Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine
Official Journal of the Japanese Society for Hygiene
INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS
Updated July 2006
Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine (EHPM), as the official Journal of the Japanese Society for Hygiene, is devoted to the publication of definitive studies including original papers, short communications and review articles on human health sciences related to biological, physical, chemical, medical, psychosocial, and other various environmental factors. EHPM is published bimonthly, and is cited in several academic databases, including Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, Japana Centra Revuo Medicina, J-STAGE, Medical Online, and Scopus. The full text of all articles in EHPM can be accessed free of charge at J-STAGE. The guidelines of this journal are essentially in accordance with the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" (the complete document appears at http://www.icmje.org).
Categories of Publication
(1) Regular articles are expected to report the results of original fundamental research in any branch of environmental health and preventive medicine. Generally, they are no more than 8 printed pages (approx. 6,400 words) in length.
(2) Short Communications are reports of original but limited studies. They should be no more than 4 printed pages (approx. 3,200 words) in length.
(3) Reviews address subjects relevant to the field. Authors may submit an outline of an unsolicited review to be approved by the Editorial Board, after which the complete article will be carefully evaluated.
(4) Minireviews focus on stimulating topics of recent findings in the field of environmental health and preventive medicine. Authors are encouraged to have a well-balanced view of the field, and the final version should be no more than 2 to 3 pages (1,600 to 2,400 words) in length.
(5) Commentaries discuss stimulating or disputed topical issues of public interest in the field of environmental health and preventive medicine.
(6) Announcements of scientific meetings and events in the research field of environmental health and preventive medicine should be submitted 5 weeks prior to the date of publication.
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Editorial Policies
Peer Review: Editorial board members, as well as a large group of external reviewers who have broad expertise in research areas of environmental health and preventive medicine, shall fairly and thoroughly evaluate manuscripts submitted to EHPM.
Conflicts of Interest: Editors and reviewers must disclose conflicts of interest that could inappropriately influence their judgment, and, accordingly, they should disqualify themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts. When authors submit a manuscript, they are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias their work. Potential conflicts of interest must be described in the Acknowledgements section.
Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research: When reporting studies on human subjects, authors must indicate whether the research was in accordance with the ethical standards of the committee responsible for human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration. It should be stated in the text that the participants' informed consent is obtained on the basis of a procedure that is officially approved by the authors' institutions or governmental regulations or guidelines. When reporting experiments on animals, authors must indicate that the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals are observed.
Prior Publication: Editors and reviewers are expected to maintain a strict ethical code regarding the confidentiality of the material under review. After the review, authors will be promptly informed of editorial decisions. Only written inquiries regarding the status of manuscripts will be answered. After acceptance, the manuscript may be checked by English editing service. The copyright of articles accepted by this journal will be transferred from authors to the Japanese Society for Hygiene.
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Manuscript preparation
The manuscript should be submitted with a cover letter stating the following.
(1) That the manuscript is submitted for consideration for publication in EHPM. Please specify the category of the submitted manuscript.
(2) That the research contained in the manuscript has not been published, and the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere.
(3) That all authors have participated in the concept and design, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting or revising of the manuscript, and that they have approved the manuscript as submitted.
Format and Style
Manuscripts should follow the following order, starting each section on a new page: (a) title page, (b) abstract, (c) text (introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion), (d) acknowledgments, (e) references, (f) footnotes, (g) tables, (h) figures, and (i) figure legends. Manuscripts should be typed on ISO A4 size with double spacing throughout, including table and figure legends, with 25 mm margins. Consecutive numbering of all pages is required, with the title page as page 1. Numbering of lines in the margin is requested to facilitate review (consult the 'Help' menu for 'Insert Line Number' on word processing programs).
Manuscripts should be written in clear and grammatically correct English. When written by authors whose first language is not English, the manuscript should be checked by an editing service company employing native-English-speaking scientists. Terminology and abbreviations not consistent with internationally accepted guidelines should be avoided. Abbreviations for scientific units must conform to the SI units. Manuscripts that are not in the style of EHPM or not in good idiomatic English will be returned to the author without being reviewed.
Title Page
Title: The title should be informative and brief.
Names and Affiliations of Authors: Full names of all authors (first name, middle and surname) and affiliations (names of institutions and subsidiary laboratories or departments, city, country) should be provided. The name and, complete address, including postal code, telephone and fax numbers, and an e-mail address, of the corresponding author should be provided.
Running Title: A brief running title not to exceed 50 characters (including spaces) should be provided.
Key Words: Five key words identifying the nature of the subject matter should be listed.
Abstract
The abstract should be no more than 250 words and should indicate the content of the manuscript. In both Regular Articles and Short Communications, a structured abstract should be written under four headings: objectives, methods, results, and conclusions. Abbreviations should be kept to an absolute minimum; however, if they are needed, they should be defined at first use in both the abstract and text so that the abstract can be viewed independent of the text.
Text
Regular Articles or Short Communications consist of an introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion. In Short Communications, the results and discussion sections may be combined. Introduction: State why the investigation was carried out, note any relevant published work and delineate the objective of the investigation. The significance of the work and its contribution to the area of study should be stated. Materials and Methods: The methods should be briefly but clearly explained. Procedures published previously need only be cited as references. New and significant modifications need complete exposition. Describe statistical methods with sufficient detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. Authors must describe the Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research. Results: The results of the study should be concisely summarized. Textual description of the data must be presented in tables and figures, and duplication of the text of this section and materials presented in tables and figures should be avoided. Discussion: The discussion section should emphasize the major findings of the study and its significance to existing knowledge. Information presented in the previous section should not be repeated. Concise interpretation of the data with well-founded speculation should be included.
