Guidelines for Authors

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The Journal accepts papers for consideration related to contraception and reproductive health care.

The following types of papers are welcome: Editorial, Research, New Developments, Clinical Study, Epidemiological Study, Historical/Socio-demographic article, Review, Short Communication, Case Report, Debate, Book Review, Letter to the Editor, Personal Opinion

All submissions should be made online at the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care Manuscript Central site. New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site, submissions should be made via the Author Centre. Complete instructions for submissions are given on the site. One corresponding author should be identified, whose full contact information, including email address is provided.

Copyright: Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted material from other sources and are required to sign an agreement to transfer the copyright to the publisher. This enables Informa Healthcare to ensure protection against infringement.

Ethical review: The Editor and Publisher support the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, and expect that the authors of papers submitted to the Journal will have obtained ethical consent and followed those legal and regulatory requirements for human experimentation with drugs, including informed consent, according to procedures which apply to their institution and country.

Authority and responsibility: The intellectual content of the paper is the responsibility of the authors. The Editor and the Publisher accept no responsibility for opinions and statements of authors. While every effort will be made by the Editor and Publisher to avoid inaccurate and misleading data, they accept no liability whatsoever for the consequences of wrong information. The authors agree to keep the Editor and Publisher fully and effectually indemnified against any liability or claims that may arise out of the publication of inaccurate and/or misleading data.

Manuscript preparation: Papers submitted should be written in correct English. British English (not American) spelling and punctuation should be used throughout.

Text should be supplied in a format compatible with Microsoft Word for Windows (PC). All figures (illustrations, diagrams, photographs) need to be submitted as separate files. All parts of the manuscript should be double-spaced, with a 12 point font, and margins of 2.5 cm on all sides.

Statistics: Authors of papers containing statistics must mention in their accompanying letter that statistical analyses were either done or cross-checked by a statistician. If there should be any doubt about the correctness of statistical data, these latter will be reviewed by a statistician designated by the Editorial Office. The cost of this statistical assessment will be defrayed by the authors.

Presentation: Papers should be structured into headed sections as follows: Title page, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References.

The first page should include: title, first and last name of the authors and their affiliations, short title (not more than 50 letters), key words (2-8), and the address for correspondence, including telephone, facsimile numbers and email address.

Abstract: The abstract should be structured (divided into objectives, methods, results and conclusions) and should not exceed 200 words.

Style: Abbreviations and symbols must be standard and SI units used throughout. Statistical analyses must explain the methods used. References to drugs should be made by their approved, not proprietary names, and the source of any new or experimental preparations should be given. The use of footnotes is not permitted. Single quotation marks should be used and words to be italicized should be underlined.

The Editor reserves the right to alter the manuscripts whenever necessary to make them conform to the Stylistic and bibliographic conventions of the Journal.

Literature cited: References should be numbered consecutively throughout the text and cited as superscript numerals.Theyshould be listed in full at the end of the article in Vancouver style. Unpublished work, work in preparation or personal communications should not be used as references but merely mentioned in the text. For references with more than four authors, only the first three should be given followed by et al. Medical journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus usage. Authors must verify references against the original documents before submitting the articles. References should be set out in the style of the following examples:

Journal article: Kero A, Lalos A, Wulff M. Home abortion – experiences of male involvement. Eur J Contracept Reprod Health Care 2010;15:264–70.

Article in an edited book: Cameron IT. Prostaglandins and menstruation. In Drife JO and Calder AA, eds. Prostaglandins and the uterus. London: Springer- Verlag 1992:17–28.

Abstracts: Baton KJ, Mayne JR, Menzies JB, et al. Studies on pressure measurements. Presented at the Symposium on Fluid Dynamic Measurements, Leicester, July 20-22, 1974:23.

Acknowledgements: The scientific and material contributions of others to the work should be acknowledged. Any permission for reproduction of published material must be acknowledged.

Declaration of interest: All sources of funding for research must be explicitly stated and will be published at the end of each paper. It is the policy of all Informa Healthcare to adhere in principle to the Conflict of Interest policy recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

Tables:

Each table should be on a separate page with its caption. They should be numbered Table 1, Table 2, etc. Tables should be simple and should not duplicate information in the text of the paper. The following symbols should be used for footnotes: *, **, †, ‡. Reference should be made specifically in the text to all tables.

Illustrations: For highest quality reproduction of illustrations we recommend submitting each figure as high resolution TIFF or EPS files with any fonts embedded. Legends for illustrations should be collected together and presented on a separate manuscript page. Reference should be made specifically in the text to all figures. They should be numbered Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.

Colour figures: Any figure submitted as a colour original will appear in colour in the journars online edition free of charge and can be downloaded. Paper copy colour reproduction will only be considered on condition that authors contribute to the associated costs. Charges are: $2300 per article. (Colour costs will be waived for invited Review Articles).

Case reports: The number of authors should not exceed three. The number of words of the entire manuscript should not exceed 2200. The abstract should be structured (Objectives/Case/Conclusions). The number of words should be at most 170. The text should be divided into sections (Introduction/Case report/ Discussion/Conclusion). A declaration of interest must be included. The number of references should not exceed 12. Figures at most 2, and of the highest quality.

iOpenAccess: Upon final acceptance the author may also select to publish through iOpenAccess, which, while being free of charge for public viewing, requires a fee from the authors. An official offering will be made by e-mail with a link. However, this is only a special offering and not required for publication in the Journal.

Proofs: Page proofs are sent to the designated author using Informa Healthcare’s CATS system. They must be carefully checked and returned within 48 hours of receipt. Authors may be asked to defray the expense of major alterationstotheproofs,whicharedeparturesfrom the accepted manuscript. If authors do not return page proofs within five days of receipt, the Editor reserves the right to either delay publication to a subsequent issue or to proceed to press without author corrections.

Offprints/reprints: Each corresponding author will receive free online access to their article through our website (www.informahealthcare.com/ejc). Reprints of individual articles are available for order at the time authors review page proofs, through Rightslink®. For more information on our journals and books publishing, visit our Informa Healthcare websites: http://www.informahealthcare.com.

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NIH Public Access Policy: In consideration of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, Informa Healthcare acknowledges that the broad and open dissemination of NIH-funded-research results may benefit future scientific and medical research. Because we value the current and future contributions our journals make to the scientific body of knowledge, we have made certain that our policies accommodate those authors who wish to submit to PubMed Central.

Informa Healthcare's position with respect to public access to NIH-funded work published in Informa Healthcare journals is as follows:
 

• Informa Healthcare authors may voluntarily submit their funded work to PubMed Central after a 12-month embargo period;
• “funded work” shall be defined as the final, peer-reviewed manuscript that is accepted by the Editor in Chief of the journal. This manuscript must not be altered by Publisher's copyediting and typesetting services; and
• this embargo period begins the day the work is published online on our website.

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