Guidelines

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Writing for the Journal of Pelvic Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapy (JPOGP) - Author Guidelines

The editors encourage authors to submit original research, clinical papers, systematic, scoping and literature reviews, meta-analyses, case reports, brief and technical reports, clinical commentaries, infographics, editorial letters, and quality improvement projects for consideration for inclusion in the journal.

All submissions should be sent directly to the editorial team: journal@thepogp.co.uk

Editor-in-Chief: Gráiinne Donnelly

Associate Editor: Biljana Kennaway

Managing Editor/Publisher: Andrew J. Wilson

 

We follow the principles of the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE), which demands the highest standards of practice from all participants in scientific research and publishing (www.publicationsethics.org.uk). It is recognized that it may not be possible to identify or be aware of all transgressions of the code of practice. Any complaints made to the journal are dealt with by the Journal Subcommittee (JSC) in line with COPE’s code of practice.

 

Follow our guidelines for the submission of your manuscript and check that you comply with these throughout the process:

• before preparing for submission;
• preparing for submission; and
• after submission.

 

BEFORE YOU BEGIN - PREPARING FOR SUMBISSION

Ethics in publishing

It is important that all articles published in the Journal of Pelvic, Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapy (JPOGP) are morally acceptable, and representative of research ethics and reporting.

Authors are expected to conduct research with the highest level of integrity from formulating the research question to conducting, analysing and sharing their data. Approval for conducting research on humans and animals should be gained prior to the start of the study. Authors are obliged to include their ethics policy registration number in their manuscript; however, the editors reserve the right to request that the documents are presented to them for verification.

Submitted manuscripts should both present data and interpret findings in a transparent and professional scientific manner. Plagiarism and misinterpretation of data, results or any other findings is strictly forbidden, and when detected, the manuscript will be rejected. Citations, verbatim quotations, and reporting of other researchers’ work, results and interpretations must be cited to avoid the risk of potential plagiarism. This is particularly screened by the editorial team when non-research articles are submitted, such as clinical commentaries, and conference and opinion papers, and additionally, by peer reviewers in the cases of clinical papers and literature reviews.

The editorial team may check for potential plagiarism, and may ask for supporting evidence of findings, including raw data. Authors should be prepared to send the raw data on request while protecting the anonymity and confidentiality of the subjects.

 

Ethical approval and informed consent

The policy is based on the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Where relevant, statements about ethical approval and informed consent must be included in research reports. Our policy is that appropriate statements on the following matters must be included:

(1) scrutiny and acceptance by an ethics committee or institutional review board; and

(2) informed consent for inclusion, collection and use of data or samples, and/or publication, as applicable.

(3) submissions of research involving human participants should follow the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki.

 

(1) Ethical approval

To find out which ethics committee your study will need to obtain approval from, enquire within the research and development department of your organisational trust or authority. Do not be tempted to call your investigation something that it is not just to avoid the need for approval; this will prevent your work being published and compromise your professional integrity.

 

(2) Informed consent

It is necessary for all authors to obtain informed written or verbal, freely given consent from participants included in studies, as well as consent to publishing their data and images. For example, authors, should include an informed consent declaration: “Informed written consent was obtained from all participants taking part in the study”; or “Informed verbal consent was obtained prior to the interview.”

 

Protecting participants’ anonymity is of upmost importance, and therefore, unless otherwise approved, submitted data should not include participants’ names, birth dates and biometrics, or other identifiable data. The participants have the right to decide what happens to any personal, identifiable data that may be detected (e.g. in sections of research interviews, photographs and scanning images), and therefore, authors need to obtain separate informed written consent to publish any such data. Therefore, authors should include a declaration of consent to publication; for example: “The participant has freely signed a consent form allowing submission of the case report”; or, “Written, informed consent for publishing their data and images was gained from all participants who took part in the study.” Failing to obtain written consent for publishing a participant’s data will result in rejection of the paper, and in cases where the consent is not gained for publishing photographs and images, this will result in removing these from the published version.

Exceptions for publishing without informed consent include various imaging scans such as radiology and ultrasound images, and videos without identifiable data or voice recordings on them. Authors who would like to submit and publish material such as videos via QR code must consider and follow these steps to ensure anonymity. See Video and supplementary material for more info.

Authors take responsibility for the correctness of these declarations.

Please note that the editorial team reserves the right to reject submissions that fail to follow the above guidelines.

 

Patient anonymity

Please refer to our ethics in publishing, and ethical approval and informed consent sections above. Studies involving human beings (i.e. patients or volunteers) require ethical approval and informed consent, and this should be clearly documented in the manuscript, as illustrated in the above-mentioned sections. Authors must make sure that their manuscript is submitted without any identifiable personal details of participants being included in any part of the study, which includes identifiable data within tables, images, videos, imaging or supplementary material. Exceptional circumstances may present whereby participants waive their right to anonymity and consent to sharing of their identifiable details. In such circumstances, a letter of consent from the participant must be obtrained.

