Policies

POLICIES OF THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH

From 21 July 2022

Updated: 22 March 2024

As the European Journal of Mental Health serves as an interdisciplinary journal, accepting submissions from both the medical as well as the social and behavioral sciences, we refer to the guidelines for both disciplines in our policies.

Authors’ contribution

As of June 2022, the European Journal of Mental Health follows some recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) and the Good publication practice for communicating company-sponsored medical research: the GPP2 guidelines (BMJ) for defining authorship.

According to the ICMJE recommendations, authorship should be based on the following four criteria:

“1. Substantial contributions to the work’s conception or design; or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; AND

  1. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  2. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  3. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

… All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged.”[1]

According to GPP2 recommendations, professional medical writers can be mentioned as authors if they fulfill the four ICMJE criteria. Should these conditions not be met, their name must be included in the Acknowledgments section.

Using the recommendations and terms of ICMJE, CRediT and GPP2, please indicate in the Authors’ Form table for each author how and at what stage of work they contributed to the research and the manuscript. The information will be placed at the end of the manuscript.

 

Acknowledgments

Please use the Acknowledgements section in the Authors’ Form to thank all those, in addition to the authors, who have contributed to your work:

  1. Research participants (patients, clients, respondents) if they are not kept anonymous;
  2. All those contributors who do not meet all four criteria (mentioned above) should be acknowledged;
  3. All those responsible for administrative tasks, data entry, etc.;
  4. All those responsible for resources – all kinds of materials, laboratory instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools;
  5. All those responsible for programming, software development; designing computer programs;
  6. All those responsible for visualization, preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work.
  7. Reviewers can be thanked if they are kept anonymous.
  8. Professional medical writers, if their contributions do not qualify for authorship.

Note! To share information about funding, scholarships, grants, and financial support, use the Funding section in the Authors’ Form.

Please write the text of your preferred Acknowledgments section based on our guidelines in the Authors’ Form, which will be placed at the end of the manuscript.

 

Declaration of Interest

As of June 2022, the European Journal of Mental Health follows some recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and also some recommendations of the Good Publication Practice for Communicating Company-Sponsored Medical Research: the GPP2 guidelines (BMJ) hence the European Journal of Mental Health requires each author individually to disclose all potential conflicts of interest in detail.

Each author should disclose all financial and non-financial relationships (e.g., close family ties, memberships in committees etc.) that could influence professional judgment related to the submitted manuscript. 

The following financial and non-financial supports are required to be reported: employment, funding, provision of study materials, medical writing, article processing charges, grants, royalties and licenses, consulting fees, payment/honoraria for lectures, presentations, educational events, payment for expert testimony, travel support, conference fee support, fiduciary role, stocks or options, receipt of equipment, materials, drugs, medical writing, gifts.

In line with GPP2, we recommend authors favor greater, rather than lesser, disclosure.

In accordance with the editorial decision of BMJ, Heart, Thorax, BMJ Open, Tobacco Control, PLoS Medicine, PLoS One, PLoS Biology; Journal of Health Psychology etc., the European Journal of Mental Health does not consider manuscripts for publication that were partially or fully funded (and/or prompted) by tobacco companies; funding includes any of the research costs, data acquisition costs, authors’ salaries, or any other research or publication  related costs. 

In the Authors’ Form, please indicate in detail your Declaration of Interest for each author.

 

Declaration of Funding Sources

As of June 2022, the European Journal of Mental Health follows some recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and it also follows some recommendations of the Good publication practice for communicating company-sponsored medical research: the GPP2 guidelines (BMJ), hence it requires authors to indicate funding sources for all articles submitted.

The full name of the funding agency (or organization), the country of the funding agency (or organization), and the grant number shall be indicated, separated by a semi-colon. In case of multiple grant numbers or multiple agencies/organizations, “and” shall be added.  Non-financial support (such as technical assistance, consultation, training, travel, food, accommodations, donations of equipment, gifts, etc.)  shall also be mentioned. 

While the European Journal of Mental Health expects authors to ensure that they have met the requirements of their funding agencies fully, the European Journal of Mental Health prohibits editing by funding agencies and organizations. (If professional medical writers were employed, it should be reported in the Acknowledgments.)

The European Journal of Mental Health also requires authors to state if any organizations (pharmaceutical, tobacco, public relations, government agency, non-governmental agency etc.) prompted or paid the authors to write the submitted article.

In accordance with the editorial decision of BMJ, Heart, Thorax, BMJ Open, Tobacco Control, PLoS Medicine, PLoS One, PLoS Biology; Journal of Health Psychology etc., the European Journal of Mental Health does not consider manuscripts for publication that were partially or fully funded (and/or prompted) by a tobacco company: funding includes any of the research costs, data acquisition costs, authors’ salaries, or any other research or publication related costs. 

