Aims & Scope

The Nordic Journal of Psychiatry (NJP) is a non-profit journal which has been published since 1946. It is the official organ of the Nordic Psychiatric Associations and serving the North European Zone of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA). Today it has a circulation of about 6,000 copies and reaches all psychiatrists including child and youth psychiatrists in the Nordic and the Baltic countries, as well as many other subscribers worldwide. Original scientific reports, review articles and articles describing the clinical practice of psychiatry in a single country or a single area will be of interest for publication in NJP.

Edtorial Policy

All contributions are accepted upon the understanding that the work has been performed in accordance with national laws and international ethical guidelines.

All manuscripts are assessed by qualified referees. Single-blinded peer-review process is applied. The author must warrant that whenever appropriate, any patient or participant mentioned in the text or shown in a photograph has given informed consent to publication of such material. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article. If you wish to publish a supplement, please contact your National Editor or the Editor-in-Chief.

Manuscripts 

Manuscripts should be arranged according to rules stated in the “Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals”; see also: Ann Intern Med 1997;126:36-47, or JAMA 1997;277:927-34. The full document is available at www.icmje.org. The journal specific requirements are detailed below.

Manuscript files should be formatted with Times New Roman in size 12 points, double-space text throughout the whole file, using word processing software. All manuscript files needs to be editable, we cannot process pdf files with text for publication. Original articles should not be more than 3,500 words long, tables and references excluded.

Subheadings in the text should be limited to three levels and recognised with different formatting for each level. Please also mark the approximate position of figures and tables within the text.

Language - manuscripts should be written in clear and concise scientific English. British spelling is recommended to be used throughout. It is the responsibility of authors to ensure the quality of the language for submitted articles. Colloquial English may not be sufficient and is not necessarily the same as scientific English, for which professional services may be needed (see for example www.internationalscienceediting.com and www.writescienceright.com). A brief language overview will be carried out for articles accepted for publication, but no major changes are accepted at that stage (see also note about author proofs below).

Abbreviations and symbols used must be standard and SI units used throughout. Acronyms should be used sparingly and must be fully explained when first used. Whenever possible, drugs should be given their approved generic name. When a proprietary (brand) name must be used, it should begin with a capital letter and the manufacturer's address details should be given. Statistical analyses must explain the methods used.

Electronic Submission

All manuscripts should be submitted through the online service Manuscript Central. Please direct your browser to the following address: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/spsc.

For first time users, start by creating a new account, and then follow the instructions provided. For existing users, log into your account and then enter your 'Author Center'. For additional assistance, please contact the Editorial Office via e-mail at: sofie.wennstrom@informa.com

1. Title page - should include: a) Full title (avoid abbreviations or proprietary names in the title) b) Running title (for page heading, max 50 characters), c) All contributing authors with full first and last name, title and affiliation, d) Corresponding author details (to whom all decision letters and page proofs will be communicated, as well as to be noted in the printed manuscript). The title page should be included in the main manuscript file.

2. Abstract - A structured abstract of no more than 250 words is required for main research articles, subdivided into the following sequential sections: Background, Aims, Methods, Results and Conclusions. Please also include a short description of the clinical implications of the article. The abstract is required to be included both in the designated field in the submission database but also in the main manuscript file.

3. Keywords - Include in the manuscript file 3-5 keywords representative of your article. These may be used for indexing services and other search facilities for published material.

4. Main text - The text for articles should be structured with the following headings: Background, Aims, Material and Methods (including statistics, ethics and consent issues), Results and Conclusion. The Introduction should assume that the reader is knowledgeable in the field and should, therefore, be as brief as possible. In the Materials and methods section, methods that have been published in detail elsewhere should not be described in detail.

5. References - numbered as they appear in the text in Vancouver style (see details below).

8. Tables - should be included in the main document and created with the table tool in the word processing software. The number of tables and figures should be kept to a minimum. There should preferably not be repetition/overlap of information given in tables/figures/text.

9. Figures - should be submitted as separate files in the best possible quality. Please note that you should name the figure files with the same number as they are noted in the text. Read more about accepted formats and quality requirements below.

A Cover Letter should be provided as a separate file, where authors vouch for the accuracy of the manuscript according to the guidelines given here. This is also the place where authors may inform the Editors of any special circumstances or details regarding the submitted material, including prior publication of the material/parts of the material in a minority language.

