Public Health Genomics
Guidelines
About the Journal
Aims and Scope
Public Health Genomics aims to bring principles of population science to the translation of genomic discovery for public health benefit globally. The three key functions of public health: Assessment, Policy Development, and Assurance, along with the cross-cutting theme of health equity, provide the framework for reviewing the appropriateness of submissions. To that end, the journal welcomes original research, notes from the field, reviews and commentaries within the following public health genomics research domains:
Surveillance Research focusing on efforts to monitor genetic factors that affect community health, and identify genetic risk factors influenced by avoidable environmental elements including behaviors.
Behavioral Research focusing on using information from genomic discovery to influence health behaviors.
Communication Research focusing on research to promote awareness and literacy among patient, community, and health professional populations to empower optimal access and uptake of genomics applications.
Community Engagement Research focusing on efforts (e.g., needs assessments) to engage stakeholders in the development and evaluation of interventions in community, clinical, organizational, and policy relating to genomics-informed health promotion.
ELSI Research focusing on work aimed to assess the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomic innovations for public health, clinical practice, and public policy.
Implementation Science Research focusing on the use of innovative study designs to test optimal approaches to integrating effective interventions into community, clinical, and other settings to promote health.
Across each of these domains, we especially encourage submissions focused on promoting health equity (e.g., addressing health disparities).
Article Types
Research Article
Research Articles report on primary research. They must describe significant and
original observations. Consideration for publication is based on the article’s originality, novelty, and
scientific soundness, and the appropriateness of its analysis.
Research Articles are reports of
original work. Authors are asked to follow the EQUATOR Network for Research Articles.
Prior approval from an Institutional
Review Board (IRB) or an Ethics Review Committee is required for all investigations involving human
subjects.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Research Article (DOCX, 39 KB)
Research articles should contain 4'000 - 6'000 words and a 250-word abstract.
Review Article
Review Articles are considered reviews of research or summary articles. They are state-of-the-art papers covering a current topic by experts in the field. They should give evidence on and provide answers to a well-defined aspect or question in a particular area. Review Articles must include a critical discussion of the reported data and give a clear conclusion with potential impacts on the standard of care.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Review Article (DOCX, 32 KB)
Review articles should contain up to 6'000 words and a 250-word abstract.
Systematic Review
Systematic Reviews are literature reviews focused on a research question that synthesizes all high-quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic Reviews should be presented in the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion format. The subject must be clearly defined. The objective of a Systematic Review should be to arrive at an evidence-based conclusion. The Methods section should give a clear indication of the literature search strategy, data extraction procedure, grading of evidence, and kind of analysis used. We strongly encourage authors to comply with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Systematic Review (DOCX, 37 KB)
Brief Report
Brief Reports are short and/or rapid announcements of research results. They must contain data derived
from cutting-edge research and be of potential interest to a large proportion of the readership. They
are independent, concise reports representing a significant contribution to the field. Such
communications should represent complete, original studies and should be arranged in the same way as
full-length manuscripts with subheadings.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Brief Report (DOCX, 36 KB)
Brief reports should contain 1'600 - 2'000 words.
Editorial
Editorials provide a viewpoint on specific articles or on general subjects directly relevant to the journal. Editorials are written by an editor or other member of the journal.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Editorial (DOCX, 34 KB)
Methods Article
Methods Articles describe methods or protocols used to perform an experiment or carry out a research plan. They should not report research results. Authors may submit a Study Protocol outlining a research and/or statistical analysis plan for proposed, or ongoing, but incomplete, research studies, including but not limited to, clinical trials, population-based studies, clinical outcome studies, and service evaluations. Only study protocols that have received ethical approval will be considered and, where expected by community convention, study protocols must be pre-registered and the trial/study registration number should be provided in the manuscript. Manuscripts reporting study protocols must adhere to the relevant reporting guidelines for their study design, such as the SPIRIT, PRISMA-P or other relevant reporting guidelines as detailed on the Equator Network website.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Method Article (DOCX, 36 KB)
Method Article for Study Protocol (DOCX, 37 KB)
Guidelines
Guidelines are statements intended to guide clinical care. They should describe the clinical problem to be addressed, the mechanism by which the statement was generated, a review of the evidence for the statement and the statement on practice itself.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Guidelines (DOCX, 33 KB)
Commentary
Documents
Commentary (DOCX, 33 KB)
Letter
Letters may explore subjects related to matters discussed in the journal, providing the author’s
perspective on a subject. Letters may discuss a recently published article and may lend support or
constructively critique the article in line with the author’s experience. The editors reserve the right
to share such letters to the authors of the article concerned prior to publication in order to permit
response, ideally in the same issue of the journal. Letters should not include original data.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Perspectives (DOCX, 33 KB)
Perspectives are Letters that present a new and unique viewpoint on a topic of interest to the journal by an expert in the field. The analysis provides the author's personal perspective, interpretation, or recommendation on the topic in question with a focus on current advances and future directions. Perspectives should have a maximum length of 3,000 words, excluding references (25 references maximum). A maximum of 2 tables and figures are allowed. Perspectives should not include original data.
