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  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
  • If submitting a Case Report or Clinical Image, the properly accomplished Affidavit of Consent to Publish is available for uploading as a supplementary file (in Step 4 of the five-step submission process).

  • If submitting a Research Report, the Ethics Review Committee/Institutional Review Committee Certificate of Approval is available for uploading as a supplementary file (in Step 4 of the five-step submission process).

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All article submissions, including commissioned ones, should be sent using the submission feature of the SPMC Journal of Health Care Services website (http://spmcpapers.com/index.php/jhcs/user/register). The journal does not collect article submission charges or article processing charges.


A. Case Reports


Authors should follow the CARE Checklist in preparing the manuscript for a case report.

Case report submissions should contain the following sections:

1. Title: should state the final diagnosis
2. Authors and affiliations
3. Abstract: up to 250 words (refer to the CARE Checklist for specific contents)
4. Keywords: 2 to 5 words or phrases that do not repeat the title
5. Introduction
6. Clinical features
7. Diagnostic approaches
8. Therapeutic approaches
9. Outcomes
10. Discussion
11. References
12. Acknowledgments

Please use 2000 words or less for the main text of the report (excluding title, abstract, tables, figures, references, and acknowledgments).

Every attempt should be made in order to obtain an affidavit of consent to publish the article or photos that describe a patient. The affidavit should be duly executed by the patient or by the patient's legally acceptable representative. You may use the SPMC template provided by the Hospital Research and Publication Office or the SPMC Legal Office for this purpose. Please submit a copy of the affidavit along with the case report and/or photos of the patient.

B. Research reports


Authors should follow the appropriate EQUATOR Network checklist for reporting research results. Listed below are the common study types and their corresponding checklists. Listed in the table below are the common study types and their corresponding checklists. Please visit the EQUATOR Network website for a complete list of the reporting guidelines and checklists.

Checklists and diagrams
1. Randomized controlled trials
     CONSORT Checklist
     CONSORT Flow Diagram
2. Observational studies (cohort, case-control, cross-sectional)
     STROBE Checklist
3. Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
     PRISMA Checklist
     PRISMA Flow Diagram
4. Diagnostic accuracy studies
     STARD Checklist
     STARD Flow Diagram
5. Prediction model for individual prognosis or diagnosis
     TRIPOD
6. Qualitative studies
     COREQ
7. Economic evaluation
     CHEERS


Research report submissions should contain the following sections: 

1. Title
2. Authors and affiliations
3. Abstract: up to 250 words; should (generally) include, as applicable, the sub-headings: Background, Objectives, Design, Setting, Participants, Interventions (if any), Main Outcome Measures, Main Results, and Conclusion; for sub-headings of abstracts of specific study types, please refer to the reporting checklists
4. Keywords: 2 to 5 words or phrases that do not repeat the title
5. Introduction
6. Methods
7. Results
8. Discussion
9. References
10. Acknowledgments
Please use 5000 words or less for the main text of the report (excluding title, abstract, tables, figures, references, and acknowledgments).

Ethics approval


The conduct of research involving humans must have been approved or favorably endorsed by an Institutional Review Board or Ethics Review Committee. Please submit a copy of the Certificate of Approval or Certificate of Favorable Endorsement to conduct the research along with the research report.

Data availability


SPMC Journal of Health Care Services requires, as a condition for publication, that data supporting the results in the paper should be archived in an appropriate public archive. SPMC Journal of Health Care Services recommends the Harvard Dataverse, which is free and open to all researchers worldwide to share, cite, reuse and archive research data.

1. Definition of data that must be shared
A minimal dataset can be defined to consist of the dataset used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript with related metadata and methods, and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. Include sufficient information for a researcher to understand data, and any citations to data from which the replication set is derived. Core descriptive data, methods, and study results should be included within the main paper, regardless of data deposition. Authors who have datasets too large for sharing via repositories or uploaded files should contact SPMC Journal of Health Care Services for advice. (Adapted from PLOS™ Data Policy)

2. Guidance on sharing datasets that derive from work involving human participants
SPMC Journal of Health Care Services recognizes that there are cases where for reasons of privacy, national security and commercial confidentiality the full data cannot be made openly available. In such cases researchers should share their data analysis under the least restrictive terms consistent with legal requirements, and abiding by the research ethics and guidelines of their community. This should include opening up non-sensitive data, summary data, metadata and code; and facilitating access if the owner of the original data grants other researchers permission to use the data. (Adapted from OKF™s Open Economics Principles)

3. Guidance on Data Citation
If your research data is deposited at the same time as your manuscript using OJS™ article submission form then a Data Citation will automatically be generated by the Harvard Dataverse. However, if your research data is already in a repository then here is the suggested Data Citation format to include when you submit your manuscript:

Author(s), Year, Dataset Title, Global Persistent Identifier, Data Repository or Archive, version and subset.

or more information on Data Citation best practices please review Force11™s Data Citation Principles.

