Minimum Submission Requirements

 

• Provide all files needed for peer review, including manuscript text files, figures, & supplemental material.
•  Manuscript Format: Manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced using a 12-point font, including references, figure legends, and tables in A4 or letter size. Leave 1-inch margins on all sides.
• Number every page except the title page, including figures, tables, and references. Cite each figure and table in text in numerical order.
• Assemble the manuscript in this order: Title Page, Abstract, Text (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion), Acknowledgments, Sources of Funding, Disclosures, References, Figure Legends, Tables, and Figures. (Tables less than one page in length can be placed in the appropriate location within the manuscript.)
• References, figures, and tables should be cited in numerical order according to the first mention in the text.
• The total word count consists of Text, References, Tables, and Figures Legends.
• Complete ICMJE disclosure form and submit it as an attachment along with the manuscript.
• Note that following the Proclamation against tobacco by the Japanese Society for Hygiene, any research funded or supported by firms or organizations related to the tobacco industry, whether domestic or international, will not be accepted for publication in the society's journal (after January 1st, 2019).
  

 

 

Type of articles

 

Research

 

Research articles are expected to report the results of original fundamental research in any branch of environmental health and preventive medicine. They should be approx 6,400 words in length.

 

Commentary

 

Commentaries are short, narrowly focused articles of contemporary interest and usually take one of two forms:

• The first form is a discussion of an article or trial that was recently published or that is soon to be published and that is interesting enough to warrant further comment or explanation. This type of commentary discusses specific issues within a subject area rather than the whole field, explains the article's implications, and puts it in context. Opinions are welcome as long as they are factually based
• The second form is more editorial in nature and covers an aspect of an issue that is relevant to the journal's scope, for example discussion of the impact of new technology on research and treatment

A maximum of ten articles may be included in the references. Length should be approx. 1,800 words.

 

Letter to the Editor

 

A letter to the Editor is a brief report that is within the journal's scope and of particular interest to the community but not suitable as a standard research article. A maximum of ten articles may be included in the references.

 

Letters to the Editor may be edited for clarity or length and may be subject to peer review at the Editors' discretion. To contribute, please contact the Editors. Length should be approx. 1,500 words.

 

Review

 

Reviews provide comprehensive and authoritative coverage of a topic area.

 

Key aims of reviews are to provide systematic and substantial coverage of mature subjects, evaluations of progress in specified areas, and/or critical assessments of emerging technologies. - Maximum length: 8,000 words.

 

Short communication

 

Short communications are suitable for the presentation of research that extends previously published research, including the reporting of additional controls and confirmatory results in other settings, as well as negative results. Authors must clearly acknowledge any work upon which they are building, both published and unpublished. Length should be approx. 3,200 words.

 

Study Profiles

 

Manuscripts that describe designs, methods, and procedures of specific epidemiologic studies as a protocol paper.

- Maximum length: 4,000 words.

 

Mini review

 

Minireviews focus on stimulating topics of recent findings in the field of environmental health and preventive medicine. Authors are encouraged to have a well-balanced view of the field, and the final version should be no more than 2,400 words in length.

 

 

Preparing your manuscript

 

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section.

Please note that your manuscript must include a 'Declarations' section, including all subheadings (please see below for more information).

 

 

Title page

 

The title page should:

• present a title that should be brief, descriptive, and comprehensible. The title includes, if appropriate, the study design. Avoid abbreviations, numbers, formulae, punctuation, and puns.
• list the full names and institutional addresses for all authors
• if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name. If you would like the names of the individual members of the Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the "Acknowledgements" section following the instructions below
• indicate the corresponding author
• Short title (not to exceed 50 characters, including spaces)
• The total word count of the manuscript (including Text, References, Tables, and Figures Legends)

 

 

Abstract

 

The Abstract should not exceed 350 words. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. Reports of randomized controlled trials should follow the CONSORT extension for abstracts. The abstract must include the following separate sections:

• Background: the context and purpose of the study
• Methods: how the study was performed and statistical tests used
• Results: the main findings
• Conclusions: brief summary and potential implications
• Trial registration: If your article reports the results of a health care intervention on human participants, it must be registered in an appropriate registry, and the registration number and date of registration should be instated in this section. If it was not registered prospectively (before enrollment of the first participant), you should include the words 'retrospectively registered'.

 

 

Keywords

 

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

 

 

Background

 

The Background section should explain the background to the study, its aims, a summary of the existing literature, and why this study was necessary or its contribution to the field.

