For Authors

Instructions for Authors

European Health Literacy Journal is published in accordance with the principles of independent, unbiased, and double-blinded peer review. It publishes original research related to health literacy.

The journal evaluates only the manuscripts submitted through its online submission system on the web site https://ehlj.org/. Manuscripts sent by other means will not be accepted.

The primary conditions for the acceptance of manuscripts for publication are originality, scientific value and citation potential.

PUBLISHING FEE
European Health Literacy Journal is an open access journal. Manuscripts are available on the journal web page at no cost. European Health Literacy Journal does not charge any article submission or processing fees.

STATEMENTS AND GUIDELINES
Statements

  • All statements and opinions expressed in the manuscripts published in European Health Literacy Journal reflect the views of the author(s). All liability for the advertisements rests with the appropriate organization(s). The Editor-in-Chief does not accept any responsibility for articles and advertisements.
  • The manuscripts submitted to the journal, except abstracts, presentations, reviews and parts of theses, should not have been accepted and published previously elsewhere in electronic or printed format. Manuscripts evaluated and rejected by other journals must mention any previous submissions and supply reviewer’s reports. This will help to accelerate the evaluation process. If the submitted manuscript has been previously presented at a meeting, the name, date, city and country must be specified.
  • The authors transfer all copyrights of the manuscript in the framework of national and international regulations to the European Health Literacy Journal as of evaluation process. A Copyright  Transfer Form signed by corresponding author in order must be submitted to the journal with manuscript. After acceptance of manuscript, all of authors must fill and sign Copyright Transfer form. A separate form for each manuscript should be submitted. Manuscripts submitted without a Copyright Transfer Form will not be accepted. In the case of rejection, all copyrights transfer to the authors again. Authors must confirm that they will not submit the work to another journal, publish it in the original or another language and or allow a third party to use the manuscript without the written permission of the European Health Literacy Journal.
  • All contents are the authors’ responsibility. All financial liability and legal responsibility associated with the copyright of submitted tables, figures and other visual materials protected by national and international laws rest with the authors. The authors take responsibility for any legal proceedings issued against the journal.
  • Rejected manuscripts will not be returned except for artwork.
  • To clarify scientific contributions and responsibilities and any conflict of interest issues relevant to the manuscript, all parts of the ‘Authors' Contribution’ form must be completed by the corresponding author and the‘ICMJE Uniform Disclosure Form for Potential Conflicts of Interest’must be completed online by all authors. Both forms should be included in the manuscript at the time of original submission.

Ethics

  • All manuscripts will be vetted by the Editor-in-Chief’s Office for possible plagiarism and duplication. Sanctions will be imposed in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) when non-ethical issues arise. The authors must obtain the permission of the copyright holder for non-original tables, figures, graphs, images and other visuals.
  • The authors should acknowledge and provide detailed information on any contributions in kind and financial support given by any foundations, institutions and firms before references section.
  • An ethics committee report prepared in conformity with the WMA Declaration of Helsinki - Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals is required to be submitted with experimental and clinical studies, drug trial studies and some case reports. Authors may be asked by the Editor-in-Chief’s Office for an ethics committee report or similar in other circumstances also. Manuscripts reporting the results of experimental studies must explain in detail all procedures which volunteer subjects and patients have undergone and a statement indicating that consent for the study has been obtained from all subjects should be included in the text. Animal studies should clearly specify how pain or discomfort has been relieved. We will be unable to accept research papers without this statement.

PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts should be concise and clear.
Manuscript files should be prepared with Microsoft Office Word.
Please format your manuscript as follows:

  • Use Times New Roman style, 12 punto, justified and double line spacing throughout (including reference list and figure legends).
  • Leave 2 cm space from each edge of pages.
  • Number all pages in the bottom-right hand corner, but do not use numbers for headings and /or subheadings.
  • Define all abbreviations when first mentioned.
  • Do not mention names and/or institutions of the authors within the main text except title page.


For further advice on manuscript preparation see the Guidelines published by the European Association of Science Editors.

The online submission system will direct authors during all stages of submission and provide necessary support for accelerating the submission process. A list of the files that should be supplied through the online submission system is provided below.