Contact Information
Should you have any problems with your submission, please contact the editorial office:Editorial Office Public Health Genomics
S. Karger AG
P.O. Box
CH-4009 Basel
(Switzerland)
Editorial Office
Editorial and Journal Policies
Getting Started
The presentation of manuscripts should follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). We recommend preparing the manuscript using the dedicated article template for the manuscript type.
Only papers written in English are considered. The articles should be comprehensible to a reader who is fluent in English and should be edited prior to submission to ensure that standard English grammar and usage are observed. Use of a professional language editing service prior to submission can help avoid delays with the review process.
Research and Publication Ethics
When preparing a manuscript, it is important to review the editorial policies, including those on research ethics, consent, conflict of interest, data sharing and citation, text reuse and plagiarism, reproducibility and more. For full details, please visit the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page.
Karger Publishers is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Karger journals aim to adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. Our policies on reporting and investigation of suspected misconduct in manuscripts and articles and how we handle potential errors in published articles can be found on the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page. Concerns regarding a manuscript in review or a published article should be raised to the Research Integrity and Publication Ethics team.
Statements
All submitted manuscripts must contain a statements section after the main body of the text, but before the reference list. A summary of the required information is given below, for full details please refer to the article templates and visit the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page.
Acknowledgement (optional)
In the Acknowledgement section, authors may include individuals, who are not listed as authors, and organizations that have made substantive contributions to the research or the manuscript. An exception is where funding was provided, which should be included in Funding Sources.
Statement of Ethics
The Statement of Ethics must provide detail about the ethical approval process for the study reported in the manuscript, including the name and affiliation of the committee who approved the study and the decision reference number. For studies involving human participants, information must be provided about the consent provided to participate in the study. If information is included in the submission that may identify and individual or groups of individuals, specific consent to publish this information must be obtained and reported in the Statement of Ethics.
For complete information on our policies on Studies Involving Human Subjects, Identifiable Materials or Data or Studies Involving Animals, please see here.
Conflict of Interest Statement
Authors are required to disclose any relationship that could be perceived as a conflict of interest in the Conflict of Interest Statement. All forms of support and financial involvement which took place in the previous three years should be listed, regardless of their potential relevance to the paper. Nonfinancial relationships that may potentially influence the writing of the manuscript should also be declared. If there is no potential conflict of interest to report, please state this.
For complete information on our Conflict of Interest policy, please see here.
Funding Sources
Authors must give full details about the funding of any research relevant to their study, including sponsor names, written in full providing any associated grant numbers, and explanation of the roles of these funders in the study design, execution and analysis, and manuscript conception, planning, writing and decision to publish. If the sponsor or funder had no role in any of the above or if no funding was received for the study, please state this.
For complete information on our Funding Sources policy, please see here.
Author Contributions
In the Author Contribution statement, a short statement detailing the contributions of each person named as an author should be included. The CRediT taxonomy is a useful framework for preparing this section. Contributors to the submission who do not fulfil the ICMJE Criteria for Authorship should be credited, with their consent, in the Acknowledgement section.
For complete information on our Authorship and Contributorship policy, please see here.
Data Availability Statement
Authors are required to provide a Data Availability Statement that details whether data are publicly available and where the data supporting their study can be accessed. The journal’s data sharing policy strongly encourages authors to make all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to editors, reviewers and readers without unnecessary restriction wherever possible. In cases where research data are not publicly available on legal or ethical grounds, this should be clearly stated along with any conditions for accessing the data.
For complete information about our Data Sharing policy, please see here.
Peer Review
Peer Review Policy
All Karger journals employ a rigorous peer-review process to confirm the validity and ensure scientific accuracy of published articles. Independent researchers with relevant expertise assess submitted manuscripts to help journal editors determine whether a manuscript should be published in their journal. All articles, except for Editorials and some Correspondence articles, are externally peer reviewed, typically by at least two individuals with expertise in the manuscript content area and/or research methods, before a final decision is made about acceptance for publication.
