Guide for Authors

 

 

Aims and Scope

The International Journal of Community-Based Nursing and Midwifery (IJCBNM) is an international, open access, peer-reviewed, and quarterly publication for nurses, midwives, educators, and researchers in the related fields. The journal focuses on health care issues relevant to all aspects of community practice research (both quantitative and qualitative). Manuscripts are published in the form of original article, review article, brief report, case report, and letter to the editor. 
The Journal invites health care specialist concerned with any of these areas to submit research on topics including, but not limited to:

 

Health promotion & disease prevention in all stages of human life

Home-health care

Family-centered care

Patient & client education

Individual care in the context of family and community

Health care delivery and health outcome

Continuity of care

 

 

Assignment of Copyright and Authorship Responsibilities

Your article will not be published unless a Copyright Assignment Form has been signed and received by IJCBNM. You hereby warrant that “This article is an original work, has not been published before in any form and is not being submitted for consideration or publication elsewhere, in its final form either in printed or electronic form”.

 

 

Ethical Considerations 

The Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in confronting any ethical misbehavior. All manuscripts should be prepared in strict observation of the research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/).

 

 

1)    Statement of human and animal rights

  • Statement of human rights

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board), and be prepared to provide documentation when requested by editors.

 

  • Statement of animals rights

In the studies using animal experimentation, assurance must be provided that all animals received humane care according to the criteria outlined in the "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" prepared by the National Academy of Sciences and published by the National Institutes of Health. When conducting research on animals we commit to the Basel Declaration which shows outlines fundamental as well as ethical guidelines at the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS).

 

2) Conflict-of-Interest statement

Conflict of interest exists when an author or the author’s institution, reviewer, or editor has financial, personal, political, or academic relationships that inappropriately influence or bias his or her actions. They must declare all relevant interests that could be perceived as conflicting. Each author must fill the uniform disclosure form available through the below link and upload it at the time of submission: (http://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/). General institutional support for an author’s time on the work should be distinguished from direct overall funding of the work. An appropriate funding statement might be: “This study was funded by A; Dr. F’s time on the work was supported by B.”

 

3) Statement of informed consent

All patients and participants in a study should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the research and any possible side effects of the drugs and intervention. Written informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians is necessary for any such studies. The Journal reserves the right to request the related documents.

 

4) Statement of institutional review board approval

Any study that includes human subjects or human data must be reviewed and approved by a responsible institutional review board (IRB). IRB approval code must be mentioned in the “Materials and Methods” section. 

 

5) Registry of Clinical Trials

A clinical trial is defined as “any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome”. Each clinical trial must be registered with the primary registry prior to publication. Trial Registration Number should be stated in the in the title page.

 

6) Authorship:

IJCBNM follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines for authorship.  All individuals who meet these criteria must be listed as authors on manuscript title pages and in the IJCBNM online submission system. Contributors who meet fewer than all criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged.

 

7) Copyright: 

If a manuscript contains any previous published image or text, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders. The author is required to obtain and submit the written original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscripts

 

8) Open Access Policy:

Every paper published in IJCBNM is freely available via our website (https://ijcbnm.sums.ac.ir). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).

 

9) Research and Publication Misconduct:

Publication ethics for all papers submitted to the IJCBNM is monitored. All manuscripts submitted to IJCBNM will be checked for textual similarity using iThenticate plagiarism checker. When any types of publication misconduct including plagiarism and copyright infringement, duplicate publication, data fabrication and falsification, and authorship disputes are found in a submitted manuscript or a published article in IJCBNM, the journal will follow the flowchart by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts)

 

10) Editorial Independency: 

The IJCBNM benefits from editorial freedom. Our editorial policy is consistent with the principles of editorial independence presented by the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).  

 

 

Submission Process

IJCBNM accept manuscripts only through the online submission system, which can be found at (https://ijcbnm.sums.ac.ir/contacts

 

 

Article categories

IJCBNM article types include original articles, review articles, brief reports, case reports, and letters to the editor. Article format descriptions is shown in the following table.

