As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
The Journal of Social Determinants of Health (SDH) is the official publication of the Social Determinants of Health Research Center affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. This peer-reviewed journal is published quarterly up to 2019 and then as continuous issue since 2020. It contains original contributions and observations of interest to researchers, as well as narrative and systematic reviews, brief report, editorial, letter to editor, policy note, and community case reports.
1. Aim and Scope
The Journal of Social Determinants of Health is a peer-reviewed free of charge scientific journal with the mission to disseminate information, viewpoints, and questions about social determinants of health, public health research, community-based studies, and community oriented medical education. The journal aims to advance the science, technology, ethics, and art of community medicine through research and education worldwide. The scope of the journal is intended to include not only social determinants of health, but related disciplines like health policy, health economics, social sciences, nutrition, health management, health policy, and other basic sciences that contribute to the knowledge and science of public health.
2. Manuscripts
The journal accepts manuscripts for publication as the following types:
Original Articles: The journal accepts papers derived from original research in different fields of study as the scope of the journal allows.
Review Articles: Reviews are accepted for publication in different fields of study as the scope of the journal allows.
Systematic Review Articles: Systematic reviews are accepted for publication in different fields of study as the scope of the journal allows.
Editorial: Editorials are usually written on invitation by the Editor-in-Chief, regarding articles scheduled to appear in the corresponding issue or describing issues of special importance.
Letters: Letters are accepted for publication including those that may wish to comment on articles in previous issues, or those that contain additional considerations worth of notice.
Community Case Reports: Interesting experiences or educational cases of community health are accepted for presentation in the Community Case Report section.
Policy Notes or Appraisal: Appraising current policy and programs in different fields of health.
Community Intervention Technique: New Community Intervention techniques can be arranged to be presented, accompanied by a complete description of the method, outcomes and a discussion.
News: News is written by the editors or selected authors, but any information which may be of interest to researchers of community medicine and public health sciences will be taken into consideration for publication.
Manuscripts should include the following sections:
a) Title Page
The title page should include:
(1) The manuscript type (e.g., original article, community case report, etc.).
(2) The complete manuscript title; and a running title of no more than 40 characters (not counting space).
(3) Authors' full names (listed as first name, middle initial and last name, with the last name underlined), Email and ORCID number of all authors.
(4) Highest academic degrees and affiliations of the authors (as department or research center, school, University name, city, country).
(5) The name of the corresponding author, academic rank or position, complete postal address, fax number, telephone number, and e-mail address.
(6) Authors contribution (as discussed below), Acknowledgement, Funding and financial support, conflict of interest, and informed consent
b) Abstract
The abstract should be no longer than 250 words. Abstracts for original articles should be structured using the following headings: Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusion.
Abstracts for community case reports and challenging cases should be structured as: Background, Case Report, and Conclusion. Abstracts for review articles and community Intervention technique submissions should be unstructured, summarizing the main points of interest. No abstracts are required for editorials, policy notes or appraisal, news and letters.
The use of abbreviations and acronyms in the abstract should be limited. The abstract should be composed to stand alone and convey the message independent of the main text.
A number of 3-6 keywords should be included after the abstract, preferably using MeSH terms for biomedical terminology.
c) Main Text
Original articles should be structured under the following main headings: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. The manuscript should clearly state the importance of the problem, current knowledge bearing on the question, why this work adds to what is currently known and the objectives or hypothesis in the Introduction section. Methods must include study design, setting, subjects/patients/participants with inclusion and exclusion criteria, details of interventions, if any, the exposure factor and how it was measured and the primary outcome and the secondary outcomes if any. It must also give details on data management and analysis. The result section should provide data with confidence interval and statistical significance, whenever appropriate. Conclusions must be consistent with the results and must relate to the research question addressed. It should include summary of main results, related literature, strengths and limitations, and implications. Internationally accepted check lists/guidelines should be followed like the CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, STRAND, STREGA etc. (See http://www.equator-network.org).
Community Case reports and challenging cases should include Introduction, Case Report, and Discussion sections.
Community Intervention techniques should be presented with Introduction, Technique, Results (to report the outcomes) and Discussion headings.
Review articles are subject to higher versatility, and may include headings as required, but generally include Introduction, Methods, Results and Conclusion headings as well as headings the author(s) consider necessary.
Acknowledgements may be added under a separate heading at the end of the main text.