 

 

Methods

 

The methods section should include:

• design, and setting of the study
• the characteristics of participants or description of materials
• a clear description of all processes, interventions, and comparisons. Generic drug names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses
• the type of statistical analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate

 

 

Results

 

This should include the findings of the study, including, if appropriate, results of statistical analysis, which must be included either in the text or as tables and figures.

 

 

Discussion

 

This section should discuss the implications of the findings in the context of existing research and highlight the limitations of the study.

 

 

Conclusions

 

This should clearly state the main conclusions and explain the importance and relevance of the study reported.

 

 

List of abbreviations

 

If abbreviations are used in the text, they should be defined at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

 

 

Preparing tables

 

When preparing tables, please follow the formatting instructions below.

• Tables should be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e., Table 1, Table 2, etc.).
• Tables less than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed in the appropriate location within the manuscript.
• Tables larger than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed at the end of the document text file. Please cite and indicate where the table should appear at the relevant location in the text file to be added in the correct place during production.
• Larger datasets or tables too wide for A4 or Letter landscape page can be uploaded as additional files. Please see [below] for more information.
• Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or comma-separated values (.csv). Please use the standard file extensions.
• Table titles (max 15 words) should be included above the table, and legends (max 300 words) should be included underneath the table.
• Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files but should be formatted using your word processing program's 'Table object' function.
• Color and shading may not be used. Parts of the table can be highlighted using superscript, numbering, lettering, symbols, or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend.
• Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values.

 

 

Preparing figures

 

When preparing figures, please follow the formatting instructions below.

• Figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text and uploaded in this order. Multi-panel figures (those with parts a, b, c, d, etc.) should be submitted as a single composite file containing all the figure's parts.
• Figures should be uploaded in the correct orientation.
• Figure titles (max 15 words) and legends (max 300 words) should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphic file.
• Figure keys should be incorporated into the graphic, not into the legend of the figure.
• Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration. Cropping figures improves accuracy when placing the figure in combination with other elements when the accepted manuscript is prepared for publication on our site. For more information on individual figure file formats, see our detailed instructions.
• Individual figure files should not exceed 10 MB. If a suitable format is chosen, this file size is adequate for extremely high-quality figures.
• Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have previously been published elsewhere. In order for all figures to be open access, authors must have permission from the rights-holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non-open access journals. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source included in the reference list.

 

Figure file types

 

We accept the following file formats for figures:

• EPS (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
• PDF (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
• Microsoft Word (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
• TIFF (suitable for images)
• JPEG (suitable for photographic images, less suitable for graphical images)
• PNG (suitable for images)
• BMP (suitable for images)
• CDX (ChemDraw - suitable for molecular structures)

Figure size and resolution

 

Figures are resized during publication of the final full text and PDF versions, which are detailed below.

Figures on the web:

• width of 600 pixels (standard), 1200 pixels (high resolution).

Figures in the final PDF version:

• width of 85 mm for half page width figure
• width of 170 mm for full page width figure
• maximum height of 225 mm for figure and legend
• image resolution of approximately 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size

Figures should be designed such that all information, including text, is legible at these dimensions. All lines should be wider than 0.25 pt when constrained to standard figure widths. All fonts must be embedded.

 

Figure file compression

• Vector figures should, if possible, be submitted as PDF files, which are usually more compact than EPS files.
• TIFF files should be saved with LZW compression, which is lossless (decreases file size without decreasing quality) to minimize upload time.
• JPEG files should be saved at maximum quality.
• Conversion of images between file types (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) should be kept to a minimum to avoid quality degradation.

 

 

Preparing additional files

 

As the length and quantity of data are not restricted for many article types, authors can provide datasets, tables, movies, or other information as additional files.

 

All Additional files will be published along with the accepted article. Do not include files such as patient consent forms, certificates of language editing, or revised versions of the main manuscript document with tracked changes. Such files, if requested, should be sent by email to the journal’s editorial email address, quoting the manuscript reference number. Please do not send completed patient consent forms unless requested.

 

Otherwise, results that would be indicated as "data not shown" should be included as additional files. Since many web links and URLs rapidly become broken, Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine Central requires that supporting data are included as additional files, or deposited in a recognized repository. Please do not link to data on a personal/departmental website. Do not include any individual participant details. The maximum filesize for additional files is 20 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission. Each additional file should be cited in sequence within the main body of text.