 

Declaration of interest

All authors must disclose any relationships that could be seen as prejudicial to their results, or may represent a potential conflict of interest. This could constititute any financial or personal relationships that could inappropriately bias their work and results. Authors must disclose any such involvement in the manuscript under the subtitle “Declaration of interest”.

If the authors have no interests to declare, this should be noted at the end of the manuscript and before references as: “Declaration of interest: none.”

 

Submission declaration and verification

All work submitted to the journal should not have been previously published elsewhere other than in the form of a poster or abstract, lecture, or thesis. Furthermore, all submissions should uniquely be considered for publication within the journal, and not simultaneously submitted to multiple journals or previously have been published in another language. The editorial team will check for the originality and duplication of work using Crossref Similarity Check software.

 

Linguistic inclusiveness

Authors should be free of assumptions or prejudice about someone’s beliefs, cultural background, sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity, age, disability or health conditions. Equally, their manuscripts should be free of any personal bias, and hierarchical assumptions and references. This is an important aspect of promoting equal opportunities.

 

Sex and gender equity in research

Although there is no internationally agreed guideline on defining sex and gender, authors should address such matters in their manuscript in order to enhance the precision and rigour of scientific reporting. In cases where this is not possible, they should indicate this as a limitation in their manuscript. For more information, authors can refer to Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) Guidelines (https://ease.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EASE-SAGER-Checklist-2022.pdf.pagespeed.ce.Ni8gG8fm0D.pdf).

 

Authorship

All named and listed authors should have contributed to the paper by involvement in its conception or design, or in the interpretation of the data or writing of the report. A statement describing each author’s contribution should be included at the end of the article.

 

Changes to authorship

The list and order of authors should be carefully considered prior to submission. Any addition, deletion or change to the order of authors should be made prior to acceptance, and will need to be agreed by the editorial team.

 

Acknowledgements

Individuals who have provided technical or other support, but are not included as authors should be recognised as contributors to the work and listed in the acknowledgements.

 

Copyright

Accepted submissions will need to complete a journal publishing agreement. The editor managing your submission will send this to you or you can email journal@thepogp.co.uk to request one.

 

Authors should submit articles as per the house style requirements listed below:

• font size 12;
• double-spaced;
• Times New Roman;

• consecutively numbered pages;
• saved in Rich Text Format; and
• word count: clinical papers should be no longer than 7500 words (excluding the abstract and references).

Papers should be submitted with a separate title page containing all author details (including full contact information and academic affiliation). The manuscript should include an abstract, the text, references, appendices and tables, all in a single file. The different sections should be marked by page breaks. 

Please note that figures should be provided in separate files, and not embedded in the text. Tables should be inserted at the end of the manuscript.

The title of the article should be in sentence case, bold and ranged left: note that there is no full stop and no underlining. The author’s name(s) (initials and surname only) should be given below the article’s title in sentence case, bold and ranged left. Again, there is no full stop. The author’s place of work should be listed below his or her name in italics, ranged left, no full stop.

A summary of not more than 350 words should be submitted outlining the purpose, scope and conclusions of the paper. This should be followed by a minimum of three and a maximum of five keywords that best represent the contents.

The layout of the journal is with the heading of each section in bold sentence case. Notice that, again, there is no full stop and no underlining.

The first paragraph is left-justified; subsequent paragraphs in the same section are indented.

When including tables, diagrams and figures, these should be numbered in the order in which they appear in the text, and must be not be embedded in the text. Please indicate their placing in the text (e.g. “Fig. 1”). Any caption should be left-justified above the table or below the diagram. All figures and tables must be referred to in the text.

When using numerals in the text, these should be written out in words up to and including nine, except for measurements, numbers in tables, years or page numbers.

All clinical papers must be fully referenced using the Harvard system, and the references verified by the author. No exceptions will be made.

The reference list must be double-spaced, and arranged alphabetically by the surname of the first author or editor. References should have a hanging indentation. In the text, give the author(s) and date of publication in brackets [e.g. “(Smith 1998)”], or if the main author’s name is part of a sentence, then only the year is in brackets [e.g. “as described by Smith (1998)”]. Note the absence of commas and full stops. For more than two authors, reference can be made in the text to “Smith et al. (1998)”; note the italics and full stop. However, when writing the reference list, the convention is as follows: for up to five authors, write all the authors’ names; for six or more authors, write the first three authors’ names, followed by “et al.”

For journals, give the author’s surname followed by all initials, the year of publication in brackets, the title of the paper, the full name of the journal, the volume number, the issue number in brackets, and the first and last page numbers of the article in full (note the correct use of italic, bold, commas and full stops):

Laycock J., Knight S. & Naylor D. (1995) Prospective, randomised, controlled clinical trial to compare chronic electrical stimulation in combination therapy for GSI. Neurourology and Urodynamics 14 (5), 425–426.

