Submissions

Author Guidelines

AIM

The Annals of Health Research is a peer-reviewed open-access journal of medical sciences meant to disseminate research works and ideas in the fields of clinical and laboratory medicine and public health with the ultimate goals of enhancing knowledge, improving practice and encouraging practice-centred research.

 OWNERSHIP

The journal is owned, sponsored and published by the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria, Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, Nigeria. The journal presently does not receive sponsorship from any external body nor adverts from agencies and companies.

INDEXING AND REGISTRATION

This journal is presently listed on the African Index medics, SCOPUS, Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Crossref and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The Editor-in-Chief of the journal is also a member of the Council of Science Editors (CSE) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

 SCOPE

The Annals of Health Research is a medical journal published quarterly in the months of March, June, September and December. The journal publishes original communications in the form of original research, high-quality case reports, short communications, letters to the editor and systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis on clinical medicine (surgery, surgical specialities, paediatrics, internal medicine, public health, obstetrics and gynaecology), laboratory medicine and public health. Articles in the form of Reviews, Personal Practice, Expert’s Opinions and Commentaries are only invited from renowned experts in the relevant fields by the Editorial Board.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

The journal operates an Open Access policy which guarantees free, unsubscribed access to every electronically published material. The materials are available in the form of downloadable PDF versions.

EDITORIALPOLICY & PEER-REVIEW SYSTEM

The operations of the editorial board of the journal are in conformity with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) [www.icmje.org].

Manuscripts are submitted to the journal on the understanding that the same manuscripts have not been simultaneously submitted to another journal, are not under processing by another journal, have not been accepted by another journal and no substantial part of the data contained in the manuscript have already been published elsewhere.

All manuscripts are subjected to an initial round of in-house editorial review and only manuscripts of satisfactory quality are processed further at the external peer review stage. The journal employs double-blinded external peer-review process usually conducted by at least two experts in the relevant specialties, sourced from cognate institutions.

Guided by the reports obtained from the editorial review and the external peer review processes, the editorial board determines the suitability of every manuscript. Editorial decisions are usually communicated to the authors within eight weeks of submission.

The revised manuscripts are expected to be submitted within four weeks of communicating the editorial decision. As a matter of editorial policy, revised manuscripts are not returned to external reviewers for re-assessment. In-house editors vet revised manuscripts to ensure compliance with the suggestions and queries raised by external reviewers except for technical issues which must necessarily be assessed by the external reviewers. The other situation in which revised manuscripts may be returned to external peer reviewers is when the manuscript, after the initial review is recommended for rejection and re-submission. When a manuscript is accepted, a formal letter of acceptance indicating the manuscript number, title of the manuscript and the list of authors, is issued to the authors.

Upon acceptance, the editorial board reserves the exclusive right to edit manuscripts (from the title to the references, including tables and figures) to meet the journal’s style prior to publishing. Accepted manuscripts are published online (at www.annalsofhealthresearch.com) and in print.

The journal abhors duplicate submission, data falsification, data fabrication and duplication of data already accepted by or published in other journals (even when certain cosmetic changes/additions are made). Plagiarism of any form is also considered a major publication misconduct hence every manuscript is subjected to electronic plagiarism check using the tools provided in Crossref and the Grammarly software. Where publication misconducts are detected, such acts shall be officially addressed according to the provisions of the ICMJE. Such cases of publication frauds shall be treated with outright rejection if detected prior to publishing or retraction if detected after publishing. The concerned authors shall be blacklisted and shall be officially reported to their home institutions.

Authors and peer-reviewers are encouraged to channel any complaints or protests concerning any aspect of the editorial process to the Editor-in-Chief (annalsofhealthresearch@gmail.com). Such complaints are investigated by the Editor-in-Chief and the findings are presented to the Editorial Board for deliberation and adjudication.  

COPYRIGHT

The articles and other materials published in the Annals of Health Research are protected by the Nigerian Copyright laws. The journal owns the copyright over every article, scientific and intellectual materials published in it. However, with the open access publishing policy and under the provisions of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 License, the journal grants all authors, users and researchers, free access to the materials published online in the journal with the permission to copy, use and distribute the materials contained therein for non-commercial but academic and scientific purposes, provided the source is adequately cited and credited.

The views, information and opinions expressed and presented in the articles and other materials published in the journal only reflect the submission of the respective authors. Neither the journal, the editorial team, the editorial board, other agents and representatives of the journal nor the publishers of the journal assumes liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness and validity of the contents of the materials so published in the journal. Therefore, only manuscripts accompanied by the signed Copyright Transfer/Undertaking Form will be processed.

