General
The Editor-in-Chief and team welcomes papers which are scholarly in style and thought, including original research papers and literature reviews, on all aspects of the health care of children, infants and neonates, and young people (for our purposes, the word “child/ren” will be used to define all those within these groups).
These instructions will provide you with all the information you need to prepare a manuscript for submission, including the journal's requirements and standards, and links to other parts of the journal’s website which describe the processes of the journal, its editorial team, and the associations to which the journal belongs. The editorial team are happy to answer questions, through the journal email system: editor@npchn.com
Ethical Guidelines
NPCHN adheres to the following ethical guidelines for both publication, and research.
Authorship
Those submitting a paper take responsibility for assuring that the manuscript has been read and approved by all authors and that all authors agree to the submission of the manuscript to NPCHN. All those named as authors must have made an active contribution to the conception and design, and/or analysis and interpretation of the data, and/or the drafting of the paper, and all must have critically reviewed its content and have approved the final version submitted for publication. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) defines authorship quite specifically, and all authors submitting to NPCHN must adhere to those definitions:
1) author/s must have made substantial contributions to conception and design of, or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data,
2) authors must have been involved in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content and
3) authors must have given final approval of the version to be published.
ALL authors should meet conditions 1, 2 and 3.
Contributors who do not qualify as authors should be mentioned under “Acknowledgements”
The corresponding author (guarantor) is responsible for ensuring that the above criteria are met.
Acknowledgements
Here you must specify contributors to the article other than the authors accredited as well as specifications of the source of funding for the study and any potential conflict of interests if appropriate. Suppliers of materials should be named and their location (town, state/county, country) included.
Declarations
Each manuscript must contain, after its title page and before the body of writing begins, the following list of declarations:
• Competing interests (have the authors any interest that would bias the publishing of this paper?)
• Funding (list any funding from which this paper is an outcome)
• Ethical approval (for research, has this been given, and supply reference number of the approval)
• Guarantor (the main author who will retain responsibility for the content and publication of the paper, and will be the point of contact for the editorial team)
• Contributorship (list the contributions of all the authors, eg, conceptualization of the study, finding funding, main composition of the manuscript, etc).
• Acknowledgements (any other contribution towards the development of the work, and dedication to those whom the authors wish to recognise in a particular way)
Papers will not be sent for review unless this section is completed by the authors.
Ethical Approvals
Inclusion of details of ethical approval for all studies using human or animal subjects in the Methods section of any research paper is required, identifying the review and ethics committee approval for each study, if applicable. Editors reserve the right to reject papers if there is doubt as to whether appropriate procedures have been used.
Clinical Trials should be reported using the CONSORT guidelines available at www.consort-statement.org.
A CONSORT checklist should also be included in the submission material. http://www.consort-statement.org/mod_product/uploads/CONSORT%202001%20checklist.doc
Conflict of Interest
The authors are obliged to disclose to the Editor-in-Chief any significant financial or personal interests they may have in products, technology or methodology mentioned in their manuscript. All such information will remain confidential and will only be disclosed to manuscript reviewers if, in the opinion of the Editor-in-Chief, the information is directly pertinent for an informed review.
Funding
Any sources of funding, such as research grants or industry sponsorship for the project about which the manuscript has bee written must be stated.
Permissions
The authors hold responsibility for obtaining permission from the copyright holder if all or parts of previously published illustrations and other work are used. This must be in writing and sent to the Editor-in-Chief
Copyright Assignment
Authors submitting a paper do so on the understanding that the work and its essential substance have not been published before and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Once you submit a manuscript and it has been accepted by NPCHN, automatically agree to assign copyright to the journal. Once the work has been published, NPCHN will not publish it elsewhere, in any language, without notifying the author. The articles published in this journal are protected by copyright, which covers translation rights and the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute all of the articles printed in the journal. No material published in the journal may be stored on microfilm or videocassettes, in electronic databases and the like, or reproduced photographically without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Once you submit the paper to NPCHN, we will not send it out for review unless you have sent the EIC a copy of the transfer of copyright/order of authors/authenticity of work form, signed by all the authors. Authorship Copyright Form
Assignment of the copyright is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless copyright has been assigned. (Papers subject to government copyright are exempt from this requirement; however, the form still has to be signed).