Journal of Radiotherapy in Practice

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Preparing your materials

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.

Article Types

The journal accepts the following article types:

Research article*

250-word structured abstract: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions.
3500 words maximum including references
Main article with images and tables embedded where appropriate
Headings should be used as per the abstract; subheadings are recommended to enhance readability
References using AMA referencing style
Findings must be novel with clear implications for radiotherapy practice

Review article*

250-word structured abstract: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions.
3500 words maximum including references
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses require completion of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist
Main article with images and tables embedded where appropriate
Headings should be used as per the abstract; subheadings are recommended to enhance readability
References using AMA referencing style
Findings must be novel with clear implications for radiotherapy practice

Case report*

250-word structured abstract: Introduction, Case, Discussion, Recommendations
1500 words maximum including references
Main article with images and tables embedded where appropriate
Headings should be used as per the abstract; subheadings are recommended to enhance readability
No more than 10 references
References using AMA referencing style
Case reports must add important new information that can inform radiotherapy practice

Study protocol and qualitative methods*

250-word structured abstract: Introduction, Aim, Method, Discussion
2500 words maximum including references
Main article with images and tables embedded where appropriate
Headings should be used as per the abstract; subheadings are recommended to enhance readability
References using AMA referencing style
Please note that a detailed and evidence-based method/study design is essential and must include a clear and detailed rationale for study design decisions
Please note that it is not necessary to have a detailed literature review, results or conclusion section.
Protocols for prospective proposed and completed cohort studies and randomised controlled trials will be considered
Methods and methodological papers for qualitative studies will be considered
Method/design must be novel and not reported previously
Evidence of approval by an ethics committee must be submitted with the manuscript
Protocols for clinical trials must provide the public trials registry name, identification number and date of registration and adhere to the SPIRIT guidelines
Protocols for systematic reviews/meta-analysis must adhere to the PRISMA-P (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols) guidelines
Protocols for online surveys should consider using CHERRIES (Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys)
Qualitative methods papers must describe the methodological approach and paradigm within which the research is situated, research methods and any frameworks employed in design, data collection, analysis and interpretation. They must also adhere to the COREQ guidelines (Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies) and include a completed COREQ checklist for the study

Educational note*

250-word structured abstract: Introduction, Innovation, Discussion, Recommendations
2000 words maximum including references
Main article with images and tables embedded where appropriate
Headings should be used as per the abstract; subheadings are recommended to enhance readability
References using AMA referencing style
Findings must be novel with clear implications for radiotherapy education or training

Technical note*

250-word structured abstract: Introduction, Innovation, Discussion, Recommendations
2000 words maximum including references
Main article with images and tables embedded where appropriate
Headings should be used as per the abstract; subheadings are recommended to enhance readability
References using AMA referencing style
Technical reports of new technological devices or processes that will have direct impact on radiotherapy practice.
Findings must be novel with clear implications for radiotherapy practice

Invited reviews

Reviews of recent developments are welcome and authors are encouraged to contact the editor to determine their appropriateness for inclusion.

* These article types may be eligible for APC waivers or discounts under one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access.

Presentation of Manuscripts

Please prepare your manuscript in Microsoft Word format, and add line numbering to your manuscript. All manuscripts should be anonymous. Details of authors and institutions should be listed on the Title Page:

Title page

Title of the article
Surname and initial of each author
Name and address of the department or institution to which the work should be attributed
Name and email address of the author responsible for correspondence
Acknowledgements
Sources of financial support
Conflicts of Interest statements

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.

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. 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”.

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.

The corresponding author will be asked to confirm that all authors that have contributed to the paper are familiar with the final draft.

Ethical Standards

Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable): "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national guidelines on human experimentation (please name) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008, and has been approved by the institutional committees (please name) ." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national guides on the care and use of laboratory animals (please name) and has been approved by the institutional committee (please name)." The Ethical Standards statement should be placed after the Conflicts of Interest section before the References. If the research does not involve human and/or animal experimentation, this statement should be omitted. Papers reporting the results of human and/or animal experimentation that do not contain an Ethical Standards statement will not be reviewed. For more information on the ethical standards and procedures of Cambridge Journals, please visit Cambridge Core.

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.

Financial Support

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. This is particularly important in the case of research that is supported by industry. Support from industry not only includes direct financial support for the study but also support in kind such as provision of medications, equipment, kits or reagents without charge or at reduced cost and provision of services such as statistical analysis. 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.". Papers that do not include a Financial Support statement will not be reviewed.

Acknowledgements

Here you may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice and/or support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section. The Acknowledgements should be placed after the main body of the text before Financial Support. If there are no acknowledgements, the title should be inserted followed by "None". Papers that do not include an Acknowledgements section will not be reviewed.

ORCID

We require all corresponding 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 will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on Editorial Manager, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your Editorial Manager account, or by supplying it during submission.

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.