GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

EAST AFRICAN JOURNAL OF APPLIED HEALTH MONITORING AND EVALUATION (EAJAHME)

Manuscripts: Manuscripts must be submitted via the website (https://eajahme.mzumbe.ac.tz). The first page of the manuscript should have a title page with the full title of the article, but not the authors’ names.

Cover Page: A separate cover page must be submitted along with the manuscript. The cover page should include: a) the complete manuscript title; b) the authors’ full names with the surnamesunderlined, their academic degrees, and their affiliations, for example:
Sarah Mwangi, MS, PhD1; Daniel J. Smith, MD2
Affiliations:

  1. Department of Epidemiology, University of Nairobi, Kenya
  2. Center for Health Policy Research, Mzumbe University, Morogoro, Tanzania

and c) the corresponding author’s name, telephone number, email address and full mailing address. The corresponding author is expected to be responsible for all correspondence with the journal. The cover page should also indicate the length of the article in number of words.

Cover Letter: Including a cover letter is optional. If you choose to include a cover letter, it should be uploaded as a separate document. You can describe why the manuscript is a good fit for the journal and highlight your most important findings.

Abstract: A structured abstract of not more than 250 words should appear at the beginning of the manuscript. The structure of the abstract should include sections relevant to the content of the manuscript, typically: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion. The abstract should be comprehensive and should limit the use of abbreviations and acronyms.

Key words: The abstract should be followed by a list of 5-7 key words or short phrases which will assist the cross-indexing of the article and which may be published. The terms used should be from the Medical Subject Headings list of the US National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html).

Length and Writing Style: Articles should not exceed 4,000 words, excluding footnotes and references (the word count is for the manuscript text only), and should not contain more than 40 references. Articles can contain a maximum of 5 tables/figures. Please use Times New Roman, 11 point font, and double line spacing for the main text, and use Times New Roman, 9 point font, single line spacing for footnotes. Please submit a word version (MS Word) of your manuscript.

Format: The sequence of the manuscript should follow the outline below.

Beginning section These elements must be included, in the following order:

·         Title page: List the title of the article but do not include author names

·         Abstract: Structured, up to 250 words

·         Key words

Middle section These elements can be renamed if needed:

·         Introduction

·         Methods

·         Results

·         Discussion

·         Conclusion (optional)

Final section These elements must be included, in the following order:

·         Acknowledgments

·         Conflicts of interest

·         Author’s contributions

·         References

·         Tables & Figures (no more than 1 per page)

Titles: Titles of articles should be brief, attractive and accurate in describing what the paper is about. Headings and sub-headings within the text should be short and clear. Avoid using more than three levels of subheadings.

Quotations: Quotations in the text itself should be marked as such with single quotation marks. For quotations within quotations, use double marks. Quotations of more than 60 words should be indented, without quotation marks. For quotations from other publications, always provide page number(s) for the quotation, however short.

Dates: Dates should be formatted as day month and year, e.g. ‘10 February 2016’.

Acronyms: The use of acronyms should be limited to only those commonly understood or used frequently in the manuscript. When using an acronym for the first time, the full name should be provided (with the acronym in parentheses). If a phrase with an established acronym is used and appears more than five times in your article, please include the acronym in brackets after first mention of the phrase, and then use the acronym only. You should not define acronyms in any of your headings. If an acronym has been used in your abstract, you need to define it again the first time it is used in the main text.

Language and Spelling: Articles should be written in English. Quotations of text fragments in other languages should be followed by an English translation. Both American and British English are acceptable provided the authors are consistent with the version being used throughout the manuscript.

Footnotes: Use footnotes rather than endnotes. The location of footnotes within the text should be indicated by superscript numbers.

Ethical issues: The East African Journal of Applied Health Monitoring and Evaluation only publishes articles that adhere to ethical guidelines regarding the protection of human and animal subjects. The Methods section should include a subsection describing how ethical guidelines were met, including approvals of the study protocol by institutional review boards, informed consent, protection of health information, and other issues relevant to the specific methods used.

