Eurohealth editorial information

Senior Editorial Team:

Sherry Merkur, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, London Hub, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

Gemma A Williams, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, London Hub, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

Editorial Board:

Reinhard Busse, Faculty of Economics and Management at Berlin University of Technology, Germany.

Josep Figueras, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels, Belgium.

Suszy Lessof, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels, Belgium.

David McDaid, Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

Martin McKee, Department of Health Services Research and Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK.

Elias Mossialos, Department of Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

Richard B Saltman, Department of Health Policy and Management, Emory University, USA.

Sarah Thomson, World Health Organization, Barcelona Office for Health Systems Financing, Spain.

Willy Palm, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Editorial policies

The European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and its publications, including Eurohealth, subscribe to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (https://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). Some of the issues, like Conflict of Interest, are also included in these Recommendations but it is also a wider policy on ethical publishing.

Printing, to ISO environmental standards and on FSC paper, is kept to a minimum.

Guidelines for authors

What to include when submitting an article to Eurohealth.

• Title – please include a title with the article
• Subheads – include message-led sub-headings where appropriate, to make the article more readable
• Abstract/Summary – provide a summary of up to 100 words
• Key words – submit up to 5 key words to accompany your article
• Word count – articles should be up to 2,000 words including references (longer articles by arrangement)
• References - include a maximum of 12 references. Ensure that all references include relevant details including URL or DOI. Incomplete references cannot be included.
• Jargon – explain all specialist terminology. Not all readers will be familiar with the acronyms of organisations, please spell them out or add a line describing their function.
• Language – use United Kingdom English. Provide Euro currency conversions when other currencies are used.
• Format – all data for figures should be provided in excel and images in power point
• Attribution – send details of full name, position and organisation (including city, country) for all co-authors
• Contact details of author – provide an email address to be published in the article so that readers can make contact. Also, include a postal address for copies of the issue to be sent when it is published.

If accepted, the article will be part of our open peer review process (see below) and titles may be modified. A final proof will be sent to you for your approval or amendment before publication.

Authors and co-authors must list all relevant affiliations to attribute where the work was approved and/or supported and/or conducted. If you have moved to a different institution before the article has been published, you should list the affiliation where the work was conducted, and include a note to state your current affiliation. If you do not have a current relevant institutional affiliation, you should state your independent status.

Listing authors’ names on an article is an important mechanism to give credit to those who have significantly contributed to the work. It also ensures transparency for those who are responsible for the integrity of the content.

Authors listed on an article must meet all of the following criteria:

• Made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that’s in the conception, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation, or in all these areas.
• Have drafted or written, or substantially revised or critically reviewed the article.
• Have agreed on the journal to which the article will be submitted.
• Reviewed and agreed on all versions of the article before submission, during revision, the final version accepted for publication, and any significant changes introduced at the proofing stage.
• Agree to take responsibility and be accountable for the contents of the article and to share responsibility to resolve any questions raised about the accuracy or integrity of the published work.

Co-authors must declare any competing interests relevant to, or which can be perceived to be relevant to the article.

• A competing interest can occur where you (or your employer, sponsor or family/friends) have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organisations, or with the people working with them which could influence the research or interpretation of the results.
• Competing interests can be financial or non-financial in nature. To ensure transparency, you must also declare any associations which can be perceived by others as a competing interest.
• Please read our policy on conflicts of interest (below).

Images and figures should only be used in the article if they are relevant and valuable to the work reported. Please refrain from adding content of this type which is purely illustrative and does not add value to the scholarly work. Permissions for use of third-party material will be sought and obtained before submission of the article.

Research funding should be acknowledged. Funding information should be provided if the work was undertaken as part of a grant (e.g., a European Union Framework Programme). This will be included in an acknowledgement section in the article. Note that, as WHO does not engage with the tobacco industry or entities that work to further the interests of the tobacco industry, and also does not engage with the arms industry, no funding or other support (e.g., contributions by those from within or affiliated to or sponsored by such private sector entities or from non-State actors that work to further the interests of the tobacco industry) are accepted. The same rule applies to reviewers (see below).

Please note that from 2011 issue 17(4), Eurohealth became the official journal of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

Peer review process

Eurohealth runs an open peer review process. This means that the reviewers know who the authors are and also that their identity will be revealed to authors during the review or publication process.

Eurohealth articles come about in one of two ways: commissioned or unsolicited submissions. For commissioned articles, a member of the Senior Editorial Team (or Editorial Board) writes directly to the prospective author who will be a subject expert, country expert, or policy expert and shares with them the thematic focus of the forthcoming Eurohealth issue as well as the guidelines for authors

Upon submission of the article (for both commissioned and unsolicited contributions), the peer review process has three steps. Although the process is not a traditional blind peer review process, it serves to provide quality control and direct feedback for improvement and to ensure all articles are original, meet editorial policies and are of high quality.

