Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Journal of Infection Prevention
- Peer review policy
- Article types
2.1 Summary of manuscript structure/style - How to submit your manuscript
- Journal contributor’s publishing agreement
4.1 SAGE Choice - Declaration of conflicting interests policy
- Other conventions
- 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
Journal of Infection Prevention is a peer-reviewed professional journal for all workers in infection prevention and control. The aim of the journal is to advance the evidence base in infection prevention and control, and to provide a publishing platform for all health professionals interested in this field of practice.
"Protecting patients from infection is central to role of all healthcare providers and the evidence to support best practice in this field can be found in the pages of this journal. Health professionals from a wide range of disciplines report the latest research findings here and give advice and support on the most clinically effective measures that can be taken to minimise the risk of infection and to promote patient safety. This journal has become indispensable reading for everyone concerned with health protection and the prevention of healthcare-associated infections."
-
Professor Robert J. Pratt CBE FRCN, Thames Valley University, Middlesex, UK
1. Peer review policy
The journal's policy is to obtain at least two independent reviews of each article. It operates a double-blind reviewing policy in which the author and reviewer’s names are mutually concealed – as such; submitted manuscripts should contain no identifying information.
Referees will be encouraged to provide substantive, constructive reviews that provide suggestions for improving the work and distinguish between mandatory and non-mandatory recommendations.
The editor welcomes papers that contribute toward the development and understanding of infection prevention and control theory and practice. All manuscripts accepted for publication are subject to editing for presentation, style and grammar. Any major redrafting is agreed with the author but the editor's decision on the text is final.
Original Manuscripts (including abstract and references) that address issues of infection control clinical practice, research, education, management, case studies and projects of interest to others are encouraged. Short papers and correspondence are also welcomed.
2.1 Summary of manuscript structure:
Manuscripts up to 4,000 words (including abstract and references).
Short papers of between 1,000 and 2,000 words.
Correspondence of up to a maximum of 3000 words.When uploading your manuscript you will need to upload a manuscript file with no identifying author information (designate as Main Document) and a separate title page (designate as Title Page) with author details. The title page must include an email address to which all correspondence should be sent must be included, as should a daytime telephone number. A fax number should also be included, if possible. The total word count of the document should also be displayed on the front page of the manuscript (Main Document).
All manuscripts should commence with an abstract of no more than 200 words, which accurately reflects the paper's content. Key words should also be provided (25 approx). Where approval for reproduction or modification of material is required, this must be noted on the first page, and approval obtained by the author before the manuscript is submitted. Details of sources of research funding, commercial affiliations and acknowledgements should also be included on the first page.
It is important that you write carefully and accurately, ruthlessly removing superfluous or ambiguous words. Please check your spelling, especially unusual or scientific terms or names. Start with a single sheet of paper outlining the order of your ideas and arguments. Before you start to write, read some articles in respected journals that you consider to be especially well written. Look at the way facts are presented, arguments are made and the style of language used. As a general rule articles should be no more than four pages when printed; this limits total word count to about 4,000 words - less if tables or illustrations are included.
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 may be returned. If you would like to discuss your paper prior to submission, please contact the Editor at: jipeditors@sagepub.com.
Journal of Infection Prevention has a fully web-based system for the submission and review of manuscripts. All submissions should be made online at the Journal of Infection Prevention SAGETRACK website:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jips
Note: Online submission and review of manuscripts is now mandatory for all types of papers.
New User Account
Please log onto the website. If you are a new user, you will first need to create an account. Follow the instructions and please ensure to enter a current and correct email address. Creating your account is a three-step process that takes a matter of minutes. When you have finished, your User ID and password is sent immediately via email. Please edit your user ID and password to something more memorable by selecting 'edit account' at the top of the screen. If you have already created an account but have forgotten your details type your email address in the 'Password Help' to receive an emailed reminder. Full instructions for uploading the manuscript are provided on the website.
New Submission
Submissions should be made by logging in and selecting the Author Centre and the 'Click here to Submit a New Manuscript' option. Follow the instructions on each page, clicking the 'Next' button on each screen to save your work and advance to the next screen. If at any stage you have any questions or require the user guide, please use the 'Get Help Now' button at the top right of every screen. Further help is available through ScholarOne's® Manuscript CentralTM customer support at +1 434 817 2040 x 167 or email the editor with your manuscript as an attachment(s) and write a note to explain why you need to submit via this route.
To upload your files, click on the 'Browse' button and locate the file on your computer. Select the designation of each file (i.e. main document, submission form, figure) in the drop down menu next to the browse button. When you have selected all the files you wish to upload, click the 'Upload Files' button.
Review your submission (in both PDF and HTML formats) and then click the Submit button
You may suspend a submission at any point before clicking the Submit button and save it to submit later. After submission, you will receive a confirmation e-mail. You can also log back into your author centre at any time to check the status of your manuscript.
Please ensure that you submit editable/source files only (Microsoft Word or RTF) and that your document does not include page numbers; the SAGETRACK system will generate them for you, and then automatically convert your manuscript to PDF for peer review. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revisions, will be by email.
If you would like to discuss your paper prior to submission please contact jipeditors@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. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is a exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than SAGE. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
4.1 SAGE Choice
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 Journal of Infection Prevention 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 ‘Conflict of Interest Statement’. 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 have with any sponsoring organization and the for-profit interests that the organisation 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 Conflict of Interest statement provided in the article.