Tables

Tables can be included in the main manuscipt file if created with the 'Draw Table' tool in the word processing software, and included on separate sheets, with a title or caption. They should be numbered with arabic numerals and have a short descriptive heading. Place explanatory matter in footnotes, using the following symbols in this sequence: *, $, %, §, _, '. Please use as few table as possible, that presents only essential data.

Illustrations

Graphic elements and illustrations are accepted if providing unique data that can not be described in the text. These should be submitted as separate files in EPS or TIF format, with an image resolution of at least 300 DPI. Legends must be included in the main manuscript file and should be numbered with arabic numerals and contain sufficient information to make the illustration intelligible without reference to the text.

Reference List

Only papers closely related to the author's work should be quoted. Exhaustive lists should be avoided. References should follow the 'Vancouver' format. In the text they should appear as numbers within brackets i.e. - (1). At the end of the paper they should be listed (double-spaced) in numerical order corresponding to the order of citation in the text. All authors should be quoted for papers with up to six authors; for papers with more than six authors, cite the first six followed by followed by 'et al'. Abbreviations for titles of medical periodicals should conform to those used in the latest edition of Index Medicus. The first and last page numbers for each reference must be provided. Abstracts and letters must be identified as such. Articles that have been accepted for publication but not yet published should be listed as 'in press'.

Examples:

Journal articles

1. Karterud S, Wilberg T, Pedersen S, Friis S, Irion T, Urnes . Quality assurance of psychiatric day hospital treatment. II. Ward level. Nord J Psychiatry 1998;52:327-35.

For more detailed instructions, please turn to the uniform guidlelines for biomedical journals at the following link: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html

Statistic validity

If statistical data are provided the Editors may ask for an official statement issued by a certified statistician (with a proper affiliation) to ensure the validity of the methods used.

Ethics and consent

When reporting experiments on human subjects, a statement is required that the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983. Do not use patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Papers including animal experiments or clinical trials must be accompanied by an approval by the local ethics committee and, in the case of animal experiments of any relevant local Licensing Authority. Please give date of issue and registration number in a covering letter. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published.

Disclosure of Interests

Authors are responsible for recognising and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might affect their work. State relevant financial (e.g. patent or stock ownership, consultancies, speaker's fees), personal, political, intellectual or religious interests, and add as a paragraph at the end of the main manuscript file, before the references. Funding for any type of publication, for example by a commercial company, charity or government department, should be stated. This applies to all types of papers (including, for example, research papers, review papers, letters, editorials and commentaries). A conflict of interest should not prevent someone from being listed as an author if they qualify for authorship.

Contribution to Authorship

A paragraph in the Cover letter explaining each author's contribution is required. To qualify for authorship an individual should meet the following criteria: (a) substantial contributions to conception and design or acquisition of data or to analysis and interpretation of data; (b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and (c) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions (a), (b), and (c). Contributors who do not qualify for authorship should be included in the Acknowledgments section.

Author proofs - final approval

Authors will be notified via e-mail when a manuscript is ready for final approval before publication. This e-mail provides instructions on how to log on to the online author service, where the final version of the manuscript can be downloaded as a printer ready PDF file.

To avoid delays of publication, proofs should be checked immediately and returned electronically through the online service, following the instructions given. Corrections submitted via the telephone are not accepted. Authors are advised that they are responsible for proof-reading of the text, references, tables and figures for absolute accuracy. Additional material or major corrections cannot be accepted at this stage, nor is substantial rewriting of paragraphs permitted. Such extensive changes may result in a delay or withdrawal of the article from publication. Any costs arising from major additional changes may also be charged to the authors.

Copyright

It is a condition of publication that authors assign copyright or license the publication rights of the contents of their articles, including abstracts, to Informa Healthcare. This enables full copyright protection and dissemination of the article and the Journal, to the widest possible readership in electronic and print formats. A document to verify this will be sent upon acceptance for publication. This document should be signed by the corresponding author and returned to the publisher for archiving. To read more about Informa Healthcare's policy and guidelines regarding copyright, consult the online author service pages: ./authors_journals_copyright

Sofie Wennstrm, Managing Editor