Instructions for Authors

Please follow these instructions carefully to ensure that the review of your manuscript is as efficient as possible.

Aims and Scope 

The Journal of Education and Community Health (JECH) is a peer-reviewed journal that is published in English quarterlies. The journal contains refereed original article, reviews, and debate article on major themes and innovations from various sectors including; Public Health, Health Education and Health Promotion with emphasis in community development and community health. 

Manuscript of Categories

JECH welcomes submissions of various types including Research Articles, Review Articles, Brief Report, and Letter to the Editor. 

A) Original Research Articles: should be divided into the following sections: abstract, introduction, material and method, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgements and references. Contributions should not exceed 4000 words in length for research papers adopted from quantitative studies. The length of papers which include a qualitative research study can be just extended by a maximum of 5000 words for the main text (excluding the abstract, tables, figures, references, and acknowledgements). The number of references must be kept to a minimum, preferably not exceeding 40, and tables or figures not more than 5 in number. 

B) Short Communication: are short reports of original research articles or the early results of interventions and are structurally like Original Research Articles. They do not exceed 2000 words in length and include at most 2 tables and 15 references. 

C) Review Articles: consist of abstract, introduction, method, headings and subheadings (if required), discussion, conclusion, acknowledgements, co-authors contribution, conflicts of interest, and references. Articles bearing on updated topics conducted by proficient researches are more welcome. Review Articles comprise of 50-70 references, at least 3-5 of which are supporting literature on the same topic. The main text does not exceed 5000 words in length. 

D) Systematic Review Articles: may appear in Meta-Analysis or Meta synthesis format, and may lack any statistical analyses. They include the same sections as Original Research articles but are structured like Review Articles. 

E) Letters to Editor: normally include no abstract, tables, or figures. References are not more than 5 in number and the main text does not include more than1000 words. 

Manuscript Preparation and Submission Requirements

All manuscripts should be submitted at the JECH e-submission website (http://jech.umsha.ac.ir/Login). After registration, authors can login and follow the submission process and upload their manuscript. The submission tool generates an automatic reply which incorporates the manuscript number for future correspondence. Manuscripts can be submitted at any time. Original source files (cover letter, main text, tables, and figures) are required for submission.

Manuscript Preparation
The manuscript should be written on plain A4 paper with proper bordering [margins of 25 mm left at the sides, top, and bottom of each page], in a "Times New Roman" 12-point font for English. The manuscript must be double-spaced and justified throughout. Illustrations (line drawings and photographs) should be submitted in JPEG or GIF format and figures generated in Excel Software. The cover letter must be uploaded within your personal account at the website.

All submissions should be arranged and submitted as single file including: 

A) Title Page: The title page should be included the following items: Type of manuscript, Running title, Author(s) name(s) and institutional affiliations including research center, institution, university, and department; corresponding Author's postal address, cell-phone number, and e-mail address; institution phone and fax numbers all written. 

B) Abstract: which serves as the synopsis of the entire article is a single paragraph of 250 or fewer words written in English languages. Abstract should be structured and include the full title, Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion, and 3-5 key words introduced using MeSH list, available from Journal Website: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html.

C) Introduction: draws attention to the purpose and rationale of the study and a brief review of the relevant literature. Findings and results should not be referred to here. 

D) Materials and Methods: contains a clear description of the experimental design and sampling procedures and sufficient details of the methods, instruments, analytic processes, software version selected, and statistical analyses performed. If the method has been applied somewhere before, the exact reference should be cited; If otherwise, detailed description must be provided. 

E) Results: must be written in the text format. Tables, figures and illustrations must be referenced sequentially in the same order as in the text. Repetition of table contents should be avoided. Graphs and figures must be created in English. Table footnotes should be typed above the tables while legends to figures should be indicated below the figures. Tables or figures should not exceed 5 in number. 

F) Discussion: includes data analysis, comparison of the findings with those of other relevant surveys, and limitations of the scope the study. Any hypothesis put forward in the main text must be either accepted or rejected here. Implications for future developments are also proposed in this section. 

G) Conclusion: involves clear and precise deductions from the results which should not go further beyond the scope of the study. 