These main headings should be emphasized in bold face type. Additional subheadings can be used in each section, accentuated throughout the text with italic face type.
d) References
Cite only published work as references. Personal communication and unpublished data should be incorporated into the text without any reference number. Cite references within the text with numbers in parenthesis. Assign numbers in the order that references are first cited within the text. In the reference section, list the cited works in numerical order. Abbreviate journal names according to Index Medicus. For references with more than 6 authors, cite the names of the first 6 followed by et al.
Using Vancouver method, reference to journal articles should include: authors, title, journal name (as abbreviated in Index Medicus), year, volume number and pages. References to books should include: authors of chapter and chapter title (if any), authors or editors of book, title of book, edition, city of publication, publishing company, year, and page numbers (for limited reference to chapters within books). The following examples demonstrate correct reference style:
· Journal Article: Gravel JS, Roberts JE, Roush J, Grose J, Besing J, Burchinal M, et al.
Early otitis media with effusion, hearing loss, and auditory processes at school age. Ear
Hear. 2006;27(4):353-68.
· Book Chapter: Thompson J. Proliferative vitreoretinopathy. In: Ryan SJ (ed). Retina. 3rd
ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2001: 1309-1349.
· Book: Bradley WJ. Neurology in clinical practice. 4th ed. Philadelphia: Butterworth-
Heinemann; 2004.
· Conference, Congress or Seminar: Blumenkranz MS. New developments in diabetic
vitrectomy. The Vitreoretinal Frontier, Dallas, Texas, USA. November 6-7, 1992.
· Website: Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health, R.O.C. (Taiwan). Available
from: www.bhp.doh.gov.tw. Accessed January 25, 2010.
3. Tables and Figures
Tables and figures should be labeled sequentially, numbered and cited in the text. They should be referred to specifically in the text of the paper but should not be embedded within the text. Avoid tables with one row that could be included in the text. Tables should not be more than six.
a) Tables
Each table should be double-spaced on a separate sheet at the end of the manuscript and numbered consecutively in the order of first citation in the text. Use the word processor to create the tables and avoid submitting them separately as picture files. Titles and footnotes should appear above and below the tables, respectively, on the corresponding pages. The footnotes within the table must be indicated with superscript lowercase letters.
b) Figures
Figures can include diagrams created by the word processor (managed as the tables, appearing at the end of the manuscript with appropriate titles and numbering), or preferably, can be submitted as images in separate files. Images must be submitted in .jpg format with sufficient quality and a resolution of at least 300 dpi. The file names must be numbered corresponding to their appearance in the text and the legends should be included on a separate page of the manuscript file.
4. Style
All manuscripts should be written in clear and grammatically correct English. Manuscripts must be submitted in .doc or .rtf formats, preferably using Microsoft Word as the word processor. A single 12-point Times New Roman font should be used for the whole manuscript. The text should be double spaced in a single column. Do not break or hyphenate words at the end of the line. Keep formatting minimal and use the word processor's options only to justify or center text, or present text as bold, italics, underline, subscripts, and superscripts. Begin each of the following on a new page: Title Page, Abstract and Keywords, Main Text, References, Tables and Figure legends.
Quantitative data may be reported in the units used in the original measurement, but the equivalent in SI units must be mentioned.
Abbreviations and Symbols: Use standard abbreviations and symbols and avoid creating new abbreviations. Avoid abbreviations in the title and unusual abbreviations in the abstract. Use an abbreviation only if the term is repeated several times in the paper. Write out the full term the first time it appears, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter, employ the abbreviation alone. Standard units of measurement can be abbreviated without explanation (e.g., mmHg, etc.).
5. Cover Letter
The authors must warrant that they have participated sufficiently in the work described to justify authorship and that the article is original, not under consideration for publication by another journal and has not been published previously. The authors must accept full responsibility for the conduct of the study, state that they had access to the data and jointly controlled and agreed on the decision to publish.
The authors should also state if the manuscript has been presented elsewhere, in whole or in abstract form as a conference presentation or published material. If no statement is made in this regard, it will be presumed that the authors deny previous publication of the material. In the case of the use of copyright-protected material the responsibility of obtaining permission is that of the authors.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
Authors are asked to disclose any financial relations and conflicts of interest they may have with a manufacturer or distributor whose product is part of the submitted manuscript. Such interests do not disqualify a paper from consideration and are not disclosed to reviewers. A statement to this effect should be included in the cover letter.
