Rural and Remote Health
Instructions for Authors
- About us: scope and content
- Submission
- Peer review
- Ethics and copyright
- Publication
- Indexing and abstracting services
- Preparation of the manuscript
- Checklist for submission
- Useful websites for authors
Rural and Remote Health, the international, electronic Journal of Rural and Remote Health education, practice and policy is a joint publication of the Australian Rural Health Education Network (ARHEN) and the Federation of Rural Australian Medical Educators (FRAME). The Journal's aim is to provide an easily accessible, peer-reviewed, international evidence-base to inform improvement in health service delivery and health status in rural communities.
The multidisciplinary, international Editorial Board reflects the five major thematic areas of the journal: rural health practice, policy, status/research, health education and indigenous health. The Journal welcomes submissions in the form of original research; review articles; clinical case reports or reviews; policy, project or conference reports; personal views; book reviews; rural health history; letters to the editor; biographies of/tributes to/obituaries of important figures in the field of rural and remote health. Some letters to the editor are accepted in the form of discussion posted on the online Forum at the Journal site.
There are no subscription fees, and readers may register to receive immediate email notification of published articles in their field of interest.
The journal, Rural and Remote Health (RRH) welcomes the submission of relevant manuscripts. To contribute, register with the Journal (via the homepage) select the 'Contribute' link. Be prepared to submit for each author: full name, highest academic qualification, position title, organisation (current at the time of article preparation), business hours phone contact and current email address, contribution to the manuscript and whether a Journal registered user. Following that screen, you will be asked to upload your manuscript (as a Word document) and any non-embedded figures into our Online Article Submission Form.
Automatic acknowledgement will be sent after successful submission.
New authors or those who have questions are encouraged to seek assistance from the enthusiastic RRH editorial team ejrh@rrh.org.au.
Most manuscripts are peer reviewed. Once your manuscript has been submitted it will be streamed into the Journal's refereeing process. Please view the refereeing process diagram via the link in the submission area of the site.
Your manuscript may be returned with feedback for revision and a request to resubmit before the manuscript is sent out for review. After review, most contributors can expect to revise aspects of their article according to reviewers' recommendations before the article is accepted for publication. Assistance to increase the clarity and strength of the writing to publication standard is available to authors at any stage prior to acceptance ejrh@rrh.org.au.
Guidance can be obtained for authors of randomized controlled trials by viewing the revised Consort Statement at http://www.consort-statement.org/, and authors of review articles by visiting the QUOROM section of the Consort site http://www.consort-statement.org/QUOROM.pdf. If you are preparing a health economics paper, the British Medical Journal site http://bmj.com/advice/article_submission.shtml has excellent guidelines in the form of checklists and article links.
Most submitted articles are reviewed against the main criteria for article acceptance by three external experts. The criteria include:
- Specific: clarity of purpose; rural and remote health context; well organised ideas that justify conclusions; comprehensive and current references; ethical considerations addressed.
- For quantitative studies: appropriate design; justification of methods; appropriate statistical methods
- For qualitative studies: appropriate design; data are corroborated; findings are grounded in data
- Global: significance to international readership; contribution to knowledge and/or practice in rural and remote health; appropriate language and style.
Reviewers provide a detailed report to the Editor-in-Chief and recommend one of the following outcomes:
- Accept the paper.
- Accept after minor/major revision (usually related to strengthening data-based arguments or identifying areas where additional data are required).
- Reject the paper for failing to meet Journal criteria.
The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision about the suitability of the article for publication in RRH, based on his own review of the article and the recommendation of the external reviewers. This information (and detailed feedback related to revision of the article, if this is recommended) will be emailed to you in a timely fashion.
Submission of a manuscript to RRH implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that approval of research has been obtained from an ethics committee (where appropriate), in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm.
Information or clinical photographs that relate to individual patients may only be used if the authors have obtained written and signed consent from each identifiable person.
