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Checklists
We advise the authors to follow the below guidelines and checklists when submitting an article. Guidelines and checklists proposed are based on the EQUATOR Network that is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and the wider use of robust reporting guidelines.
This transparency enables readers and reviewers to scrutinise the research adequately, evaluate its methodological rigour, and reproduce the methods or findings.
All observational studies should comply with the STROBE guidelines:
Combined Studies Cohort Studies Case-Control Studies Cross-Sectional Studies
All systematic reviews should comply with the PRISMA guidelines:
PRISMA Checklist PRISMA Expanded Checklist
All study protocols should comply with the SPIRIT guidelines:
SPIRIT Checklist
All case reports should comply with the CARE guidelines:
CARE Checklist
All randomized trials should comply with the CONSORT guidelines: CONSORT Checklist
All meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology should comply with the MOOSE guidelines: MOOSE Checklist
All qualitative studies should comply with the SRQR guidelines: SRQR Checklist
All animal studies should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines:
ARRIVE Checklist
General instructions
The authors are encouraged to consult previous relevant publications in TID to assist them in the preparation of the manuscript, especially the references and tables.
Text formatting
All manuscripts should be submitted in a Word format, they should be single column and 1.5 spaced. Margins should be one inch at the top, bottom and sides of the page. Font size should be 11-pt or 12-pt, standard font in ‘Arial’ or ‘Times New Roman’ typeface. Manuscripts should be formatted in full justified paragraphs and headings should be left-aligned. Maths should be editable text.
Title page
The Title page should list the title of the article and suggestions for a short running title of no more than 60 characters (including spaces). Also include the authors names, affiliations and contact details including email address for the corresponding author. Affiliations should contain each author’s department, institution (institute, university), city, country.
The Title of the article should be clear, concise and highlighting the research topic. It should not include rhetorical questions, literary language, quotations and special symbols.
Authors cannot change the title of their article once it is accepted for publication, apart from very minor corrections.
Abstract
Authors are asked to supply a structured abstract of 300 words. For research articles, systematic review papers and short reports, the abstract should be structured as follows: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Letters do not have an abstract. Abstracts for narrative reviews, study protocols and methodology papers are unstructured.
Keywords
Include up to 3-5 keywords that describe your paper for indexing and for web searches of your manuscript.
Main text
Research papers, systematic review papers and short reports sections are: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Narrative review papers are not necessarily structured. It is suggested though to include the sections Introduction, Developments and Conclusion. Study protocols consist of Introduction, Methods, Discussion, and Conclusions. Methodology papers should consist of Introduction, Methodological approach, Case studies or Practical examples, Discussion, Conclusions.
Use the guidelines below to structure these sections:
1. A short introduction which should end with the study’s aims. The introduction should state clearly the objective of the paper as well as the context of the research or analysis.
2. A methods section which should describe the study design, setting, participants, measures, variables and statistical analysis performed. This section should also include information on the study’s ethics procedures. AI technology use should be described in detail (data collection, analysis, figure generation). The tool, version and prompts should be described too.
3. A results section, which should describe the study’s main findings and important aspects within the tables.
4. A discussion section, which should include a discussion of the study’s main findings, comparisons with other studies, potential policy implications, the study’s strengths and limitations.
5. A conclusions section, which should be short, concise and based on the results of the current study. General conclusions that do not stem from the manuscript's results should be avoided.
Declaration of interests
Declare any competing interests for each author. TID adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. The author names on the ICMJE forms should be identical to the names in the manuscript.
Funding
All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.
The sentence should begin: "This work was supported by". Proposal numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in parentheses as follows: "(proposal number xxxx)". The funding statement should only report grants awarded that are directly relevant to the study.
Acknowledgements
This section is for acknowledging individuals and institutions whose support the authors wish to mention (it is not compulsory). Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. The "Acknowledgements" section should be kept to a minimum.
If the study was based on a pre-print, thesis, or conference proceedings, it should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. If an AI was used to support the writing of the manuscript, this should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments.
Authors' contributions
The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies. The authors have the option to give a brief outline of their contribution. Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section.
Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): If you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the "Acknowledgements" section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.
