JCHS Guidelines
Submission process
Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The corresponding author takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review.
To facilitate rapid publication and to minimize administrative costs, JCHS only accepts online submissions.Files can be submitted as a batch, or one by one. The submission process can be interrupted at any time; when users return to the site, they can carry on where they left off.
See below for examples of word processor and graphics file formats that can be accepted for the main manuscript document by the online submission system. Additional files of any type, such as movies, animations, or original data files, can also be submitted as part of the manuscript.
Cover letter
During submission, in your cover letter, explain why your manuscript should be published in JCHS and declare any potential competing interests, including all authors’ information and contribution. Authors must provide names, affiliations and email addresses of at least 3 potential reviewers. All of the reviewers should not have the same affiliation as the authors.
The manuscript must include a cover letter with the names of potential reviewers; otherwise, it will not be processed.
Manuscripts should be submitted in Microsoft word (DOC, DOCX) processor file format.
Preparing main manuscript text
Preparing illustrations and figures
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest exists when your interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by your personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors must disclose any financial conflict of interests they should also reveal any non-financial conflict of interests that may cause them embarrassment were they to become public after the publication of the manuscript.
All conflict of interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no conflict of interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no conflict of interests'.
When declaring the conflict of interest, please consider the following questions:
Financial conflict of interests
- In the past three years have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? Is such an organization financing this manuscript? If so, please specify.
- Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? If so, please specify.
- Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the content of the manuscript? Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript? If so, please specify.
- Do you have any other financial conflict of interests? If so, please specify.
Non-financial conflict of interests
- Is there any non-financial conflict of interest (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) to declare in relation to this manuscript? If so, please specify.
- If you are unsure as to whether you, or one your co-authors, has a conflict of interest please discuss it with the editorial office.
Authors’ contribution
According to ICMJE guidelines, An 'author' is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) have given final approval of the version to be published; and 4) agree 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. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.
JCHS assumes that all authors have read and approved the final manuscript before submission. Each author’s contribution should be clearly stated in a section before references.
Acknowledgements
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, a department chair who provided only general support.
Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Include the source(s) of funding for the study. Acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study. If a language editor has made significant revision of the manuscript, we recommend that you acknowledge the editor by name, where possible.
Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.
References
All references, including URLs, must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any in tables or legends. Each reference must have an individual reference number. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.
Only articles, clinical trial registration records and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text and referred to as "unpublished observations" or "personal communications" giving the names of the involved researchers. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited colleagues is the responsibility of the author.
Journal abbreviations must follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Citations in the reference list should include all named authors. Any in press articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.
Examples of the JHCS reference style are shown below. Please ensure that the reference style is followed precisely; if the references are not in the correct style they may have to be retyped and carefully proofread.
All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do. Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.
Examples of the JCHS reference style
Article within a journal
Agarwal R, Agarwal P. Glaucomatous neurodegeneration: an eye on tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Indian J Ophthalmol. 2012; 60(4): 255-61.
Article within a journal by DOI (ahead of print)
Khan MS,Gan C,Ahmed K,Ismail AF,Watkins J,Summers JA,Peacock JL,Rimington P,Dasgupta P.A single-centre early phase randomised controlled three-arm trial of open, robotic, and laparoscopic radical cystectomy (CORAL). Eur Urol. 2016; 69(4): 613-21. doi: 10.1016/j.eururo.2015.07.038.
Article within a journal supplement
Rajikin MH, Kamsani YS, Chatterjee A Nor-Ashikin MN, Nuraliza AS. Gamma-tocotrienol supplementation improves embryo development and fetal survival rate in nicotine-treated pregnant mice. Hum Repro. 2013; 28 Suppl 1: 232-33.
.
Online journal article (without a volume designation but with a DOI)
Mokhtar SS, Marshall CR, Phipps ME Thiruvahindrapuram B, Lionel AC, Scherer SW, Peng HB. Novel population specific autosomal copy number variation and its functional analysis amongst negritos from peninsular Malaysia patient. PLoS One. 2014. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100371.
Book chapter, or an article within a book
Gelder M. Symptoms and Signs of Psychiatric Disorders. In: Shorter Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry. 5th ed. eds Gelder M, Harrison P, Cowen P. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. 2006. pp. 1-21.
Complete book, authored
Gelder M, Harrison P, Cowen P. Shorter Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry. 5th ed. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. 2006. pp. 846.
Online document
Rani MFA. COPD: what is it and do you suffer from it. Expat Go Malaysia. 2013. http://www.expatgo.com/my/2013/06/12/copd-what-is-it-and-do-you-suffer-from-it/. Accessed 23 Aug 2013.
Online database
Ribavirin. American Society of Health System Pharmacists. DynaMed, EBSCO Information Services. 1995. http://search.ebscohost.com. Accessed 15 May 1996.
Supplementary material/private homepage
Zudrop J. High performance computing.2014. http://www.jenszudrop.de/research/. 2014. Accessed 19 Sep 2015.
University site
Ismail, K: Center for coal and biomass energy. http://fsg.uitm.edu.my/v1/research/reftp://ftp.cap.org/superlinks/ref.htmlsearch-news/202-center-for-coal-and-biomass-energy.html. 2016. Accessed 24 Jan 2016.
FTP site
Schrier, RW: Atlas of diseases of the kidney. ftp://ftp.cap.org/superlinks/ref.html. 1999. Accessed 9 Feb 2001.
Organization site
IFLA Metadata Newsletter. http://www.issn.org/ifla-metadata-newsletter. 2016. Accessed 20 Jan 2016.
Dataset with persistent identifier
Klüver N,König M,Ortmann J,Massei R,Paschke A,Kühne R,Scholz S. Fish embryo toxicity test: identification of compounds with weak toxicity and analysis of behavioral effects to improve prediction of acute toxicity for neurotoxic compounds. Env Sci & Tech. 2015. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b01910.
Style and language
General
Currently, JCHS only accepts manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture.
There is no explicit limit on the length of articles submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise. The total number of figures and tables must not exceed eight (8) for original articles and (3) for case reports. Figures and tables should be numbered in the order in which they are referred to in the text. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible. They should be defined when first used
Typography
- Please use double line spacing, 12-font, Times new roman.
- Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks.
- Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines.
- Capitalize only the first word, and proper nouns, in the title.
- All pages should be numbered. The lines should be numbered separately on each page.
- Use the JCHS reference format.
- Footnotes are not allowed, but endnotes are permitted.
- Please do not format the text in multiple columns.
- Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full. Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF.
- Reviews should not exceed 5000 words (excluding abstract and references). Case report should not exceed 2000 words. (excluding abstract and references);
- Abstract not more than 250 words for original article and review, 150 words for case reports
- All manuscripts will be screened for plagiarism before sending to the reviewers
Units
SI units should be used throughout (liter and molar are permitted, however).