Title Page
Information about the authors and their institutions should not be included in the main text, tables, figures and video documents. Since submitted manuscripts are evaluated by the reviewers through the online system, personal identification is excluded in the interests of unbiased interpretation.
Thus, only information about the manuscript as specified below should be included on the title page. For each type of manuscript, it is mandatory to upload a title page as a separate Microsoft Word document through the online submission system. The title page should include the names of the authors with their latest academic degrees, and the name of the department and institution, city and country where the study was conducted. If the study was conducted in several institutions, the affiliation of each author must be specified with symbols. The correspondence address should contain the full name of the corresponding author, postal and e-mail addresses, phone and fax numbers. If the content of the manuscript has been presented before, the name, date and place of the meeting must be noted. Disclosure of conflict of interest, institutional and financial support, author contributions and acknowledgments should be included on the title page.

Main Text
The manuscripts submitted to our journal are classified and evaluated according to the manuscript types stated below. During preliminary evaluation, the editors assess whether a manuscript’s format and sub-headings are prepared in accordance with the journal’s guidelines. Therefore, it is important that authors check the accuracy of the main text in terms of the following. Manuscripts should also be prepared according to STROBE criteria for observational studies, STARD criteria for accuracy studies of diagnosis, CONSORT criteria for randomized controlled trials.


Manuscript Types

         From the Editor

  • Articles on topics of interest to readers within the scope of the journal, especially on educational issues, can be published in the format of a Editorial.
  • Title
  • Main Text: It should not include subheadings and it should be limited to 500 words.
  • References: The reference list should follow the main text and the number of references should be limited to five. The volume, year, issue, page numbers, authors’ names and title of the manuscript should be clearly stated, included in the list of references and cited within the text.
  • Abstract and keywords are not included.

         Original Research

  • Title
  • Structured Abstract: It should be structured with Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusion subheadings and should be limited to 250 words.
  • Keywords: This section should contain a minimum of three and a maximum of six items in accordance with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms prepared by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and should be placed just below the abstract.
  • Main Text: It should consist of Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Limitations of the Study and Conclusion sections and should not exceed 5000 words excluding the references.
  • References: The reference list should be provided following the Main Text. Limiting the number of references to 50 is usually sufficient.
  • Tables, Figures and Images: They should be placed below the reference list and numbered according to their consecutive order in the main text.
  • Statistical Analysis:
    Statistical analysis should be conducted in accordance with the guidelines on reporting statistical data in medical journals.
    The software used for statistical analysis must be described. Data must be expressed as mean ± standard deviation when parametric tests are used to compare continuous variables. For non-parametric tests, data must be expressed as median (minimum-maximum) or percentiles (25th and 75th percentiles). In advanced and complex statistical analyses, relative risk (RR), odds ratio (OR) and hazard ratio (HR) must be supported by confidence intervals and p values.
    The outcomes of statistical analyses and interpretation of the results must be in evidence-based scientific language.


    Letter to the Editor
  • Letters to the Editor aim to discuss the importance of a manuscript previously published in the journal. This type of manuscripts should also include a comment on the published manuscript. Moreover, articles on topics of interest to readers within the scope of the journal, especially on educational issues, can be published in the format of a Letter to the Editor.
  • Title
  • Main Text: It should not include subheadings and it should be limited to 500 words.
  • References: The reference list should follow the main text and the number of references should be limited to five. The volume, year, issue, page numbers, authors’ names and title of the manuscript should be clearly stated, included in the list of references and cited within the text.
  • Abstract, Keywords, Tables, Figures and Images, and other visuals are not included.

 

References

  • References should be numbered in the order in which they are cited within the main text.
  • Reference numbers should be written between square brackets in superscript at where they are cited in the main text.
  • Only manuscripts published or accepted for publication should be cited.
  • Recent publications related to the topic of the manuscript should be reviewed.
  • References that are inaccessible and not indexed in any database should not be cited.
  • The titles of journals should be abbreviated in accordance with (Patrias K. Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers [Internet]. 2nd ed. Wendling DL, technical editor. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007 - [updated 2011 Sep 15; cited Year Month Day].
  • For references with six and fewer authors, all authors should be listed. For references with more than six authors, the first six authors should be listed, followed by ‘et al’.

