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Manuscript Formatting
1. Checklists
We advise the authors to follow the guidelines and checklists below when submitting an article. Guidelines and checklists proposed are based on the EQUATOR Network, which is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and the wider use of robust reporting guidelines.
This transparency enables readers and reviewers to scrutinise the research adequately, evaluate its methodological rigour, and reproduce the methods or findings.
All observational studies should comply with the STROBE guidelines:
Combined Studies Cohort Studies Case-Control Studies Cross-Sectional Studies
All systematic reviews should comply with the PRISMA guidelines:
PRISMA Checklist PRISMA Expanded Checklist
All study protocols should comply with the SPIRIT guidelines:
SPIRIT Checklist
All case reports should comply with the CARE guidelines:
CARE Checklist
All randomized trials should comply with the CONSORT guidelines: CONSORT Checklist
All meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology should comply with the MOOSE guidelines: MOOSE Checklist
All qualitative studies should comply with the SRQR guidelines: SRQR Checklist
All animal studies should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines:
ARRIVE Checklist
2. General instructions
The authors are encouraged to consult previous relevant publications in Population Medicine to assist them in the preparation of the manuscript, especially the references and tables.
3. Text Formatting
All manuscripts should be submitted in Word format. They should be single-column, 1.5-spaced, and only in English. Margins should be one inch at the top, bottom, and sides of the page. The font size should be 11-pt or 12-pt, standard font in ‘Arial’ or ‘Times New Roman’ typeface. Manuscripts should be formatted in full-justified paragraphs, and headings should be left-aligned. Maths should be editable text.
4. Title Page
The Title page should list the title of the article and suggestions for a short running title of no more than 60 characters (including spaces). Also include the authors names, affiliations and contact details including email address for the corresponding author. Affiliations should contain each author’s department, institution (Institute, University), city, and country.
The Title of the article should be clear and concise and highlight the research topic. It should not include rhetorical questions, literary language, quotations, or special symbols.
Authors cannot change the title of their article once it is accepted for publication, apart from very minor corrections.
5. Abstract
Authors are asked to supply a structured abstract of 300 words. For research articles, systematic reviews, and brief reports, the abstract is limited to 300 words and should be structured as follows: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Abstracts for narrative reviews, methodology papers, and short/rapid communications are unstructured. Letters do not have an abstract.
6. Keywords
Include up to six keywords that describe your paper for indexing and for web searches of your manuscript.
7. Main Text
Research papers, systematic review papers, and short reports sections include the following: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Narrative review papers are not necessarily structured. It is suggested, though, to include the sections Introduction, Developments, and Conclusion. Methodology papers should consist of an Introduction, Methodological approach, Case studies or Practical examples, Discussion, and Conclusions. The suggested structure for short/rapid communications is Introduction, Commentary, Conclusion.
Use the guidelines below to structure these sections:
1. A short introduction that ends with the study’s aims. The introduction should state clearly the objective of the paper and the context of the research or analysis.
2. A methods section should describe the study design, setting, participants, measures, variables, and statistical analysis performed. This section should also include information on the study’s ethics procedures. AI technology use should be described in detail (data collection, analysis, figure generation). The tool, version, and prompts should also be described.
3. A results section should describe the study’s main findings and important aspects within the tables.
4. A discussion section should include a discussion of the study’s main findings, comparisons with other studies, potential policy implications, and the study’s strengths and limitations.
5. A conclusions section should be short, concise and based on the results of the current study. General conclusions that do not stem from the manuscript's results should be avoided.
8. Acknowledgements
This section is for acknowledging individuals and institutions whose support the authors wish to mention (it is not compulsory). Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. The Acknowledgements section should be kept to a minimum. If the study was based on a pre-print, thesis, or conference proceedings, it should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. If an AI was used to support the writing of the manuscript, this should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments.
9. Declaration Of Interests
Declare any competing interests for each author. Population Medicine adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. The author names on the ICMJE forms should be identical to the names in the manuscript. The ICMJE Conflict of Interest form is used by European Publishing. Any declaration of interests should be mentioned in the Conflicts of Interest.
10. Funding
All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.
The sentence should begin: "This work was supported by". Proposal numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in parentheses as follows: "(proposal number xxxx)". The funding statement should only report grants awarded that are directly relevant to the study.
11. Data Availability
We ask all authors to include a data availability statement by choosing one of the following options during their submission:
1. The data supporting this research are available from the author(s) on reasonable request.
2. The data supporting this research cannot be made available for privacy or other reasons. [please give the reasons if possible]
3. The data supporting this research are available from the following sources: [link] OR [DOI]
4. The data supporting this research can be found in the Article appendix or supplementary content.
5. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data was created.
More information about data policies can be found here.
