Manuscript Submission Guidelines:

HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine

1. Open Access
2. Article processing charge (APC)
3. What do we publish?
    3.1 Aims & scope
    3.2 Article types
4. Editorial policies
    4.1 Peer review policy
    4.2 Authorship
    4.3 Acknowledgements
    4.4 Funding
    4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
5. Publishing policies
    5.1 Publication ethics
    5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
6. Preparing your manuscript
    6.1 Formatting
    6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
    6.3 Identifiable information
    6.4 Supplemental material
    6.5 Reference style
7. Submitting your manuscript
     7.1 ORCID
    7.2 How to submit your manuscript
    7.3 Title, keywords and abstracts
    7.4 Information required for completing your submission
    7.5 Permissions
8. On acceptance and publication
    8.1 Production
    8.2 Online publication
9. Further information

 

Please note that manuscripts not conforming to the guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine will be reviewed. As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. You are required to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

1. Open Access
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity.

2. Article processing charge (APC)
If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for the publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creatives Commons license. 

An article processing charge (APC) of INR 30,000 for India/USD 400 for rest of the world (plus tax where applicable) will be payable on acceptance if the manuscript is accepted after peer review.

Currently, for the first issue, 100% is waived off and sponsored by Health Action by People, Thiruvananthapuram for all authors.

3. What do we publish?

3.1 Aims & scope
Before submitting your manuscript to HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope of the journal.

3.2 Article types

Original research papers
The journal encourages maximum original research work to be communicated to the readers.

• Original research papers need to provide the complete title of the article accompanied by a brief abstract (in 200–250 words) and 6–8 keywords. This page should be considered the first page of the submission and should be  paginated accordingly.

Abstract: It should be concise and factual. The abstract should be structured under the following heads: Background (the rationale for the study); Methods (how the study was done); Results (major findings); Conclusions (a discussion of the results). An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. References should be avoided in the abstract. Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

The manuscript:           

• Should not exceed 3000 words (excluding references and abstract). Review articles for 3000 words (3500 for qualitative studies).
• Should be divided into sections with the following headings: Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion.
• In the Methods section, name the ethics review board that approved the study, and provide details of informed consent from human subjects and the manner in which it was obtained (written or oral).
• Whenever possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Report losses to observation such as dropouts from a clinical trial.
• When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the computer software and the statistical analyses used. All P values greater than .001 (P > .001) should be expressed as actual exact values and those less than .001 may be reported as P < .001.
• Mean differences in continuous variables, proportions in categorical variables, and relative risks, including odds ratios and hazard ratios, should be accompanied by their confidence intervals.

Review articles

• The journal solicits this type of article only from invited experts.
• Should not exceed 4000 words (excluding abstract and references)
• Should have an unstructured abstract within 200 words

Case reports

• Should not exceed 1500 words (excluding the abstract and references)
• Should not use more than ten references
• Should have an unstructured abstract within 150 words
• Should be divided into Introduction, Case report, and Discussion

Letter to the Editor & short communications

• Need no abstract
• Should not exceed a word count of 1000 (excluding the references)
• Should not use more than five references

Correspondence to the Editor unrelated to a specific article should not exceed 500 words or have more than 3 references. Correspondence pertaining to a recently published article or to be published concurrently with an article within the journal should not exceed 800 words or have more than 5 references.

4. Editorial policies

4.1 Peer review policy
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine adheres to a rigorous double-anonymized reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are concealed from each other.

Peer review process:

• Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees. In case of conflicting recommendations, the editors may decide on a third review. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, and our aim will be to reach an editorial decision within 8-12 weeks of submission.
• All manuscripts are screened initially by the editors and only those papers that meet the editorial standards of the journal and fit within the aims and scope of the journal, will be sent for formal peer review process.

Timelines:

The approximate timelines are given below –

If article needs initiation of discussion before publication, additional 2 more weeks will be taken.

4.2 Authorship
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal editor.

Please contact your production editor if a change is required.

4.3 Acknowledgements
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, or a department chair who provided only general support. 

Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

4.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input 
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance 
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc. 

Where appropriate, HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

4.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

4.4 Funding 
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.

All research articles should have a funding acknowledgement statement included in the manuscript in the form of a sentence under a separate heading entitled ‘Funding’ directly after your Acknowledgements and Declaration of Conflicting Interests, if applicable, and prior to any Notes and your References. The funding agency should be written out in full, followed by the grant number in square brackets, see following example (the text in bold is mandatory, unless specified otherwise by the journal):

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number xxx].

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by comma and space. Where the research was supported by more than one agency, the different agencies should be separated by semi-colon, with “and” before the final funder. Thus:

This work was supported by the Trust [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number zzzz]; and the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number aaaa].

In some cases, research is not funded by a specific project grant, but rather from the block grant and other resources available to a university, college or other research institution. Where no specific funding has been provided for the research we ask that that corresponding authors (see Section 7.3 for detail on corresponding author) use the following sentence:

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Important note: If you have any concerns that the provision of this information may compromise your anonymity dependent on the peer review policy of this journal outlined above, you can withhold this information until you submit your final accepted manuscript.