    * Words is exclusive of the abstract, references, figures and tables.

 

Original articles: Include quantitative, qualitative and mixed-method articles, They Should contain a structured abstract, 3-5 keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement (if applicable), conflict of interest and references sections, and maximum 4 tables and 4 figures. The words should not exceed 3000-3500 for quantitative, 4500 for mixed-method articles and 5000 for qualitative articles, excluding the references, abstract, figures and tables. 20-40 references should be stated for original articles.The format of clinical trials is similar to original articles. However, the CONSORT flow diagram should be added as a figure. Randomized controlled trials should be registered at any RCT Registry approved by the WHO and their registration number should be mentioned in the title page. RCTs done in Iran must be registered at https://www.irct.ir/ w.

 

 Type of articles

 Abstract (word)

 Main Text (word)*

 References

 

 Original articles

 

 Structured, (250)

 Quantitative (3500)

 Mixed-method (4500)

 Qualitative (5000)

 40

 Systematic reviews & Meta-analyses

 Structured, (300)

 (4500)

 50

 Narrative reviews

 Non-structured, (300)

 (4500)

 50

 Brief reports

 Non-structured, (250)

 (2000)

 15

 Case reports

 Non-structured, (150)

 (1500)

 10

 Letters to the editors

 Not required

 (800)

 6

Review articles:

Systematic reviews: Systematic reviews of RCTs or Observational Studies will be accepted by the Journal. The protocol of the study should adhere to PRISMA or MOOSE guidelines for systematic reviews of RCTs or Observational studies, respectively. Abstracts should be structured. The word count should not exceed 4500 words. Up to 50 references can be stated.

Narrative reviews: should critically assess the current knowledge of the field. Abstract should be non-structured. The word count should not exceed 4500 words. Should contain at least 50 references.

 

Brief reports: Contain a non-structured abstract, 3-5 keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement (if applicable), and references sections, and maximum 2 tables and figures. However, the word count should not exceed 2000 words. 10-15 references should be stated.

 

Case reports: should optimally be accompanied by relevant figures to document findings. Informed consents should be obtained from the patients to report their cases. The Journal keeps the right to ask for original signed informed consents. Case reports should contain a non-structured abstract, 3-5 keywords, introduction, case presentation, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement (if applicable), and references sections, and maximum 1 table and 3 figures, and 5-10 references.

 

Letters to the Editor: Letters discussing articles published in the IJCBNM should be submitted at most within 4 months after the publication of the main article or discuss matters of general scientific or medical interest to readers of IJCBNM. Letters will undergo peer review and will be edited for clarity. Letters should be less than 800 words. Up to 6 references should be stated.

 

 

Preparing your manuscript

 

1. Cover letter: Should contain a statement that you will not resubmit your article to another journal until the reviewing process will be completed. Also please indicate why the editorial board would want to publish your manuscript.

 

2. Title Page: should contain the following information: 1) the title of the article; 2) running title (short form of the main title presented on the top of pages); 3) all authors' names, ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID, https://orcid.org/), affiliation, city, country; and 4) complete mailing address, telephone number, and email address of the corresponding author, 5) Conflict of interests, and acknowledgments. This page is unnumbered. The title page form available through the link: https://ijcbnm.sums.ac.ir/page_3.html

 

3. Abstract: A structured abstract in original articles and systematic reviews should consist of background/objective for the study, methods, results, and conclusion. A non-structured abstract in narrative reviews, brief reports, and case reports should provide the essential information. An abstract should not exceed 300 words for original and review articles or 150 words for case reports.

 

4. Keywords: Each article should provide three to five keywords selected from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) below the abstract (in alphabetical order, separated by semicolons).