The manuscript must be the authors' original work, not previously published in printed or electronic form, nor under consideration by any other print or electronic journal. However, submission of articles based on published abstracts, or verbal or poster presentations at conferences or meetings is welcomed.
All authors should be listed on the title page or first page of the manuscript. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for some part of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole. All others who contributed to the work but are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgments and their contribution described. For a full definition of Authorship, please access http://www.icmje.org/.
Changes to authorship: Once a manuscript has been submitted to the Journal, requests to add or remove an author should be made in writing by the corresponding author to the respective editor. Such changes will not be made without the agreement of the entire existing author group.
Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s published and unpublished ideas or words (intellectual property) without attribution (referencing). This applies to all instances of another’s work, including abstracts, reports, grant applications and unpublished or published manuscripts in any form (from oral presentations to electronic and print publications). If intentional, such wrongful use of another’s intellectual property amounts to serious scientific misconduct. Intentional or unintentional plagiarism may represent a potentially costly copyright infringement.
Rural and Remote Health’s policy on plagiarism is based on a commitment to the highest standard of peer-reviewed publication. Plagiarism is always a serious issue, and authors are cautioned to take extreme care in manuscript preparation, being vigilant about what they present as their own work, and scrupulously referencing the words and ideas of others. Any detected instances of plagiarism in submitted, reviewed or published manuscripts will be dealt with rigorously, following the pathway suggested by the Committee on Publication Ethics (www.publicationethics.org.uk).
Self plagiarism: Unintentional plagiarism may include an author’s copying of his or her own previously published material (self-plagiarism), without acknowledging the original publication source, paraphrasing the material or presenting it in quotation marks. This most frequently occurs in the Methods section of a subsequent article. Self-plagiarism is potentially a copyright violation, and for this reason Rural and Remote Health’s policy is that authors must always attribute text repeated verbatim from their previously published works by full referencing of clearly identified text. The alternative is to paraphrase what was originally written (that is, to present the same idea using other words).
For further information and guidance about citation of other’s work, authors are referred to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication, by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors at http://www.icmje.org/.
Authors: Authors are required to have obtained permission to use any copyright-protected material in their submitted paper, including material in the form of figures or tables. Any costs incurred relating to permissions are the reponsibility of the authors. Please ensure that you have avoided any libellous statements, because authors are liable for any subsequent legal action.
While you retain copyright of your original material, by publishing on the RRH site you will have agreed to the following contractual terms:
- The article is the original work of the stated author(s)
- The work has not been published previously
- The journal Rural and Remote Health may use the article for publicity purposes
- The journal Rural and Remote Health may publish the article on third-party sites
- Any subsequent publication of the article by the authors will carry the acknowledgement: ‘First published in the journal, Rural and Remote Health [http://www.rrh.org.au]’
Prior to publication of your article, you will be requested to logon to the journal site, accept and agree to the final, edited version of your article and also to indicate agreement to these terms.
A notice of conditions placed on site users to protect your original material is available at the foot of each journal page.
Permissions: Enquiries regarding reproduction and re-use of the material contained in this site should be directed to:
- RRH [ejrh@rrh.org.au], regarding permission to use our version of the material.
- The copyright holder (in most instances the author), regarding re-use of their original material.
Once the article has been submitted, you may check its progress by logging on to the journal site http://www.rrh.org.au and accessing your own status page (select from the menu bar) where article-specific editorial correspondence is accessible.
Articles accepted for publication will be edited to ensure consistent journal style in order to improve communication of the content to the reader. Immediately prior to publication, the correspondence author will be requested by email to agree to the journal's copyright conditions and approve the edited article. Immediate publication will occur once this task is completed.
The journal RRH is indexed by MEDLINE (available on MEDLINE within 48 hours of publication), CINHAL, APAIS (incl. ATSIROM and AUSThealth), AMI (Australasian Medical Index), and registered with PANDORA and the DEST Register of Referred Journals (authors are encouraged to register their published article for the DEST publications output).
