Guidelines for Authors

The Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare publishes the following article types:

Papers must meet the word limit upon submission, but the editorial office might allow for authors to exceed that on revisions.

You may find more information regarding the structure of qualitative research articles here.

Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare does not apply charge for publication to Authors.

Overview

Manuscripts will be carefully scrutinized for evidence of plagiarism, duplication and data manipulation; in particular, images will be carefully examined for any indication of intentional improper modification. Any suspected misconduct ends up with a quick rejection and is then reported to the US Office of Research Integrity.

Authors should submit their papers electronically by using the Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare online submission and review website (submissions), although general inquiries made directly to the editor are welcome. The Publisher and Editor regret that they are not able to consider submissions that do not follow this procedure.

QRMH strictly follows Declaration of Helsinki Guidelines mandating that when human subjects are involved, the research protocol must be submitted for approval to authors’ respective independent research ethics committees before commencement of the research regardless of whether or not such approval is required by authors’ respective review board policies.

Ensure that the following items are present

One author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:

Institutional affiliation
E-mail address
Full postal address

All necessary files have been uploaded:

Blinded manuscript file
Title page (on a separate file)
Include keywords (no more than seven)
All figures (include relevant captions)
All tables (including titles, description, footnotes)
Ensure all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided

Further considerations

The entire manuscript should be in APA format.
If your study involves human participants, make sure that your manuscript clearly states that you have received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval as stipulated according to current Helsinki Declaration guidelines. Published copies will also need to stipulate the name of the IRB granting organization. (See further details below.)
Please prepare your manuscript for the double-blind peer review. (No information should be present in the text that could allow the identification of the authors).
Ensure that all references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa.
Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet).
A competing interests statement is provided, even if the authors have no competing interests to declare.
Journal policies detailed in this guide have been reviewed.
Manuscript has been "spell checked" and "grammar checked". Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission. Note that submitted manuscripts will not go through language-focused copyediting with the journal prior to or after acceptance; language-focused copyediting is the responsibility of the authors prior to submission. Professional copyediting can help authors improve the presentation of their work and increase its chances of being taken on by a publisher. In case you feel that your manuscript would benefit from a professional English language copyediting checking language grammar and style, you can find a reliable revision service at:

Desk reject criteria
The Editorial Team of Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare applies desk review to filter out papers that will not be processed; these are papers that are not aligned with the aims and scope of the journal, or which lack essential information in one or more sections of the paper or has not been submitted as per the correct procedure. In such cases, the paper will be desk rejected: this means that it will be sent back to the submitting author, and will not be reviewed.

Submission Procedure

The Corresponding Author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) must submit the manuscript online-only through our Manuscript Submission System. The Authors' metadata must be duly completed, by adding "contributors" when needed. Metadata are crucial for the indexing of the paper and of authors and for attribution of copyright to ALL authors.

Preparing your manuscript

Manuscripts should be in either British or U.S. English consistently throughout. Check for consistent spelling of names, terms, and abbreviations, including in tables and figure captions. Note that submitted manuscripts will not go through language-focused copyediting with the journal prior to or after acceptance; language-focused copyediting is the responsibility of the authors prior to submission.
Each manuscript has to be typewritten and double-spaced throughout.
The manuscript can be submitted in Word.
In case of not adhering to the journal requirements, the manuscript will be sent back to the authors for amendments. If the authors do not answer timely with the requested amendments, the paper will be archived.

References

References should be prepared strictly according to the APA style. To ensure the correct citation format, please check your references here: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections (compulsory):

Ethical approval;
Availability of data and material;
Competing interests;
Funding;
Authors' contributions;
Acknowledgments.

The manuscript should be divided into: Title page; Abstract; Text; Acknowledgments; References; Tables; Figures; Tables/Figures legends.

The Title page must contain the following information:

title of the paper;
full name and surname of author(s);
full name, town and country of the institution(s) where the work was done;
complete address (phone and fax numbers, E-mail address) of the corresponding author (Please note that multiple corresponding authors are not allowed.);
key words (no more than seven);
authors' contributions, i.e., information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in the study (role of authors and contributors);
disclosures about potential conflict of interest.

The text should normally be subdivided into: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion.
In the Introduction, which should be concise, the purpose of the research must be clearly explained.
Research Methods should be detailed. Lack of details in with regard to the research method(s) used is the primary criticism expressed by reviewers for this journal.
Materials. Generic and specific names should be typed in italics. When chemicals are quoted, well-defined, registered names should be used following the subject index of chemical abstracts. When the text refers to enzymes, the trivial names should be given as published in Enzyme nomenclature by Academic Press, 1984. Units of measurements should be those recommended by the International Committee for the Standardization of Units of Measurements, please check this site (http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure) for Uniform Requirements.
Results should also be thorough and detailed. Quotations longer than 35 words should be block quoted. Lack of detail with respect to results is the second most common criticism among reviewers for this journal. General considerations and conclusions should be reported in the Discussion only.
Acknowledgments should be placed at the end of the text.