 

If additional material is provided, please list the following information in a separate section of the manuscript text:

• Filename (e.g., Additional file 1)
• File format including the correct file extension for example .pdf, .xls, .txt, .pptx (including name and a URL of an appropriate viewer if format is unusual)
• Title of data
• Description of data
  

Additional files should be named "Additional file 1" and so on, and should be referenced explicitly by file name within the body of the article, e.g., 'An additional movie file shows this in more detail [see Additional file 1]'.

 

 

References

 

Examples of the Vancouver reference style are shown below.

 

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do. Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

 

Example reference style:

 

Article within a journal

 

Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999;36:234-5.

 

Article within a journal (no page numbers)

 

Kokubo Y, Padmanabhan S, Iwashima Y, Yamagishi K, Goto A. Gene and environmental interactions according to the components of lifestyle modifications in hypertension guidelines. Environ Health Prev Med. 2019;24:19.

 

Article within a journal by DOI

 

Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. 2000; doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

 

Article within a journal supplement

 

Frumin AM, Nussbaum J, Esposito M. Functional asplenia: demonstration of splenic activity by bone marrow scan. Blood 1979;59 Suppl 1:26-32.

 

Book chapter, or an article within a book

 

Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. p. 251-306.

 

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

 

Saito Y, Hyuga H. Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Top Curr Chem. 2007. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

 

Complete book, authored

 

 Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

 

Online document

 

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

 

Online database

 

Healthwise Knowledgebase. US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. 1998. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

 

Supplementary material/private homepage

 

Doe J. Title of supplementary material. 2000. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

 

University site

 

Doe, J: Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html (1999). Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

 

FTP site

 

Doe, J: Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt (1999). Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

 

Organization site

 

ISSN International Centre: The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org (2006). Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

 

Dataset with persistent identifier

 

Zheng L-Y, Guo X-S, He B, Sun L-J, Peng Y, Dong S-S, et al. Genome data from sweet and grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). GigaScience Database. 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100012.

 

 

Declarations

 

 All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

• Ethics approval and consent to participate
• Consent for publication
• Availability of data and material
• Competing interests
• Funding
• Authors' contributions
• Acknowledgements
• Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

 

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

 

Ethics approval and consent to participate

 

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data, or human tissue must:

• include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
• include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval.

See 'Ethics and consent' for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state "Not applicable" in this section.

 

Consent for publication

 

If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images, or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent, or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.

 

See our 'Consent for publication' for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state "Not applicable" in this section.

 

Availability of data and materials

 

All manuscripts must include an 'Availability of data and materials' statement.

 

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

•  Data are available in a repository (a DOI).
• Data are available in a repository (a unique identifier other than a DOI).
•  All data are incorporated into the article and its online supplementary material.
•  Data available on request from authors.
•  Data derived from a source in the public domain (with a link).
•  There are no new data associated with this article.
•  Data cannot be shared for privacy or ethical reasons.

 If none of the above examples apply, the actual situation should be described.

 

Competing interests

 

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

In addition, corresponding authors should complete the ICMJE competing interests form available here and upload it to the submission system along with the main manuscript.

 

Please use the authors' initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

 

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

 

Full explanations of competing interests are as follows:

 

What constitutes a competing interest?

 

Competing interests may be financial or non-financial. A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by, or may be perceived to be influenced by, their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment if they were to become public after the publication of the manuscript.

 

Financial competing interests

 

Financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):

• Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future.
• Holding stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future.
• Holding, or currently applying for, patents relating to the content of the manuscript.
• Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript.

Non-financial competing interests

 

Non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to) political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests.

 

Commercial organizations

 

 Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should declare these as competing interests on submission. They should also adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies (GPP3), designed to ensure that publications are produced responsibly and ethically. The guidelines also apply to companies or individuals who work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations, and communications companies. Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine will not publish advertorial content.

 

Editorial Board Members and Editors

 

Editorial Board Members and Editors are required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.

In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors, and sharing the same institution as one or more of the authors.

 

Where an Editor or Editorial Board Member is on the author list they must declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. If they are an author or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Editor or member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript.

 

Editorial Board Members are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editorial Board Member status has no bearing on editorial consideration.

 

Funding

 

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.

 

Authors' contributions

 

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section.

 

Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception OR design of the work; OR the acquisition, analysis, OR interpretation of data; OR the creation of new software used in work; OR have drafted the work or substantively revised it

 

AND to have approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author's contribution to the study);

 

AND to have agreed both to be personally accountable for the author's own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.