Any word-processing package may be used to prepare your manuscript, but please avoid using automatic formatting such as footnotes, endnotes, headers or footers. Please include footnoted material in brackets in the text at the appropriate place; the Vancouver system of referencing does not allow for footnotes in the reference list.
Manuscripts should follow the style of the Vancouver Agreement as detailed in the 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals' http://www.icmje.org/.
Writing online text for publication: Readers respond to digital material (accessed using a computer screen) in a different way from the same material in a printed version. Reading on-line text is generally slower and may result in reduced reader comprehension. This is due to a variety of factors, including the back lighting of the screen and pixelated characters of digital material, and a preference for information presented in portrait orientation and double-page format. Because the RRH publishes in electronic format only, authors may find the guidelines in the following section useful.
Text structure and article length: In order to maximise readers' appreciation of your work, consider making some modification to your text structure:
- Short pieces of writing are appealing in this form of publication and are more likely to be accessed and read than are longer articles. The full-text of any article should be less than 5000 words, guidance on specific variations follow:
- Editorial: less than 2000 words
- Commentary: less than 2000 words
- Original research: less than 5000 words
- Review article: less than 5000 words
- Clinical case report: less than 3000 words
- Clinical review: less than 3000 words
- Short communication: less than 1500 words
- Policy report: less than 2500 words
- Project report: less than 2500 words
- Conference report: less than 2500 words
- Personal view: less than 3000 words
- Rural health history: less than 2000 words
- Biography, Tribute or Obituary: less than 1500 words
- Book review: less than 500 words
- Letter via on-line forum: less than 500 words
- Many readers will only read the article Abstract. Therefore, the suggested length of the structured abstract of original research is 500-750 words (the Abstract for other articles will be shorter). Detail of required abstract structure is given under 'Sections of the article'.
- Within the article text, write shorter sentences than usual.
- Likewise, where possible break the text into short paragraphs of five to seven sentences.
- Provide frequent section headings that cue the reader to the content of the paragraphs that follow.
- Consider using bullet points or a numbered list instead of complex 'list' sentences.
Spelling: Authors may use Australian, UK or US spelling, but please avoid using a mixture of spelling styles within your article. Authors should follow the latest edition of the Macquarie dictionary for Australian spelling, the Oxford dictionary for UK spelling or Websters dictionary for US spelling.
Abbreviations: All abbreviations and acronyms should be spelled out at first use. The exception is any acronym related to rural and remote health in the following list, which may be used without definition.
- AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
- AFB Acid-fast Bacteria
- BSL Blood Sugar Level
- CB Citizens Band (radio)
- CEO Chief Executive Officer
- CPR Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
- CT Computed Tomography
- EURIPA European Remote and Isolated Practitioner Association
- GP General Practitioner
- HCG Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin
- HF High Frequency
- HIV Human Immuno-deficiency Virus
- HRT Hormone Replacement Therapy
- ICU Intensive Care Unit
- IMF International Monetary Fund
- IHW Indigenous Health Worker
- IT Information Technology
- MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- SIDS Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
- STI Sexually Transmitted Infection
- TB Tuberculosis
- UCLA University of California, Los Angeles
- UNICEF United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
- WHO World Health Organisation
- WONCA World Organization of Family Doctors
- WTO World Trade Organisation
Abbreviations are unnecessary in the Abstract unless the term is used there more than once.
Units: In accordance with international scholarly convention, all units must be given as Système Internationale (SI) units http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/index.html.
Special characters: Because non-keyboard characters may corrupt during electronic transfer, the use of special characters/symbols in the text should be accompanied by a spell-out of that character in brackets, for example, c (chi), a (alpha). The bracketed text will be removed during the editing process.
Statistics: Please describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify your reported results. Provide actual numbers as well as percentages in both text and tables, and wherever possible include total rows and columns.