Tables and Figures: Tables and figures should be at the end of the manuscript, and each table and figure should be on its own page(s). Please do not place tables and figures within the body of the manuscript.

How to refer to tables and figures in the text: Every figure and table included in the manuscript must be referred to in the body of the text. When referring to figures and tables, highlight the key relationship(s) or trend(s) that you want your reader to focus on, and refer to the appropriate figure or table only in parenthesis, e.g.:

The number of people tested for HIV increased in all regions from 2010–2015 (Figure 1).

Avoid simply directing the reader to a figure or table without providing any information (e.g., Table 1 shows demographic information about the study population).

How to number tables and figures: Figures and tables are numbered independently, in the sequence in which you refer to them in the text, starting with Figure 1 and Table 1. Manuscripts must not include more than 5 tables/figures.

Titles and legends for tables and figures: Any table or figure you present must be able to stand alone and be interpreted by your reader without reading the results section. Use simple, clear, well-labelled tables and figures, with titles that indicate the who, what, where and when of the data. All figures should have well-labelled axes and clear and descriptive legends.

Acknowledgments: A separate section should be included to acknowledge help and support by those who are not authors. This section should include sources of funding, staff support, stakeholders, mentors, and others who contributed to the manuscript but who did not qualify as co-authors.

Conflicts of interest: Authors must state all possible conflicts of interest, including financial, consultant, institutional and other relationships that might lead to bias or a conflict of interest. If there is no conflict of interest, this should also be explicitly stated using the following statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. All sources of funding should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments section.

Authors’ contributions: List the principal contributions made by each of the authors to the article in a section labeled “Authors’ contributions.” Use authors’ initials to distinguish between authors (e.g. KW contributed to the study design and conducted the data analysis”). Should two authors have the same initials, use their first initial and their full last name to distinguish between them. Persons listed as authors must be able to justify their participation in the study and should have substantially contributed to the study’s conception, design, and performance as well as the writing or reviewing of the manuscript. Please follow the criteria for authorship published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/). Corresponding authors will be asked to sign a copyright letter which includes a statement that all co-authors have read and approved the submitted manuscript.

References: All sources should be appropriately cited in the manuscript and listed in a References section at the end of the manuscript. Authors can summarize another scientist’s findings but cannot use their language word-for-word. All submitted manuscripts will be checked for plagiarism.

The East African Journal of Applied Health Monitoring and Evaluation uses the American Psychological Association (APA) Guidelines. References should be cited in the text using the last name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication. The letters a, b, c, etc. should be used for different works by the same author in the same year. The full alphabetical list of references cited should be included at the end of the article. Titles of books or journals should be italicized, and those of articles should be left plain, and not enclosed in quotes:

Bryson, J. M. (2004). What to do when stakeholders matter: stakeholder identification and analysis techniques. Public management review, 6(1), 21-53.

Chatora, R., & Tumusiime, P. (2004). District Health Management Team Training Modules. Module 1: Health Sector Reform and District Health Systems. Brazzaville: World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/management/HealthSectorReformDHS.pdf

Rossi, P. H., Lipsey, M. W., & Freeman, H. E. (2004). Evaluation: A systematic approach (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Submission and Copyright Assignment:

The manuscript must be submitted via the journal’s website (https://eajahme.mzumbe.ac.tz). All articles must be accompanied by a separate cover page, as described above.

In addition, articles must also be accompanied by a signed copyright letter (scanned and sent as an attachment in pdf format) in which the authors declare that the article has not and will not be submitted or published elsewhere, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in any form. Papers will not be published unless copyright has been assigned. Copyright forms can be downloaded from the website at https://eajahme.mzumbe.ac.tz.

Editors reserve the right to reject any submitted article which does not conform to the guidelines.