 

Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section, for example: "FC analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the hematological disease and the transplant. RH performed the histological examination of the kidney, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript."

 

Acknowledgements

 

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

 

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

 

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

 

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the "Acknowledgements" section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

 

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

 

 

Prepare supporting information

 

Please make sure you have the following information available before you submit your manuscript:

 

Cover letter

 

A cover letter that includes the following information, as well as any additional information requested in the instructions for your specific article type (see main manuscript section above):

• An explanation of why your manuscript should be published in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine
• An explanation of any issues relating to journal policies
• A declaration of any potential competing interests
• Confirmation that all authors have approved the manuscript for submission
• Confirmation that the content of the manuscript has not been published, or submitted for publication elsewhere
• If you are submitting a manuscript to a particular special issue, please refer to its specific name in your covering letter

 

 

Peer reviewers

 

You may suggest potential peer reviewers for your manuscript. If you wish to do so, please provide institutional email addresses where possible or information that will help the Editor verify the reviewer's identity (for example, an ORCID or Scopus ID). Intentionally falsifying information, for example, suggesting reviewers with a false name or email address, will result in rejection of your manuscript and may lead to further investigation in line with our misconduct policy.

 

Excluding peer reviewers

 

During submission, you may enter details of anyone whom you would prefer not to review your manuscript.

 

Peer-review policy

 

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity, and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

 

Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

 

The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

 

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editor-in-Chief will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

 

 

Copyright

 

• Copyright on any open access article in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine is retained by the author(s)
• Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details, and publisher are identified.
• Articles of Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine are published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). The CC BY license allows readers to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to alter, transform, or build upon the material, including for commercial use, providing the original author is credited.

Where an author is prevented from being the copyright holder (for instance, in US government employees or those of Commonwealth governments), minor variations may be required. In such cases, individual articles' copyright line and license statement will be adjusted, for example, to state ‘© 2016 Crown copyright’. Authors requiring a variation of this type should inform Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine during or immediately after submission of their article. Changes to the copyright line cannot be made after the publication of an article.

 

 

Ethics and consent

 

Ethics approval

 

Research involving human participants, human material, or human data must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to the Editor on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In rare cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee for further information.

 

Retrospective ethics approval

 

If a study has not been granted ethics committee approval prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained, and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor's discretion.

 

New clinical tools and procedures

 

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient’s clinical need. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors’ institution. Authors will be expected to have obtained ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool where a clear clinical advantage based on clinical need was not apparent before treatment.

 

Consent to participate
 

For all research involving human participants, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children), and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. Consent must be obtained for all forms of personally identifiable data, including biomedical, clinical, and biometric data.

 

If a study is exempted from ethics committee approval and informed consent, the authors should document the reasons for the exemption in detail.

 

Research involving human embryos, gametes, and stem cells

 

Manuscripts that report experiments involving the use of human embryos and gametes, human embryonic stem cells and related materials, and clinical applications of stem cells must include confirmation that all experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations (See also Ethics and Consent)

The manuscript should include an ethics statement identifying the institutional and/or national research ethics committee (including the name of the ethics committee) approving the experiments and describing any relevant details. Authors should confirm that informed consent (See also Ethics and Consent and Consent for publication) was obtained from all recipients and/or donors of cells or tissues, where necessary, and describe the conditions of donation of materials for research, such as human embryos or gametes. The Editor may request copies of approval and redacted consent documents.

We encourage authors to follow the principles laid out in the 2016 ISSCR Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation.

 

Sex and gender in research (SAGER)

 

We encourage our authors to follow the ‘Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines’ and to include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should carefully use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) to avoid confusing both terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should indicate clearly what sex(es) the study applies to. Authors should also describe in the background whether sex and/or gender differences may be expected; report how sex and/or gender were accounted for in the design of the study; provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss respective results. If sex and/or gender analysis was not conducted, the rationale should be given in the Discussion. We suggest that our authors consult the full guidelines before submission.

• Definition of Sex and Gender (taken from Office of Research in Women’s Health, NIH).
• Sex - refers to biological differences between females and males, including chromosomes, sex organs, and endogenous hormonal profiles.
• Gender - refers to socially constructed and enacted roles and behaviors which occur in a historical and cultural context and vary across societies and over time.
• Applications of the guidelines: These guidelines apply to studies involving humans, vertebrate animals, and cell lines.