For more information please visit the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
6.1 Informed consent
Authors are required to ensure that the following guidelines are followed, as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ("Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals": http://www.icmje.org/urm_full.pdf).
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published.
Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the submitted article.
Authors should identify individuals who provide writing/administrative assistance, indicate the extent of assistanceand disclose the funding source for this assistance.
Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential.6.2 Ethics
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.
7. Acknowledgements
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), Journal of Infection Prevention additionally requires all Authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. All research articles should have a funding acknowledgement in the form of a sentence as follows, with the funding agency written out in full, followed by the grant number in square brackets: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-colons, with “and” before the final funder. Thus:
This work was supported by the Wellcome 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 corresponding authors use the following sentence:
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Please include this information under a separate heading entitled “Funding” directly after any other Acknowledgements prior to your “Declaration of Conflicting Interests” (if applicable), any Notes and your References.
For more information on the guidance for Research Funders, Authors and Publishers, please visit: http://www.rin.ac.uk/funders-acknowledgement.
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.
9.1 File types
Only electronic files conforming to the journal's guidelines will be accepted. Preferred formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are Word doc, and tiff or jpeg for figures (ideally figures will use journal colours). Please also refer to additional guideline on submitting artwork [and supplemental files] below.9.2 Journal Style
Journal of Infection Prevention conforms to the SAGE house style. Click here to review guidelines on SAGE UK House Style, which is summarised in 2.1.9.3 Reference Style
Journal of Infection Prevention operates a SAGE Harvard reference style. Click here to review the guidelines on SAGE Harvard to ensure that your manuscript conforms to this reference style, which is summarised in 2.1.All references in the text must be cited from primary sources and should include the authors' names and date of publication in date order, e.g. (Skelton, 1997; Edwards, 1998; Whitehead, 2000). Where there are three or more authors, the first author's name followed by 'et al' is acceptable in text, e.g. (Troillet et al, 1999), but all authors must be cited in the reference list. Page numbers should be included in the text for all quotations, e.g. (Harthog, 2000: 136).
Reference to a journal article should include the author's surname and initials, date of publication, title of the paper, name of the journal, volume and issue number and its first and last page numbers, e.g. Ayliffe G. (2000) Evidence Based Practices in Infection Control. Journal of Infection Control 1(4): 5-9.
Reference to a book should include the author, date of publication, title, publisher and town of publication, e.g. Kirkwood E and Lewis C. (1989) Understanding Medical Immunology Second Edition: John Wiley and Sons: Chichester.
Chapters in edited books should include the additional detail of chapter title and page numbers e.g. Stevens R and Jones R. (1993) Functional Bowel Disorders. In: Gastrointestinal Problems in General Practice (Jones R. ed). Oxford University Press: Oxford: 126-35.
9.4. Manuscript Preparation
The text should be double-spaced throughout and with a minimum of 3cm for left and right hand margins and 5cm at head and foot. Text should be standard 10 or 12 point.9.4.1 Keywords and Abstracts
The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring that readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. 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.9.4.2 Corresponding Author Contact details
Provide 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
The editors encourage the inclusion of figures where appropriate. Please ensure that electronic copies of all figures are available for review. Authors should submit figure files as high resolution EPS or JPEG files, and send those files along with the main manuscript files.All figures (line drawings, graphs and photographs) should be referred to in the text. Figures are often reduced in size when appearing on the printed page - allowance for this should be made when selecting text and symbol size. Symbols and keys should be given as a key on the artwork, not in the legend. The magnifications should be indicated by a scale bar on the photograph, not as a magnification factor in the legend
Once the publisher receives an accepted paper they will request hard copies of photographs and other figures if necessary.
Figure Legends
Figure legends should be supplied for all figures. Please ensure that your figure legends are saved separately to the figures. Do not embed illustrations in Word files - supply them as individual files.Tables
If tables, charts or graphs are to be included, original or coordinate values should also be sent. Charts and graphs must be clearly labelled, and the axes on graphs made clear. Tables should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title.9.4.4 Guidelines for submitting supplemental files
The journal 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. Please contact the Editor (jipeditors@sagepub.com) in the first instance. For more information please refer to SAGE’s Guidelines for Authors on Supplemental Files.9.4.5 English Language Editing
Non-English speaking authors who would like to refine their use of language in their manuscripts might consider using a professional editing service. Visit http://www.sagepub.co.uk/authors/journal/submission.sp for further information.
10.1 Proofs
We will email a PDF of the proofs to the corresponding author. Corrections should be limited to typographical amendments. Authors' approval will be assumed if corrections are not returned by the date indicated.10.2 E-Prints and Complimentary Copies
SAGE provides authors with access to a PDF of their final article. For further information please visit http://www.sagepub.co.uk/authors/journal/reprint.sp. We additionally provide the corresponding author with complimentary copies 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.10.3 SAGE Production
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.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 Journal of Infection Prevention with SAGE.
10.4 OnlineFirst Publication
Journal of Infection Prevention provides the opportunity for your article to be included in 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. This significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. For more information please visit our OnlineFirst Fact Sheet.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the following address:
jipeditors@sagepub.com
Any queries regarding publication should be directed to:
Susan Lord
Senior Commissioning Editor
SAGE Publications
1 Oliver's Yard
55 City Road
London
EC1Y 1SP
+44 (0) 207 324 8610
susan.lord@sagepub.co.uk