For surveys, ensure that the response rate is described and, if necessary, any biases due to low response discussed. A justification for sample size based on the required accuracy of the results should be provided. 95% confidence intervals for the main results should be given.
For intervention studies/trials, ensure that the response rate is described, and any biases discussed. A justification for sample size based on the required power should be provided.
All statistical tests should be described. If parametric analyses (eg t-test, analysis of variance or multiple regression) have been undertaken, make sure that you have first checked the dependent variable for normality.
Specify in the text the statistical software used, giving company detail (names and address).
It is acknowledged that many researchers working in rural/remote areas have little or no access to statistical advice. We would be pleased to answer any statistical queries you might have before submitting the manuscript(email the journal manager ejrh@rrh.org.au in the first instance).
Line numbering:
Please line number your document before submission to facilitate reviewer feedback. To do this in Microsoft Word:
- In the File menu, select “Page Setup”
- Select the “Layout” tab
- In “Apply to” select “whole document”
- Click on “Line Numbers…” at the lower left
- Check the box “Add line numbering”
Digital author information: RRH encourages all authors to supply a digital author image (head-and-shoulders view) of each author to be published with their article. If there is more than one author and you prefer it, a group image may be submitted. Please ensure the file (saved as JPEG or GIF) is labelled with the author's family name (eg Green-B.jpeg). In the case of a group image, please email the journal manager detail of the name and position in the image of each author.
Authors are also invited to submit a sound file to the Journal Manager that consists of an author introducing their article by reading the introduction section of their abstract.
If it is not possible to provide a digital image, email the journal manager ejrh@rrh.org.au to arrange scanning of a photo print.
File format:
Please use common word-processing software (such as Microsoft Word) for the text.
However, Microsoft Word 2007 saves files by default in an XML format (file extension .docx). Files saved in this format cannot be accepted by the Journal. Therefore, please save all Word documents with the file extension .doc
To do this for Word 2007 documents:
- Select the Office button in the upper left corner of a Word 2007 window and choose "Save As".
- Select "Word 97-2003 document".
- Enter a file name and select "Save".
- Use this version to upload.
These instructions also apply to the new version of Excel (avoid the default file extension .xlsx).
Title page: The first page or beginning of the article file should identify the type of article you are submitting, the title of your manuscript, the full names, position titles, institutional addresses (current at the time the work was undertaken) and current email and institutional addresses for all authors. The highest academic qualification of each author should be given.
If more than one author is registered with the journal, the correspondence author should be indicated and a current institutional address and telephone number included for that author. If any author has a preferred form of name for publication, this is the place to record it. Sources of support in the form of grants, equipment and/or drugs should be specified here.
Abstract: RRH requires that the Abstract be a substantial piece of writing in its own right and of 500-750 words' length. Where possible, please structure the Abstract using the headings: Introduction (including Objective), Methods, Results, Conclusions (and these headings should also be found in the full text to facilitate linking). The Abstract should state the purposes of the study or investigation, basic procedures followed (selection of study subjects; observational and analytical methods), main findings (including specific data and their statistical significance, if applicable), and the main conclusions. New and important aspects of the study should be emphasised.
In Abstracts for reviews, reports, personal views and clinical material the following headings should be used: Context, Issue, Lessons learned. Authors should provide a thorough summary and discursive material, main points and recommendations of the article.
Keywords: Three to 10 key words should be included when submitting the manuscript. As well as selecting from the key word screen at the prompt when submitting, terms from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/introduction2004.html should be considered. The key words will be used for search and as article alerts for those registered with the journal; they will also assist in cross-indexing the article at abstracting services.
Main text: For guidance as to the structure of the sections 'Introduction', 'Methods', 'Results' and 'Conclusions', authors are referred to http://www.icmje.org. For reviews, reports, personal views and clinical material the following headings should be used in the main text, as in the abstract: Context, Issue, Lessons learned. Book reviews should be accompanied by: the full title of the book reviewed; the full name/s of the author/s and/or editor/s of the volume; the date of publication; the name and city of the publisher; the ISSN and RRP in AU$, and whether the book is case bound or soft covered. Please include in the file the publication name and institutional address of the reviewer.