 

The style and punctuation of the references should be formatted as in the following examples.

Journal: Aydın, U., Engin, M., Kat, N. K., As, A. K., Demirel, A., Tatlı, A. B., ... & Türk, T. (2022). Investigation of the effects of diabetes mellitus on left internal thoracic artery flow patterns in patients scheduled to undergo coronary bypass graft surgery. Journal of Clinical Ultrasound, 50(6), 789-794.

Book Chapter:  Murphy, D.J., Jr. (2014). Coarctation of the aorta. In D.S. Moodie (Ed.).Clinical management of congenital heart disease: From infancy to adulthood (pp. 142-170). Minneapolis, Minnesota: Cardiotext Publishing.

Book with Single Author: Cottrell, S. (2013). The study skills handbook (5th ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Epub ahead of print articles: Veerman, H., & van der Poel, H. G. (2022). Reply to Liebert et al. diagnostic potential of radiological apical tumor involvement. J Robot Surg. 2022 Epub ahead of print. Journal of Robotic Surgery, 1-1.

Manuscript published in electronic format: Jenet, B. L. (2006) A meta-analysis on online social behavior. Journal of Internet Psychology, 4. Retrieved from http://www. journalofinternetpsychology.com/archives/volume4/ 3924.html.

Special Terms and Conditions

  • For double-blinded peer-review process, the names of the corresponding author and other authors, their affiliations and any information on the study centres should not be included in any part of the submitted manuscripts and images, except the Title Page. This information should be added to the relevant section of the online submission system and included in the Title Page.
  • Pharmaceutical products should be written with their generic names and brand and company names, city and country should be specified for medical equipment and devices.

Tables, Graphs and Figures

  • Tables, Graphs, Figures and other visuals should be numbered in the order of their citation within the text and names of patients, doctors and institutions should not be disclosed.
  • Tables should be prepared in a Microsoft Office Word document using the command ‘Insert Table’ and inserted at the end of the references in the main text.
  • Tables should not be submitted in JPEG, TIFF or other visual formats. For microscopic images, the magnification ratio and staining technique used should be specified in addition to figure legends.
  • All visuals should have a high resolution (minimum 300 dpi).
  • The thickness of the lines in graphs should be sufficient to minimize loss of quality if size reduction is needed during the printing process. The width of the graphs should be 9 cm or 18 cm. Drawings should be performed by professionals. No grey colours should be used.
  • Abbreviations should be explained in alphabetical order at the bottom of the tables, graphs and figures
  • Punctuation symbols should be used as *,†,‡,§,II,¶,**,††,‡‡ in an order.
  • Roman numbers should be avoided in tables and figures within the text and their titles.
  • Decimal numbers used in text, tables and figures should be separated by dots.
  • Tables should be easily understandable and should not repeat the data in the main text.
  • In addition to the pictures included in case reports and original images, video and movie images are published on the journal’s website. These images should be prepared in MPEG format with a maximum size of 2 MB. They should be submitted to the journal with the manuscript documents. The names of patients, doctors, institutions and places should be omitted from all documents.

Preparation of manuscripts

  • Use Times New Roman style, 12 punto, justified and double line spacing throughout (including reference list and figure legends).
  • Leave 2 cm space from each edge of pages.
  • Number all pages in the bottom-righthand corner, but do not use numbers for headings and /or subheadings.
  • Define all abbreviations when first mentioned.
  • Decimal numbers used in text, tables and figures should be separated by dots.
  • Do not mention names and/or institutions of the authors within the main text except title page.
  • Structured abstract should be structured with Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusion subheadings and should be limited to 250 words.
  • Each keyword accordance with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms prepared by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and should be placed just below the abstract.
  • Reference numbers should be written between curved brackets at where they are cited in the text.
  • For references with six and fewer authors, all authors should be listed. For references with more than six authors, the first six authors should be listed, followed by ‘et al’.
  • Tables should be prepared in a Microsoft Office Word document using the command ‘Insert Table’ and inserted at the end of the references in the main text.

Punctuation symbols should be used as *,†,‡,§,II,¶,**,††,‡‡ in an order.