Instructions for Authors

Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted online. Once you have prepared your manuscript according to the instructions below please visit the online submission web site. Instructions on submitting your manuscript online can be viewed here.

The covering letter with the typescript must include the following information:

• Relevant details of any prior or duplicate publication.
• A statement of the roles played by each author, e.g. data analysis, experimental design.
• A declaration of any possible conflicts of interest and/or funding.
• A signed statement that the paper has been read and approved by all authors.
• Full details for contacting the corresponding author.
• Formal and documented ethical approval from an appropriately constituted research ethics committee is required for all studies involving people, medical records, and anonymised human tissues. Please see the COPE website for full guidelines on publications practice. A statement on ethical approval should be included in the Methods section of your article.
  

Prior and duplicate publication
The Journal will not consider for publication a paper on work that has already been reported in a published paper or is described in a paper submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere. This does not preclude a paper that has been rejected by another journal or a full report that follows publication of a preliminary report, usually in the form of an abstract. Authors must always make a full statement to the Editor about all submissions and previous reports that might be regarded as prior or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work. Copies of such material must be included with the submitted paper to help the Editor decide how to deal with the matter.

Patient Consent
We will normally require written patient consent for all published clinical material, for instance in case reports. Further guidance regarding consent is provided on the COPE website.

Submissions which do not conform to these Notes for Authors will be returned for amendment.

The attention of authors is particularly drawn to the first requirements listed above. Failure to do so will be viewed as a serious breach of conduct.

Papers should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals according to the Vancouver style (available from the British Medical Journal, London WC1H 9JR, UK). On acceptance for publication papers are subject to editorial amendment. Authors are solely responsible for the factual accuracy of their papers.

Open Access

Occupational Medicine authors have the option, at an additional charge, to make their paper freely available online immediately upon publication, under the Oxford Open initiative. After your manuscript is accepted, as part of the mandatory licence form required of all corresponding authors, you will be asked to indicate whether or not you wish to pay to have your paper made freely available immediately. If you do not select the Open Access option, your paper will be published with standard subscription-based access and you will not be charged.

For those selecting the Open Access option, the charges for Occupational Medicine vary depending on the institution at which the Corresponding author is based:

Optional Oxford Open charges:
For a Corresponding author based at an institution with an online subscription to Occupational Medicine:
Regular charge - £900 / $1800 / €1350
List B developing country charge** - £450 / $900 / €675
List A developing country charge** - £0 / $0 / €0

For a Corresponding author based at an institution that does not subscribe to the online journal:
Regular charge - £1500 / $3000 / €2250
List B developing country charge** - £750 / $1500 / €1125
List A developing country charge** - £0 /$0 / €0

*Visit http://www.oxfordjournals.org/jnls/devel/ for list of qualifying countries.

The above Open Access charges are in addition to any page charges and colour charges that might apply. Orders from the UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from elsewhere in the EU you or your institution should account for VAT by way of a reverse charge.  Please provide us with your or your institution’s VAT number.

If you choose the Open Access option you will also be asked to complete an Open Access charge form online. You will be automatically directed to the appropriate version of the form depending on whether you are based at an institution with an online subscription to Occupational Medicine. Therefore please make sure that you are using an institutional computer when accessing the form. To check whether you are based at a subscribing institution please use the Subscriber Test link for Occupational Medicine.

Authors

Multiple authorship is discouraged. Authors should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content.

Abstract

The abstract should be no more than 250 words and structured using the following headings: Background, Aims, Methods, Results and Conclusions.

Discussion

The discussion should be structured to include the following: statement of principal findings; strengths and weaknesses of the study; strengths and weaknesses in relation to other studies, discussing particularly any differences in results; meaning of the study: possible mechanisms and implications for clinicians or policymakers; unanswered questions and future research.

Key words

The abstract should be followed by a list of 3-10 key words or short phrases which will assist the cross-indexing of the article and which may be published.

Tables

Tables should be presented on separate pages with a suitable caption at the top of each table. Column headings should be as brief as possible and give units of measure in parentheses. Vertical lines are not needed.

Both figures and tables should be constructed and labelled in such a way that they may be understood without reference to the text.

References

References should be indicated in the text as numbers in brackets, placed in line with the text and in order of appearance. References cited only in tables or figures should be numbered in sequence according to the first mention of the illustration in the text. Periodicals should be abbreviated as in Index Medicus; if the journal is not listed in the Index give the full title. Up to six authors should be listed; if there are more quote the first three followed by et al. The sequence for a journal article is: author(s), title, journal, year, volume, first and last page number, e.g.

Elms J, Poole K, Mason H. A screening questionnaire for HAVS? Occup Med (Lond) 2005;55:139-141.

The sequence for a book chapter or a book is: author(s), book title [or chapter title, editor(s), book title], edition, place of publication, publisher, year, first and last pages, e.g.null

Cherry N. Occupation and infertility. In: McDonald C, ed. Epidemiology of Work-related Diseases. London: BMJ Books, 2000; 361-380.

Funding

Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear before the 'Acknowledgements' section.

The following rules should be followed:

• The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’
• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies) Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]’
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency)
• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.

An example is given here: ‘This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789].

Footnotes

Footnotes should not be used in the text. Footnotes to tables should be placed at the bottom of the table to which they refer.

Units and abbreviations

SI units should be used except for measurement of blood pressure (mmHg). Abbreviations and acronyms should only be used if absolutely necessary and must be defined on first use. Guidance on use and presentation of statistical analysis is available in Statistical Guideline for Contributions to Medical Journals (available from the British Medical Journal, London WC1H 9JR, UK).

Copyright

It is a condition of publication in the Journal that authors grant an exclusive licence to the Society of Occupational Medicine. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently, and will also allow the article to be as widely disseminated as possible. As part of the licence agreement, Authors may use their own material in other publications provided that the Journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication and Oxford University Press as the publisher. If papers include tables or illustrations that have been published previously, the author must obtain permission to reproduce from the first publisher (and author if necessary) before the paper can be accepted for publication in Occupational Medicine. Copies of the letters of permission must accompany the submitted article. Opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not those of the Journal or the Society of Occupational Medicine

Conflicts of interest

At the point of submission, Occupational Medicine’s policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider the conflict of interest test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it?

As an integral part of the online submission process, Corresponding authors are required to confirm whether they or their co-authors have any conflicts of interest to declare, and to provide details of these. If the Corresponding author is unable to confirm this information on behalf of all co-authors, the authors in question will then be required to submit a completed Conflict of Interest form to the Editorial Office. It is the Corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy.

If the manuscript is published, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.

Author Self-Archiving/Public Access policy from October 2005

For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.

Proofs

The first named or the nominated author will be sent proofs for correction. The publisher reserves the right to charge authors for the cost of changes made to the text or the figures at proof stage when such changes are extensive. No charge will be made for corrections of errors made during the editorial process or by the printer.

Offprints

The publisher will supply free online access for each paper. Offprints may be ordered at an extra cost at proof stage. Reprints of all papers may be purchased direct from the publishers. Orders from the UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from elsewhere in the EU you or your institution should account for VAT by way of a reverse charge.  Please provide us with your or your institution’s VAT number.

Disposal of manuscripts

Occupational Medicine holds on file submitted manuscripts for 6 months after editorial decision or publication. From that date, all manuscripts in our possession which have either been published or rejected will be destroyed.

Occupational Medicine is an international peer-reviewed journal published by Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.

Language Editing

Particularly if English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript you may wish to have it edited for language. This is not a mandatory step, but may help to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. If you would like information about one such service please click here. There are other specialist language editing companies that offer similar services and you can also use any of these. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.

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