Tables, Figures and Supplementary material
Tables and Figures should be placed at the end of the manuscript and be numbered sequentially in order of appearance in the text. However authors should ensure that every table or figure is referred to in the body of the text. Each table or figure should be accompanied by a short, descriptive title and in the footnote should define any acronyms, abbreviations or symbols used, statistical methods applied and any other information needed so that the table or figure may stand alone. Superscripts used to refer to table footnotes should be lowercase alphabetical symbols. Captions should be given separately in editable form and not part of the table or figure. Numbers in the table should not contain commas, and numbers less than unity should have a zero in front of the decimal point. Decimal numbers should be represented with the use of a full stop.
The number of actual tables (no sub-tables) that an article can contain should not exceed five. However, they have to be of value as determined by peer review. Extra tables can be included in the Appendix. The content of the tables should be such that the data are of sufficient resolution for comfortable reading. Tables should be submitted in their original Word format (not via Excel), and they should be legible. Avoid using vertical rules. Horizontal rules should be used only above and below column headings and at the bottom of the table. Do not create a table using only tabs or spaces to create columns. Tables should not duplicate material contained in the main text.
The number of figures should not exceed four. Extra figures can be included in the Appendix. Figures can be submitted in greyscale, black or white or in color as the journal is published online. The journal prefers that figures be created in Excel. Do not embed a figure file as a picture into Excel or Word, but submit them as individual files. The data of figures should be attached in a Word format. Size the figure to the column or page width of the journal, and set the resolution at 300 dpi or greater. Figures containing a large amount of text, particularly flow diagrams, should be send in an editable form.
Supplementary material should be submitted as a single file that includes all the supplementary material (figures, tables, questionnaires, etc.). If the authors wish to change the Supplementary file they would need to resend it corrected, as a final version before publication. The authors should be aware that supplementary files are not proofread or corrected by our team.
References
These must be numbered sequentially, as they first appear in the text. They should be superscripted and where more than one reference is cited, these should be separated by a comma, for example, 1, 12, 16, while for a continuous sequence of numbers, give the first and last number of the sequence separated by a hyphen, for example, 4-7. The Reference list should thus be sequentially numbered using plain text (i.e. without use of footnote or endnote etc). Please check the reference list and ensure that there is no duplication of references. A research manuscript should contain no more than 36 references, a review article no more than 50 and a short report no more than 15.
Article citations
These follow the AMA format.
Journal articles in Print
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume number(issue number):initial-final page.
(Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
Example:
Kjellstrom Tord, Lemke Bruno, Otto Matthias. Climate conditions, workplace heat and occupational health in South-East Asia in the context of climate change. WHO South East Asia J Public Health. 2017;6(2):69-73.
Journal articles Online
All references that are from journal articles must contain a Digital Object Identifier (DOI): A DOI is a unique character string created to identify a digital object, such as a journal article in an online environment. The DOI is a permanent identifier of all versions of an article and the DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document. The DOI must be included in the citation.
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume number(issue number):initial-final page. doi.
Example:
Thomson G, Wilson N. Smokefree signage at children’s playgrounds: Field observations and comparison with Google Street View. Tob Induc Dis. 2017;15(August):1-4. doi:10.1186/s12971-017-0143-x
Books
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Volume number (for more than 1 volume). Edition number. Place of publication: Name of publisher; year of publication:page numbers.
(Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
Example:
Patterson James T. The dread disease: cancer and modern American culture.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1989.
Web links and URLs
All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number, and included in the reference list, rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the item, the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed.
Website
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Name of the website. URL. Published date. Updated date. Accessed date.
Example:
Tobacco: fact sheet. World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/. Published November, 2017. Accesed November 24, 2017.
Report Online
Citation format:
Authors or Institution. Title. URL. Published date. Accessed date.
Example:
World Health Organization. Equitable access to essential medicines: a framework for collective action. http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/pdf/s4962e/s4962e.pdf. Published March, 2004. Accessed November 24, 2017.
Double blind peer-review policy
All papers submitted for publication are assessed with the mutual anonymity rule as to the names of reviewers and authors observed. Authors’ names and affiliations should not appear in the attached text/tables/figures.
Proofs
Minor changes to the manuscript will only be accepted. Beyond minor corrections, there will be no author changes accepted that are outside the style of the journal. Rewording, restructuring or changes of style to the manuscript will not be accepted. The authors should carefully review the proofs before publication and approve the files. If an error is identified after the publication, a correction letter will be published on behalf of the authors, indicating where the mistakes were made, while the original source will be immediately corrected.
Article download statistics
After publication, article download statistics are freely available to all readers via the "stats" tab next to each article.
Checklists
We support the use of Checklists during manuscript preparation. Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including:
randomized trials (CONSORT)
systematic reviews (PRISMA)
observational studies (STROBE)
meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE) and
qualitative studies (RATS).
