Submissions

Online Submissions

Already have a Username/Password for Canadian Journal of Public Health?
Go to Login

Need a Username/Password?
Go to Registration

Registration and login are required to submit items online and to check the status of current submissions.

Author Guidelines

The Canadian Journal of Public Health (CJPH) publishes peer-reviewed original articles, reviews and correspondence on all aspects of public health and preventive medicine. CJPH is a recognized vehicle for timely, high-quality, relevant research and commentary for the community of researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners to support knowledge transfer, understanding of complex public health problems, and inform decisions to promote the public’s health.

Manuscripts will be considered for publication with the understanding that the work has not already been reported in a published paper or described in a paper submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere in print or in electronic media. This does not preclude consideration of a complete report that follows publication of a preliminary report, such as an abstract. Nor does it preclude consideration of a paper that has been presented at a scientific meeting if not published in full in meeting proceedings or similar publications. Circumstances in which there has been any other form of public disclosure of unpublished data must be declared in the “Comments for the Editor” section in Step #1 of the online submission process and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

When submitting a munuscript for consideration, please state clearly the dates of the study in the "Comments for the Editor" section in Step #1 of the online submissions process.

To build capacity in public health, CJPH supports student reviews under the supervision of a research peer (see Editor’s Page on page 5 of the January/February 2007 issue of the journal available online at journal.cpha.ca/index.php/cjph/article/view/803/803). Not all manuscripts are used for student review. However, specify in the “Comments for the Editor” section in Step #1 of the online submission process if you do not wish to have your manuscript made available for student review under supervision.

All original contributions are reviewed by the editor and sent to two or more external reviewers as part of a double-blind peer review process (authors and reviewers are anonymous). The editor reserves the right to make editorial changes in all matter published in the Journal and cannot enter into correspondence about papers not accepted for publication.

Our style requirements follow those of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), entitled “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” (hereafter referred to as “Uniform Requirements”). These can be found at www.icmje.org.

COPYRIGHT TRANSFER

In consideration of expenses of reviewing, editing, publishing, and distributing your manuscript (including text, tables, and figures), author(s) will be asked to assign their copyright in and to the article to the Canadian Public Health Association. This means that the authors may not, without the Canadian Public Health Association’s prior written permission:

post the article on any website
translate or authorize a translation of the article
copy or otherwise reproduce the article, in any format, beyond what is permitted under Canadian copyright law, or authorize others to do so
copy or otherwise reproduce portions of the article, including tables and figures, beyond what is permitted under Canadian copyright law, or authorize others to do so

If you wish to do any of these things, please contact our Permissions Department at cjph@cpha.ca. This allows us to track the use and distribution of your article. The Canadian Public Health Association encourages use for non-commercial, educational purposes, and will not unreasonably deny any such permission or request.

You retain your moral rights in and to the article. This means that the Canadian Public Health Association may not assert its copyright in such a way that would negatively reflect on your reputation or your right to be associated with the article.

SUBMISSIONS

Please indicate type when submitting your manuscript.

Quantitative Research

Maximum word length: 2,000 words, not including abstract, tables/figures, references
Structured abstract: 250 words, with the headings Objectives, Method(s), Results and Conclusion
Maximum number of references: 30

Qualitative Research

Maximum word length: 2,500 words, not including abstract, tables/figures, references
Structured abstract: 250 words, with the headings Objectives, Method(s), Results and Conclusion
Maximum number of references: 30

Commentary

Maximum word length: 1,500 words, not including abstract, tables/figures, references
Text abstract: 200 words
Maximum number of references: 15
CJPH Commentaries have a reduced number of tables and figures (up to a total combined of 3). Commentaries take a “position” and then bring forth arguments or evidence to support that position. The text summary gives the reader an idea what the commentary is about.

Public Health Intervention

See published article by Dr. Patricia Huston, former CJPH Scientific Editor, describing this type of CJPH submission, at journal.cpha.ca/index.php/cjph/article/view/432/432)
Maximum word length: 2,000 words, not including abstract, tables/figures, references
Structured abstract: 250 words, with headings Objectives, Participants, Setting, Intervention, Outcomes, Conclusion
Maximum number of references: 30

Systematic Review

Maximum word length: 2,500 words, not including abstract, tables/figures, references
Structured abstract: 250 words, with the headings Objectives, Method(s), Synthesis, and Conclusion
Maximum number of references: 50, with links if required to lists of retrieved and excluded articles

Letter to the Editor

Maximum word length: 500 words
No abstract
Maximum number of references: 10

Note that CJPH no longer publishes Brief Reports.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Before preparing a manuscript for submission, it is advisable to refer to the reviewer criteria for original research articles, systematic reviews, commentaries, or public health interventions. These can be found at: www.cpha.ca/en/cjph/reviewers.aspx

When you are ready to submit your manuscript, go to http://journal.cpha.ca. and either Register as a CJPH author or login with your user name and password.

In the right-hand navigation menu, click on "New Submission" to begin the step-by-step process of submitting your manuscript for consideration by the CJPH. At any point in the submission process, you can click on "Journal Help" in the right-hand navigation menu for assistance.