For reports, follow this style:

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (2014) Antenatal and Postnatal Mental Health: Clinical Management and Service Guidance. NICE Clinical Guideline 192. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, London.

For books, give the author’s/editor’s surname followed by all initials, the year of publication in brackets, the book title in italics, and the publisher and city of publication:

Williams P. L. & Warwick R. (eds) (1986) Gray’s Anatomy, 36th edn. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh.

For a chapter or section in a book by a named author (who may be one of several contributors), both chapter and book title should be given along with the editor’s name(s), and the first and last page numbers of the chapter:

Robinson K. L. (1996) Bioelectric fields and physical principles. In: Physics in Medicine and Related Fields (eds P. Smith & P. S. Hascombe), pp. 335–349. Dekker Publishing, New York, NY.

For references to documents on the World Wide Web (WWW), give the author’s surname followed by all initials, the year of publication in brackets, the document title in italics, indication that it is a WWW document in square brackets and the complete Uniform Resource Locator (URL):

List D. (2004) Maximum Variation Sampling for Surveys and Consensus Groups. [WWW document.] URL http://www.audiencedialogue.net/maxvar.html

Please adhere strictly to this style of referencing in any contribution to the journal.

 

Acknowledgements

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Please mention individuals who have provided technical or other support, but are not included as authors.

• Conflict of interest – highlight any potential conflicts of interest, and if there are none, then please state that this is the case.
• Ethical approval – detail who provided this, and the reference number, where appropriate. If this was not required, then please state this and why it was so.
• Funding – list any sources of funding.

• Randomized controlled trial – Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT);
• Systematic reviews – Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA);
• Qualitative research – consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ); and
• Study interventions – template for intervention description and replication (TIDieR).

The journal accepts submissions of case reports of up to 2500 words. These should be structured as follows:

• title;
• abstract and keywords;
• a brief introduction;
• a concise description of the patient and condition, and an explanation of the assessment;
• treatment and progress;
• discussion; and finally,
• evaluation of implications for practice.

The study must be referenced throughout. Further guidance and examples are available on request.

 

The submission of infographics is encouraged by the editors, but these will be subject to the same double-blinded review process as clinical papers, literature reviews and case studies. On occasion, the editors may commission infographics in the same way that they request opinion pieces, and these will not undergo peer review. We request that you submit your infographic in an editable format, such as Microsoft PowerPoint. A PowerPoint template is available on request, and can be accessed from the website under the “Examples” section. Colour images can sometimes be included, but these will need to be discussed with the editors. In other cases, the infographic may appear in print in black and white, but with a hyperlink or QR code to direct the readers to the full-colour image in the extended online content on the website.

 

Please ensure that you have permission to use any artwork within your paper, and acknowledge the source and copyright, where necessary. Accepted submissions will need to complete a journal publishing agreement. The editor managing your submission will send this to you or you can request one.

 

These should be monochrome and must be in sharp focus. The photographs should be numbered and their placing indicated in the text. Digital photographs should be of high resolution (i.e. a minimum of 300 dots per inch). Line illustrations should follow the style used in the journal, i.e. any labelling text should be in sentence case (10-point, Arial font), graphs should be two-dimensional and all images must be monochrome. As with photographs, line illustrations should be numbered and their placing indicated in the text. All images should be of high resolution (i.e. a minimum of 1200 dots per inch).

 

We publish extended online content, and it is possible to provide links to this within or at the end of any document via a hyperlink or QR code. Please discuss this with the editorial team where required.

 

We ask that you identify any financial support for your study, and state what this provided (e.g. study design, data collection and/or preparation of the article). Once again, this is important in order to give your work and your paper transparency.

 

Pelvic, Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapy asserts copyright over all material published in the journal. On acceptance of their work, authors are asked to sign a journal publishing agreement form.

Permission from POGP is required for all reprints and derivative works. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included in papers, authors must obtain the written permission of the copyright holders, and credit the sources in the acknowledgements.

However, please note that authors have certain rights that allow them to reuse their work.

 

General points to note:

Please enclose your work address, e-mail address, and telephone number.

It is the author’s responsibility to obtain and acknowledge permission to reproduce any material that has appeared in another journal or textbook.

A brief biographical note on the author(s) should run at the end of the paper. This should be in italics.

 

 

Notes and news

All notes and news should have clinical relevance. Please refer at all times to the style and layout of previous editions of JPOGP for whatever you are writing. Using these guidelines will save the editorial team time. The copy deadline for the next issue of the journal is printed in the current one, and can be found below the editorial. This must be strictly adhered to by all contributors. Any further enquiries should be addressed to the editor and Sarah Papagiorcopulo, our news editor.