First, the article goes to one of the members of the Senior Editorial Team. Here, the draft article undergoes rigorous quality control and review of content, analytical rigour, and language. Next it is sent for a second review by the other Senior Editorial Team member or a subject expert working at (or with) the European Observatory on Health System and Policies. These first two steps serve as an avenue for analytical feedback (or an article may be rejected). A further (third) review is provided by a Guest Editor in the case of an article designated for a Special Issue. Guest Editors are policy or academic experts from the Special Issue subject of interest. Upon sending back to the author(s), the editors’ comments and amendments are incorporated into the text and modifications, which may be extensive, where warranted are made accordingly. At this stage, articles are substantially revised and improved on. The updated draft is then sent back to the Senior Editorial Team for final checking, including specific attention to the abstract, keywords, referencing and the final checking of the revised data and analysis. Another round of review and a final iteration from the authors may be needed or the article may be rejected if authors do not wish to make necessary changes.

The final draft is sent to the typesetter, then the editors and authors have another opportunity to check the article proof before publication.

Eurohealth structure

Each issue of Eurohealth, except for Special Issues, includes the following sections:

Eurohealth Observer – reporting on widely applicable international and European health policy areas with a particular topic focus for each issue;

Eurohealth International – contains articles on topics with relevance to countries beyond Europe’s borders;

Eurohealth Systems and Policies – analysis of the latest reforms or topical issues on the country level from experts working in the field;

Eurohealth Monitor – draws attention to new publications and news

Policies on Conflict of Interest, Human and Animal Rights, and Informed Consent

Conflict of Interest

A Declaration of Conflicting Interests policy refers to a formal policy a journal may have to require a conflict of interest statement or conflict of interest disclosure from a submitting or publishing author.

‘Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgments on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.’

Principles of the policy

Note that the European Observatory conforms to WHO policy on conflict of interests and it is important for publications issued by the Observatory reflect the objectivity and credibility of the wider organization. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, all experts engaged by WHO or serving on WHO expert groups (WHO expert committees, scientific groups and study groups) complete a Declaration of Interests form. Technical units review and follow the procedures described in the Guidelines for declaration of interests (WHO experts). Of course, declaring an interest does not necessarily exclude an expert from involvement in the work of WHO and any related publications. However, the expert’s interests must be assessed before the involvement begins and appropriate measures, as described in WHO’s Guidelines for declaration of interests (WHO experts), are taken to mitigate against potential conflicts of interest.

Reviewers

To ensure that the review process is free of conflicts:

Editors should select a Guest Editor when there is a conflict of interest with respect to an author. Editors should ensure that reviewers are free of conflict of interest with respect to an author.

Minor conflicts do not disqualify a reviewer from reporting on an article but will be taken into account when considering the review.

Authors

As above, all authors and co-authors are required to disclose any potential conflict of interest when submitting their article (e.g., employment, consulting fees, research contracts, stock ownership, patent licenses, advisory affiliations, etc.). If the article is subsequently accepted for publication, this information should be included.

Editors

Editors should not make any editorial decisions or influence in any way the editorial process if they have any conflict of interest for a submitted manuscript.

When editors submit their own work to the journal, another editor should manage the manuscript and the editor/author should recuse himself or herself from discussion and decisions about it.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism means representing someone else’s work as one’s own. Plagiarism is prohibited. Disciplinary or appropriate punitive action will be taken against any staff member or consultant who reproduces others’ work as their own. When any permissible material from previously published text is quoted or referred to, those materials should be appropriately cited and a bibliographical reference included in the reference list. Permission is required to reproduce or adapt any materials belonging to third parties.

Human and Animal Rights

All research must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. If there is suspicion that work has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, editors may reject the manuscript, and/or contact the author(s)’ ethics committee. On rare occasions, if the editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.

Articles conducting any animal or clinical studies should contain a statement in accordance with the animal and human ethics committee. Research should be carried out in a manner that animals do not get affected unnecessarily. Registration is required for all clinical trials.

Informed Consent

In Eurohealth, patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Since Eurohealth is a health policy journal, the inclusion of patient details should not be necessary. Eurohealth abides by the principles set out in the GDPR.

Data sharing policy

Eurohealth strongly encourages that data generated by its research that supports any article be made available as soon as possible, wherever legally and ethically possible. Authors are asked to share original data where relevant, and provide links to publicly available datasets, where appropriate.

Eurohealth abides by WHO data policies in that any data relating to patients and participants in research studies are confidential and should not be revealed by WHO staff members. If reference is made to a specific medical case or condition in a publication to be issued by the Organization, care must be taken to ensure that neither the names of the individuals concerned nor any other information that could lead to their identification are given. Photographs or video footage of individual patients or participants in research studies may be used by WHO only if written consent has been obtained from the individuals portrayed or their parents or guardians. In the case of patients, it should be borne in mind that they may be under unusual stress at the time of illness and that their permission may be questioned later. Any image showing signs of illness on a human body should not show the face unless that is the site of the illness. It should be noted that many Member States have their own national legislation regarding confidentiality of data relating to patients and participants in research studies. The terms of this legislation may affect the nature of data supplied to WHO, and what WHO may do with those data.