Peer Review Type and Process
Public Health Genomics uses a single-blind peer review system where reviewers know the names of the authors, but the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript. For full details, including information about peer review policies and appeals process, please visit the Peer review – Karger Publishers page.
Article Preparation
Formatting
- The preferred word processing program for manuscripts is Microsoft Word. Page and line numbering should be activated, and the level of subheadings should be indicated clearly.
- Footnotes should be avoided. When essential, they should be numbered consecutively and appear at the foot of the appropriate page.
- Abbreviations (with the exception of those clearly well established in the field) should be explained when they are first used both in the abstract and in the main text.
- Units of measurement should be expressed in SI units wherever possible.
- Generic names of drugs (first letter: lowercase) should be used whenever possible. Registered trade names (first letter: uppercase) should be marked with the superscript registration symbol ® or ™ when they are first mentioned.
- The manuscript text, tables and figures must be submitted in separate files. Figure legends should be included at the end of manuscript text, not in the figure file. Table headers should be included above or below the table in the table file.
- Use of original images and materials whenever possible. If a submitted manuscript contains third-party copyright material(s), it is the authors’ sole responsibility to obtain permission from the relevant copyright holder for reusing the material(s), including any associated licensing fee.
For full technical specifications, including those regarding tables, figures, and illustrations, please refer to Karger’s Technical Instructions to Publish a Paper.
Manuscript Arrangement
Title Page
The first page should contain a short and concise title plus a running head of no more than 80 characters. Abbreviations should be avoided.
Below the title, list all the authors’ names as outlined in the article sample, which can be downloaded under Article Types. Each listed author must provide an affiliation, which comprises the department, university, or organization and its location, city, state/province (if applicable), and country. The affiliation listed for an author in a manuscript must be the affiliation where the author was based when the work described in the manuscript was carried out. For more information on our Authorship policies see our Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page. Corresponding author information: Please supply the first and last name as well as an e-mail address at the bottom of the title page.
Keywords relevant to the article should be listed below the corresponding author information.
Body
Please refer to the Article Types section of the Guidelines for Authors for information on the relevant article structure, including maximum word counts and downloadable samples.
References
In-Text Citation
References in the text should be identified sequentially using Arabic numerals [in square brackets].
Reference List
The reference list should include only those publications which are cited in the text, arranged numerically in the order in which they are cited. Please number the reference list as shown below (i.e., without using full stops, brackets, etc.). The authors’ surnames should be followed by their initials with no punctuation other than a comma to separate individual authors. A maximum of 6 authors should be listed (followed by “et al.” if there are more than 6 authors). Material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be referred to as “unpublished data” and should not be included in the reference list. Other pre-published or related materials with a DOI, e.g. preprint manuscripts, datasets, and code, may be included. More information on good referencing practice, as well as further examples, can be found in National Library of Medicine Style Guide for Authors.
Examples
Articles published in journals: 1 Sawant KV, Xu R, Cox R, Hawkins H, Sbrana E, Kolli D, et al. Chemokine CXCL1-mediated neutrophil trafficking in the lung: role of CXCR2 activation. J Innate Immun. 2015;6(7):647–58. (Journal names should be abbreviated according to the Index Medicus.)
Articles published only with DOI number: 2 Chen C, Hu Z. ApoE polymorphisms and the risk of different subtypes of stroke in the Chinese population: a comprehensive meta-analysis. Cerebrovasc Dis. DOI: 10.1159/000442678.
Monographs: 3 Matthews DE, Farewell VT. Using and understanding medical statistics. 5th ed, revised. Basel: Karger; 2015.
Edited Books: 4 Cohen SR, Gardner TW. Diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema. In: Nguyen QD, Rodrigues EB, Farah ME, Mieler WF, Do DV, editors. Retinal pharmacotherapeutics. Dev Ophthalmol. Basel: Karger; 2016. Vol. 55; p. 137–46.
Websites: 5 Karger Publishers [Internet]. Basel: Transforming Vesalius: The 16th-Century Scientific Revolution Brought to Life for the 21st Century [cited 2013 Feb 4]. Available from: https://www.vesaliusfabrica.com/en/new-fabrica.html.
Figures and Tables
The figure legend should be placed at the end of the article, after the reference list. The figure legend should not be part of the figure file. Tables require a heading above or below the table in the table file. For more details please download the relevant article template from the section “Article Types”.