Acknowledgements: The Acknowledgement section is the place to list all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship (eg, someone who provided purely technical help or writing assistance) but please obtain permission to do so. Specify the role of these people (eg, critically reviewed the study proposal, or collected data, or cared for study patients.) Financial and material support should also be acknowledged here.
Please also detail any funding source that contributed to your reseach.
References: When listing references, follow the Vancouver Style http://www.icmje.org. References should be cited consecutively in the text using numbers in square brackets. The numbered reference list follows the order in which references appear in the text.
Journal titles should be given in full. Page ranges should be given in full (eg 673-678, not 673-8).
Note: list all authors and/or editors up to 6; if there are more than 6, list the first 6 and add 'et al'.
Personal communications (which may only be included with permission), unpublished data and personal observations should not be included in the reference list, however they may be placed in the text (eg, P Smith, pers. comm., 2001). Likewise, any statistical software used to process your data should be cited in brackets in the text, providing the name and version of the package and the name, city, state and country of the company that produced it.
As already mentioned, in the Vancouver system of referencing, footnoted material is placed in brackets in the text at the appropriate place. Footnotes among references in the list will have to be manually repositioned, which will increase the processing time for the article and increase the possibility of introduced errors.
Some examples of the journal's style of references follow; for a more comprehensive list, please view the examples at http://www.icmje.org.
Journal article
Wellard S, Bethune E. Learning issues for nurses in renal satellite centres. Australian Journal of Rural Health 2000; 8(2): 322-326.
Veitch C, Hollins J, Worley P, Mitchell G. General practice research. Problems and solutions in participant recruitment and retention. Australian Family Physician 2001; 4(3): 399-406.
Book
Hudson R, Richmond J. Unique and ordinary, 2nd edn. Melbourne, Vic: Ausmed, 2000.
Book chapter
Rosenthal M, Bond MR. Behavioural and psychiatric sequelae. In: M Rosenthal, ER Griffith, JS Kreutzer, B Pentland (Eds). Rehabilitation of the adult and child with traumatic brain injury. New York: FA Davis, 1990; 179-192.
Book: author as editor
Norman IJ, Redfern SJ (Eds). Mental health care for elderly people. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1996.
Report: personal author
Garnaut J, Lim-Applegate H. People in farming, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) research report, 98/6. Canberra: AGPS, 1998.
Report: corporate author
Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health. Rural doctors: reforming undergraduate medical education for rural practice. Final report of the Rural Undergraduate Steering Committee. Canberra: AGPS, 1994.
Conference paper
Coombe PE, Phillips M-J, Masters R et al. Review of current provision of rural and remote psychiatric services. Proceedings, National Workshop on Remote Services, Alice Springs, 17-19 October 2001. Melbourne: Blackwell Publishing Asia, 2002.
Thesis (unpublished)
Kissane RJ. Post-hospital home health care in rural centres: access and equity for some (PhD thesis). Geelong, Australia: Deakin University; 2002.
Journal article accepted but not yet published
Slaven J, Kisely S. Staff perceptions of care for deliberate self-harm patients in rural Western Australia: a qualitative study. Australian Journal of Rural Health 2002; 10: (in press).
Journal article in electronic format
Laurence COM, Wilkinson D. Towards more rural nursing and allied health services: current and potential rural activity in the Division of Health Sciences of the University of South Australia. Rural and Remote Health 2: 105. (Online) 2002. Available: http://www.rrh.org.au (Accessed 8 October 2002).
Tables and Figures: Figure legends should be added to the main text, immediately after the references.
