote supports SAGE Vancouver download the output file by following this link . A maximum of 30 references are allowed except in the case of review articles.
All authors must have contributed substantially to the conception and design or analysis and interpretation of the data, drafting or revision of content, and approval of the final version.
A full description of the statistical methods used should be provided in the methods section. In statistical evaluation it is desirable to quote 95% confidence intervals.
9.4.1 Keywords and Abstracts: Helping readers find your article online
The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring that readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google or Bing or abstracting services such as PubMed. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting SAGE's Journal Author Gateway Guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
The abstract of articles appearing in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health should be no more than 250 words and structured according to Aims, Methods, Results and Conclusions. You should list up to ten key words. A word count should be included for the whole manuscript, excluding the abstract, references, figures and tables.
9.4.2 Corresponding Author Contact details
The manuscript should include a title page with full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors.
9.4.3 Guidelines for submitting artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit SAGE's Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Images should be supplied as bitmap based files (i.e. with .tiff or .jpeg extension) with a resolution of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch). Line art should be supplied as vector-based, separate .eps files (not as .tiff files, and not only inserted in the Word or pdf file), with a resolution of 600 dpi. Images should be clear, in focus, free of pixilation and not too light or dark.
If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable colour figures, these figures will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the possible costs from SAGE after receipt of your accepted article.
In text: tables and figures are either inserted as part of a sentence, for example table 1 or in parentheses for example (figure 1). Each table should carry a descriptive heading. Each figure should be submitted electronically.
Figures and tables: Full length articles can have a maximum of five tables and/or figures. Short communications should have no more than three tables and/or figures.
Figures should be professionally designed and include a caption.
Tables should be supplied as separate files from the text and should be self-explanatory. They should be constructed so as to fit in one or two columns, omitting internal horizontal and vertical lines. Frequency tables must contain absolute sample sizes. The key to abbreviations and symbols plus any other explanatory text should be included in footnote form - not in the heading, which should be kept brief. Number tables consecutively with roman numerals.9.4.4 Guidelines for submitting supplemental files
The Scandinavian Journal of Public Health may be able to host approved supplemental materials online, alongside the full-text of articles. Supplemental files will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. For more information please refer to SAGE's Guidelines for Authors on Supplemental Files .9.4.5 English Language Editing services
Non-English speaking authors who would like to refine their use of language in their manuscripts might consider using a professional editing service. Visit English Language Editing Services for further information.
We will email a PDF of the proofs to the corresponding author.
10.2 E-Prints and Complimentary Copies
SAGE provides authors with access to a PDF of their final article. For further information please visit Offprints and Reprints . We additionally provide the corresponding author with a complimentary copy of the print issue in which the article appears up to a maximum of 5 copies for onward supply by the corresponding author to co-authors.
At SAGE we place an extremely strong emphasis on the highest production standards possible. We attach high importance to our quality service levels in copy-editing, typesetting, printing, and online publication ( http://online.sagepub.com/ ). We also seek to uphold excellent author relations throughout the publication process.
It should be noted, that for manuscripts exceeding five printed pages (including abstract, tables, figures and references) there is a charge is USD 100 per excess page. As a guide, one journal page is approximately 800 words.
We value your feedback to ensure that we continue to improve our author service levels. On publication all corresponding Authors will receive a brief survey questionnaire on your experience of publishing in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health with SAGE.
10.4 OnlineFirst Publication
A large number of SAGE journals benefit from OnlineFirst, a feature offered through SAGE's electronic journal platform, SAGE Journals Online. It allows final revision articles (completed articles in queue for assignment to an upcoming issue) to be hosted online prior to their inclusion in a final print and online journal issue which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. For more information please visit our OnlineFirst Fact Sheet
11. Further information
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript
Submission process should be sent to the Editorial Office as follows:
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health
Editorial Office
Asli Anik
Editorial Assistant
sjpheditorial@sagepub.com