Submit

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PAPER

It is easy to Submit the Manuscript at Edizioni FS publishers. Visit the journal’s submission web page to send us your Manuscript: www.journalhss.com/submission

Log-in or Sign-in to submit your paper. Click on the “Send manuscript”  button and follow the upload procedure. 

The submission should include:

• cover-letter-for-authors (Click Here).
• Title page file including:
  • Full Title of the manuscript;
  • Full names (capitalize only surname), Preferred title, affiliations (institution name, city, country / department’s name), e-mail address and ORCID of ALL authors;
  • Full name and details of the corresponding author;
  • Source of financial support (number and title of program/research/grant, title, name and surname of manager);
  • Conflict of interest;
  • Acknowledgments;
  • Authorship statement.
• Main manuscript including: 1) Abstract containing a maximum of 250-300 words, followed, below it, by up to five keywords or brief phrases to assist in indexing. (MeSH headings, whenever possible. Refer to: www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html); 2) Take-home message: one or two short sentences (no more than 40-50 words) summarizing the main message expressed in the article; 3) Tables (in word). Please, check the references according to our house style before publication (we use the Vancouver style with the first six authors followed by “et al”; the titles of journals should be abbreviated as they appear in the NLM catalogue).
• A word file including both the title page and the main manuscript with embedded tables and figures must be submitted by using the below JHSS template. This is needed to accelerate the Advance Online Publication.
• Figures (a minimum resolution of 300 DPI is required).

Please, use this template for your Manuscript.

Please note we do not accept presubmission inquiry, we only evaluate complete papers.

Regular Issue submission

The steps need to be followed to submit your manuscript in the Regular Issue are as follows:

1. Prepare your manuscript, abstract and tables/figures by following the Author Guidelines.
2. Prepare your cover letter and title page.
3. Log-in or Sign-in to www.sitosubmission.com, then select “Submit Paper”.
4. Enter a title. Upload  the cover letter for authors, the title page file, the manuscript and the figures.

You will receive an e-mail notification of the successful upload.

Submit your cover letter to the attention of Prof Francesco Chirico, Editor in Chief and Scientific Director of the JHSS. For comments, suggestions, proposal of collaboration or queries e-mail Francesco Chirico at the Editor in Chief’s Office  (chirico@journalhss.com).

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT 

If your paper makes it through our first round of reviews, it enters the pool of articles that will be published on our Journal. We consider many factors, such as the balance of perspectives, locations, grade levels, and topics. We will notify you regarding whether your article is selected for the issue. All article selections are tentative until we go to press.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES 

If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time APC is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons license. The Corresponding author, if the manuscript is accepted for publication, is obliged to pay the Article Processing Charge of 249,00 EUR € (Incl. VAT) to Edizioni FS Publisher. The APC covers the cost of publication (DOI assignment, copyediting and production costs). In the event that authors do not pay the APC, the paper will not be published in the Journal of Health and Social Sciences.

ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION

The article, if accepted for publication, could be firstly published as Advance Online Publication. The Advance Online Publication provides a final online versions of articles before they are compiled and published in an issue. PDF versions of manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, but not yet copy-edited or typeset, allowing the most rapid access to accepted papers. The final version of the manuscript will be afterly published in a regular issue of the journal, as soon as possible and according to the choices of the Publisher.

PEER REVIEW POLICY 

Editorial peer review

Immediately after submission, the first editorial peer review is carried out by Editor in Chief, or by Deputy/Associate Editors or one of the Editorial Board Member.

This check is aimed to assess:

• Suitability of the manuscript to the journal’s objectives and scope
• Qualification and background of authors;
• Reject obviously poor manuscript

Masked Review Policy 

After the first step, papers will be subject to masked review. Authors’ names and affiliations should appear only on the cover letter; authors should not be identified anywhere else in the manuscript and in the abstract. Authors should make every effort to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to their identities.
Please ensure that anything you submit to J Health Soc Sci conforms to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations 2021).