The Copyright Transfer/Undertaking Form to be signed by the Corresponding Author is as follows:

 “I, the undersigned, give an undertaking to the following effects with regards to my/our article entitled:

_________________________________________________________________________________

Submitted for publication in the ANNALS OF HEALTH RESEARCH:

1. a) That I/We have read and understood the principles, policies and conditions stated in the Authors’ Guidelines;
2. b) That the article mentioned above has not been published or simultaneously submitted to or accepted for publication in any form, in any other journal;
3. c) That the authorship of this article will not be contested by anyone whose name(s) is/are not listed here;
4. d) That I/We contributed significantly towards the research study e., (i) conception and design (ii) analysis and interpretation of data (iii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content and (iv) final approval of the version to be published;
5. e) That I/We hereby affirm that I/We shall duly inform the Editors if I/We have conflicts of interest which must be declared in agreement with the editorial policies of the journal;
6. f) That I/We hereby assign, convey and otherwise transfer all rights, title, interest, and copyright ownership of the aforementioned manuscript to the ANNALS OF HEALTH RESEARCH;
7. g) That the assignment of rights to the ANNALS OF HEALTH RESEARCH includes but is not exclusively limited to rights to claim copyright, edit, publish, reproduce, distribute copies and include in indexes or search databases;
8. h) That I concur that the authors of this manuscript should be listed in the sequence shown here:

(1) ...............................................................,

(2) .................................................................,

(3)..................................................................,

(4) .................................................................,

(5)..................................................................,

(6) ..................................................................”

 HUMAN AND ANIMAL SUBJECTS RIGHTS

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in the year 2000. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

INFORMED CONSENT STATEMENT

A statement declaring that the authors obtained informed written consent must be provided; this entails that the human subjects in a research are duly informed about the principles of research ethics which specify the gains, risks and freedom to participate or decline participation without punitive measures. For children aged above six years, assent must be obtained from them in addition to consent from the parent or guardian. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in written descriptions and photographs, unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and in which case, the patient (or parent, guardian or relation) gives written informed consent for the use in publication.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

It is the policy of the journal that every manuscript should be accompanied with a statement declaring any conflict of interest. Reviewers and editors are also required to declare any potential conflict of interests with respect to a manuscript. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence actions as a result of involvement in terms of employment, sponsorship, grants, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria and paid expert testimony by a body, agency, company or institution which has an interest or disinterest in the research theme of a manuscript. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment and therefore, must be declared. The extent to which the declared conflict may influence the research presented in the manuscript will be evaluated by the Editorial Board. The source of funding for the research and preparation of the manuscript should also be declared.

PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT

Please visit the journal management website (www.annalsofhealthresearch.com) for the details of registration for online manuscript submission and processing. Allmanuscripts must be written in British English. Manuscripts must be submitted through the journal management website at www.annalsofhealthresearch.com. Manuscript submitters are advised to start by registering as users of the website and select roles as authors. Thereafter, the author should follow the online instructions on how to complete the process of submission. The manuscript submitter will, by default, serve as the corresponding author for the manuscript.

Due to the blinded peer review policy of the journal, the title page (which must contain all the names, affiliations and email addresses of the authors including acknowledgement) should be submitted as a supplementary file. The blinded full text of the manuscript should also be separately submitted as the main document of the manuscript.  

Manuscripts must be prepared in the Microsoft Word® (2010 and above edition) format. The pages should be consecutively numbered, starting with the abstract page, on the right side of the lower page margin. The manuscript should be presented in as concise form as possible, with neat double-space typewriting using the Times New Roman Font 12 without justification. The word count (excluding abstract, list of references, acknowledgement, tables and figures) for original research, case report, short communications and letters to the editor should not exceed 3000, 2000, 1000 and 750 words respectively. Paragraphs should be inserted using the tab function rather than with manual spacing.

The manuscript should be arranged as follows:

 Title Page

The title of the article should be short (not more than 12 words). The title page should include full names (NOT initials) of the author(s) with the surname capitalized, institutional affiliations and highest degree of each author, email address of each author and the institution to which the work should be credited. The journal normally does not allow more than six authors listed on a manuscript for a single-centre study except where the listed authors belong to a registered research group. Up to ten authors may be listed on a manuscript which derives from a multi-centre, collaborative study or if the authors belong to a registered research group. Where it is expedient to list more than six or ten authors, as the case may be, particularly in cases of large multi-centre studies, this should be specifically justified in a correspondence to the journal editor at annalsofhealthresearch@gmail.com. The name, complete postal address, telephone number, e-mail address and the ORCID number (obtainable from http://orcid.org) of the corresponding author should be clearly indicated. A short running title not exceeding seven words must be provided. At the bottom of the title page, it is compulsory to indicate the: (1) contributions of individual authors to the research and the manuscript [Please check the details on www.icmje.org], (2) conflicts of interest and (3) sources of funding for the research and manuscript preparation.

