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Author Guidelines

Aims and Scope
Sri Lankan Journal of Nursing (SLJN) is a peer-reviewed journal published biannually by the Graduate Nurses’ Foundation of Sri Lanka (GNFSL). The journal provides a forum for nurses to publish quality research related to all aspects of the discipline of nursing including but not limited to nursing education, clinical nursing, nursing management and leadership and public health nursing. Research across a range of biological, behavioural, psychosocial, spiritual, ethical and cultural aspects of health are within the editorial focus.

The primary aim of the journal is to promote and share high-quality research findings to facilitate, safe and effective care for the public. Further, the SLJN promotes evidence-based practice through the diversity of research and scholarship it profiles.

Types of Manuscripts
SLJN welcomes submissions from the following categories;

• Original (full) Research Papers
• Brief Reports
• Review articles
• Editorials
• Letters to the editor
  
  

  Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors, who will act as the Corresponding Author.

• Title page
• Manuscript (in word format)
• Certification for Ethical Clearance

Preparation of Manuscript
The manuscript must be prepared according to the following guidelines;

• The manuscript should be free of errors and written in British English.
• It should be prepared in single column with Times New Roman size 12 font, 1.5-point line-spaced, 2.5 cm margins and justified using an A4 paper.
• There should be one line space between each paragraph and no line space between sub-titles and paragraphs.
• The order of content in full research articles, reviews and brief reports should be; Title, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions and References (a combined result and discussion section is also accepted where appropriate).
• Any potential of Conflict of interest statement should be included before the references.
• Tables and figures should be inserted within the text where they should appear.
• Word limits for articles should not exceed; 5000 words for full research articles, 4000 words for review articles, 3000 words for brief reports, and 2000 words for a letter to the editor. The abstract should not exceed 300 words [abstract, tables, figures, funding/conflict of interest statement and references are not included in word count].
• The journal expects authors to adhere to the relevant EQUQTOR research reporting guidelines  and upload the marked relevant checklist with the manuscript
• Authors should seek external support for English language editing of the manuscript before submission.
• Pages should be numbered consecutively.

Title:
The manuscript’s title should be clear, precise and concise and should include all the necessary information related to the scope of the article.

Abstract:
The abstract should not exceed 300 words and should be devoid of citations and abbreviations. It must include background and objective, method, results and conclusions under subheadings. The abstract should not exceed 300 words and should be devoid of citations and abbreviations. It must include background and objective the method, major results, and conclusions under subheadings.

Keywords:
A maximum of five (5) keywords relevant to the contents of the manuscript should be included.

Introduction:
The Introduction should explain the scope of study giving adequate background information with the existing literature, aims and the objectives and significance of the study.

Methods:
Methods used in the study should be clearly explained in detail; study design, settings, and all procedures followed for data collections, statistical analysis (if applicable). Descriptive studies should include study approach and design, sample population, sample size, study instrument, data collection, and analysis. All papers must state the full name of the ethics review committee and the approval number. 

Results
The results section should present the main findings of the study clearly and logically. Findings described in the text should be consistent with the relevant tables and figures and should be numbered and cited in the text in consecutive numerical order.

Tables
Tables should be clear and prepared without vertical gridlines. Tables should be numbered according to the order of their occurrence in the text (e.g., Table 1, Table 2, etc.). Table captions should explain the appropriate components of the table and all abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. The maximum number of tables should be five (05). Tables should not be presented as images.

Sample Table

Table 1: Baseline socio-demographic characteristics (N=210)

n – frequency

Figures

Figures (graphs, charts, drawings, photographs) should be numbered according to the order of their occurrence in the text (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.). Figure captions should explain the figures appropriately. The maximum number of figures should be four (4).

Sample Figure

Figure 1: Changes in work attitude as a function of day and time

Discussion
The discussion should include interpretation of the findings in relation to previous studies.

Conclusions

The conclusions of the study should summarise the main findings considering the aims/objectives of the study. In addition, implications and recommendations should be clearly stated.

References
A list of references should be presented according to the APA format (7th edition). All references should be cited in the text and vice-versa. In-text citations and references should be format as specified in below table. For more information refer https://apastyle.apa.org/

Reference Types

Book & ebook with DOI
In text citation: (Perera et al., 2014) or according to Perera et al. (2014)
Reference list: Perera, E. W., Silva, D. S., & Gunasekara, J. R. (2014). Nursing education. CPD International. https://doi.org/10.1079/9782545939199.0000

Book & ebook without DOI
In-text citation: (Silva, 2018) or According to Silva (2018)
Reference list: Silva, G. R. (2018). Nursing education in Sri Lanka. Entrepreneur Press.

Article with DOI
In-text citation: (Perera, 2020) or Perera (2020) stated that
Reference list: Perera, E. T. (2020). Nursing education in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Journal of Nursing, 1(1), 21–27. https://doi.org/10.2267/1045159514558412

Article without DOI
In-text citation: (Perera, 2019) or Perera (2019)
Reference list: Perera, M. S. (2020). Nursing education in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Journal of Nursing, 2(3), 20–25.