REVIEW/DECISIONS

Journal of Health and Social Sciences operates a double-blind peer review system, in which the identities of both reviewers and authors remain anonymous to each other.
Manuscripts that are judged to be of insufficient quality or unlikely to be competitive enough for publication will be rejected during initial screening. For papers that are not selected for peer review, the journal notifies authors within two or three weeks of submission.
Otherwise, the Scientific Director of the Journal of Health and Social Sciences, selects one or two editorial board members, experts on the topic. Each paper is reviewed by the board members for timeliness and relevance to the journal’s objectives. After this step, some of these submissions are selected for external review. Original Articles, Reviews/Meta-Analyses, will then typically be sent to at least 2 peer reviewers; Commentaries, Viewpoints, Case Reports and Technical Reports to at least 1 peer reviewer. Letters to the Editor will be reviewed by Scientific Director. For papers selected for revision, the time between revision request and publication varies (weeks to months) depending on factors such as the extent of revision required, the need for additional review and revision, issue production, etc.. The peer reviewers are not known to the author and are obliged to inform the Scientific Director of any possible conflict of interest which may arise. The editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide Scientific Director with a current description of their financial interests or other conflicts (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff members must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain.
Both peer reviewers and editorial board members work free of charge for Journal of Health and Social Sciences.
The editorial members board and peer reviewers send their evaluation of the article to the Scientific Director, together with suggestions as to how to improve it. The Scientific Director refers these comments to the author and based on these, decides whether or not to publish the manuscript. At the end of the revision process, the remaining manuscripts go through a review process, and possible decisions are: accept as is, minor revision, major revision, or reject. In the case of discordant reviews, the Scientific Director may seek review by an additional expert. The Scientific Director makes the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection taking into account reviewers’ recommendations. We aim to issue a final decision on all articles within 45 days of submission. Authors should submit back their revisions within 10 days in the case of minor revision, or 30 days in the case of major revision. Manuscripts with significant results are typically reviewed and published at the highest priority. A note on plagiarism: There is a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) in our journals. Manuscripts are screened for plagiarism before or during publication, and if found they will be rejected at any stage of processing.

Authors can formally appeal an editorial decision, in which case the Journal Editors will review the decision in accordance with the procedures outlined in the COPE Code of Conduct for Editors.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

“Public trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how transparently an author’s relationships and activities, directly or topically related to a work, are handled during the planning, implementation, writing, peer review, editing, and publication of scientific work.

The potential for conflict of interest and bias exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.

Individuals may disagree on whether an author’s relationships or activities represent conflicts. Although the presence of a relationship or activity does not always indicate a problematic influence on a paper’s content, perceptions of conflict may erode trust in science as much as actual conflicts of interest. Ultimately, readers must be able to make their own judgments regarding whether an author’s relationships and activities are pertinent to a paper’s content. These judgments require transparent disclosures. An author’s complete disclosure demonstrates a commitment to transparency and helps to maintain trust in the scientific process.

Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership or options, honoraria, patents, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable, the ones most often judged to represent potential conflicts of interest and thus the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. Other interests may also represent or be perceived as conflicts, such as personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and intellectual beliefs.

Authors should avoid entering in to agreements with study sponsors, both for-profit and non-profit, that interfere with authors’ access to all of the study’s data or that interfere with their ability to analyze and interpret the data and to prepare and publish manuscripts independently when and where they choose. Policies that dictate where authors may publish their work violate this principle of academic freedom. Authors may be required to provide the journal with the agreements in confidence.

All participants in the peer-review and publication process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals—must consider and disclose their relationships and activities when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication.

When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all relationships and activities that might bias or be seen to bias their work. The ICMJE has developed a Disclosure Form to facilitate and standardize authors’ disclosures. ICMJE member journals require that authors use this form, and ICMJE encourages other journals to adopt it.

Reviewers should be asked at the time they are asked to critique a manuscript if they have relationships or activities that could complicate their review. Reviewers must disclose to editors any relationships or activities that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they’re reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.

Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have relationships or activities that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their relationships or activities (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which an interest that poses a potential conflict exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should regularly publish their own disclosure statements and those of their journal staff. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.

Articles should be published with statements or supporting documents, such as the ICMJE Disclosure Form, declaring:

• Authors’ relationships and activities; and
• Sources of support for the work, including sponsor names along with explanations of the role of those sources if any in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; any restrictions regarding the submission of the report for publication; or a statement declaring that the supporting source had no such involvement or restrictions regarding publication; and
• Whether the authors had access to the study data, with an explanation of the nature and extent of access, including whether access is on-going.

To support the above statements, editors may request that authors of a study sponsored by a funder with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome sign a statement, such as “I had full access to all of the data in this study and I take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis”.

by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (“Disclosure of Financial and Non-Financial Relationships and Activities, and Conflicts of Interest”), 2019

PEER REVIEWERS

Manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Health and Social Sciences are privileged communications that are authors’ private, confidential property, and authors may be harmed by premature disclosure of any or all of a manuscript’s details.

Reviewers therefore should keep manuscripts and the information they contain strictly confidential. Reviewers must not publicly discuss authors’ work and must not appropriate authors’ ideas before the manuscript is published. Reviewers must not retain the manuscript for their personal use and should destroy copies of manuscripts after submitting their reviews.

Reviewers are expected to respond promptly to requests to review and to submit reviews within the time agreed. Reviewers’ comments should be constructive, honest, and polite.

Reviewers should declare their conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from the peer-review process if a conflict exists.

PROOFS

The corresponding author of an accepted manuscript will receive one set of proofs for correction of printing errors. No substantial alterations may be made to the proof. Correction of proofs by authors relieves the editorial board of all responsibility for any errors in the printed text. The authors are requested to return the corrected proofs within 2 days after their delivery. Corrections of proofs will not be taken into consideration if they are not received on time. By confirmation of proofs the author agrees that the submitted work will be published and made accessible on the Journal website.

REVIEWS

Books and other publications which authors or publishers wish to be reviewed in the Journal should be sent to the Scientific Editor.

COVER LETTER

Cover letter where the authors declare that the manuscript has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. The author responsible for correspondence should declare that all the authors have read and agreed with the content and interpretation of the submitted article. Cover letter include the author’s contribution statement (individual contribution to the manuscript), the conflict of interest statement (a conflict of interest exists when authors or their institutions have financial or personal relationship with other people or organizations that could inappropriately bias conduct and findings of the study) and a permission to reproduce figures, if appropriate. Authors should deal responsibly and effectively with security issues that might be raised by their papers (see: Statement on Scientific Publication and Security Science 2003;299:1149). Cover letter also include the License to publish in Journal of Health and Social Sciences. Cover letter include the title of the article, the initial and surname of the author or authors, the name in full and surname for female authors, affiliation of each author with town and country, indication of any financial support for the research, and complete address of the author responsible for correspondence. The name and address, and e-mail of the corresponding author should also be indicated.

SUBMISSION CHECKLIST

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1) The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Cover Letter to the Editor).
2) The submission file is in “Microsoft Word” document file format (the JHSS template).
3) Where available, both URLs (“Available from”) and “cited” (provided with date) for the references have been provided.
4) The text is double-spaced, uses a 12-point Times New Roman character, and include tables. Figures and illustrations should be loaded as separate files, but their titles are placed within the text at the appropriate points.
5) The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
6) There are both the abstract and take-home message if they are required (they should be placed in the main manuscript before the list of references).

ADVERTISEMENTS, BACK ISSUES AND REPRINTS

Because Journal of Health and Social Sciences will be published freely online, authors will have free electronic access to the full text (in PDF) of the article. Authors can freely download the PDF file from which they can print unlimited copies of their articles. Advertisers and persons interested in printed version should contact: FS Edizioni, Via Antonio Kramer, 21, 20129 Milano, Italy. Phone: +39 02 83 42 18 79. Fax: 02 83 42 21 12 e-mail: editor@journalhss.com

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