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer review for submissions to the CJPH, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. Please ensure that all identifying information is removed (i.e., authors/affiliations, header/footer, properties, and acknowledgements section). Please check to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text.
With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under "File" in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with "File" on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or "Options" if using a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from the file properties on save > Save.
With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under "File" on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.

The manuscript must be double-spaced and pages must be numbered consecutively starting at “1” (i.e., not “0” for title page), including abstract, abstract translation (if provided), text, references, tables and figures.

AUTHORSHIP

Consistent with the ICMJE policy on authorship, each author should be able to take public responsibility for the content and have made substantial contributions to three (3) areas:

conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
final approval of the version to be published.

A letter signed by all authors, stating that all agree to publication, will be requested if your manuscript is accepted for publication. Scanned signatures are acceptable.

Those who do not meet the above criteria for authorship – such as a person who provided technical help, writing assistance, a department chair who provided general financial and material support or a statistician not involved in study design but who assisted with revisions and inferences – should be acknowledged. Because readers may infer that acknowledgement means endorsement of the data and conclusions, all persons acknowledged must provide the authors with written permission. Copies of these permissions must be submitted to the CJPH when the manuscript has been accepted for publication.

Group or Corporate Authorship

Group or corporate authorship is acceptable as long as one member takes responsibility for the entire content of the manuscript. The authors must provide the name of this individual, and the information will be added in a footnote to the title page, i.e., «Dr./Mr./Ms./Prof. X takes responsibility for the work reported and the content of the manuscript.»

In addition, all members of the group must meet the criteria for authorship of the manuscript.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from negligible to great potential for influencing judgement. Not all relationships represent true conflict of interest.

On the other hand, the potential for conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgement. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion. All participants in the peer-review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Disclosure of such relationships is also important in connection with editorials and review articles, because it can be more difficult to detect bias in these types of publications than in reports of original research. Editors may use information disclosed in conflict-of-interest and financial-interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions.

TITLE PAGE

The title page of the blinded version of the submission should include:

type of submission;
title;
short running title of no more than 40 characters (count letters and spaces).

Once an article has been accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be asked to provide a fully-identified version of the manuscript. The title page of the fully-identified manuscript should include in addition to the above:

first name, middle initial, and last name of each author, with highest academic degree(s), and the name(s) of department(s) and institutions to which the work should be attributed;
name, address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence and reprint requests.

The title page of the fully-identified manuscript should also carry any necessary disclaimers or acknowledgements of sources of support.

AUTHOR AFFILIATIONS

The affiliation of each author is that which was the case at the time of submission of the manuscript. Current address of the corresponding author at the time of publication should also be indicated on the published manuscript. The corresponding author should normally be the first author, but can be another author depending on the ownership of the work and of the data.

ABSTRACT

Refer to previous section, “Types of submissions”. At the end of the abstract, include a list of three to six (3-6) MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) key words and subjects for indexing purposes. See: www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html for a list of MeSH terms. (Note: MeSH vocabulary suggestions can be submitted on this page.)

A translation of the abstract is required once the article has been accepted for publication, and this can be requested from the CJPH translation service at a cost of 27¢/English word (plus 5% GST or 13% HST, where applicable). Authors can submit their own translations after their papers are accepted, however these will be subject to quality check and there may be a retranslation cost charged to the author as necessary.

TEXT

In order to publish as many articles as possible within a Journal that comes out 6 times per year, it is CJPH policy that research articles (quantitative, qualitative, public health intervention, systematic review) should be accompanied by no more than 5 tables, or 5 figures, or some combination of both adding to 5; and that commentary submissions should be accompanied by no more than 3 tables, or 3 figures, or some combination of both adding to 3.

Divide the text into sections headed Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion (or other appropriate subheadings – see info above re different submissions).

Do not repeat in the text a lengthy description of material that is summarized in tables and/or figures; emphasize or summarize only important observations. Avoid a lengthy “review of literature”, which may be deleted.

Approval should be obtained from a recognized ethics approval board for studies involving human subjects. This approval should be indicated in the Methods section of the article.

Further information on units of measurement and acceptable abbreviations can be found in the Uniform Requirements.

REFERENCES

Number references consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text, tables and figures. Identify references in the text by Arabic numerals in parentheses following a punctuation mark, or at the end of a sentence. For repeated (identical) references, reuse the original reference number.

The style for references is based on the Uniform Requirements. See examples that follow this section. “Personal communications” may not be used as references, but rather should be noted in brackets in the text, with the title of the person and the date of the communication. All persons must have given written permission to the authors to be identified in a personal communication. Authors are responsible for verifying references against the original documents.

For references citing online publications, please provide the internet address and the date that it was accessed.

Examples of References in CJPH Style:

Journal Article
Marshall DA, McGeer A, Gough J, Grootendorst P, Buitendyk M, Simonyi S, et al. Impact of antibiotic administrative restrictions on trends in antibiotic resistance. Can J Public Health 2006;97(2):126-31.

