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Submission Process

The Journal of Pelvic, Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapy prides itself on being not only an academic publication that sets excellent standards in the world of pelvic health, but also one that aims to nurture new researchers and authors to encourage the publication of their work.

Before you begin

We welcome articles for publication on all aspects of pelvic health.

The editors invite papers in the following categories: original research; literature reviews, both systematic and narrative; case studies; service evaluations; and on occasion, invited opinion pieces.

We support the principles of the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE), which demands the highest standards of practice from all participants in scientific research and publishing. 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.

Ethics in publishing

It is important that all articles published in this peer-reviewed journal are representative of ethical research methods and reporting. These represent the work and opinions of not only the authors, but the reviewers and the journal itself.

Please consider the following before you publish:

  • Research data. It is important that all data that you present from your research have been collected after ethical approval, and that consent has been obtained from those whose data you are publishing. In the case of service evaluations and audits, it may be that you do not require formal ethical approval, but it is important that you have checked that this is the case, often with your audit department, and report it as such in your methodology. It is vital that all the data that you publish remain anonymous, and that this is also the case for any information that you may be required to make available in the case of a review.
  • Authors. All named authors should have made a contribution to the paper, either in the conception, design, interpretation of the data or writing of the report. It is often useful to include a statement at the end of the article describing each author’s contribution.
  • Duplication of publications. The journal does not accept work that has previously been published, with the exception of papers that have been sought for reprint by the JSC with the required permissions. We will, on occasion, choose certain articles that have been deemed to be of value to the POGP membership, and full acknowledgment of the previous publication will be made. Plagiarism will not be tolerated, and any work/words of others must be appropriately cited and acknowledged.
  • Reporting standards. Authors should present all work as an accurate representation of their research and results. It is recommended that, for transparency, it can be good practice to register the protocol of your proposed investigation before work begins, and this may then be referred to for clarity and to show that you have represented your study correctly. More information may be found here. Some sites may require payment, but there are others that do not.
  • Errors. If authors become aware of significant errors or inaccuracy in their published work, it is their responsibility to notify the JSC, and provide a retraction or correction.

Patient anonymity

Data anonymity and consent. Studies involving patients or volunteers require ethical approval and informed consent, and this should be documented in the article. To find out which ethics committee your study will need to obtain approval from, enquire within the research and development department of your trust or authority. Alternatively, it can be helpful to look here. 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.

Declaration of interest

All authors must disclose relationships that may be seen as prejudicial to their results, or may represent a potential conflict of interest.

Submission declaration and verification

It is implied that all work that is submitted to the POGP journal has not been previously published elsewhere other than in the form of a poster or abstract, lecture, or thesis. Furthermore, it should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere while under review by the journal.

Changes to authorship

Consider carefully the authorship of the paper prior to submission. Any addition, deletion or change in the order of authors should be made prior to acceptance, and will need to be agreed by the editorial team.

Acknowledgements

Anyone who contributes to the work, but is not deemed to have fulfilled the requirements for authorship, should be listed in the acknowledgements. This includes anyone who may have provided technical help or writing assistance.

Reporting guidelines

It is good practice to refer to the following guidelines when reporting your work:

Copyright

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 copyright release 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.

Role of any source of funding

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.

 

Preparation

The journal house style is documented in more detail in the author guidelines. Please read these thoroughly before submitting your work. The editor will check any submission to ensure that the guidelines have been followed. Your submission may be returned at this point if the editor has to request that you reformat and edit where required in order to allow your work to enter the review process.

Double-blind review

We operate a double-blind peer review system, which means that neither the authors nor the reviewers are revealed during the review process. In order to comply with this, we ask that you anonymize 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 two of our peer reviewers for their consideration. While we aim for a three- to four-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.

Use of word-processing software

We ask that all articles are submitted as Microsoft Word documents or in Rich Text Format, and that any tables and figures are not embedded within the text (see the author guidelines).

Referencing software may be used, but it can be helpful to convert the reference list to text format before submission in order to ensure that it is not corrupted during the review process.

Presentation of manuscripts

Please write your text in plain English, and ask someone to read it for clarity before submission. It is often useful to ask someone without a detailed understanding of the specific subject matter to proof-read it since he or she may pick up things that are easily misunderstood, such as abbreviations or words that may be ambiguous. Please present your work double-spaced and with page numbers because this will help the reviewers to comment concisely on specifics within the text.

It can be helpful to provide separate word counts for the abstract and the main body of the text.

It is acceptable to write your abstract with or without headings depending on the nature of your paper.

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, please provide up to five keywords since these will allow search engines to identify your paper. The journal is currently indexed by the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and the Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED). We are under consideration to be indexed by PubMed.

Terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list should be used. If suitable MeSH terms are not available, subject-specific terms can be employed instead.

Final statements

At the end of the paper and before the references, please provide three statements regarding:

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

Artwork and permissions

Please ensure that you have permission to use any artwork within your paper, and acknowledge the source and copyright, where necessary.

References

See the author guidelines for full details of how to present your references.

Video and supplementary material

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.

Submission checklist

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.

Review process

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

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

The middle two options are the most common, and the editor will often return a manuscript with edits and comments from the reviewers.

It is good practice to save all the reviewer comments and required revisions in a separate document at this stage, so 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 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.

After acceptance

Proofs

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

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.

 

Author enquiries

Clinical editor: drgillian.campbell@gmail.com

Managing editor: ajwpublishing@gmail.com

 

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