Abstract & Keywords

The title of the manuscript should be written on top of the text containing the abstract. The abstract of all manuscripts (excluding Case Reports) must be structured (not more than 250 words) with the following sub-headings: Background, Objectives, Methods, Results and Conclusions. The summary of Case Reports should not be more than 150 words and may not be structured. Conclusions and recommendations not related to the findings in the study and not found in the text of the articles should be avoided in the abstract. References are usually not required within the Abstract. A set of searchable keywords or specific phrases available on Index Medicus (4-7 in number) should be arranged alphabetically below the abstract.

Text

This should be prepared in the IMRAD format: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion with the addition of a separate section on Conclusion.

Ethical considerations: For studies involving human subjects, the authors must indicate adherence to the relevant aspects of the Helsinki Declaration on human subject research in terms of: (i) institutional ethical clearance to use human subjects or the permission to use institutional data (ii) informed written consents/ assent obtained from the human subjects for cross-sectional, case-control and prospective studies. Where Case Reports will include images bearing the face or other unconcealed identities of the subjects, a written permission must be obtained from the subject or the parent, guardian or close relations.

Acknowledgement

Acknowledgement is reserved for individuals who assisted in the research or manuscript writing but do not qualify to be listed as authors (www.icmje.org). This section should be brief and formal.

References

The total number of references should not exceed 10 for letters to the editors and short communications, 20 for case reports (and 30 where review of the literature is included) and 35 for original research. The Vancouver style of referencing is adopted by the journal. Within the text, references should be kept within square brackets, superscripted and must be inserted after punctuations. The cited literature must be numbered consecutively in the order of appearance. A list of references numbered consecutively according to the order of listing within the text should be placed at the end of the manuscript (after acknowledgement). Personal communication and non-scientific materials should be avoided on the list of references but may be so indicated in the appropriate part of the text. Articles that have been accepted for publication in another journal but yet to be published can be listed along with the references but with the name of the journal clearly stated with “In press” as an indicator.

The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style recommended by the Index Medicus. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to use the correct abbreviations of journal names. All the authors must be listed except where there are more than six (6) authors. In such cases as the latter, the first six authors should be listed followed by “et al” in italics.

The styles of writing references are as follows:

For journals:

Somorin AO, Al-Harbi A, Subaity Y, Zaman AU. Calciphylaxis: case report and literature review. Afr J Med Med Sci 2002; 31(2): 175-178.

For books:

1. a. Editor(s) as author(s)

Falase AO, Akinkugbe OO. Introduction to molecular biology: Technical development in molecular analysis and Gene therapy. In: Falase AO, Akinkugbe OO (Editors). A compendium of Clinical Medicine. 1^st Edition. Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books Limited; 2000: 944-955.

1. b. Chapter in a book

Burgess A. Nutritional disorders. In: Lucas AO, Gilles HM (Editors). Short Textbook of Public Health Medicine for the Tropics. 4^thEdition. London: Book Power with Hodder Arnold; 2003: 261-282.

For journal articles on the Internet, the website, digital object identifier (doi) number and date of access must be indicated. An example is as follows:

Rajasingham R, Boulware DR. HIV care: ART adherence support and cryptococcal screening. Lancet 2015; 385(9983): 2128-2129. Available at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60455-X and accessed on April 12, 2015.

Tables

Tables should be typed separately and numbered consecutively using Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc) with the title of the table placed above the table. The table drawing command and table design functions on Microsoft Word should be used. Tabs function and unformatted lines should not be used to represent tables. The tables should bear the brief title and column headings should also be short. Units of measurements should be appropriately abbreviated and placed below the headings. Tables should appear at the end of the manuscript (after references) within the text file. Tables should not be submitted as photographs.

Illustrations

Figures and graphical representations should be submitted in editable formats (Microsoft Word® or Excel®) with the legends placed directly beneath the figure. Photographs and other illustrations should be submitted in JPEG or TIFF format (size not more than 0.5MB). All the illustrations should be consecutively numbered in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc).

Abbreviations

Only standard abbreviations are acceptable. The International System of Units (SI) is recommended for use within the text, Tables and Figures. Trade names of drugs should be avoided while the generic names are preferred.

 PROOFS

When articles are accepted, galley proofs in marked PDF forms will be sent to the authors by email and must be returned to the editor within three week days. Corrections on the proof should be restricted to printer’s errors only and no substantial additions/deletions should be made. Changes in the names or sequence of the authors (byway of additions and deletions) are not permissible at the proof stage.

 PUBLICATION FEES AND SUBSCRIPTION RATES

The journal currently charges the sum of Ten Thousand Naira as submission fee payable by Nigerian contributors or Fifty US Dollar payable by non-Nigerian contributors, before the processing of the manuscript. The journal also charges Fifty Thousand Naira as Article Processing Charge (APC) payable by Nigerian contributors (or One Hundred and Fifty US Dollar payable by non-Nigerian contributors). The APC is payable after the acceptance of the manuscript by the journal. The journal provides free access to articles published online under its open access publishing policy.