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  3. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine
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Preparing your materials

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their main manuscript file. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article. 

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. 

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. 

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”. 

Ethical Standards statement

The following Ethical Standards statement should be included at the end of all submissions, regardless of type of article, under the heading 'Ethical standards':

'The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.'

A sentence relating to ethics committee approval should be included in the 'Ethical standards' section if appropriate. For example the following sentence could be included:

'The study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of X institution.'

All research involving human or animal experimentation requires ethics committee approval. Written informed consent should be obtained from all study participants if deemed necessary to adhere to ethical standards, and this should be documented in the 'Ethical standards' section. Informed consent for publication is required for case reports. In some exceptional circumstances the editors may accept case reports where informed consent is impossible.

Different statements may apply for other article types such as clinical audit, service evaluation, case reports and perspective pieces:

Where ethical approval for publication is required and has been granted by their local Ethics Committee

Please include the following Ethical Standards statement at the end of the article:

‘The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. The authors assert that ethical approval for publication of this [audit / service evaluation / case report / perspective piece]* has been provided by their local Ethics Committee.’

*delete as appropriate; please write only article type that has been submitted here

Where the local Ethics Committee has determined that ethical approval for publication is not required

Please include the following Ethical Standards statement at the end of the article:

‘The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. The authors assert that the local ethics committee has determined that ethical approval for publication of this [audit / service evaluation / case report / perspective piece]* was not required by their local Ethics Committee.’

*delete as appropriate; please write only article type that has been submitted here

Where an Audit Committee has determined that ethical approval for publication from the local Ethics Committee is not required

Please provide the following documentation at submission:

  • Confirmation in writing from the Audit Committee that Ethics Committee approval for this audit/service evaluation is not required, with the audit committee recognising the intent to publish;
  • Confirmation in writing from the local Clinical Director that the audit/service evaluation adheres to local ethical protocols and principles, with the Clinical Director recognising the intent to publish.

Additionally, please include the following ethical standards statement at the end of your article:

‘The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committee on human experimentation with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. The authors assert that [specify location] Audit Committee determined that ethical approval from the local Ethics Committee was not required for publication of this [audit / service evaluation]*. The authors have provided written confirmation of this from the Audit Committee and local clinical director.’

*delete as appropriate; please write only article type that has been submitted here

Where an ethics committee has not been involved in ethical approval for a study it is of high importance that the study methodology is outlined in detail in the paper. The editors also reserve the right to reject submissions on the basis that they deem that ethical approval for publication is required from a Research Ethics Committee.

Financial Support statement

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors in the manuscript, including grant numbers. For example:

"This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)".

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with "and" before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors' initials. For example:

"This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)."

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."

Acknowledgements

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the Financial Support section (see above). Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge individuals named in any Acknowledgments section, since readers may infer endorsement.

Informed Consent

IJPM follows ICMJE guidelines regarding informed consent: Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt.

As mentioned above, written informed consent should be obtained from all study participants if deemed necessary to adhere to ethical standards, and this should be documented in the required 'Ethical standards' section.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. 

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

ORCID

We encourage authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

  • Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
  • Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
  • Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

See our ORCID FAQs for more information. If you don’t already have an iD, you can create one by registering directly at https://ORCID.org/register.

ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information. 

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record. 

Supplementary materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.

English language editing services 

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.  

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.