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Start Submission1. The Journal of Long-Term Care is an international, open access online journal. The scope of the journal is adult long-term (social) care. The focus is on adults (18 years and above) but we will consider papers including research pertaining to children and adolescents as long as there is significant relevance to adult care. There are no fees for submitting or processing articles. Once papers are accepted and processed they will be published on line in pdf format.
2. All new submissions to the journal should be submitted through Ubiquty’s online system and uploaded as Word, text or rich text format, with a covering letter giving full contact details and position(s) held by the author(s). Papers should be anonymised, ready for forwarding to referees. Where papers have more than one author, the contact author should be clearly specified. Tables and figures should be uploaded separately.
Line artwork should be supplied in tif or eps format, resolution 1200 dpi at final size. Combination artwork (line/tone) should be supplied in tif or eps format, resolution: 800 dpi at final size.
Correspondence should be sent to the same address electronically as far as possible. If it is necessary to send by mail, the address for correspondence is:
Managing Editor, Journal of Long Term Care, International Long Term Care Policy Network, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE.
All books for review should be sent to the same address.
3. By submitting your paper to the Journal you are agreeing that the journal may retain and use your email address for further correspondence about the journal and its host, the International Long-Term Care Policy Network (ILPN).
4. There is no upper word limit on articles that we will publish as long as they are of high quality. A guide is that articles should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words, excluding abstract, tables and figures, notes and bibliography/references. We also accept perspectives papers discussing important issues and/or commenting on policy for long-term care. Perspectives papers we would normally expect to be up to 3,000 words, but will accept longer papers if justified. Other formats such as longer or shorter articles, and linked, short debate (point/counterpoint) articles are encouraged. If you have ideas for such shorter articles, please check with the journal editor before writing them. Other formats such as longer or shorter articles, and linked, short debate (point/counterpoint) articles are encouraged. If you have ideas for such articles, please check with the journal editor before writing them. All correspondence should be addressed to the editor at the following email address Journal.of.Long-Term.Care@lse.ac.uk. Appendices to articles are not permitted. Links embedded in articles to other relevant materials are encouraged.
5. Original articles are considered on any aspect of long-term care practice, research, policy, theory, systems of care, methods and education. This includes empirical research papers (including quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods papers), modelling, theoretical discussions, policy commentaries, comparative analyses, and reviews of subject areas. We also welcome perspectives articles debating important issues and areas of policy for long-term care.
6. Authors are advised to follow specific guidance on writing up specific methodologies e.g. the CONSORT statement for RCTs (http://www.consort-statement.org/) and the PRISMA statement for systematic reviews and met-analyses (http://www.prisma-statement.org/)..
7. Authors are expected to ensure the integrity of their submitted articles. Where research is reported it should conform to good ethical practice. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that all appropriate research ethics and governance processes have been adhered to and that the necessary permissions were obtained for the research. It is also the responsibility of the authors to ensure that material in the article requiring specific copyright permission has the necessary approval. Submission of an article is taken to imply that it has not been previously published in a journal, or is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Authors should note in an acknowledgement sources of funding for the paper and associated work, and any potential conflicts of interest they may have relevant to the content of the article.
8. Research article contributions should be accompanied by an abstract of up to 250 words, plus up to six key words, and details of any acknowledgements. Abstracts should disclose the substantive argument or finding of the article and not merely its subject and formal structure. The structure for abstracts is:
Context – briefly set out the pertinent context and issues.
Objective(s) – succinctly set out the objective(s) of the paper.
Method(s) – describe the approach used to address the purpose of the article.
Findings – describe the key findings.
Limitations – discuss the main limitations of the work.
Implications – argue the implications of the paper for adult social care practice, policy and/or future research.
Key words – up to 6 relevant key words to help people find the article
Acknowledgements and Declarations – acknowledgements of funding and other contributions to the paper and declarations of, for example, potential conflicts of interest.
Contact details of the corresponding author.
9. Perspective pieces are generally shorter articles than research manuscripts (up to 3,000 words but we will consider longer articles if justified) and discuss important debates in long-term care. This can include commentaries on/critiques of long-term care policy. Abstracts for these perspectives pieces should be of no more than 200 words and cover the following:
Context - establish the context of the perspectives debate in the paper
Perspective - succinctly convey the main perspectives or policy argument of the paper
Implications – argue the implications of the paper for long-term care practice, policy and/or future research
Key words – up to 6 relevant key words to help people find the article
Acknowledgements and Declarations – acknowledgements of funding and other contributions to the paper and declarations of, for example, potential conflicts of interest
Contact details of the corresponding author.
10. Authorship of papers should be guided by existing good practice such as http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html. In these guidelines, authorship is defined as satisfying all 4 of the following points:
11. Contributions should conform exactly to the style of the Journal of Long-Term Care, and authors should check the format of their own contribution with that of recent content in the journal, paying particular attention to references and tables. Articles should be written clearly in UK English, with consistent spelling throughout, and to a publishable standard. Authors for whom English is not their first language are encouraged to have their articles proof-read by a professional proof-reader or a native English speaker with publishing experience.
12. The editorial team is happy to advise authors on the most suitable terminology to use e.g. on sensitive issues, avoiding discriminatory terms, and finding the most internationally recognised phrases.
13. Such notes as are essential to the arguments in the paper should be referred to in numerical order throughout the text and the numbers shown as superscript. These notes should be placed after the body of the text and before the references.
14. References must be in the Harvard style. They should be arranged alphabetically under author(s) name(s) and then in chronological order if several papers by the same author(s) are cited. The full title of the paper must be given together with the first and last page numbers. Book titles should be followed by the place of publication and the publisher. Only list references used in the main article. References in the text of the article should be cited with author’s/authors’ name(s) and year of publication (i.e. (Jones, 2000)), and with page numbers for specific quotations.
15. Tables and figures should be clearly laid out and designed to fit onto a page 234 mm by 155 mm. Vertical lines between columns should be omitted, and horizontal lines limited to the top and bottom of the table, with an additional one below the column headings. Totals and percentages should be labelled, and units identified.
16. Submitted articles will be triaged by the editor. If deemed appropriate to the aims and purpose of the journal, the editorial board will then usually seek two peer reviews of the anonymised article. In the light of these reviews the editor will make a decision about whether or not they wish to accept the article. Authors will be asked to respond to the anonymised feedback from reviewers.
17. Proofs will be sent to the contact author as a .pdf document. This is the final opportunity to correct errors, but without substantially altering the accepted paper.
18. As this journal is electronic only, paper offprints are not supplied to authors. Upon publication the corresponding author will receive a pdf file of their article. We encourage authors to link to the paper on the journal website.
19. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
20. Published articles represent the views of the author(s) and not necessarily of the Journal’s Editorial Board or the publisher.
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.
JLTC does not currently charge authors for processing and publishing articles. The Journal has been sponsored by the NIHR School for Social Care Research to cover start-up and publication costs.