Acknowledgements
Authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might bias their work. They should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support for the work and other financial or personal connections to the work.
References
References should be cited consecutively in the order in which they first appear in the text. Cite references in the text using Arabic numbers in parentheses. The reference list should be arranged in order of citation. References should include the names of all authors. Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the latest edition of Index Medicus or Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index, if possible. List all authors when six or less; for seven or more authors, list the first six followed by et al.
Please follow the style illustrated in the following examples.
Papers published in journals
(1) Fukuda S, Morimoto K, Mure K, Maruyama S. Effect of the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake on posttraumatic stress, lifestyle changes, and cortisol levels of victims. Arch Environ Health. 2000;55:121-125.
(2) Sowa Y, Sakai T. Gene-regulating chemoprevention against cancer -as a model for "molecular-targeting prevention" of cancer. Nippon Eiseigaku Zasshi. 2003;58:267-274. (Article in Japanese)
(3) Moser KL, Neas BR, Salmon JE, Yu H, Gray-McGuire C, Asundi N, et al. Genome scan of human systemic lupus erythematosus: evidence for linkage on chromosome 1q in African-American pedigrees. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998;95:14869-14874.
Books and other monographs
(4) Agarwal DP, Goedde HW. Alcohol Metabolism, Alcohol Intolerance, and Alcoholism. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; 1990.
Chapter in a book
(5) Nordberg GF, Sandstrom B, Becking G, Goyer RA. Essentiality and toxicity of metals. In: Sarkar B editor. Heavy Metals in the Environment. New York: Marcel Dekker; 2002. p. 1-34.
Footnotes
Footnotes used in the manuscript should be described on this page. Superscript Arabic numerals are to be designated consecutively.
Tables
Tables should be numbered and cited in numerical order in the text, and each should be on a separate page, numbered in sequence in Arabic numerals (Tables 1, 2, etc.), provided with a heading, and referred to in the text as Table 1, Table 2, etc. Explanations sufficient to make the data intelligible without reference to the text must be typed below the table on the same page.
Figures (Illustrations)
Figures should be numbered in Arabic numerals according to the sequence of their appearance in the text, where they are referred to as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc. The name of the first author and the figure number should be written at the corner of each figure. For pictures, a designation of the top of the picture should be clearly indicated.
Legends for Figures (Illustrations)
Figure legends should be on a separate page, and should include a brief title and a concise explanation of each figure.
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Submission of Manuscripts
Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts electronically via e-mail. Electronic submission expedites the review process. The electronic files should exactly match the hard copy of the manuscript. Send a copy of the manuscript with a cover letter to
jsh-edt@tmd.ac.jp as attached files.
Please note that, in the case of electronic submission, authors should send one hard copy of the manuscript and a cover letter by post to the following address:
Editorial Office, Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, Department of Molecular Oncology, Graduate School of Medicine and Dentistry, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8519, JAPAN.
If authors cannot submit electronically, three hard copies of the manuscript and a cover letter may be submitted to the Editorial Office by Post.
Electronic submission
The manuscript and cover letter should be submitted as PDF files or Microsoft Word .doc files; PDF files are preferred. Other format files may not be accepted. Assemble the title page, abstract, text, acknowledgments, references, footnotes, tables, figures, and figure legends in a single file. If the images can be viewed by the editor and reviewers, it is not necessary to save them as high-resolution images. The files should be designated using the author's name, i.e., Aizawa.doc or Aizawa.pdf.
The font should be Times New Roman, 12 point. Ensure that the letter "l" and the number "1" (also the letter "O" and the number "0") are used properly, and format your article (tabs, indents, etc.) consistently. For Japanese versions of English software, please use Ordinary 1 Byte Code Character (Hankaku in Japanese). When using Greek letters such as α and β, these characters should be selected from the Times New Roman font type. Unique codes such as ● and □ should be expressed by spelling out the codes, e.g., "open square" for □ and "closed circle" for ●.
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Page Charge and Reprints
For Regular Articles, no page charge will be imposed on authors for articles up to 8 printed pages. Authors may be charged for the cost of English editing service. For color photographs, authors will be charged for the cost of publishing. Reprints may be ordered at prices shown in the reprint order form, which will be sent to the author in due course.
Proofs
Proofs will be sent to authors with manuscripts. Changes to the manuscript will not be allowed except for printing errors. The corrected proofs should be returned within 48 hours after receipt.
Advertisements
Advertisements should be received 5 weeks prior to the date of publication. Issues are published bimonthly. Inquiries regarding advertising should be directed to:
Editorial Office, Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, Department of Molecular Oncology, Graduate School of Medicine and Dentistry, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8519, JAPAN.
Phone: +81-3-5803-5184； Fax: +81-3-5803-0125
E-mail: jsh-edt@tmd.ac.jp
The Best Article Award
The Japanese Society for Hygiene has established the Best Article of the Year Award for original articles published in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine. One or two original articles appearing in the journal may be selected as the best article annually by the Editorial Board and approved by the Board of Directors. Prize money and a certificate of merit will be awarded to the authors of these articles.
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