Submission Guidelines

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor submitted before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for thee references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced, uses a 12-point font, employs italics, rather than underlying (except with URL addresses) and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistics and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Author Guidelines

The Healer Journal welcomes contributions that are relevant to the science or practice of physiotherapy and rehabilitation sciences. We highly recommend to carefully read the Guidelines and Download the related forms before submissions.

Human rights

If the work involves the use of human subjects, the author should ensure that the work described has been carried out following ‘The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association’ (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

Conflict of interest

To prevent the information on potential conflict of interest for authors from being overlooked or misplaced, that information must be part of the manuscript. It should therefore also be included as a single line in the manuscript.

Submission declaration and verification

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture, or academic thesis, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright holder.

If additional papers have or will be published with any overlap of the current dataset, it is the authors' responsibility to notify the editor at the time of submission.

Changes to authorship

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and the order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in the author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. The editor can consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted only in exceptional circumstances. While the editor considers the request, the publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the editor will result in a corrigendum.

Clinical trial results

The policy of The Healer Journal regarding clinical trial registration is consistent with the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Results may be posted in the same clinical trials registry in which primary registration resides. This will not be considered to be a prior publication if the results are posted in the form of a brief structured (less than 500 words) abstract or table. However, divulging results in other circumstances (e.g., investors' meetings) is discouraged and may jeopardize consideration of the manuscript. Authors should fully disclose all posting in registries of results of the same or closely related work.

Reporting clinical trials

Randomized controlled trials should be presented according to the CONSORT guidelines. At manuscript submission, authors must provide the CONSORT checklist accompanied by a flow chart/diagram that illustrates the progress of patients through the trial, including recruitment, enrollment, randomization, withdrawal and completion, and a detailed description of the randomization procedure.

Registration of clinical trials

Registration in a public trials registry is a condition for publication of clinical trials in this journal following ICJME recommendations. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrollment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. A clinical trial is defined as any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects of health outcomes. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration.

Authorship Letter:

The corresponding author has to submit an authorship letter at the time of submission of the manuscript, duly signed by all co-authors along with a description of their contributions, affiliations and email addresses. Declaration of any potential conflict of interest, transfer of copyrights and funding will also be mentioned in it.

Open access

This is an open-access journal: all articles will be free for everyone to read and download.

Informed consent and patient details

Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in the paper. Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in The Healer Journal publication. Written consents must be retained by the author but copies should not be provided to the journal. Only if specifically requested by the journal in exceptional circumstances, the author must provide copies of the consents or evidence.

Submission

Manuscripts may be submitted by registering with the journal. Once you have submitted the article, all correspondence will be sent by email. In case of any submissions related query, please send email on submission@thehealerjournal.com

Article length

Manuscript length (not including title page, abstract, references, tables or figure legends) depends on the type of study:

  • Systematic reviews: up to 5000 words
  • Clinical trials, experimental and qualitative studies: up to 3500 words
  • Observational studies: up to 2500 words

Peer review

This journal operates a double-blind review process. All contributions will be initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's decision is final.

Editorials

The Healer Journal publishes two editorials on scientific or professional issues of physiotherapy practice and other health-related matters and innovations in each issue. Editorials are usually commissioned; however, anyone wishing to write an editorial should contact the Journal Editor for discussion about the topic. Editorials should be no more than 2000 words with a maximum of three authors and 20 references. Commissioned editorials are not formally peer-reviewed, but may be subject to informal review. Non-commissioned editorials will be formally peer-reviewed.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION:

Essential title page information

Title: The title should be concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

Running title: Write a short running title on the title page.

Author names and affiliations: Please clearly indicate the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the city and country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.

Corresponding author: Indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that the e-mail addresses and contact numbers are given. The corresponding author details should be included on the title page. 

Abstract

The structured abstract should comprise the following: Background, Objective, Design, Methods, Results, Conclusion. A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself. Terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus should be used.

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using Australian / British spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Units and Abbreviations

This journal does not favor abbreviations in the text. However, 95% CI, SD, OR, RR, MD and such commonly used terms do not require spelling out in full at first mention (they would usually appear within parentheses), but even when presented outside of parentheses these do not require defining. The journal uses an approved list of units and abbreviations.

Introduction 

State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

Methodology 

Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarized, and indicated by a reference. If quoting directly from a previously published method, use quotation marks and also cite the source. Any modifications to existing methods should also be described.

Results

Results should be clear and concise.

Discussion

This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.

Conclusion

The main conclusion of the study should be presented in a short concluding paragraph at the end of the Discussion section.

Conflict of Interest

To prevent the information on potential conflict of interest for authors from being overlooked or misplaced, it is necessary for that information to be part of the manuscript. It should therefore also be included after conclusion.

Figures

Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions below the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used. The maximum number of figures or images is 4.

Tables

Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Tables can be placed either next to the relevant text in the article, or on separate page(s) at the end. Number tables consecutively following their appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Please avoid using vertical rules and shading in table cells. Write captions below the table. The maximum number of tables to be included is 4.

References

Citation in text

Please ensure that every reference in the text should be mentioned as Arabic numerals in superscript. Reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication. Use the support of Citation Style Language styles, such as EndNote.

Reference style

Text: Indicate references by (consecutive) superscript Arabic numerals in the order in which they appear in the text. The numerals are to be used outside periods and commas, inside colons, and semicolons. The referencing style used by the journal is the Vancouver style, which can be found as a standard referencing style in EndNote, RefWorks, Mendeley, and Zotero.

Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article before sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item. Ensure that the following items are present:

One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:

  • E-mail address
  • Full postal address

All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:

  • Keywords
  • All figure captions
  • All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
  • Further considerations
  • The manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'. References are in the correct format for this journal.
  • All references mentioned in the reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
  • Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)
  • Download for Author