 

5. Background: Should provide a context or background and specifies the purpose of the study or observation.

 

6. Materials and Methods: Must indicate enough detail for others to able to replicate the study. All details of the plan of study including type of study, patients and participants characteristics, inclusion and exclusion criteria, sample size, sample recruitment, etc should be mentioned. All types of questionnaires including: standard questionnaires, researcher-made questionnaires, standard questionnaires which modified by researchers should have face, content and specially construct validity and reliability. Methods and software of statistical analyses used and the criteria for determining significance levels should be described.  Authors who used AI technology to conduct the study should describe its use in the methods section in sufficient detail to enable replication of the approach, including the tool used, version, and prompts where applicable. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) should be registered at any RCT Registry approved by the WHO and their registration number should be mentioned in the title page. RCTs done in Iran must be registered at https://www.irct.ir/ w. For reports of RCTs, authors should refer to the CONSORT statement. Authors are encouraged to refer to the SAGER guidelines for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analyses, results and interpretation of findings. Authors are strongly encouraged to use appropriate reporting guidelines when preparing and submitting manuscripts through EQUATOR Network website.  We particularly encourage the use of:

 

CONSORT for randomized controlled trials

TREND for non-randomized trials

PRISMA for systematic review and meta-analyses

CARE for case reports

STROBE for observational studies

SRQR for qualitative studies

 

7. Results: Should be presented in chronological sequence in the text, table, and illustration. Organize the results according to their importance. Repetition of data already given in tables and figures should be avoided.  

 

8. Tables: Every table must have a descriptive title. Each must be cited in order which appear in the text, and must be typed double-spaced and numbered with Arabic numerals. Tables should be standalone and should not duplicate information in the text of the paper. Explain in footnotes all nonstandard abbreviations that are used in each table. For footnotes, use the following symbols, in this sequence: a, b, c, etc.

 

9. Figures: Figures should be provided only if they improve the article. The preferred formats for illustrations are JPG (JPEG), GIF, and TIFF files (600 dpi or higher). Color photographs, if found to improve the article, would be published at no extra-charge at the print version of the journal. Legends must accompany each illustration and should be typed on a separate page. 

 

10. Discussion: Should emphasize the new and important aspects of the study without repeating issues already presented in the Results section. It should review the study findings in light of the published literature with the format of arguments and counterarguments. The limitations and strengths of the study and the implications of the findings for future research or clinical practice should be explored.

 

11. Conclusion: Should be described the final result that the author(s) has (have) reached. It should be avoided redundant information.

 

12. Supplementary Materials: Such as tools, questionnaires, etc may be published on the online version of the journal.

 

13. Acknowledgments: Contributors who meet fewer than all criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Any financial or technical support should also be stated. Use of AI for writing assistance should be reported in the acknowledgment section.

 

14. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology

At submission, the authors should disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology should describe, in both the cover letter and the submitted work in the appropriate section if applicable, how they used it. For example, if AI was used for writing assistance, describe this in the acknowledgment section. If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, authors should describe this use in the methods. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work. Authors should carefully review and edit the result because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors should not list AI and AI assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. Authors should be able to assert that there is no plagiarism in their paper, including in text and images produced by the AI. Humans must ensure there is appropriate attribution of all quoted material, including full citations.

 

15. References: Should be complied numerically according to the order of citation in the text in the Vancouver style. The numbers of references should not preferably exceed 40 for original articles, 15 for brief, 10 for case reports and 6 for letters to editors. Referencing AI-generated material as the primary source is not acceptable. References should be made to published articles rather than to abstracts whenever possible. For the references credited to more than 3 authors please provide the name of the first 3 authors and represent the rest authors by the phrase “et al.” For various references please refer to “the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pmcdoc/tagging-guidelines/citations/v2/citationtags.html”.

Listed below are sample references.

  • Journal Article:

Warnier MJ, Rutten FH, Kors JA, et al. Cardiac arrhythmias in adult patients with asthma. J Asthma. 2012;49:942-6. doi: 10.3109/02770903.2012.724132. PubMed PMID: 23013453.