We advise the authors to follow the below guidelines and checklists when submitting an article. Guidelines and checklists proposed are based on the EQUATOR Network that is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and the wider use of robust reporting guidelines.
This transparency enables readers and reviewers to scrutinise the research adequately, evaluate its methodological rigour, and reproduce the methods or findings.
All observational studies should comply with the STROBE guidelines:
All systematic reviews should comply with the PRISMA guidelines:
All study protocols should comply with the SPIRIT guidelines:
All case reports should comply with the CARE guidelines:
All randomized trials should comply with the CONSORT guidelines:
All meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology should comply with the MOOSE guidelines:
All qualitative studies should comply with the SRQR guidelines:
All animal studies should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines:
General instructions
The authors are encouraged to consult previous relevant publications in TID to assist them in the preparation of the manuscript, especially the references and tables.
Text formatting
All manuscripts should be submitted in a Word format, they should be single column and 1.5 spaced. Margins should be one inch at the top, bottom and sides of the page. Font size should be 11-pt or 12-pt, standard font in ‘Arial’ or ‘Times New Roman’ typeface. Manuscripts should be formatted in full justified paragraphs and headings should be left-aligned. Maths should be editable text.
Title page
The Title page should list the title of the article and suggestions for a short running title of no more than 60 characters (including spaces). Also include the authors names, affiliations and contact details including email address for the corresponding author. Affiliations should contain each author’s department, institution (institute, university), city, country.
The Title of the article should be clear, concise and highlighting the research topic. It should not include rhetorical questions, literary language, quotations and special symbols.
Authors cannot change the title of their article once it is accepted for publication, apart from very minor corrections.
Abstract
Authors are asked to supply a structured abstract of 300 words. For research articles, systematic review papers and short reports, the abstract should be structured as follows: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Letters do not have an abstract. Abstracts for narrative reviews, study protocols and methodology papers are unstructured.
Keywords
Include up to 3-5 keywords that describe your paper for indexing and for web searches of your manuscript.
Main text
Research papers, systematic review papers and short reports sections are: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Narrative review papers are not necessarily structured. It is suggested though to include the sections Introduction, Developments and Conclusion. Study protocols consist of Introduction, Methods, Discussion, and Conclusions. Methodology papers should consist of Introduction, Methodological approach, Case studies or Practical examples, Discussion, Conclusions.
Use the guidelines below to structure these sections:
1. A short introduction which should end with the study’s aims. The introduction should state clearly the objective of the paper as well as the context of the research or analysis.
2. A methods section which should describe the study design, setting, participants, measures, variables and statistical analysis performed. This section should also include information on the study’s ethics procedures. AI technology use should be described in detail (data collection, analysis, figure generation). The tool, version and prompts should be described too.
3. A results section, which should describe the study’s main findings and important aspects within the tables.
4. A discussion section, which should include a discussion of the study’s main findings, comparisons with other studies, potential policy implications, the study’s strengths and limitations.
5. A conclusions section, which should be short, concise and based on the results of the current study. General conclusions that do not stem from the manuscript's results should be avoided.
Declaration of interests
Declare any competing interests for each author. TID adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. The author names on the ICMJE forms should be identical to the names in the manuscript.
Funding
All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.
The sentence should begin: "This work was supported by". Proposal numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in parentheses as follows: "(proposal number xxxx)". The funding statement should only report grants awarded that are directly relevant to the study.
Acknowledgements
This section is for acknowledging individuals and institutions whose support the authors wish to mention (it is not compulsory). Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. The "Acknowledgements" section should be kept to a minimum.
If the study was based on a pre-print, thesis, or conference proceedings, it should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. If an AI was used to support the writing of the manuscript, this should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments.
Authors' contributions
The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies. The authors have the option to give a brief outline of their contribution. Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section.
Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): If you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the "Acknowledgements" section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.
Tables, Figures and Supplementary material
Tables and Figures should be placed at the end of the manuscript and be numbered sequentially in order of appearance in the text. However authors should ensure that every table or figure is referred to in the body of the text. Each table or figure should be accompanied by a short, descriptive title and in the footnote should define any acronyms, abbreviations or symbols used, statistical methods applied and any other information needed so that the table or figure may stand alone. Superscripts used to refer to table footnotes should be lowercase alphabetical symbols. Captions should be given separately in editable form and not part of the table or figure. Numbers in the table should not contain commas, and numbers less than unity should have a zero in front of the decimal point. Decimal numbers should be represented with the use of a full stop.