4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine 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 ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. 

5. Publishing policies

5.1 Publication ethics
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors.

5.1.1 Plagiarism
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine takes 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 published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the 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; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

5.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. If in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial.

6. Preparing your manuscript

6.1 Formatting
The preferred format for your manuscript is MS Word.

Please note the below points while preparing your manuscript.

• Title page: The first page of all papers needs to display the title of the submission along with the full name(s) institutional affiliations of the author(s) and contact details (complete postal and email addresses, and telephone/mobile numbers) (see also Section 7.3).
• All articles should be typed using the font Times New Roman point 12 double spaced. This condition also applies to the extended quotations and references as well.
• Manuscript has been 'spell checked' and 'grammar checked'.
• Acronyms including those in common use should be spelled out at first occurrence, with the acronym/abbreviation following in parenthesis, for example, World Trade Organization (WTO). Thereafter you may use the acronym only.
• State name should always appear as full names in the text of a manuscript. If included in references, use the two-letter abbreviation.
• To indicate a time of day, use AM or PM in small capitals.
• When dates are provided in the text, use numerals for day and year, and write out the month, e.g., April 2, 2010.
• If using dates in a table, you may use numerals for the month (e.g., 4/2/1990).
• Use ‘to’ rather than ‘en-dash’ in a range, e.g. Around 15% to 20% of users report side effects.
• The use of longer dash (em-dash) is permitted: Curie, Goodall, Franklin—these scientists have inspired women in STEM.
• Use SI (Le Système International d'Unités) standards for writing measurements. Numbers are always written in plain text, there is a space after the number and prior to the unit, and never a period after the unit (unless it ends a sentence).
• The following conventions are to be used when using capital letters:
  • In general, capital letters should only be used for place names, personal names and at the beginning of sentences. 
  • In the main title, the first letter in all words except prepositions, conjunctions etc. should be a capital.
• Use standard American spelling throughout (e.g., ‘labor’ and not ‘labour’, ‘center’ and not ‘centre’, ‘organize’ and not ‘organise’).         

       Numbers

        Numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) should be used in all writing, except when:

• The number begins the sentence or title
• Common fractions
• Ordinals: first through ninth
• Number spelled out in quotations or titles of works cited.
• One number may be spelled out, if the sentence requires multiple numbers to be placed next to each other. E.g., ‘If 12 16-year-olds had this reaction...’ should be changed to ‘If twelve 16-year-olds...’.

      Math equations/formulae

Please submit math equations as editable text and not as images. Present simple formulae in line with normal text where possible and use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms, e.g., X/Y. In principle,variables are to be presented in italics. Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text)

      Headings

      The following is the style of the headings:

H1	Title case, bold	Theoretical Framework and Hypothesis Development
H2	Title case, italics	Rule Compliance, Legitimacy and Decisions of Independent Reviewers
H3	Title case, italics with end period, text run-on	Regression Approach. In this approach…

There should be no instance of missed headings. H2 should follow H1, and so on. H3 can only be used if H2 has been used.

       Quotations, Footnotes/Endnotes, Tables and Figures

• Use double quotation marks for quotations within a given paragraph, and if needed, please use italics within quotations for emphases. Spelling of words in quotations should not be changed.
• Place end quotation marks before comma or full stop.
• If a quotation exceeds 40 words, it should be given as a display quote, i.e. separated from the main text with one-line space above and below, and indented on the left margin by 1 cm.
• Footnotes/end notes should be avoided.
• Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Each table should have a caption.
• Each figure or table must have a text citation, i.e. it must be mentioned in the text (e.g. see Table 1).
• Tables can be placed either next to the relevant text in the article or at the end. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body.
• In the typeset proofs, tables and figures will be placed at the top or bottom of the page, closest possible to their text citation. But tables or figures cannot be ‘sandwiched’ in between sections of the text.

          Please see the following section for detail on artwork/figures.               

6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
Illustrations, pictures and graphs, should be supplied in the highest quality and in an electronic format that helps us to publish your article in the best way possible. Please follow the guidelines below to enable us to prepare your artwork for the printed issue as well as the online version.

• Format: TIFF, JPEG: Common format for pictures (containing no text or graphs).
• EPS: Preferred format for graphs and line art (retains quality when enlarging/zooming in).
• Placement: Figures/charts and tables created in MS Word should be included in the main text rather than at the end of the document.
  Figures and other files created outside Word (i.e. Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, TIFF and EPS) should be submitted separately. Please add a placeholder note in the running text (i.e. “[insert Figure 1.]")
• Resolution: Rasterized based files (i.e. with .tiff or .jpeg extension) require a resolution of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch). Line art should be supplied with a minimum resolution of 800 dpi.
• Dimension: Check that the artworks supplied match or exceed the dimensions of the journal. Images cannot be scaled up after origination
• Fonts: The lettering used in the artwork should not vary too much in size and type (usually sans serif font as a default). 
• Caption: Ensure that each figure has a caption. Please ensure to explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
• Figures will not be edited or redrawn and they will be placed as supplied by the author.

       Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.
 

6.3 Identifiable information
Where a journal uses double-anonymized peer review, authors are required to submit:

1. A version of the manuscript which has had any information that compromises the anonymity of the author(s) removed or anonymised. This version will be sent to the peer reviewers.
2. A separate title page which includes any removed or anonymised material. This will not be sent to the peer reviewers. Please see Section 6.1 for more information on title page.

6.3.1 Anonymising your manuscript:
Where present, the following identifiable information should be treated as follows:

• Remove author names, emails and affiliations
• Remove the Acknowledgements
• Remove identifying information from file names and document properties using Document Inspector
• Anonymise the Conflict of Interest statement where a competing interest exists, e.g.:
  • The author(s) declared following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: [details omitted for double-anonymised peer review]
• Anonymise the trial registration number and date
• Anonymise the funding source(s), e.g.:
  • The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was funded by [details omitted for double-anonymised peer review]
• Avoid using self-citations. If you include an essential self-citation then:
  • The citation should not be anonymised  
  • If necessary, it should referred to in the third person, e.g. write "Jones and Xi (2020) have shown", not "we have previously shown (Jones & Xi, 2020)".

6.4 Supplemental material
This journal is able to host additional materials online alongside the full-text of the article.

All supplemental material will be freely available online to all users, regardless of whether the user has access to the article the material relates to or not.

The authors are advised to supply the supplemental material as a separate file clearly mentioning it as Supplement. It should not be added at the end of the article or within the article; only a mention needs to be there within the article where applicable. If not specified or given as a separate file, we will publish the supplement as an appendix within the article.

Supplemental material refers to files relates to a specific article, which authors supply for publication alongside their article.  They should generally be additional pieces to the article that could not be included in the issue or print version, such as appendices, tables, and audio and video material that is impossible to produce within the article. There may also be instances, such as certain podcasts and videos, where they are not directly attributable to a specific piece of research.

6.5 Reference style
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine adheres to the AMA reference style. View the AMA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To encourage a faster production process of your article, you are requested to closely adhere to the AMA reference style. Otherwise, it will entail a long process of solving copyeditor’s queries and may directly affect the publication time of your article. In case of any questions, please contact the journal editor at info@hapkerala.org

Several points to keep in mind:

• For each text citation there must be a corresponding citation in the reference list and for each reference list citation there must be a corresponding text citation.
• Cite references in consecutive order using superscript Arabic numbers. Use commas to separate multiple citation numbers in text. Corresponding references should be listed in numeric order at the end of the document. Unpublished works and personal communications (oral, written, and electronic) should be cited parenthetically (and not on the reference list). For e.g., As reported previously, ^{1, 3-8, 19}
• Page numbers are required for direct quotations.
• The names of all authors should be given unless there are more than 6, in which case the names of the first 3 authors are used followed by “et al.”

7. Submitting your manuscript

7.1 ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process. HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine is supporting guidelines of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this Journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. Co-authors can also link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, and sign into your ORCID account. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one.

7.2 How to submit your manuscript
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine is hosted on our web-based submission and peer review system. Visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/jpm to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you 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 year it is likely that you will have had an account created.

7.3 Title, keywords and abstracts
Please supply a title, short title, an abstract and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google.

Here are some tips:

• Repeat key phrases in the abstract while writing naturally.
• Get the title right: Ensure the main key phrase for your topic is in your article title. Make sure your title is descriptive, unambiguous, accurate and reads well.
• Choose your key words carefully: Include your main 3 or 4 key phrases and add in at least 3 or 4 additional key words.
• Use descriptive sub-headings.
• Link to your article: As well as optimizing the content, you should link to your article and encourage others to do so. 

7.4 Information required for completing your submission
Provide full contact details of the authors including emails, affiliations, mailing addresses and telephone numbers. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.

You will be asked to identify who is to be the corresponding author via our submission system. These details must with match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

The affiliation listed on the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper.

Corresponding author: The one individual who 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, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors.

The corresponding author is the person who signs the publishing agreement on behalf of all of the authors and whose contact details are included on the article. They should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

7.5 Permissions
Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information, please share your query on info@hapkerala.org

8. On acceptance and publication
If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. 

8.1 Production
Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via email and should be returned promptly.  Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. Please note that if there are any changes to the author list at this stage all authors will be required to complete and sign a form authorizing the change.

8.2 Online publication 
One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. Your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all. 

9. Further information
HAP Journal of Public Health and Clinical Medicine is published by Health Action by People, Thiruvananthapuram. Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the journal’s editorial office.

Editor,
Health Action by People
TC 1 / 1706, 'Chemmanam' Navarangam Lane
Medical College PO Trivandrum
Kerala, India, Pin: 695011

E-mails: info@hapkerala.org