If tables are used, they should be double-spaced on separate pages of the manuscript, not embedded throughout the text. They should be numbered and cited in the text. Tables should be provided as editable Word files, and authors should ensure that they are presented in a publication-ready format. Considering how a table fits on a page in a wordprocessing program can often provide insight into how it will appear on a journal page.

Larger or more complex tables will be made available online as supplementary material at the Editorial Office's sole discretion, including ensuring efficient readability of the paper publishing format.

If figures are used, they should be numbered and cited in the text and inserted at the end of the manuscript. Figures should be designed using a well-known software package. Please note that the Production Office will not redraw or re-letter any image.

A different caption for each figure must be provided at the end of the manuscript. Figures with different panels have to be grouped into a plate, and panels marked with letters.

In case of acceptance, authors are required to provide the figures as .tiff or .jpg files, with the following digital resolution:

Color (saved as CMYK): 300 dpi - maximum width 17 cm - minimum width 8.5 cm
Black and white/grays: 600 dpi - maximum width 17 cm - minimum width 8.5 cm

Permissions

In case extracts (text/figures/tables) from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright holder(s) and credit the source(s) in the article, for example: "Adapted from Applequist, J. (2018). The introduction of the medicinal partner in direct-to-consumer advertising: Viagra's contribution to pharmaceutical fetishism and patient-as-consumer discourse in healthcare. Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare, 2(2), 7646; with permission." The editorial office of the Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare needs to receive a copy of the written permission before proceeding with publication. Please download here the "License and Disclaimer" agreement.

Peer-review policy

All manuscripts submitted to our journal are critically assessed by external and/or in-house experts in accordance with the principles of peer review, which is fundamental to a rigorous qualitative research publication process and the dissemination of sound scholarship. The first step of manuscript selection takes place entirely in-house and has two major objectives: i) to establish the article appropriateness for the readership of our journal and ii) to define the manuscript priority ranking relative to other manuscripts under consideration since the number of papers that the journal receives is much greater than it can publish. If a manuscript does not receive a sufficiently high priority score to warrant publication, the editor will proceed to a quick rejection. The remaining articles are reviewed by at least two different external referees (second step or classical peer review). Manuscripts should be prepared according to the Uniform Requirements established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred. If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern and information supporting the concern.

Authorship and Contributorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the ICMJE criteria. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should only be based on substantial contributions to each of the following: i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, on iii) final approval of the version to be published, and iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions. Those who do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading. Authors can find detailed information on the Publisher's website.
Authors must disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the creation of submitted work. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be held accountable for the work's accuracy, integrity, and originality, all of which are required for authorship. Because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that is incorrect, incomplete, or biased, authors should carefully review and edit the result. Authors should be able to assert that their paper contains no plagiarism, including text and images generated by AI.

Changes in Authorship

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal editor: Authors are required to sign and send to the Editors a statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author(s) to be removed or added. Please note that if your manuscript is accepted you will not be able to make any changes to the authors, or order of authors, of your manuscript once the editor has accepted your manuscript for publication. No changes to the Authors or Corresponding Author can be made after publication of the article. Instead, a corrigendum may be considered by the journal editor.

Role of the funding source

Authors are required to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, it is recommended to state this.

Obligation to Register Clinical Trials

The ICMJE believes that it is important to foster a comprehensive, publicly available database of clinical trials. The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or concurrent comparison or control groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Medical interventions include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, process-of-care changes, etc. Our journals require, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration in a public trials registry. The journal considers a trial for publication only if it has been registered before the enrollment of the first patient. The journal does not advocate one particular registry, but requires authors to register their trial in a registry that meets several criteria. The registry must be accessible to the public at no charge. It must be open to all prospective registrants and managed by a non-profit organization. There must be a mechanism to ensure the validity of the registration data, and the registry should be electronically searchable. An acceptable registry must include a minimum of data elements (http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/clinical-trials-registration/). For example, ClinicalTrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov), sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine, meets these requirements.

Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research

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 2013. 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. An informed consent statement is always required from patients involved in any experiments. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision). When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, Authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guides for the preservation of native biodiversity. As per Helsinki Guidelines, at the conclusion of the research, authors must submit a summary of findings and conclusions to their respective research ethics committees.