The number of actual tables (no sub-tables) that an article can contain should not exceed five. However, they have to be of value as determined by peer review. Extra tables can be included in the Appendix. The content of the tables should be such that the data are of sufficient resolution for comfortable reading. Tables should be submitted in their original Word format (not via Excel), and they should be legible. Avoid using vertical rules. Horizontal rules should be used only above and below column headings and at the bottom of the table. Do not create a table using only tabs or spaces to create columns. Tables should not duplicate material contained in the main text.
The number of figures should not exceed four. Extra figures can be included in the Appendix. Figures can be submitted in greyscale, black or white or in color as the journal is published online. The journal prefers that figures be created in Excel. Do not embed a figure file as a picture into Excel or Word, but submit them as individual files. The data of figures should be attached in a Word format. Size the figure to the column or page width of the journal, and set the resolution at 300 dpi or greater. Figures containing a large amount of text, particularly flow diagrams, should be send in an editable form.
Supplementary material should be submitted as a single file that includes all the supplementary material (figures, tables, questionnaires, etc.). If the authors wish to change the Supplementary file they would need to resend it corrected, as a final version before publication. The authors should be aware that supplementary files are not proofread or corrected by our team.
References
These must be numbered sequentially, as they first appear in the text. They should be superscripted and where more than one reference is cited, these should be separated by a comma, for example, 1, 12, 16, while for a continuous sequence of numbers, give the first and last number of the sequence separated by a hyphen, for example, 4-7. The Reference list should thus be sequentially numbered using plain text (i.e. without use of footnote or endnote etc). Please check the reference list and ensure that there is no duplication of references. A research manuscript should contain no more than 36 references, a review article no more than 50 and a short report no more than 15.
Article citations
These follow the AMA format.
Journal articles in Print
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume number(issue number):initial-final page.
(Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
Example:
Kjellstrom Tord, Lemke Bruno, Otto Matthias. Climate conditions, workplace heat and occupational health in South-East Asia in the context of climate change. WHO South East Asia J Public Health. 2017;6(2):69-73.
Journal articles Online
All references that are from journal articles must contain a Digital Object Identifier (DOI): A DOI is a unique character string created to identify a digital object, such as a journal article in an online environment. The DOI is a permanent identifier of all versions of an article and the DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document. The DOI must be included in the citation.
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Journal name. Year;Volume number(issue number):initial-final page. doi.
Example:
Thomson G, Wilson N. Smokefree signage at children’s playgrounds: Field observations and comparison with Google Street View. Tob Induc Dis. 2017;15(August):1-4. doi:10.1186/s12971-017-0143-x
Books
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Volume number (for more than 1 volume). Edition number. Place of publication: Name of publisher; year of publication:page numbers.
(Note: Use et al. instead of names after the 6th author)
Example:
Patterson James T. The dread disease: cancer and modern American culture.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1989.
Web links and URLs
All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number, and included in the reference list, rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the item, the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed.
Website
Citation format:
Authors. Title. Name of the website. URL. Published date. Updated date. Accessed date.
Example:
Tobacco: fact sheet. World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/. Published November, 2017. Accesed November 24, 2017.
Report Online
Citation format:
Authors or Institution. Title. URL. Published date. Accessed date.
Example:
World Health Organization. Equitable access to essential medicines: a framework for collective action. http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/pdf/s4962e/s4962e.pdf. Published March, 2004. Accessed November 24, 2017.
Double blind peer-review policy
All papers submitted for publication are assessed with the mutual anonymity rule as to the names of reviewers and authors observed. Authors’ names and affiliations should not appear in the attached text/tables/figures.
Proofs
Minor changes to the manuscript will only be accepted. Beyond minor corrections, there will be no author changes accepted that are outside the style of the journal. Rewording, restructuring or changes of style to the manuscript will not be accepted. The authors should carefully review the proofs before publication and approve the files. If an error is identified after the publication, a correction letter will be published on behalf of the authors, indicating where the mistakes were made, while the original source will be immediately corrected.
Article download statistics
After publication, article download statistics are freely available to all readers via the "stats" tab next to each article.
Checklists
We support the use of Checklists during manuscript preparation. Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including:
randomized trials (CONSORT)
systematic reviews (PRISMA)
observational studies (STROBE)
meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE) and
qualitative studies (RATS).
