Commonwealth Nurses and Midwives Federation





Author Guidelines The Commonwealth Nurse is the official journal of the Commonwealth Nurses and Midwives Federation (CNF). The CNF is a federation of national nursing and midwifery associations in Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth Nurse is published bi-annually. The Commonwealth Nurse publishes scholarly articles, professional papers, original research and expert opinion on nursing and midwifery practice and education that contributes to the development and understanding of all aspects of nursing and midwifery across the Commonwealth. Papers on the advertised theme for a particular journal are welcome. Papers on other subjects are also welcome. All papers undergo a peer review process to determine suitability for publication. Criteria for acceptance of papers include originality, timeliness of the information, quality, clarity, readability and relevance. The Editor makes the final decision regarding acceptance of a paper for publication. Download PDF of Author Guidelines		Specifications Papers must be submitted in English which is the official language of the Commonwealth Nurses and Midwives Federation, in Microsoft Word, 12 point Verdana, A4 size, and double spaced. Word length should not exceed 3,000 words. Pages should be numbered at the bottom of the page in the centre. Abbreviations may be used providing they are defined when first mentioned. International System of Units (SI units) should be used. All papers should be submitted electronically via this website from the Submit Article page. If an author is unable to submit through the website, then papers can be emailed to the Editor at: editor@commonwealthnurses.org Process Authors are notified on receipt of their paper and, following peer review, are informed whether their paper has been accepted for publication or not. It is customary for it to take approximately six weeks between receipt of a paper and notification of outcome. In some cases, in light of the reviewers' comments, revision of papers will be required before acceptance for publication. To assist authors, all review commentaries are returned with the paper. A PDF proof of the paper will be sent to the corresponding author prior to publication. Any changes to the PDF proof must be notified to the Editor within the following five days. The Commonwealth Nurse reserves the right to edit all papers for editorial style or space requirements. Papers that are accepted for publication are deleted from the filing system of The Commonwealth Nurse six months after publication. Papers that are not accepted for publication are deleted from filing system of The Commonwealth Nurse. Authorship Authors submitting a paper do so on the understanding that the paper has been read and approved by all authors and that all authors agree to the submission of the paper to The Commonwealth Nurse. Authors are responsible for checking the accuracy of material in their paper including all references. Copyright Papers submitted for publication must not be under consideration for, or have been published elsewhere. Once a paper has been accepted for publication, a copyright declaration form will be sent and must be completed by all authors and returned prior to publication, stating that the submission, or a paper with similar content, has not been published elsewhere. This includes publication in collections of conference papers and other documents that can be publicly obtained. Accepted papers become the sole property of The Commonwealth Nurse for copyright purposes. However, the author/s remains responsible for any views expressed in a paper that is published. Ethics approval If the paper involves the use of human subjects, it will only be published if it has been conducted in compliance with ethical principles, relevant laws and institutional guidelines and with the appropriate institutional ethics committee approval. See World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki Ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects: http://www.wma.net Conflict of interest Authors are required to disclose any possible conflict of interest when submitting a paper for publication. Format Papers must generally conform to the format below to be reviewed. On the first page of the paper please include the title; the author/s first name and last name; qualifications; present position; place of work; postal address; email address; and phone number/s. An author should be identified with whom the editorial team can correspond. An email address which can be included in the published article is also required. Papers should generally be presented under the following headings: • Title: which conveys the nature of the paper and does not exceed 15 words. • Abstract: Papers must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 250 words which gives a brief outline of the content of the paper including major findings. The abstract should not include references. • Introduction: The Introduction should establish the relevance of the paper to readers and outline the broad aim of the paper. • Literature review: The literature should be relevant to the main arguments of the paper. Literature cited should generally be not more than five years old. • Findings: Research articles should provide sufficient detail to justify the approach and demonstrate rigor. Papers involving statistical methods should include setting, subjects, selection methods, sample size, response rate, results or findings with confidence intervals and actual P values, and any limitations of the study. Scholarly papers (literature review, innovative practice, theoretical critique, opinion piece) should follow the same headings apart from findings. • Discussion: This section should draw the findings together and provide support for the main arguments or contentions, including the major contemporary ideas that are central to the argument or opposed to the argument. The discussion should also consider the practice or policy implications of the study for nurses and midwives, health services, the education sector, or governments across the Commonwealth. • Conclusion: The conclusion should be succinct and logically ordered and reflect accurately the findings of the article and not make any claims not substantiated in the article. The conclusion should draw the findings together and demonstrate how they relate to the original aims of the study. • Recommendations: Where recommendations are made they should be grounded in the substantive content of the paper. Figures, graphs and tables Figures, graphs and tables should be presented within the body of the article and numbered consecutively. All graphs must include data tables. Photographs and illustrations should be provided as a separate JPG high resolution file. Where photographs and illustrations should be placed must be marked clearly within the text of the paper. Authors must have written consent to publish photographs or illustrations. It is the authorís responsibility to ensure that permission has been granted to use them. If photographs or illustrations are from another publication, the original publisherís permission must be obtained. The relevance of figures, graphs and tables must be explained in the text. Footnotes Footnotes may be used for additional explanatory matter. Acknowledgements Acknowledgements should include contributors to the paper who do not quality as authors. Authors are required to specify any sources of funding (institutional, private, or corporate) or other support received during the preparation of paper. References References should be cited in the text using the authors name followed by year of publication in date order (eg Smith 2012; Brown and Jones 2011; White et al 2010). Page numbers should be given in the text for all quotations and paraphrases (eg Smith 2012, pp.26-27). Where there are three or more authors, the first authors' name followed by et al will suffice, but all authors should be cited in the reference list. A reference list must be supplied listed in alphabetical order of first authorís last name (see below). All authorsí to a paper should be listed in the reference list (et al is not acceptable in the reference list). When a web page is cited, the full URL must be given and the date it was accessed should be provided.