Guidelines for Authors

Manuscript preparation

Mental Wellness publishes the following article types:

Overview

Manuscript 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.

Submission checklist

You can use this list to carry out a final check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review. Please check the relevant section in this Guide for Authors for more details. Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission.

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:

  • E-mail address
  • Full postal address

All necessary files have been uploaded:

  • Manuscript file
  • Include keywords (no more than five)
  • 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

  • Please prepare your manuscript for the single-blind peer review;
  • 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
  • Referee suggestions and contact details provided, based on journal requirements
  • 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 their 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:

The Corresponding Author must submit the manuscript online-only through our Manuscript Submission System.

Authors are kindly invited to suggest potential reviewers (names, affilitations and email addresses) for their manuscript, if they wish.

Preparing your manuscript

Ethical considerations

Articles that report on research involving either human or nonhuman animal participants should indicate whether approval was gained by an institutional board. Research involving nonhuman animal participants should also indicate whether guidelines for the care and use of animals were adhered. Articles that report on research in healthcare settings should likewise indicate whether NHS approval or equivalent from an appropriate committee was gained. All research should meet the provisions of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

The first page must contain:

  1. title (without acronyms);
  2. three to five key words;
  3. acknowledgments;
  4. authors’ contributions, e.g., information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in the study - in order to maintain anonymity of authors, required for the double-blind peer review process, only authors' initials or different symbol for each author should be used;
  5. disclosures about potential conflict of interests;
  6. further information (e.g., funding – including grant numbers if applicable, conference presentation ...).

The second page must contain:

  1. Ethical approval and consent to participate;
  2. Consent for publication;
  3. Availability of data and material;

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:

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

A different caption for each figure must be provided at the end of the manuscript, not included in the figure file.
If abbreviations are used in the text, authors are required to write full name+abbreviation in brackets [e.g. Multiple Myeloma (MM)] the first time they are used, then only abbreviations can be written (apart from titles; in this case authors have to write always the full name).
If names of equipment or substances are mentioned in the text, brand, company names and locations (city and state) for equipment and substances should be included in parentheses within the text.

Journal Sections

  • Original Articles (3500 words max, abstract 180 words max, 30 references max, 3/5 tables and/or figures): in general, this kind of publication should be divided into an Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions and References. A maximum of 10 authors is permitted and additional authors should be listed in an ad hoc Appendix.
  • Reviews (4000 words max, abstract 250 words max, minimum 40 references, 3/5 tables and/or figures): they should be introduced by a general summary of content in the form of an Abstract. Following a short introduction, putting the study into context and defining the aim, reviews will concentrate on the most recent developments in the field. A review should clearly describe the search strategy followed (key words, inclusion, exclusion criteria, search engines, ...). No particular format is required; headings should be used to designate the major divisions of the paper.
  • Brief Reports (about 2000 words, abstract 150 words max, 20 references max, 3 tables and/or figures): short reports of results from original researches. They should be introduced by a general summary of content in the form of an Abstract. They must provide conclusive findings: preliminary observations or incomplete findings cannot be considered for publication.
  • Case Reports (about 2000 words, abstract 150 words max, 20 references max, 3 tables and/or figures): reports describing observations on clinical cases that can be educational, including adverse effects of drugs or outcomes of a specific treatment. They should be divided into: Abstract, Introduction (optional), Case report(s), Discussion, Conclusions and References.
  • Letters to the Editor (800 words max): these are written on invitation, short essays that express the authors’ viewpoint, may respond to published manuscripts in our journals, or deliver information or news regarding an issue related to the Journal scope. If the letter relates to a published manuscript, the authors of the original manuscript will be given the opportunity to provide a respond. Authors of Letters to the Editor should provide a short title.
  • Book Reviews (no abstract, no references needed): they should be a short critical analysis and evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of a short book which addressed at least one of main topics of the Journal (the authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief of the journal for his/her approval before submitting a Book Review).
  • Perspectives (unstructured abstract 250 words max; text 3500 words max excluding references, figures and tables; max 4 tables and/or figures; max 20 references): they propose a viewpoint on a specific field or discipline, and discuss/describe current advances or future directions

References

References should be prepared strictly according to the Vancouver style and must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first cited in the text (not alphabetical order); they must be identified in the text by Arabic numerals in superscript. References in the main text must always be cited after dots and commas. References to personal communications and unpublished data should be incorporated in the text and not placed under the numbered references [Example: (Wright 2011, unpublished data) or (Wright 2011, personal communication)]. Where available, URLs for the references should be provided directly within the MS-Word document. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their references.
References in the References section must be prepared as follows:

  1. More than three authors, cite 3 authors + et al. If the paper has only 4 authors, cite all authors;
  2. title style: sentence case; please use a capital letter only for the first word of the title;
  3. journal titles mentioned in the References list should be abbreviated according to the following websites:
    1. ISI Journal Abbreviations Index (http://library.caltech.edu/reference/abbreviations/);
    2. Biological Journals and Abbreviations (https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/bioscience-journal-abbreviations);
    3. Medline List of Journal Titles (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/serfile_addedinfo.html).
  4. put year after the journal name;
  5. never put month and day in the last part of the references;
  6. cite only the volume (not the issue in brackets);
  7. pages have to be abbreviated, e.g., 351-8.

To ensure the correct citation format, please check your references in the PubMed database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed).

Examples:

Standard journal article
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med 2002;347:284-7.

Proceedings
Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza's computational effort statistic for genetic programming. In: Foster JA, Lutton E, Miller J, Ryan C, Tettamanzi AG, eds. Genetic programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Genetic Programming, 2002 Apr 3-5, Kinsdale, Ireland. Berlin: Springer; 2002. pp 182-91.

Article with organization as author
Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. Hypertension, insulin, and proinsulin in participants with impaired glucose tolerance. Hypertension 2002;40:679-86.

Books
Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
Bjørn Lomborg, ed. RethinkHIV - Smarter ways to invest in ending HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2012.
Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, eds. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 2002. pp 93-113.


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 Jimenez AR et al., Monaldi Arch Chest Dis 2013;88:891; with permission.' The editorial office of Mental Wellness needs to receive a copy of the written permission before proceeding with publication.

Manuscript style and content

Authors are advised that publication in Mental Wellness requires references, symbols and abbreviations to be in line with the manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition. To support the preparation of articles for submission in Mental Wellness, authors are encouraged to review the American Psychological Association Guide for New Authors. Authors should pay particular attention to the readability of articles, in particular the Methods and Results sections of Research Articles and Short Communications.

Peer-review policy
All submissions to Mental Wellness are first checked for completeness (criteria for desk reject are available in the Guide for Authors) before being sent to an Editor, who decides whether they are suitable for peer review. If an Editor is on the author list or has a competing interest in a particular manuscript, another member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to oversee peer review. When making a decision, Editors will consider the peer-reviewed reports, but they will not be bound by the opinions or recommendations contained in them. A single peer reviewer's or the Editor's concern may result in the manuscript being rejected. Peer review reports are sent to authors along with the editorial decision on their manuscript.

Please see the About the Journal page for more information.

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: i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, and to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 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 web site.

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 guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.