Book
Lucas K, Lloyd B. Health Promotion: Evidence and Experience. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Ltd., 2005;24-43.

Chapter in Book
King PA. Justice beyond Belmont. In: Childress JF, Meslin EM, Shapiro HT (Eds.), Belmont Revisited: Ethical Principles for Research with Human Subjects. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005.

Agency Publication
F/P/T Advisory Committee on Population Health and Health Security (ACPHHS). National Immunization Strategy: Final Report 2003. Ottawa, ON: Public Health Agency of Canada, 2003.

Dissertation or Thesis
Oake A. Validation and reliability testing of a breakfast survey instrument for young elementary schoolchildren [thesis]. St. John’s, NF: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1991.

Internet Resource
Wayland S. Unsettled: Legal and Policy Barriers for Newcomers to Canada. A joint initiative of Community Foundations of Canada and the Law Commission of Canada, 2006. Available at: http://www.cfc-fcc.ca (Accessed January 7, 2008).

Magazine Article
Caragata W. Up in Smoke. Maclean’s1995, Oct 2 pp34-35.

Newspaper Article
Kirkey S. Neighbourhoods with lots of fast-food outlets record more heart attacks and deaths: study. The Ottawa Citizen2005 May 12;Sect.A:5(col.1-4).

TABLES

Tables should be double-spaced and numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals, and included in the original blinded Word document. Supply a brief title for each table.

Example of style:

Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of Survey Participants

Give each column and row a brief or abbreviated heading. Do not use vertical or horizontal rules in the body of tables. Cite each table in the text in consecutive numerical order.

Place explanatory matter in footnotes, using the following symbols, in this sequence:

*, †, ‡, §, ||, ¶, **, ††, ‡‡, etc.

FIGURES

In the original submission for blinded peer review, figures should be included within the submitted manuscript.

In the final submission, after the manuscript has been accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be asked to upload the figures as high resolution (at least 300 dpi) files in .eps, .tif, or .pdf format.

Number figures consecutively in Arabic numerals and supply a brief title for each.

Example of style:

Figure 1. Distribution of the total number of measles cases in Ontario, Canada between January 2004 and December 2005

Place explanatory matter in footnotes, using the following symbols, in this sequence:

*, †, ‡, §, ||, ¶, **, ††, ‡‡, etc.

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.

The author(s) certify that they and this work meet the following criteria:
- Each author should be able to take public responsibility for the content and have made substantial contributions to three (3) areas:
1. 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; and
3. final approval of the version to be published.
- No prior publication of this manuscript or one with substantially similar content, except as described in the “Comments for the Editor” section in Step #1 of the online submission process.
- Willingness to provide data on which the manuscript is based for examination by the editors or their assignees.
- Each author represents and warrants that the article is original and does not infringe any copyright or violate any other right of any third parties, and that the article has not been published elsewhere, has not been submitted for publication and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in any form except as expressly provided herein.
The author(s) hereby certify the following:
- All persons who have made substantial contributions to the work reported in this manuscript (e.g., data collection, writing, or editing) but who do not fulfill the authorship criteria are named in the acknowledgement section of the manuscript.
- Author has obtained (and will keep on file) all relevant consents for previously copyrighted photos/images (incl. photo subjects’ consents) that will appear in the work. Copies must be submitted to CPHA.
- Absence of an acknowledgement section implies no other persons have made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript.
- All individuals specifically named in the acknowledgement section have provided written permission to be named. Copies of these permissions must be submitted to CPHA, whether electronically or otherwise.
- If human subjects are involved, approval by the institutional review board and the informed consent of participants has been obtained and reported in the methods section of the manuscript.
All author(s) and co-authors certify disclosure of the following:
- All affiliations with or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript (e.g., consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants, or patents received or pending, royalties) are disclosed in the “Comments for the Editor” section in Step #1 of the online submission process.
- All financial and material support for this work is clearly identified in the manuscript acknowledgement section.
The submission file is in Microsoft Word document file format. The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all tables and figures are included within the blinded Word document.
Where available, URLs for the references as well as date of access have been provided.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
Blinded Submission
I have ensured that:
- all identifying information has been removed from the title page
- the Acknowledgements section has been removed
- identifying information has been removed from the Properties of the Word document.
AUTHOR: Click here and follow instructions for Ensuring a Blind Review.
I understand that if my manuscript is accepted for publication, a translation of the abstract will be requested at that time. I can either provide the translation myself or request abstract translation by the CJPH at a cost of $0.27 per word (plus GST or HST, where applicable). Price subject to change without notice.
NOTE: Author-supplied abstract translations will be subject to quality check and retranslation charges may apply.

Copyright Notice

post the article on any website
translate or authorize a translation of the article
copy or otherwise reproduce the article, in any format, beyond what is permitted under Canadian copyright law, or authorize others to do so
copy or otherwise reproduce portions of the article, including tables and figures, beyond what is permitted under Canadian copyright law, or authorize others to do so.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Username
Password
Remember me