 

Declaration of Ethics Statement

The definition of ethical implications stands as a mandatory part of all empirical communications. Authors should provide information on the ethics committee that approved the research as well as the ethics approval number, the information and consent procedure used, and the secure way in which the data are stored. The Journal does not accept unauthorized empirical manuscripts from 1 July 2022.

As of June 2022, the European Journal of Mental Health follows some recommendations of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) that integrates ethical practices into the publishing culture.

Please complete and sign the following ethical statements in the Authors’ Form: 

Hereby, I/we [please insert authors’ names] declare that for the manuscript [please insert title] the following conditions are fulfilled:

ORIGINALITY

This manuscript is the authors’ original work, which has not been previously published elsewhere and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.

The originality of the article may be further checked by plagiarism detection software. 

INTEGRITY

The paper reflects the authors’ research and analysis wholly and truthfully.

The results are appropriately placed into the context of prior and existing research.

All sources used are correctly disclosed (correct citation, quotation, and proper references).

AUTHORSHIP

The manuscript properly credits the meaningful contributions of co-authors and co-researchers.

All authors have been personally and actively involved in substantial work leading to the paper and will take public responsibility for its content.

All the authors mentioned in the manuscript have agreed to authorship, read and approved the manuscript, and have given consent for submission and subsequent publication.

RESEARCH AUTHORISATION

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by [please give the full name and affiliation of an ethics committee and the research authorisation number]. 

INFORMED CONSENT OF HUMAN SUBJECTS AND DATA MANAGEMENT

All patients/participants engaged in the research voluntarily and anonymously.

The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to engage in this study.

Their data are stored in coded materials and databases without personal data.

We have policies in place to manage and keep data secure.

I/we agree with the above statements and declare that this submission follows the policies of EJMH as outlined in the Guide for Authors and this document.

 

Data sharing policy supporting Open Science

From 2023, authors are encouraged to make data and materials supporting the results or analyses presented in their publication available in repositories, and in pre-registration platforms. Authors will be required to submit a data availability statement on the Authors’ Form at the same time as submitting their manuscript, indicating the pre-registration platform and research identifier. Please note that data may be shared on a platform only if it is ethically appropriate to do so, and does not violate the protection of human subjects or other ethical, privacy, or security concerns.

Using Artificial Intelligence in Research and Manuscript Preparation

Note! From March 2024, the following guidelines apply to the acceptable and responsible use of generative artificial intelligence technologies such as language models, machine learning, text-to-image generators, and other similar technologies in conducting research and writing manuscripts submitted to the EJMH.

Authors must assume responsibility for the appropriateness and integrity of content generated by artificial intelligence, language models, machine learning, or similar technologies.

Authors are responsible for adherence to, and possible violations of, ethical principles in research and publication if using generative AI technologies.

Authors should declare and indicate in the Authors’ Form and the manuscript if they have created any content – text, images, graphics – using artificial intelligence, language models, machine learning or similar technologies, or whether they have used such tools in their research. Authors must state precisely at which stage of the research and in which part of the publication they employed AI and how they controlled the processes. The manuscript’s methods and acknowledgments section should also clearly indicate the names, versions, manufacturers of models and tools used, and also the purposes and ways of using them. 

Authors should not include generative AI technology as co-author or author in the submitted manuscript. These technologies should not be held responsible for the integrity of the manuscript, the entire authoring process, or the approval of the content, and therefore do not meet international criteria for authorship.

If the author of a submitted manuscript has used written or visual content produced by generative AI technology, authors are responsible for verifying the factuality of this content (e.g., citations, references, cited contents). Authors should also make sure these contents do not involve plagiarism!


Performing ethical and methodologically appropriate research and writing good-quality manuscripts

The EJMH agrees with and encourages research and publications according to the following guidelines:

  • Randomized controlled trials (RCTs): CONSORT guidelines, flowchart and structured abstract checklist
  • Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: PRISMA guidelines, flowchart and structured abstract checklist
  • Observational studies in epidemiology: STROBE guidelines (also referring to RECORD for observational studies using routinely collected health data) and MOOSE guidelines
  • Diagnostic accuracy studies: STARD guidelines
  • Quality improvement studies: SQUIRE guidelines
  • Multivariate prediction models: TRIPOD guidelines
  • Economic evaluation studies: SQUIRE guidelines
  • Animal preclinical studies: ARRIVE guidelines

  [1] https://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf ; p.2.


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