 

Designate one author as the corresponding author and supply:

• an e-mail address; and
• a postal address.

Ensure that you have:

• attached all material, including the title page, all tables, figures and appendices, and any supplementary material that you may wish to have considered; and
• documented within the text the specific points where you wish your tables and/or figures to be inserted.

Final checks:

• spelling and grammar;
• references in Harvard style;
• all references cited within the text should be included within the reference list and vice versa;
• all permissions for copyright material must have been obtained; and
• generally, figures and tables will appear in black and white; if it is essential that any should appear in colour, please discuss this with the editorial team.

 

Please note

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• It can be helpful to refer to a recent issue of the journal, and follow the style, layout and length of an article or item that is similar to your own contribution.
• Examples of previously published manuscripts of clinical papers and case reports are available by e-mail on request. It is strongly recommended that authors follow these formats.
• Manuscripts may be returned to authors if they have not adhered to the guidelines. If necessary, the editor should be consulted in the initial stages for clarification. Further information regarding manuscript preparation is referred to below. You can find out more information about the submission process under the Submission Process option in the Author Guidelines tab on the toolbar.
• If a paper is submitted for publication, then it is assumed that it has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal. All submissions should be original and previously unpublished.
• Clinical papers are subject to peer review and may need to be revised before being accepted. The editor reserves the right to edit, amend or revise any submission.
• A Portable Document Format (PDF) version of the final version of any academic article is available free of charge if notice is given to the editor when the article is submitted.
• All published material becomes the copyright of POGP, but is made open access after 3 years.

We operate a double-blinded external peer review  system, which means that neither the authors nor the international cohort of reviewers are revealed during the review process. In order to comply with this, we ask that you anonymise your work before submission, and provide your title page and author details as a separate document. Please remove any identifying information, such as names or affiliations, from the main body of the text (including any figures, tables and appendices). Your article will then be allocated to a minimum of two of our external peer reviewers for their consideration. While we aim for a 3- to 4-week turnaround, all of our peer reviewers and the majority of our team are volunteers, and at times, there may be a short delay as a result of work pressures.

 

After review, manuscripts will be returned with one of these decisions:

• acceptance;
• acceptance with minor revisions;
• rejection, but may resubmit after extensive revision; or
• rejection.

 

The middle two decisions are the most common, and the editors will often return a manuscript with edits and comments from the reviewers. The Editor-in-Chief has the final decision regarding whether submissions are suitable for acceptace or not.

It is good practice to save all the reviewer comments and required revisions in a separate document at this stage. This means that you can make the revisions and reply to the comments where appropriate.

When you are happy with your revisions, return the revised manuscript to the editors, who will then send it back to the external reviewers when there are major changes, or check minor revisions themselves.

When returning a revised manuscript, do not return it with tracked changes, but rather, highlight any changes within the document, and refer to the page in your replies. This will help the reviewer/editor to see where you have addressed their queries.

Authors are provided with PDF proofs. They are expected to return any qualifications and/or corrections to the editorial team within a week.

 

Journal publishing agreement

Accepted submissions will need to complete a journal publishing agreement. The editor managing your submission will send this to you or you can email journal@thepogp.co.uk to request one.

 

Offprints

Upon request, authors can be provided with PDFs of the final version of their papers. They are allowed to share this with their colleagues on an appropriately limited basis.

 

Errata/corrections

In cases in which misconduct and/or unethical behaviour are detected, the JPOGP editorial team will print a correction, and express their concern if articles have already been published.

 

Retractions

Retractions may happen in some cases of misconduct, and the authors’ institutions will be informed.

 

Editor: journal@thepogp.co.uk

Managing editor: ajwpublishing@gmail.com

 

• JPOGP accepts the following organic research submissions:
  • Systematic, literature, scoping reviews
  • Randomized controlled trials
  • Intervention studies
  • Cohort studies
  • Observational studies
  • Qualitative or mixed-methodologies
  • Service development reviews/audit
  • Case reports / Case series
  • Infographics;
• examples of previously published clinical papers and case reports are available by e-mail o request. It is strongly recommended that authors follow these formats;
• manuscripts may be returned to authors if they have not adhered to the guidelines. If necessary, the editors should be consulted in the initial stages for clarification. Further information regarding the submission process and preparation is referred to under the submission process;
• if a paper is submitted for publication, the it is assumed that it has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal. All submissions should be original and previously unpublished;
• clinical papers are subject to peer review and may need to be revised before being accepted. The editor reserves the right to edit, amend or revise and submission;
• a portable document format (PDF) of the final version of an accepted academic article is available free of charge if notice is given to the Editor when the article is submitted;
• if authors become aware of significant errors or inaccuracy in their published work, it is their responsibility to notify the editors, and provide a retraction or correction;
• all published material becomes the copyright of POGP, but it is made open access after a period of 3 years.