Table and figure legends should describe the table or figure without need for reference to the text. Tables and figures should be cited in the text and numbered according to their sequence of citation. References cited in a figure, table or legend should be numbered according to the first citation of that figure or table in the text. Please remember to spell out in the legend any abbreviations or acronyms in the figure or table, even if they have already been spelled out in the text.
Make column headings descriptive but brief, with units of measurement in brackets. Footnote symbols †, ¶, §, ‡, should be used (in that order) with *, **, *** reserved for p-values.
Text used in figures/tables should be Arial font and 9pt in size. Headings should be bold. Text should have single spacing. If in doubt, check with the production editor before composing the figure. Keep in mind that figures should be meaningful, rather than decorative.
Use the tables feature of your word processing program to create the tables, rather than using the space bar or tabs and tab stops to separate columns of data.
If you have figures or photos in jpg or gif format that are not included in your article, these can be submitted in a separate submission area during the article submission process. Always keep a copy of what you submit in case of file corruption.
Before making your submission please ensure you have completed all the items in this check list. If you have any questions at this stage, please contact ejrh@rrh.org.au and we will be pleased to assist you.
- Read Instructions for Authors.
- Supplied all author details, including institutional and current addresses.
- Indicated the correspondence author by including their present address (if different from the study address) and contact telephone number.
- Indicated the type of article.
- Used the Vancouver style of referencing.
- Placed figure legends after the references in the body of the text.
- Prepared figure files and added legends to the text.
- Included digital author image(s).
- Met requirements for consent from patients described, those people who have been quoted in personal communications and those people acknowledged.
Open Access The Budapest Open Access Initiative was started at a meeting in Budapest in 2001 convened by the Open Society Institute. The aim of the initiative was to accelerate progress in making research articles freely available on the Internet, using two strategies: (1) Self-archiving, where researchers can upload the results of their research, to certain prescribed standards, on the Internet; (2) The establishment of open access peer-reviewed Internet journals.
BioMed Central provides free access to peer-reviewed biomedical research, in the spirit of
Budapest Open Access Initiative. Directed by a Board of Trustees, BioMed Central consists of many journals from various scientific disciplines. In most cases the authors pay for publication of their research, instead of subscribers paying for access. While original research articles are available online without charge, access to review articles is still limited to those who can pay.
The CONSORT site is a great resource for those interested in randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology, either as author or reader. CONSORT provides a checklist and flow diagram for RCT. The checklist includes items that need to be addressed; the flow diagram gives a clear picture of the progress of participants in a trial. The CONSORT site also has links to PDFs of similar guidelines for QUOROM (systematic reviews and meta-analyses), MOOSE (meta-analysis of observational studies) and STARD (studies of diagnostic accuracy).
The Cochrane Library, published quarterly and available on CD-ROM and the internet, is a regularly updated collection of high quality, evidence-based medicine databases, including The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
International Council of Medical Journal Educators provides "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals". The basis for these guidelines was the 1978 Vancouver Group meeting of medical journal editors. These guidelines are regularly updated and are accepted by many as the industry standard. An article prepared to these requirements would be acceptable to any biomedical peer-reviewed journal.
Système Internationale (SI) units, or the International System of units, is the modern metric system of measurement and is used universally in scientific and biomedical publications.
MEDLINE. MEDLINE's "Citation Matcher for Single Articles" allows a search for the abstract of any article in any journal indexed by MEDLINE.
The World Association of Medical Editors site has a collection of articles on journal writing and editing - click on "Resources for Editors" in the side panel of the home page and then select "Journal resources".
The British Medical Journal site has a free access collection of archived articles. Clickon "Collected Resources", scroll down to "Non-clinical" resources and under "History" select "Journalology" for articles on many aspects of peer-review publication. From the Home page clickon "Netprint" for an example of Open Access's self-archiving.
The COPE – Committee on Publication Ethics – site has useful information for publishers and authors (eg a detailed examination of authorship and how to avoid authorship disputes).
Copyright Rural and Remote Health 2002. Last modified 1 December 2008.
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