Author Guidelines

Contributing to HIV Nursing

HIV Nursing welcomes research papers, case reports, audit reports, literature reviews, editorial letters and other contributions relevant to healthcare professionals working in HIV. HIV Nursing also welcomes blogs for the website.

Have you completed a dissertation or a degree recently?
Do you know of any research or audit that will interest HIV nursing colleagues?
What changes have you instigated that really made a difference to your patients?
What innovations or ideas have you come across that are worth sharing?
Do you have something to get off your chest, or a great book you’d like others to know about?

You can contribute a full-length feature article (around 3000 words) or a shorter news/opinion piece (minimum 500 words), or send in a letter or comment. Choose whatever suits you – the Editorial Board will be very pleased to hear from you. See below for more detailed instructions for authors and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by email:[email protected]

The more society as a whole, and our medical colleagues, hear about what we are doing as HIV nurses, the better it is for our patients and their families.

Instructions to Authors

Manuscript submission 
Items for publication and other correspondence relating to the journal should be addressed to:
The Editor, Mediscript Ltd
1 Mountview Court
310 Friern Barnet Lane, London N20 0LD
T: +44 (0)20 8369 5389 E:[email protected]
Articles are accepted on the understanding that they have been approved by the Editorial Board and may be subject to revision. Contributions regularly accepted are: research papers, case studies and audit reports, all of which will be peer reviewed before publication. In addition, submissions such as current issues/opinion pieces, editorial letters and ‘day in the life’ items are also welcome and will be considered for publication.
If you would like help with any aspect of the writing process, please contact the Editorial office in the first instance with a brief description of your proposed contribution, and your query will be forwarded to the person best qualified to support you (email:[email protected]).

MANUSCRIPT STYLE
Authors should include full affiliation, address, telephone number and email addresses. Where there is more than one author, the author to whom proofs should be sent should be indicated. Articles should be around 3000 words in length or refer to commissioning letter. Manuscripts should use UK English spellings. Please include an abstract (not more than 150 words), if applicable, to describe the content of the article. Subheadings should be used wherever possible, and abbreviations defined when first used.

References 
HIV Nursing prefers the Vancouver style where reference citations are numbered consecutively, including tables or figure legends, as they fall in the text. Each reference should be numbered in square parentheses and listed at the end of the article in numerical order, according to the following style:
Wu AW, Rubin HR, Mathews WC et al. Functional status and well-being in a placebo controlled trial of zidovudine in early symptomatic HIV infection. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr, 1993; 6(5): 452–456.

Miller D. Living with AIDS and HIV. London: Macmillan Press, 1987.
British HIV Association. Standards of Care for People Living with HIV. 2013. Available at: www.bhiva.org/documents/Standards-of-care/BHIVAStandardsA4.pdf (accessed October 2017).  
Rodger A, Bruun T, Cambiano V et al HIV transmission risk through condomless sex if HIV+ partner on suppressive ART: PARTNER study. Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infection, March 2014. Boston, MA, USA. Abstract 153LB.

Preferred HIV terminology
Please click here to download table of preferred language to be used when describing people with HIV or concepts concerning HIV. This language is considered to be less stigmatising for individuals with HIV. 
Illustrations and tables
These should be provided wherever appropriate and be captioned. Any illustrations supplied should be of sufficiently high quality to ensure good reproduction. Colour figures are welcomed and will be used online, but please note that reproduction in the printed version of the Journal is available at the author’s expense (cost available on request). Where appropriate, magnification figures or scale bars should be supplied.
Illustrations and tables must be cited in numerical order. When required, it is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission to reproduce illustrations or tables, and to include the appropriate credit in the figure or table legend. Please note that, if necessary, figures my be re-lettered or re-drawn to follow house style.

REVIEW PROCESS
All original research and features submitted to the journal are reviewed by the Editors and undergo external peer review. Current issues/opinion pieces, editorial letters and ‘day in the life’ items submitted to the journal that have not been specifically invited are considered by the Editors in the first instance. The Editors decide whether to review the submission themselves or invite external peer-review. Authors may make suggestions for potential reviewers of their work when they submit their manuscripts. The Editors may agree with these suggestions or may decide to ask others to review the work. In the first instance, reviewers are given the manuscript title and list of authors and invited to review within 2 weeks. Following acceptance of the invitation, the manuscript is sent. Two or three reviews are sought. The Editors assess the reviewers’ recommendations and reports, and make their final decision. This is then sent, along with the report, to the authors. Articles submitted to the Journal remain confidential throughout the review process. Reviewers’ identities are also confidential unless the reviewer specifically wishes to be identified.
Page proofs: once an article has been accepted for publication, the manuscript is copyedited and then typeset. However, if there are many queries from the copyeditor, the document may be returned to the author for the queries to be answered.
Once typeset, pdf proofs are sent by email to the corresponding author. The proofs must be returned to the Editorial Office within 3 days of receipt. Only typographical errors and other essential small changes can be made at this stage. Major alterations to the text cannot be accepted.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
During the submission process, the submitting author will be asked whether the work has been, or is being considered for publication elsewhere and will be required to state on behalf of all the authors that the work meets all relevant ethical guidelines and legal requirements. Please note that the journal seeks to follow the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. (https://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct)
Please note, any misconduct by authors in reporting their data, e.g. falsification of results, will lead to rejection of their manuscript and other consequences. The Editors will follow the Committee on Publication Ethic’s Code of Conduct flowcharts and implement that advice when faced with cases of suspected misconduct.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS POLICY
The Journal requires that all experimentation on human and animal subjects is conducted according to the ethical standards of the author’s institution and relevant national and international guidelines. All experimental work on human or animal subjects must be approved by the institution’s ethics committee. If there is any doubt, the editors will request an explanation for the approach and proof of ethics committee approval.

INFORMED CONSENT
For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear when submitting the manuscript. In addition, the journal will not publish any material that could potentially identify an individual who has participated in a study unless the individual has specifically given written consent, copies of which should be submitted with the manuscript.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST AND EDITORS, AUTHORS AND PEER REVIEWERS
To avoid actual or perceived conflicts of interest, editors do not take part in editorial decisions should they have competing interests related to an article under consideration. Authors are required to disclose financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work when submitting a manuscript. Peer reviewers are also asked to disclose whether they have conflicts of interest that could bias their review and are asked to withdraw should there be any conflict.

COPYRIGHT ASSIGNMENT
Authors are assumed to transfer to Mediscript copyright of their words. Copying of articles should only be made following permission from Mediscript. However, requests by authors wishing to make copies of their own articles for personal use will be treated sympathetically. A personal copy of the issue in which the author’s article appears will be sent to the author on the publication.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES
Upon acceptance, Authors are required to pay a nominal pre-press charges is to be paid to publisher.  Article processing charges (APCs) are associated with only accepted articles to cover the costs of making the final version of the manuscript freely available via open access.

To cover the production cost of the following

  • iThenticate screening
  • Journal Hosting System [jHOST]
  • Manuscript submission systems
  • In-house copyediting and linguistic support
  • Pagination & typesetting
  • Inclusion in Crossref, giving a permanent DOI and enabling easy citation in other journals.
  • Archiving, where appropriate, in an internationally recognized, open access repositories.