12. Authors' contributions
The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies. The authors have the option to give a brief outline of their contribution. Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section.
Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): If you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the "Acknowledgements" section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.
13. References
These must be numbered sequentially, as they first appear in the text. They should be superscripted and where more than one reference is cited, these should be separated by a comma, for example, 1, 12, 16, while for a continuous sequence of numbers, give the first and last number of the sequence separated by a hyphen, for example, 4-7. The Reference list should thus be sequentially numbered using plain text (i.e., without the use of footnote or endnote, etc). Please check the reference list and ensure no references are duplicated. A research manuscript should contain no more than 36 references, a review article no more than 50, and a short report no more than 15.
Article citations
These follow the AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors (11th ed.) format.
Authors are to follow the guidelines of the Reference Chapter.
Article citation examples
Journal articles online
All references that are from journal articles must contain a Digital Object Identifier (DOI): A DOI is a unique character string created to identify a digital object, such as a journal article, in an online environment. The DOI is a permanent identifier of all versions of an article and the DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document. The DOI must be included in the citation.
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume number(issue number):initial-final page. doi.
Example:
Thomson G, Wilson N. Smokefree signage at children’s playgrounds: Field observations and comparison with Google Street View. Tob Induc Dis. 2017;15(August):1-4. doi:10.1186/s12971-017-0143-x
Books
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Volume number (for more than 1 volume). Edition number. Place of publication: Name of publisher; year of publication:page numbers.
(Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
Example:
Patterson James T. The dread disease: cancer and modern American culture.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1989.
Web links and URLs
All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including the title of the item, the title of the site, and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed.
Website
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Name of the website. URL. Published date. Updated date. Accessed date.
Example:
Tobacco: fact sheet. World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/. Published November, 2017. Accesed November 24, 2017.
Report Online
Citation format:
Authors or Institution. Title. URL. Published date. Accessed date.
Example:
World Health Organization. Equitable access to essential medicines: a framework for collective action. http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/pdf/s4962e/s4962e.pdf. Published March, 2004. Accessed November 24, 2017.
14. Tables
Tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript and be numbered sequentially in order of appearance in the text. However, the authors should ensure that every table is referred to in the body of the text. Each table should be accompanied by a short, descriptive title and in the footnote should define any acronyms, abbreviations or symbols used, statistical methods applied and any other information needed so that the table may stand alone without the supporting main text. Captions should be given separately above the tables. Numbers in the table should not contain commas, and numbers less than unity should have a zero in front of the decimal point. Decimal numbers should be represented with the use of a full stop. Superscripts used to refer to table footnotes should be lowercase alphabetical symbols.
The number of actual tables (no sub-tables) that an article can contain should not exceed five. However, they have to be of value as determined by peer review. Extra tables can be included in the supplementary online material. The content of the tables should be such that the data are of sufficient resolution for comfortable reading. Tables should be submitted in their original Word format (not via Excel), and they should be legible. Avoid using vertical rules. Horizontal rules should be used only above and below column headings and at the bottom of the table. Do not create a table using only tabs or spaces to create columns. Tables should not duplicate material contained in the main text.
15. Figures
Figures should be placed at the end of the manuscript and be numbered sequentially in order of appearance in the text.
However authors should ensure that figure is referred to in the body of the text.
Each figure should be accompanied by a short, descriptive title and, in the footnote, should define any acronyms, abbreviations, or symbols used, statistical methods applied, and any other information needed to stand alone without the supporting main text. Captions should be given separately above the figures. The number of figures should not exceed four. Extra figures can be included in the supplementary online material. Figures can be submitted in greyscale, black or white or in color as the journal is published online. The journal prefers that figures be created in Excel. Do not embed a figure file as a picture into Excel or Word, but submit them as individual files. The data of figures should be attached in a Word format. Size the figure to the column or page width of the journal, and set the resolution at 300 dpi or greater. Figures containing a large amount of text, particularly flow diagrams, should be send in an editable form.
16. Supplementary online material
Supplementary material should be submitted in a Word format in the "supplementary online material" section during the submission/revision of the article.
If the authors wish to change the Supplementary file they would need to resend it corrected, as a final version before publication. The authors should be aware that supplementary files are not proofread or corrected by our team.
17. Typesetting and Author Proofs
Once an accepted manuscript enters the production phase, it will undergo copyediting and typesetting. Once this process is complete, the corresponding author will receive proofs for review and have the chance to approve any edits, ensuring the final version aligns with the journal's style. Any queries that arise during production will be addressed alongside the proofs.
Minor changes to the manuscript will only be accepted. Beyond the provided minor corrections, rewording, restructuring, or changes to the journal's style of the manuscript will not be accepted. Author proofs will be available only once, prior to the publication of their article.