6. Ethical Considerations
An appropriate institutional review board approval is required for experimental investigations of human or animal subjects. Those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees (institutional or regional) should follow the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. For investigations of human subjects, the state in the Methods section the manner in which informed consent was obtained from the subjects.
7. Submission
Submission can be pursued electronically only through the website.
8. Peer Review Process
All submissions are considered to be confidential and are peer-reviewed by at least 2 anonymous experts in the related field selected by the editors. Peer review policy is double blind. The corresponding author is notified, as soon as possible, of the editor's decision to accept or reject the manuscript, or whether it requires modifications.
Each accepted manuscript is edited so that its message is clear and conforms to the style of the journal. The core of the contents is edited to the standards of the journal. Before publication, authors receive page proofs for minor corrections.
9. Submission Preparation Checklist
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
Dear Authors Please check the following before final submission:
10. Copyright Notice
Published papers are subject to open access and may be copied and distributed for non-profit purposes.
The authors transfer all copyright ownership of the manuscript to the Social Determinants of health Research Center in the event the work is published. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
11. Authorship criteria
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. Authorship credit should be based only on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2 and 3 must all be met. Acquisition of funding, the collection of data or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship. All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgements section.
Author contributions samples.
1. Hacking, McBride, O’Carroll and Young developed the study concept and design. Beradda, Borthwick, Callander, Jahr, McBride and Young acquired the data. McBride and O’Carroll analysed and interpreted the data. McBride wrote the article. Beradda, Borthwick, Callander, Hacking, Jahr, McBride, O’Carroll and Young contributed to the discussion. Beradda, Borthwick, Callander and Jahr provided administrative support.
2. Research idea and study design: VYG, SJG, RKS; data analysis and interpretation: VYG, SB, UE, SJG, RKS; statistical analysis: VYG; supervision or mentorship: SJG, RKS. Each author contributed important intellectual content during manuscript drafting or revision and accepts accountability for the overall work by ensuring that questions pertaining to the accuracy or integrity of any portion of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. SJG takes responsibility that this study has been reported honestly, accurately, and transparently; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been explained.
12. Proofs and reprints
The corresponding author of the accepted article shall be supplied with the proof. Corrections on the proof should be restricted to errors only and no substantial additions/deletions should be made. No addition or deletion in the names of the authors is permissible at this stage.
13. Publication ethics and malpractice statements
SDH conforms to the international regulations against scientific misconduct including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and etc.
14. Plagiarism policy
The editorial team/reviewers of “SDH” will check the submitted manuscripts for plagiarism before publication using available plagiarism detection software such as iThenticate. If suspected plagiarism is found in an article either before (by reviewers or editorial team) or after (by readers) publication, SDH will act according to COPE’s code of conduct and flowcharts.
15. Archiving
This journal utilizes the CLOCKSS and LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.
16. Complaint’s procedure
This procedure applies to complaints about the policies, procedures, or actions of The BMJ's editorial staff. We welcome complaints as they provide an opportunity and a spur for improvement, and we aim to respond quickly, courteously, and constructively. The procedure outlined below aims to be fair to those making complaints and those complained about.
Definition
Our definition of a complaint is as follows:
The complainant defines his or her expression of unhappiness as a complaint;
AND
We infer that the complainant is not simply disagreeing with a decision we have made or something we have published (which happens every day) but thinks that there has been a failure of process - for example, a long delay or a rude response - or a severe misjudgment.
The complaint must be about something that is within the responsibility of The SDH's editorial department - content or process.
How to make a complaint
The best way to reach us is by email. Complaints should ideally be made to the person the complainant is already in contact with over the matter being complained about. If that is not appropriate, please email sdhj@sbmu.ac.ir.
Whenever possible, complaints will be dealt with by the relevant member of the editorial staff. If that person cannot deal with the complaint, he or she will refer it to a section editor or the executive editor.
Complaints that are not under the control of The SDH's editorial staff will be sent to the relevant heads of department.
All complaints will be acknowledged within five working days.
If possible, a full response will be made within four weeks. If this is not possible an interim response will be given within four weeks. Further interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.
If the complainant is not happy with the resolution, he or she can ask for the complaint to be escalated to the individual's manager or to the executive editor.
If the complainant remains unhappy, complaints should be escalated to the editor, whose decision is final.
Published papers are subject to open access and may be copied and distributed for non-profit purposes.
The authors transfer all copyright ownership of the manuscript to the Social Determinants journal in the event the work is published. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.