C. Book reviews


Reviews of books relevant in health care services and the health professions may be submitted for publication. Book review submissions should contain the following:
Book details: title and author/s or editor/s of the book, ISBN
Author of the book review and affiliation 
General contents and scope of the book
Significance of the book to its readers
(Optional) comparison of the book with other books within the same area or topic
References
Acknowledgments

Please use 2000 words or less for the main text of the report (excluding title and references, and acknowledgments).

D. Clinical images


Images of unreported, unexpected or unusual physical examination, intra-operative, histopathologic, radiographic or other medical imaging findings may be submitted for publication. Up to four photos can be used to describe a condition.

Clinical images submissions should contain the following sections:

Title: should state the final diagnosis
Authors and affiliations
Brief clinical description, which should include:

     Patient's age and sex
     Chief complaint, brief history, physical examination findings
     Relevant diagnostics
     Final diagnosis
     Relevant therapeutics
     Outcomes
     Description of the individual photos
     Acknowledgments

Please use 300 words or less for the brief clinical description.

Every attempt should be made in order to obtain an affidavit of consent to publish the article and photos that describe a patient. The affidavit should be duly executed by the patient or by the patient's legally acceptable representative. You may use the SPMC template provided by the Hospital Research and Publication Office or the SPMC Legal Office for this purpose. Please submit a copy of the affidavit along with the photos and brief clinical description of the patient.

E. Editorials


These articles are usually commissioned, but we welcome submitted editorials on topics relevant to health care services. Please use 1000 words or less for the main text of the article (excluding title, and references). In the submission, include a list of authors and their affiliations, statements of competing interests and, as appropriate, an acknowledgment section.

F. Perspectives


These are brief essays based on personal experiences with health care services. We welcome submissions from different stakeholders of health care. Please use 1000 words or less for the main text of the article (excluding title and references). In the submission, include a list of authors and their affiliations, statements of competing interests and, as appropriate, an acknowledgment section.

Submissions must not have been published in the past or concurrently submitted to other publications.

All publications will have a Creative Commons BY-NC license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) by default. This means that you will retain the ownership of the copyright of your work. The license automatically gives permission to others to download, print, make derivatives of, archive and distribute your work noncommercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to you as the author of the work. This also ensures that your work will be available to a wide readership. After publication with us, you are still free to submit your work to academic societies for presentation in conventions or to other publishers for possible publication.

We can NOT guarantee the eventual publication of your submitted paper. We will invite issue editors, who will manage the preparations for publication. All submitted and commissioned articles will go through our double-blind peer review process. Invited peer reviewers, who are experts in their own fields and whose expertise match the topics of the submitted papers, will assess the submissions and make content suggestions in order to ensure the quality of the articles considered for publication. We will run your submission through Turnitin OriginalityCheck™ to detect plagiarism. Based on the results of the plagiarism scan, editors will decide whether you will be required to make further revisions in your submitted article. Extremely high similarity index in plagiarism scanning may be grounds for rejection of submission. The editors will decide to publish a submission or not based on their own assessment of the submission and on the recommendations of the peer reviewers. The editors reserve the right to withhold submissions for publication.   

Once your submission is accepted for publication, it will go through copyediting and proofreading. The editors reserve the right to edit submissions for accuracy, grammar, clarity, style, punctuation, format and length. Prior to publication, we will send you the copyedited article for your comments and provide you a softcopy of the galley proof of your article for proofreading.

For any concerns regarding submissions, email us at info@spmcpapers.com.

For authors who are new to this site, please also refer to the Public Knowledge Project - Open Journal Systems User Guide for Authors.

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Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:



  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work for non-commercial purposes with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional, non-commercial contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

  3. Authors grant the journal permission to rewrite, edit, modify, store and/or publish the submission in any medium or format a version or abstract forming part thereof, all associated supplemental materials, and subsequent errata, if necessary, in a publicly available publication or database.

  4. Authors warrant that the submission is original with the authors and does not infringe or transfer any copyright or violate any other right of any third parties.