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Guidelines for Authors

The text should be prepared according to the templates (see below).

The editors reserve the right to edit the article for formatting.

MAIN TEXT

An article (Main Text) should be anonymised (i.e., any personal data should be removed from the Main Text and only included in the Title Page, which must be included as an additional file to the submission, see below). You may use our template but skip all information identifying the authors.

Please apply the text formatting as in the Template Balt J Health Phys Act Main Text.

TITLE PAGE

The Title Page must be submitted as an additional file immediately after the submission process is completed. This can be done one of two ways: click the "Upload additional files" link on the submission confirmation page under the section titled "What's next?"; or, click on the My Account link to access the submission (click on title) and upload via the "Manage additional files" link on the left sidebar.

Please prepare the Title Page document using the following format: Template Balt J Health Phys Act Title Page.

The Title Page must contain the following information:

  • the full title and the type of the article
  • the full name of each author (without academic titles)
  • e-mail addresses and ORCID numbers (if available)
  • the organizational affiliation of each author (workplace)
  • the corresponding author's full name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address for purposes of correspondence
  • Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used: “Study Design, X.X. and Y.Y.; Data Collection, X.X.; Statistical Analysis, X.X.; Data Interpretation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; Manuscript Preparation, X.X.; Literature Search, X.X.; Funding Acquisition, Y.Y.” where X.X., Y.Y. are the authors’ names and surnames; and "All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.”

Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported. It is unacceptable to refer to persons whose contribution to the research has been scanty or actually non-existent (the so-called “guest authorship”) as authors. It is likewise inappropriate to conceal information on the contribution of persons who have actually participated in the creation of the publication. This should be recognized in form of acknowledgements at the end of the text or by including this person as a co-author.

“Ghostwriting” and “guest authorship” are manifestations of scholarly unreliability.

  • Funding: Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by NAME OF FUNDER, grant number XXX”. Check carefully that the details given are accurate and use the standard spelling of the funding agency names at https://search.crossref.org/funding. Any errors may affect your future funding.
  • Institutional Review Board Statement: In this section, you should add the Institutional Review Board Statement and approval number, if relevant to your study. You might choose to exclude this statement if the study did not require ethical approval. Please note that the Editorial Office might ask you for further information. Please add “The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF INSTITUTE (protocol code XXX and date of approval)” for studies involving humans, OR “The animal study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF INSTITUTE (protocol code XXX and date of approval)” for studies involving animals, OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification)”, OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans or animals.
  • Informed Consent Statement: Any research article describing a study involving humans should contain this statement. Please add: “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.” OR “Patient consent was waived due to XXX (please provide a detailed justification)” OR “Not applicable.” for studies not involving humans. You might also choose to exclude this statement if the study did not involve humans.
  • Written informed consent for publication must be obtained from participating patients who can be identified (including by the patients themselves). Please state: “Written informed consent has been obtained from the patient(s) to publish this paper”, if applicable.li>
  • Data Availability Statement: In this section, please provide details regarding where data supporting reported results can be found, including links to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. If the study did not report any data, you might add “Not applicable” here.
  • Acknowledgments: In this section, you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments).
  • Conflicts of Interest: Declare conflicts of interest or state: “The authors declare no conflict of interest.” Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. Any role of the funders in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state: “The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results”.

ABSTRACT

The abstract should be in a structured form, not exceed 200 words, and it should consist of four paragraphs of 1–3 sentences each, labelled as follows: (1) Background (Introduction): the purpose of the article or research, the primary thesis; (2) Materials and Methods: a brief description of the research; in the case of a review or opinion article, a characterization of the literature; for a case study, a brief description of the subject; the main parameters measured, etc.; (3) Results: the most significant results achieved; (4) Conclusions: 1–2 most important conclusions derived by the authors from the research presented in the article. (The preceding structure does not apply in detail to review articles.)

The abstract should be an objective representation of the article, and it must not contain results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions. There should be no bibliographic references or footnotes in the abstract.

STRUCTURE OF THE TEXT

The whole text of the article should not exceed 20 pages and should be divided into six sections labelled as follows: Background (Introduction), Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References. An Appendix may be attached before References, if needed. When circumstances require, depending on the content and nature of the article, a different structure may be used, provided, however, that the structure of the article is clear, transparent and self-consistent. The editors reserve the right to return a manuscript to its authors for correction of structure.

Background (Introduction) should give the scientific rationale for researching the given topic, the primary issues and controversies, an explanation of the aim of the study and the primary thesis.

Materials and Methods should contain essential information regarding how the experiment or research was conducted, including the essential characteristics of the experimental and control groups (age, gender, etc.), inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the randomization and masking (blinding) method used. The protocol of data acquisition, procedures, investigated parameters, methods of measurements and apparatus should be described in sufficient detail to allow other scientists to reproduce the results. In the case of published methods, appropriate references should be given. References and a brief description should be provided for methods that have been published but are not well known, whereas new or substantially modified methods should be described in detail. The rationale for using such new or unknown methods should be discussed, along with a balanced evaluation of these methods, not omitting their limitations. Statistical methods should be described in detail to enable verification of the reported results.

Results concisely and reasonably summarize the findings in form of text, tables and figures arranged in a logical and internally self-consistent manner. The number of tables and figures should be limited to those absolutely needed to confirm or refute the thesis. Data given in graphs and tables should not be automatically repeated in the text.

Discussion should deal only with new and/or important aspects of the results obtained, without repeating in detail data or other material previously presented in Background or Results. The Discussion should focus on theoretical implications and/or practical consequences of the findings, including suggestions for further research. The Discussion should compare the results of the present study to those obtained by other researchers mentioned in the text.