 Research involving animals

 

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available, should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The Basel Declaration outlines fundamental principles to adhere to when conducting animal research, and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) has also published ethical guidelines.

 

A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines (e.g., the revised Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the UK and Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) and/or ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the manuscript. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption). The Editor will take into account animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research. In rare cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee for further information.

 

Manuscripts presenting studies that have employed anesthesia or euthanasia methods inconsistent with the commonly accepted norms of veterinary best practice (e.g., chloral hydrate, ether, and chloroform) will not be considered. Decisions to not consider manuscripts presenting such anesthesia or euthanasia methods are independent of the approving ethics committee and any previously published work. We recommend that authors consult the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals (2020), as a comprehensive resource for guidance on veterinary best practices for the anesthesia and euthanasia of animals.

 

For experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also document informed consent from the client or owner and adherence to a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care.

 

Field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available, should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or appropriate permissions or licenses must be included in the manuscript. We recommend that authors comply with the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

 

Research involving plants

 

Experimental research and field studies on plants (either cultivated or wild), including the collection of plant material, must comply with relevant institutional, national, and international guidelines and legislation.

 

Manuscripts should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions and/or licenses for the collection of plant or seed specimens. We recommend that authors comply with the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

 

To support reproducibility, voucher specimens for all wild plants described in a manuscript must be deposited in a public herbarium or other public collection that provides access to deposited material. Information on the voucher specimen and who identified it must be included in the manuscript.

 

Research involving palaeontological and geological material

 

Details of palaeontological specimens and geological samples should include clear provenance information to ensure full transparency of the research.

 

It is recognized that precise provenance information may not be available for older museum collections. In circumstances where providing specific provenance information may compromise the security of palaeontological or geological sites, it may be appropriate to exclude detailed locality information.

 

Samples must always be collected and exported responsibly and following applicable local and national laws. Any submission detailing new material should include information regarding the requisite permissions obtained and the issuing authority. Authors may be required to provide specific supporting documentation upon request.

 

Type, figured, and cited palaeontological specimens should be deposited in a recognized museum or collection to permit free access by other researchers in perpetuity. Sufficient information on the repository, including the assigned unique catalog numbers (where applicable), should be provided to trace the specimens.

 

We encourage the deposition of 3-D scans of fossil specimens (where appropriate) within a permanent, accessible repository to facilitate study by the scientific community.

 

Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine requires that submitted content adheres to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) normative instruments for the protection of cultural heritage, and Resolutions, Motions, guidance, and other statements of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

 

Biosafety and biosecurity

 

It is expected that research submitted to Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine will comply with relevant institutional biosafety and biosecurity protocols and any national or international recommendations relevant to the research field. For example, for life sciences research, the WHO information DURC for life sciences research. Researchers are expected to be aware of dual-use concerns related to their work and take steps to minimize misuse of their work. Where submitted research is deemed to present a potential dual-use risk, the Editor may ask authors to provide details of how such a risk has been mitigated and how it complies with their institutional and funder's requirements, as well as any national regulations. We reserve the right to take expert advice in cases where we believe that concerns may arise and may require a manuscript to undergo peer review specifically to assess the dual-use risk. Thus, authors may be asked to revise their manuscript before normal journal peer-review.

 

We recognize the widespread view that openness in science helps alert society to potential threats and defend against them. We anticipate that only very rarely (if at all) will the risks be perceived as outweighing the benefits of publishing a paper that has otherwise been deemed appropriate for publication. Once a decision has been reached, authors will be informed if biosecurity advice has informed that decision.

 

Standards for research in complementary and alternative medicine

 

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research should meet the following clinical research standards:

 

• Clinical research manuscripts that comply with international and national standards for such work (such as the Declaration of Helsinki or relevant Governmental regulation e.g. the UK’s The Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations).
• Studies that are adequately controlled (be that compared to a placebo or conventional medicine), blinded (where appropriate), randomized, and of sufficient statistical power to confidentially and accurately interpret the effect reported confidently and accurately. Studies reporting a CAM treatment/technique compared only to another CAM treatment/technique are not sufficient to test the efficacy of the CAM treatment in question. Studies in which conventional treatment is supplemented with a CAM technique are only valid if compared to the same conventional treatment supplemented with a placebo.
• CAM treatments/techniques tested on animal models and/or human patients: It is unethical for such work, on humans or animals, to have taken place without adequate prior evidence that the treatment/technique shows some potential of being therapeutic. Manuscripts must include evidence that takes the form of objective, measurable data from previously published peer-reviewed literature which adheres to scientific principles (for instance, in vitro or cellular work). Other forms of evidence are not valid. Manuscripts describing work lacking this evidence will not be considered on ethical grounds.