18. Double blind peer-review policy
All papers submitted for publication are assessed with the mutual anonymity rule as to the names of reviewers and authors observed. Authors’ names and affiliations should not appear in the attached text/tables/figures.
We advise the authors to follow the guidelines and checklists below when submitting an article. Guidelines and checklists proposed are based on the EQUATOR Network, which is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and the wider use of robust reporting guidelines.
This transparency enables readers and reviewers to scrutinise the research adequately, evaluate its methodological rigour, and reproduce the methods or findings.
All observational studies should comply with the STROBE guidelines:
All systematic reviews should comply with the PRISMA guidelines:
All study protocols should comply with the SPIRIT guidelines:
All case reports should comply with the CARE guidelines:
All randomized trials should comply with the CONSORT guidelines:
All meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology should comply with the MOOSE guidelines:
All qualitative studies should comply with the SRQR guidelines:
All animal studies should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines:
2. General instructions
The authors are encouraged to consult previous relevant publications in Population Medicine to assist them in the preparation of the manuscript, especially the references and tables.
3. Text Formatting
All manuscripts should be submitted in Word format. They should be single-column, 1.5-spaced, and only in English. Margins should be one inch at the top, bottom, and sides of the page. The font size should be 11-pt or 12-pt, standard font in ‘Arial’ or ‘Times New Roman’ typeface. Manuscripts should be formatted in full-justified paragraphs, and headings should be left-aligned. Maths should be editable text.
4. Title Page
The Title page should list the title of the article and suggestions for a short running title of no more than 60 characters (including spaces). Also include the authors names, affiliations and contact details including email address for the corresponding author. Affiliations should contain each author’s department, institution (Institute, University), city, and country.
The Title of the article should be clear and concise and highlight the research topic. It should not include rhetorical questions, literary language, quotations, or special symbols.
Authors cannot change the title of their article once it is accepted for publication, apart from very minor corrections.
5. Abstract
Authors are asked to supply a structured abstract of 300 words. For research articles, systematic reviews, and brief reports, the abstract is limited to 300 words and should be structured as follows: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Abstracts for narrative reviews, methodology papers, and short/rapid communications are unstructured. Letters do not have an abstract.
6. Keywords
Include up to six keywords that describe your paper for indexing and for web searches of your manuscript.
7. Main Text
Research papers, systematic review papers, and short reports sections include the following: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Narrative review papers are not necessarily structured. It is suggested, though, to include the sections Introduction, Developments, and Conclusion. Methodology papers should consist of an Introduction, Methodological approach, Case studies or Practical examples, Discussion, and Conclusions. The suggested structure for short/rapid communications is Introduction, Commentary, Conclusion.
Use the guidelines below to structure these sections:
1. A short introduction that ends with the study’s aims. The introduction should state clearly the objective of the paper and the context of the research or analysis.
2. A methods section should describe the study design, setting, participants, measures, variables, and statistical analysis performed. This section should also include information on the study’s ethics procedures. AI technology use should be described in detail (data collection, analysis, figure generation). The tool, version, and prompts should also be described.
3. A results section should describe the study’s main findings and important aspects within the tables.
4. A discussion section should include a discussion of the study’s main findings, comparisons with other studies, potential policy implications, and the study’s strengths and limitations.
5. A conclusions section should be short, concise and based on the results of the current study. General conclusions that do not stem from the manuscript's results should be avoided.
8. Acknowledgements
This section is for acknowledging individuals and institutions whose support the authors wish to mention (it is not compulsory). Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. The Acknowledgements section should be kept to a minimum. If the study was based on a pre-print, thesis, or conference proceedings, it should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. If an AI was used to support the writing of the manuscript, this should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments.
9. Declaration Of Interests
Declare any competing interests for each author. Population Medicine adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. The author names on the ICMJE forms should be identical to the names in the manuscript. The ICMJE Conflict of Interest form is used by European Publishing. Any declaration of interests should be mentioned in the Conflicts of Interest.
10. Funding
All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.
The sentence should begin: "This work was supported by". Proposal numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in parentheses as follows: "(proposal number xxxx)". The funding statement should only report grants awarded that are directly relevant to the study.
11. Data Availability
We ask all authors to include a data availability statement by choosing one of the following options during their submission:
1. The data supporting this research are available from the author(s) on reasonable request.
2. The data supporting this research cannot be made available for privacy or other reasons. [please give the reasons if possible]
3. The data supporting this research are available from the following sources: [link] OR [DOI]
4. The data supporting this research can be found in the Article appendix or supplementary content.
5. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data was created.
More information about data policies can be found here.
12. Authors' contributions
The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies. The authors have the option to give a brief outline of their contribution. Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section.
Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): If you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the "Acknowledgements" section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.
