Instructions for authors

Tobacco Control and Public Health in Eastern Europe (TCPHEE) considers for publication original articles, editorials, commentaries, literature reviews, book reviews, news, letters to the editor, announcements of events, and various other features. TCPHEE publishes original research from all fields of public health. More information about the journal scope is provided under 'About this journal'. Two issues of the journal are published each calendar year.

It is expected that the submitted manuscripts have not been published previously, are not currently under consideration for publication in other journals, and are not archived as pre-prints.

Studies that have been presented at conferences and other scientific meetings can be considered for publication. Authors are encouraged to refer to the conference abstracts and proceedings published earlier. However, it is recommended that the title of a new submitted manuscript differs from that used in earlier published abstracts. Authors are also encouraged to clearly disclose previous abstracts and proceedings in the cover letter and to possibly refer to them.

Most of the abovementioned types of submissions are subject to peer-review. However, commentaries, news, book reviews, letters to the editor, if they do not comprise research conducted by the authors, are published after internal review.

Publication ethics and malpractice 

TCPHEE believes that monitoring publishing ethics is a major duty during the editorial and peer-review process. The prevention of publication malpractice, including fraud, plagiarism, and other forms of research misconduct, is the responsibility of every author, editor, reviewer, publisher and institution.  

Authorship

All authors are required to clearly identify their individual contributions to the work.

Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design and acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. All authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship for works submitted to TCPHEE. 

Acknowledgments 

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help or writing assistance or a department chairperson who provided only general support. 

Conflict of interest

Authors are expected to state known and potential sources of conflict of interest in the cover letter. Authors should report their place of employment and the study’s sources of funding.  If there is no conflict of interest, this should also be explicitly stated as 'none'.

Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) or might appear to influence, his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from being negligible to having great potential for influencing judgment. Not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. On the other hand, the potential for conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

All participants in the peer-review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Editors will use information disclosed in conflict-of-interest and financial-interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions regarding conflict. Editors will publish this information if they believe it is important to readers in assessing the research. 

Manuscript preparation

The TCPHEE style and editorial policies conform to the 'Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals', as specified by the statements of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Unless differently specified below, all these guidelines (www.icmje.org) apply to the TCPHEE.

Original papers should be organized in traditional format and consist of an Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions. Original research articles should be limited to 4000 words. Authors are advised to use the manuscript template as well as the Resources for Authors page.

References

Due to the indexing requirements all the references whose original texts are not in Latin letters (Roman alphabet) should be translated into English, and the language of the original publication needs to be specified in brackets after the title: (in Russian), (in Ukrainian).

The preferred style of citation is APA. Authors are advised to use citation management recommendations and to apply citation management software such as Mendeley, EndNote, BibTex, RefMan, RefWorks etc. However, manuscripts in Russian and Ukrainian with references according to Russian or Ukrainian national standards are also considered for publication.

Abstracts

All papers are to be accompanied with a structured abstracts up to 300 words. Sections in the abstract are Background, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion.

Due to the multilingual nature of the journal, papers submitted in Ukrainian should include abstracts in English, Russian and Ukrainian, papers in Russian should include abstracts in English and Russian, and papers in English must include at least an English abstract. Authors of English language contributions whose native language is Russian or Ukrainian are expected to submit abstracts in these languages as well.

Publication and peer review processes

Manuscripts are considered in any of three languages: English, Russian, and Ukrainian.

Manuscripts are submitted in electronic form only. Paper versions are NOT considered. The manuscript should be saved as *.doc or *.rtf file. The submission should be made online. If this does not work, authors may also submit their manuscripts to the email address shown at the bottom of each page at the journal website. As shown in the template, all the manuscript materials are expected to be submitted in one file if the extensions specified above allow this.

Authors are welcome to contact the editors about the idea of the intended paper before the preparation of the full text.

The submitted manuscripts will initially be reviewed by the editors to confirm that they are within the scope of the journal and generally meet its requirements. This usually occurs within one week.

The submitted papers will be sent to at least two external experts in the field with the aim of reaching a first decision within three months of submission to the journal. The review is double blind: neither the authors nor the reviewers are identified.

Reviewers' comments will be reported to the authors with possible recommendations to revise the manuscript. The editor-in-chief will inform the author whether the paper is accepted without revision, allowed an opportunity to revise and resubmit, or rejected.

Manuscript revision

If major changes are suggested as a result of peer-review, the author is expected to resubmit the manuscript with all the changes tracked, so that the changes are visible for the editors and the reviewers.

The author is also required to provide an itemized response to each reviewers' comments. A sample table how this can be done is shown below.

Decision about publication

Editors’ decisions to accept or to reject a paper for publication are based only on the paper’s importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the scope of the journal.

Archiving

As an open-access journal TCPHEE will have its published full texts readily accessible through many indexing systems. However, authors interested in self-archiving the papers as 'post-prints' in open access repositories are advised to use TCPHEE pdf files for this.

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