 

Consent for publication

 

For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to an individual person, written informed consent for the publication of these details must be obtained from that person (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18). The consent must be for publication of their details under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (such that they will be freely available on the internet). If the person has died, consent for publication must be obtained from their next of kin. The manuscript must include a statement that written informed consent for publication was obtained.

 

In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable, and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required. The final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.

 

Trial registration

 

The ICMJE uses the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of a clinical trial, which is "any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes". This definition includes phase I to IV trials. The ICMJE defines health-related interventions as "any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome" and health-related outcomes as "any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants". Authors who are unsure whether their trial needs registering should consult the ICMJE FAQs for further information.

 

Suitable publicly available registries are those listed on the ICMJE website as well as any of the primary registries that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

 

The trial registration number (TRN) and date of registration should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.

For clinical trials that have not been registered prospectively, Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine encourages retrospective registration to ensure the complete publication of all results. Further information on retrospective registration is available from the AllTrials campaign, the Public Accounts Committee , and the Department of Health.

 

Standards of reporting

 

Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine advocates complete and transparent reporting of biomedical and biological research. We also strongly recommend that authors refer to the minimum reporting guidelines for health research hosted by the EQUATOR Network when preparing their manuscript and FAIRsharing.org for reporting checklists for biological and biomedical research, where applicable. Authors should adhere to these guidelines when drafting their manuscript, and peer reviewers will be asked to refer to these checklists when evaluating such studies.

 

Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including:

• Randomized controlled trials (CONSORT) and protocols (SPIRIT)
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses* (PRISMA) and protocols (PRISMA-P)
• Observational studies (STROBE)
• Case reports (CARE)
• Qualitative research (COREQ)
• Diagnostic/prognostic studies (STARD and TRIPOD)
• Economic evaluations (CHEERS)

*Authors of systematic reviews should also provide a link to an additional file from the 'methods' section, which reproduces all details of the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook.

Publication Fee Agreement Form

Open access publishing is not without costs. Therefore, Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine levies an article-processing charge as follows for each article accepted for publication, plus VAT or local taxes where applicable.

・Members $650; Non-members $1,450 （Up to 6 pages of printed paper）
・Publishing pages over 7 pages or more, $100 per charge for an additional 1 page of printing paper
・Letter, Correction (erratum, Correction on the author side) $100

 

Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine APC discount offer

If you are a correspondence author and a member of the Japanese Society for Hygiene and wish to submit your article to Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, please contact the Japanese Society for Hygiene (jsh@nacos.com). The office will give you the code to input during the APC Agreement stage on submission to receive a discount. Please note that the code must be used on submission rather than after accepting your manuscript.

 

Copyediting, Typesetting, and Proofreading

Accepted manuscripts, including those set for advance publication as an "Accepted version," will be copyedited after acceptance.The editorial office may contact authors if confirmation of any copyediting changes is required. Copyedited manuscripts are then sent for typesetting. When this is completed, the corresponding author will receive an email about the proofs from the editorial office. This proof should be used to check the typesetting and editing and the completeness and correctness of the text, tables, and figures only. At this stage, significant changes to articles accepted for publication will only be considered with permission from the Editor-in-Chief. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in a single communication. Please check carefully before replying, as the inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Please note that while the editing office does everything possible to ensure that papers are published quickly and accurately, proofreading is solely the authors’ responsibility.

 

Use of the Digital Object Identifier

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alphanumeric character string that is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. Once assigned, the DOI never changes. It is, therefore, an ideal medium for citing documents, particularly 'Articles in press,' because these have yet to receive their full bibliographic information.
Here is an example of a correctly cited DOI (in URL format): https://doi.org/10.2188/jea.JE20160038.
When a DOI is used to create links to documents on the web, the DOI is guaranteed to never change.

 

Offprints

Offprints are supplied at a rate based on the number of pages in the printed article and the number of offprints ordered. An order form will be sent to the corresponding author after you submit the proof correction. The order should be returned to the Editorial Office.

 

AUTHOR INQUIRIES
Please contact Editorial Office of the Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine
email at ehpm-editorial-office@kopas.co.jp