PROCEDURES of PALIATIA – Journal of Palliative Care

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The journal follows the ICMJE’s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, it is expected of authors, reviewers and editors that they follow the best-practice guidelines on ethical behaviour contained therein.

TYPES OF TOPICS

EDITORIALS
Editorials represent a comment or synthesis, related to the overall objective of the journal or to the subjects of the actual content of the issue at hand. They may be authored by a member of the Editorial Board or by a personality in the field of palliative care, invited by the Editorial Board.

ORIGINAL PAPERS
This section will include original articles complying with the editing rules described in Instructions for authors.

REVIEWS
Under this section studies will be published which present a systematic review or a state of the art concerning a specific subject. Editing rules are described in Instructions for authors.

CLINICAL LESSONS
Peculiar cases which deserve to be made public will be presented. Clinical lessons may include medical, psychological, social and cultural/religious aspects. The authors of these presentations ought to give arguments for the Initial motivation for choosing the case and present Description of the Case; Problem/Diagnosis; Treatment/Action; Comments; Conclusions. The clinical lesson may also bring back into attention an issue already tackled in the past.

MANAGEMENT ISSUES This section deals with subjects, which highlight organisation and management problems in delivering palliative care. They may include subjects like communication, planning, volunteer work, financing in palliative care and innovative projects. Editing rules are described in Instructions for authors.

COMMENTS, DISCUSSION
This section will host comments and/or present a discussion by experts upon recently articles published in the field of palliative care and related areas.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR This section will present letters from readers, which express their comments about the articles published in the journal. The editor-in-chief has the right to refuse publishing a letter.

BOOK REVIEWS
The most recent books will be reviewed here by an independent expert.

NEW PUBLICATIONS
Under this topic new (international) publications, special reports (by WHO, UN etc) and new PhD studies will be summarised here.

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SUBMITTING AND REVIEWING PROCEDURE

Manuscripts will be submitted as attachment to the email in Word format (to editor@paliatia.eu. The manuscript will be registered, and the registration number will be communicated at the earliest convenience to the authors, by e-mail. Note: The authors must provide a correspondence e-mail address.

The editor-in-chief or the deputy editors will verify if the manuscript complies with the editing criteria.
-If the manuscript does not comply with the criteria, the corresponding author will receive a letter with the request to rewrite the manuscript according to the editorial criteria.
-If there are serious errors of content and/or editing, the manuscript will be rejected by the editor-in-chief. The corresponding author will receive a rejection letter.
-If the manuscript complies with the editing requirements, two peer-reviewers will be invited to review the manuscript. Both reviewers are not related with the work or institutions of the authors of the manuscript.

The editor-in-chief sends the letter of request (demanding a review within four weeks), together with a manuscript by e-mail to the peer reviewers. Reviewers will be asked to confirm the review process and time schedule. The reviewers’ decision (accept, accept with minor/major alterations, reject) will be send to the editor-in-chief, who will communicated the decision by e-mail to the corresponding author.

If the manuscript gets approval with alterations ,the anonymous comments of the reviewers will be send together with a statement of the editor-in-chief. The corresponding author shall send the altered variant of the manuscript within four weeks (complying with the initial submittal requests, mentioning the initial registration number of the manuscript), together with a letter/Word document as attachment to an e-mail where he/she responds item by item to the comments of the reviewers and specifies how the manuscript was modified. This mail is addressed to the editor-in-chief (editor@paliatia.eu) .

The peer reviewers will be asked if they are satisfied with the corresponding author’s answers. If so, the altered manuscript will be approved for publication.
-If the peer reviewers consider the corresponding author’s answer is only partially satisfactory, they will request through new item by item comments an additional review of the manuscript. The editing process following the same route as in the case of the first revision.
-If the peer reviewers consider that either on the first, or the second revision, the corresponding author did not meet/or met poorly the revision requests, they will advice to reject the manuscript for publication, which will be communicated to the authors by the editor-in-chief.

If a manuscript is approved, it will be published in PALIATIA. However, the degree of priority for the manuscript will be published, depends on the following criteria:
•  reviewers’ opinions
•  no author will have 2 articles in the same issue (as first author)
•  the degree of coverage for the different sections of the journal.

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