H) Acknowledgements: If necessary, gratitude must be expressed towards all people or institutions which have made any financial or technical contributions to data generation and collection.The conflict of interest such as fees or institutional share holdings gained or lost upon paper publication must be disclosed to the editor. Authors must be given details of all funding sources and institutions at the end of the paper. This information includes the full name of the funding agency and institutional publication code.
I) Competing Interests: It should be disclosed here according to the statement in the Research and Publication Ethics regardless of existence of competing interest. If the authors have nothing to disclose, please state: “The authors have no competing interests associated with the material presented in this paper.”
J) Author Contributions: The corresponding author is responsible for completing this information at submission, and it is expected that all authors will have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of this time. JECH participates in the CRediT standard for author contributions. Each authors' individual contribution(s) to the study must be stated based on the author statement provided by CRediT, which is a classification system consisting of 14 roles that describe the typical contributions made by authors to research outputs. For each of the categories below, please insert the full name of the authors who contributed in that category. If no one contributed in a category, you may leave that box blank. CRediT roles are defined as follows:

•  Conceptualization: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims

• Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.

• Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data

• Funding acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication

• Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection

• Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models

• Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution

• Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools

• Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components

• Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team

• Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs

• Visualization: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation

• Writing-original draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)

• Writing - review & editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre-or post-publication stages.

K) ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID): ORCID of all authors are recommended to be provided. To have ORCID, authors should register in the ORCID web site available from: http://orcid.org/. Registration is free to every researchers in the world.

L) Abbreviations: Conventional abbreviations should be used instead of full words. Define the abbreviated forms fully upon their first in-text application. Avoid using abbreviated words in the title or abstract.

References 

References should be numbered upon their first in-text citation, with the number in brackets before the final period. All citations should be typed in numerical order at the end of the manuscript, which, in turn, is based on the style developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors in 1978 in Vancouver (see examples below). Persian references must be translated to English and marked as [Persian] at the end. The titles of journals and books should be abbreviated according to the list of journals indexed in 'Journal Database' 'available from: http://www.pubmed.gov ; http://cassi.cas.org/search.jsp.

The title of journals and books should NOT be typed in italic. All authors should be listed when six or less; when seven or more, only the first six should be listed and followed by et al. The unpublished data or manuscripts under review should be excluded from the reference list. 

A) Journal Article:

Bashirian S, Hidarnia A, Allahverdipour H. Application of the theory of planned behavior to predict drug abuse related behaviors among adolescents. J Res Health Sci.2012; 12(1):54-9. 

B) Book:

Glanz K, Rimer BK, Viswanath K. Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research and Practice. 4th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass publisher; 2008. 

C) Book Chapter: 

Greenland S. Introduction to regression modeling. In: Rothman KJ, Greenland S, Lash TL, editors. Modern epidemiology. 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2008. pp. 418-455. 

D) Dissertation: 

Bashirian S. Application of the theory of planned behavior to predict drug abuse related behaviors among adolescents [PhD thesis]. Tehran: Tarbiat Modares University; 2011. 

E) Abstract: 

Joffe M, Santanna J, Feldman H. Partially marginal structural models for causal inference [abstract]. Am J Epidemiol.2001; 153(suppl):S261. 

F) Conference:

Poorolajal J, Mahmoodi M, Haghdoost A, Majdzadeh R, Nasseri-Moghaddam S, Fotouhi A, et al. Long-term protection provided by hepatitis B vaccine and need for booster dose: a meta-analysis. EPS Global-Shanghai 1st International Biomedicine Forum; September 10 - September 11; Shanghai 2010. 

G) Web Page:

Chan M. Progress in public health during the previous decade and major challenges ahead. WHO Web Site; 2014 [updated 18 January, 2014; cited 10 January, 2014]; Available from: http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2014/executive_board_126_20100118/en/index.html 

H) Unpublished Paper: 

Leshner AL. Molecular mechanisms of cocaine addiction. N Engl J Med. In press.

Ethical Permissions

If a study has involved any contact with human subjects, authors should state in their Methods section that their institution's review board has approved the study proposal, as well as the manner in which informed consent was obtained from subjects. Authors should follow the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association (www.wma.net).

Plagiarism

The authors are not allowed to utilize verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere.

Galley Proofs 
Page proofs will be transmitted to corresponding authors by e-mail as PDF files. Authors are responsible for the content of page proofs. All page proofs should be read carefully, corrected if necessary, and returned within 48 hours of receipt. Corrections should be restricted to typesetting errors. Changes or additions to the edited manuscript are not allowed at this stage.

Publication Expenses 

The corresponding author at no extra cost will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image. In addition, three hard copies of journal for each article will be provided free of charge for the corresponding authors. The hard copies of journal will be submitted for national authors but not international authors.

Open Access Information

This is a sponsored open access journal, also referred to as platinum open access. Because it is published in partnership with an organisation, your article will be published open access, but you will not have to pay an APC (article processing charge) - publication is free. Your article will be published with a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 user licence, which outlines how readers can reuse your work. You can find out more about our open access routes on our open research page (click here). 

NOTICE: These instructions to authors will be applied beginning with the January 2022 issue.

Reference Guide

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html