Conclusions must be linked with the goals of the study. New hypotheses with recommendations for further research should be advanced only when fully warranted and explicitly justified.

Recommendations may be included when appropriate. Unqualified statements and conclusions not supported by the data obtained should be avoided.

Appendix: The appendix is an optional section that can contain details and data supplemental to the main text—for example, explanations of experimental details that would disrupt the flow of the main text but nonetheless remain crucial to understanding and reproducing the research shown; figures of replicates for experiments of which representative data is shown in the main text can be added here if brief, or as Supplementary data. Supplementary materials should not be included in the manuscript but linked to external sources.

All appendix sections must be cited in the main text. In the appendices, Figures, Tables, etc. should be labeled starting with “A”—e.g., Figure A1, Figure A2, etc.

References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including citations in tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. Include the digital object identifier (DOI) for all references where available.

Citations and references in the Supplementary Materials are permitted provided that they also appear in the reference list here.

In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ] and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers, for example [5] (p. 10), or [6] (pp. 101–105).

  1. Author 1 AB, Author 2 CD. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name. Year;Volume(Issue):page range.
  2. Author 1 A, Author 2 B. Title of the chapter. In: Editor 1 A, Editor 2 B, Eds.. Book Title, 2nd ed.: Publisher Location, Country: Publisher; Year, page–page.
  3. Author 1 A, Author 2 B. Book Title, 3rd ed. Publisher Location, Country: Publisher; Year; page–page.
  4. Author 1 AB, Author 2 C. Title of Unpublished Work. Abbreviated Journal Name. year, phrase indicating stage of publication (submitted; accepted; in press).
  5. Author 1 AB, Author 2 CD, Author 3 EF. Title of Presentation. In: Proceedings of the Name of the Conference, Location of Conference, Country, Date of Conference (Day Month Year). Publisher Location, Country: Publisher; Year, page–page.
  6. Author 1 AB. Title of Thesis. Level of Thesis, Degree-Granting University, Location of University, Date of Completion.
  7. Title of Site. Available online: URL (accessed on Day Month Year).

If there are more than six authors, list the first six authors, followed by “et al.”.

Detailed information at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.

Non-English references: As a rule, the ratio of texts published in non-congress languages (other than English, French, German, Spanish and Russian) should not exceed 30% of all entries in References.

It should be given as below:

  • Ellingsen AE, Wilhelmsen I. Sykdomsangst blant medisin- og jusstudenter. Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 2002;122(8):785-7. Norwegian.

Optional:

  • Ellingsen AE, Wilhelmsen I. [Disease anxiety among medical students and law students]. Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 2002 Mar 20;122(8):785-7. Norwegian.

Please do not translate the title of the journal or the name of the publisher. Ignore diacritics, accents, and special characters in names and titles of non-English origin (e.g. Ç should be spelled as C, Ł as L, à as a, ę as e, etc.). Names in non-roman alphabets (Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew) should be Romanized (transliterated).

OTHER DETAILS

Tables are numbered consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text, with a brief title. Table captions must be placed above the tables. A short or abbreviated heading should be used for each column. The arrangement of the table should be as simple as possible, without adding unnecessary horizontal or vertical subdivisions.

Explanations, including the clarification of non-standard abbreviations, should be provided in footnotes under the table, and not in the table itself. The footnotes should be numbered independently for each table. Care should be taken that every table included with the manuscript is in fact mentioned in the text. The statistical measures of variations should be identified, such as standard deviation and standard error of the mean. If the data appearing in a table comes from another published or unpublished source, permission to reprint should be obtained and the appropriate reference provided.

Figures should be professionally prepared; freehand or typewritten lettering is unacceptable. Figure captions must be placed below the figures. Original drawings and other original unprocessed materials will not be accepted. Letters, numbers, and symbols should be clear and even throughout and of sufficient size as to remain legible when reduced for printing. Numbers should be presented according to the English standard, i.e. point is used to separate a decimal (e.g. 1.3%) and a comma to indicate numbers larger than one thousand (e.g. 2,342). Each figure should be tagged by the name of the file identifying the figure. The title of the figure and detailed explanations should be written in the caption/legend field, not on the illustrations themselves. The editors cannot accept photographs or illustrations with visible writing, scratching or marring caused by staples or paperclips, or cardboard mounting. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they are first cited in the text. If a figure has been previously published, the original source must be acknowledged and a written permission should be obtained from the copyright holder to reproduce the material, except for documents in the public domain.

The recommended file formats for figures, except for these elaborated in Excel or Word, are: *.jpg, *.tif, *.bmp *.png with an image resolution of 300 dpi. Graphic files should be attached (separately) in their original formats which are fit for editing. Also MS Word and Excel graphs should be active and be fit for editing.

If images of people are used, either the identity should be masked or written permission should be obtained to use the photograph.

Measurements of length, height, weight, and volume should be reported in metric units (meter, kilogram, or liter) or their decimal multiples. Temperatures should be given in degrees Celsius. Blood pressures should be given in millimeters of mercury.

Abbreviations and symbols are acceptable only when standard. Abbreviations should not be used in the title or abstract. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text, unless it is a standard unit of measurement.

Note: The editors accept articles in ONLY English, with abstracts and key words. All articles prepared by non-native speakers should be carefully translated and/or proofread by a native/bilingual speaker of English.

COPYRIGHT AGREEMENT FORM

The submission must be accompanied by the filled in Copyright Agreement Form, signed by the corresponding author – to be downloaded from the sidebar. Copyright Agreement should be submitted as Additional File.