13. References
These must be numbered sequentially, as they first appear in the text. They should be superscripted and where more than one reference is cited, these should be separated by a comma, for example, 1, 12, 16, while for a continuous sequence of numbers, give the first and last number of the sequence separated by a hyphen, for example, 4-7. The Reference list should thus be sequentially numbered using plain text (i.e., without the use of footnote or endnote, etc). Please check the reference list and ensure no references are duplicated. A research manuscript should contain no more than 36 references, a review article no more than 50, and a short report no more than 15.
Article citations
These follow the AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors (11th ed.) format.
Authors are to follow the guidelines of the Reference Chapter.
Article citation examples
Journal articles online
All references that are from journal articles must contain a Digital Object Identifier (DOI): A DOI is a unique character string created to identify a digital object, such as a journal article, in an online environment. The DOI is a permanent identifier of all versions of an article and the DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document. The DOI must be included in the citation.
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume number(issue number):initial-final page. doi.
Example:
Thomson G, Wilson N. Smokefree signage at children’s playgrounds: Field observations and comparison with Google Street View. Tob Induc Dis. 2017;15(August):1-4. doi:10.1186/s12971-017-0143-x
Books
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Volume number (for more than 1 volume). Edition number. Place of publication: Name of publisher; year of publication:page numbers.
(Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
Example:
Patterson James T. The dread disease: cancer and modern American culture.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1989.
Web links and URLs
All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including the title of the item, the title of the site, and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed.
Website
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Name of the website. URL. Published date. Updated date. Accessed date.
Example:
Tobacco: fact sheet. World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/. Published November, 2017. Accesed November 24, 2017.
Report Online
Citation format:
Authors or Institution. Title. URL. Published date. Accessed date.
Example:
World Health Organization. Equitable access to essential medicines: a framework for collective action. http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/pdf/s4962e/s4962e.pdf. Published March, 2004. Accessed November 24, 2017.
14. Tables
Tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript and be numbered sequentially in order of appearance in the text. However, the authors should ensure that every table is referred to in the body of the text. Each table should be accompanied by a short, descriptive title and in the footnote should define any acronyms, abbreviations or symbols used, statistical methods applied and any other information needed so that the table may stand alone without the supporting main text. Captions should be given separately above the tables. Numbers in the table should not contain commas, and numbers less than unity should have a zero in front of the decimal point. Decimal numbers should be represented with the use of a full stop. Superscripts used to refer to table footnotes should be lowercase alphabetical symbols.
The number of actual tables (no sub-tables) that an article can contain should not exceed five. However, they have to be of value as determined by peer review. Extra tables can be included in the supplementary online material. The content of the tables should be such that the data are of sufficient resolution for comfortable reading. Tables should be submitted in their original Word format (not via Excel), and they should be legible. Avoid using vertical rules. Horizontal rules should be used only above and below column headings and at the bottom of the table. Do not create a table using only tabs or spaces to create columns. Tables should not duplicate material contained in the main text.
15. Figures
Figures should be placed at the end of the manuscript and be numbered sequentially in order of appearance in the text.
However authors should ensure that figure is referred to in the body of the text.
Each figure should be accompanied by a short, descriptive title and, in the footnote, should define any acronyms, abbreviations, or symbols used, statistical methods applied, and any other information needed to stand alone without the supporting main text. Captions should be given separately above the figures. The number of figures should not exceed four. Extra figures can be included in the supplementary online material. Figures can be submitted in greyscale, black or white or in color as the journal is published online. The journal prefers that figures be created in Excel. Do not embed a figure file as a picture into Excel or Word, but submit them as individual files. The data of figures should be attached in a Word format. Size the figure to the column or page width of the journal, and set the resolution at 300 dpi or greater. Figures containing a large amount of text, particularly flow diagrams, should be send in an editable form.
16. Supplementary online material
Supplementary material should be submitted in a Word format in the "supplementary online material" section during the submission/revision of the article.
If the authors wish to change the Supplementary file they would need to resend it corrected, as a final version before publication. The authors should be aware that supplementary files are not proofread or corrected by our team.
17. Typesetting and Author Proofs
Once an accepted manuscript enters the production phase, it will undergo copyediting and typesetting. Once this process is complete, the corresponding author will receive proofs for review and have the chance to approve any edits, ensuring the final version aligns with the journal's style. Any queries that arise during production will be addressed alongside the proofs.
Minor changes to the manuscript will only be accepted. Beyond the provided minor corrections, rewording, restructuring, or changes to the journal's style of the manuscript will not be accepted. Author proofs will be available only once, prior to the publication of their article.
18. Double blind peer-review policy
All papers submitted for publication are assessed with the mutual anonymity rule as to the names of reviewers and authors observed. Authors’ names and affiliations should not appear in the attached text/tables/figures.
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