Authors

One Author
In-text citation: … (Silva, 2010) or Silva(2010) stated that …
Reference list: Silva, P. S. (2009). Challenges and barriers for the clinical nursing training: A review. International Nursing Review, 16(4), 31-37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-7657.2008.00657.x

Two Authors
In-text citation: (Basnayake & Fernando., 2016) or Basnayake & Fernando (2016) …
Reference list: Basnayake, S., & Fernando, S. (2016). Depression, anxiety, and stress among diabetic clinic attendees. Journal of Clinical Sciences, 14(4), 920-932.

3 or more authors, up to 20 authors
In-text citation: (Silva et al., 2017) or Silva et al. (2017) stated that …
Reference list: Silva, D., Tan, L., Goden, G. G., & Sue, I. R. (2017). Oral cancer prevalence in Sri Lanka. Clinical Nursing Review, 29(3), 38-49.

21 or more authors
In-text citation:
Fernando et al., 2016) or Fernando et al. (2016) stated ….
Reference list: Fernando, N. M., Perera, J. H., Costa, K., Lanarol, E., Samaranayeka, J., Weerasinghe, J. D., Weiz, S., John, V., Mart, S., Donnell, S., Bahi, S. Fusolf, A., Tan, Q., Zinger, E., Taryadi, D., Cannon, L., Tink, C. C., Sord, J. L., Lee, W. B., John, J., (2019). Novel dressings for diabetic wounds: Innovative Nursing, 55(19), 807–815. https://doi.org/11.1019/j.ajhg.2019.08.016

Headings
The headings should appear in 14-point bold type in Upper- and Lower-case letters as appropriate. Sub-Headings should appear in 12-point bold type in Upper- and Lower-case letters as appropriate. Lower level sub-headings (Sub-sub-headings) should be in 12point upper- and lower-case italics as appropriate. Use headings and sub-headings as needed.

Peer-review Policy
The journal adheres to a rigorous double-blind peer reviewing policy. A manuscript submitted to the journal will undergo initial reviewing by editor-in chief to ensure its scientific merit and its relevance to the scope of the journal.

A minimum of two (02) reviewers are assigned by the editorial board for a selected manuscript considering their expertise and the subject area. The peer-review process will take four to six weeks. Upon receipt of the two reviewer reports, a decision will be made on the manuscript based on the following, and the corresponding author will be notified accordingly.

• accepted as received
• accepted after satisfactory completion of minor amendments
• reconsider after major revision
• rejected

The authors are requested to revise the manuscript if required, according to the comments made by the reviewers within a period of 3-4 weeks. The revised version of the manuscript will be sent to the reviewers for a second review when clarifications are needed and for further comments, in some cases. The manuscript will be revised by an editorial board member once again before a final decision is made by the editor-in chief on the acceptance. All decisions are communicated in writing to the corresponding author. Accepted manuscripts will undergo editorial revision and language editing before publishing.

Copyright and Copying
Copyright is held by Graduate Nurses' Foundation of Sri Lanka.

Licensing Statement
It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal should not have been published elsewhere. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). This license permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium; provided it is licensed under the same terms and the original work is properly cited.

Article-processing Charges:
Authors pay a one-time Article Processing Charge (Rs. 5,000.00) to cover the costs of printing the journal once an article is accepted for publication. There will be no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures, or supplementary data.

Funding Statement
This section should consist of an acknowledgment of all funding sources that supported the submitted work, as well as any commercial association that could pose a conflict of interest or create a bias.

Conflict of Interest
All authors should declare any relevant conflict of interest.

Author Declaration
An author declaration form should be signed by all the authors involved to ensure their contribution.

Plagiarism Policy
All authors are requested to check their manuscripts for plagiarism before submission. Manuscripts should not contain more than 20% of plagiarized matters.

Ethical Responsibilities
The manuscript contents should be original and should not have been published elsewhere.

Ethical Approval
A copy of the ethical clearance certificate from a recognized ethics review committee should be submitted along with the manuscript for the studies involving humans. Information on ethics approval and informed consent/assent procedures should be clearly mentioned in the methods section of the manuscript.

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.

1. The submission has not been previously published, in part or in whole, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. All third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission has been obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal. Authors acknowledge their responsibility to gain all permissions prior to submission.
3. All authors qualify as authors and have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper. Author Declaration Form which can be downloaded from  here  is required to be duly filled and  separately uploaded with the manuscript.
4. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines. Every effort has been made to ensure that the submission is ready for peer review according to the journal's review policy (following the instructions to ensure blind peer review).
5. Tables are all cited in the main text and are included within the text document.
6. Figures are all cited in the main text and are uploaded as supplementary files. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
7. All patients included within original articles or brief reports or other article types in which an individual or a group of individuals can be identified have signed informed consent forms, or had had their legal guardian do so, giving permission to publish the submitted content under a CC-BY licence.
8. Research has been approved by an appropriate ethics committee, with the name of the committee and reference number of approval included within the submitted file. Otherwise, a statement that ethics approval was not required has been added to the file.
9. The corresponding author is submitting an ORCID identifier in their author data and co-authors have been recommended to also provide an ORCID.

Copyright Notice

Authors are required to transfer their copyright to the Graduate Nurses' Foundation of Sri Lanka

Articles in the Sri Lankan Journal of Nursing are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. The full privacy policy can be viewed here.