Sohrabi MB, Zolfaghari P, Mahdizade F, et al. Evaluation and comparison of cognitive state and depression in elderly admitted in sanitarium with elderly sited in personal home. Knowledge & Health. 2008;3:27-31. [In Persian]

Javan S, Tabesh M. Action of carbon dioxide on pulmonary vasoconstriction. J Appl Physiol. In press 2005

  • Reference With URL:

World Health Organization. Mental health and older adults.Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017. [Cited 12 December 2017]. Available from: http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-of-older-adults

  • Complete Book:

Cunningham FG, Leveno KJ, Bloom SL, et al. Williams Obstetrics. 24th ed. New york: McGraw-Hill Education; 2014.

  • Chapter in Book:

Young VR. The role of skeletal muscle in the regulation of protein metabolism. In Munro HN, editor: Mammalian protein metabolism. Vol 4. San Diego; Academic; 1970. p. 585-674.

 

16. Language and Style: 

Contributions should be in either American or British English language. The text must be clear and concise, conforming to accepted standards of English style and usage. Non-native English speakers may be advised to seek professional help with the language. All materials should be typed in double line spacing numbered pages. Abbreviations should be standard and must be defined at first use. Units of measurement must conform to the International System (SI) of Units. The editorial office reserves the right to edit the submitted manuscripts in order to comply with the journal’s style. In any case, the authors are responsible for the published material.

 

17. Erratum:

If there is an error, a correction from the author(s) can be published.

 

 

Peer Review Process

After submission a manuscript, a submission code will be allocated and all the future contacts should be based on this code. First, an assessment will be made to ensure the manuscript meets the formal criteria specified in the Instructions for Authors and that it fits within the scope of the journal. After that, the articles are evaluated by our statisticians who check the articles for any methodological flaws. Then Through a Double anonymized review, the articles will be reviewed by at least two external (peer) reviewers. Their comments will be passed to the authors and their responses to the comments along with the reviewers’ comments will then be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief, and a final reviewer who can be a member of the Editorial Board. The final review process will be discussed in regular editorial board sessions and on the basis of the comments. The Editor-in-Chief will decide which articles should be published. Manuscripts submitted by the staff and editors of the IJCBNM will also be reviewed by peer reviewers and the editor plays no role in the review or decision.

 

Article Charges

Since August 1, 2022, the payment of fee is mandatory for all types of manuscripts sent to the International Journal of Community based Nursing and Midwifery (IJCBNM). Invited articles are exempt from the article charges.

Please note that manuscripts submitted to IJCBNM for review and possible publication, will be processed only when the following conditions are met:

 International Authors

 Submission Fee

 10    US Dollars

 Acceptance Fee based on Article Type

 Original Article/ Review Article

 100  US Dollars

 Brief Report

 80    US Dollars

 Case Report

 70    US Dollars

 Letter to the Editor

 50    US Dollars

 Iranian Authors

 Submission fee

 1,000,000    IRR

 Acceptance Fee based on Article Type

 Original Article/ Review Article

  25,000,000  IRR

 Brief Report

  20,000,000   IRR

 Case Report

  15,000,000   IRR

 Letter to the Editor

  8,000,000   IRR

The fee for Iranian Authors should be deposited in the account number 8847106400 with IBAN code IR890120000000008847106400 at Bank Mellat.

Authors will receive an email from our journal to proceed with their payment.

To follow the instructions for the above payments please click on this Link.

 

Please make sure that a copy of your payment receipt is attached to your submission as an image file (upload it on to the journal site or send it to ijcbnm1@sums.ac.ir).

 

It should be noted that all deposits are non-refundable and a paper may be rejected by the Editors without being sent for review. Furthermore, the article submission fee and acceptance fee are used to support journal related activities and cover editorial service and production of an article.

 

 

For further information please contact the Editorial Office

International Journal of Community Based Nursing & Midwifery Office, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Nemazee Square, Zand Blvd., Shiraz, Iran.

PO Box: 71345–1359 

Tel/Fax: +98 71 36474287

Email: ijcbnm1@sums.ac.ir