Online Supplementary Material
Online Supplementary Material may be used to enhance a publication and increase its visibility on the Web. Supplementary files (directly relevant but not essential to the conclusions of the paper) will undergo editorial review and should be submitted in a separate file with the original manuscript and with all subsequent submissions. The Editor(s) reserve(s) the right to limit the scope and length of supplementary material. Supplementary material must meet production quality standards for publication without the need for any modification or editing. For ease of reader access, we strongly recommend that files be less than 10 MB. Authors wishing to associate larger amounts of supplementary material with their article should deposit their data in an appropriate public data repository. Figures must have legends and tables require headings. All files must be named clearly. Acceptable files and formats are Word or PDF files, Excel spreadsheets (if the data cannot be converted properly into a PDF file), and multimedia files (MPEG, AVI, or QuickTime formats). All supplementary material should be referred to in the main text. Authors providing a reporting checklist as part of their submission are asked to upload it as supplementary material, and refer to it in the manuscript as such. A DOI number will be assigned to supplementary material, and it will be hosted online at https://karger.figshare.com under a CC BY license.
Author Services
Karger Publishers offer a range of services to assist authors with the preparation of their manuscript, including discounts for language editing services offered by third parties.
More information is available on the Author Resources section of the Karger homepage.
When submitting a manuscript, authors can add their ORCID number to their Karger account to ensure that their paper is accredited to them correctly.
Submission
Cover Letter
In your cover letter, please describe the gap in knowledge that this manuscript addresses, and discuss the implications, significance and novelty of your research for the Editor. Furthermore, please emphasize the unique and important contributions that your manuscript makes to our understanding of the field. If your submission is part of a special issue of the journal, please refer to the specific name of the special issue in your cover letter and specify who invited the submission where appropriate.
Manuscript Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online via the Public Health Genomics submission and peer review system by the manuscript’s corresponding author. The corresponding (submitting) author will automatically be the contact person for the manuscript for the peer review and production process. For fee payment and license signing, the contact author will be the first listed corresponding author.
The corresponding (submitting) author is solely responsible for managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors and acts on behalf of all listed authors. This ensures that all correspondence reaches a unique contact and thereby secures swift communication in particular throughout the submission, peer review and production process. Articles can be published with more than one corresponding author (usually limited to three), but only the submitting author can be accommodated during the submission, peer review and production process.
The corresponding (submitting) author’s specific responsibilities include:
- Ensuring all the listed authors have approved the manuscript submission to the journal and agreed to all of the content including the author list, including the Submission Declaration
- Handling the revision(s) and re-submission(s) of the manuscript until acceptance
- After acceptance, manuscript proof reading and approving the final proof
- Acting as the point of contact for queries about the published article. It is their responsibility to inform all co-authors of any matters arising in relation to the published article including questions relating to publication ethics, availability of data, materials, etc.
Where there are multiple corresponding authors, the first listed corresponding author’s specific responsibilities include:
- Upon acceptance, ensuring that all listed authors agree to the license agreement
- Arranging for payment of Page Charges/Article Processing Charges where required. The affiliation of the corresponding author will be used to determine eligibility for discounted or waived charges including discounted or waived APCs under read and publish/offsetting/OA agreements
Please note that the author names entered into the manuscript submission and peer review system should be identical to the information presented on the title page of the manuscript, including the sequence of authorship. The author names submitted should reflect the official publication names. It is the submitting (corresponding) author’s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of all content in the proof, including the names of co-authors, addresses and affiliations.
Submission Declaration
The submitting author will submit, on behalf of all authors, their manuscript for potential publication after full peer-review. All co-authors will confirm that the submitting author has authority to act on their behalf via the verification link sent out to all authors upon completion of the submission. Please refer to the Submission Declaration PDF for details.Documents
Submission Declaration (PDF, 89 KB)
Cost of Publication
Page Charges/Article Processing Charges
Karger has established Transformative Agreements with many consortia and institutions that include full or partial coverage of the Article Processing Charges (APCs) and/or the Author’s Choice Open Access publication fees. Authors affiliated with those institutions can publish Open Access in all Karger journals and comply with Open Access mandates without incurring any additional costs or with reduced APCs. Find out here whether your Open Access charges are covered by an agreement. Find more information on Open Access charges and potential funding options here.
Upon acceptance, manuscripts will be subject to an Article Processing Charge (APC) of CHF 2,340.00 / USD 2,670.00 / EUR 2,390.00.
Please note that Brief Reports, Letters, Commentaries and Methods Articles will be subject to an Article Processing Charge (APC) of CHF 1,390.00 / USD 1,600.00 / EUR 1,420.00. Please note that all fees are subject to change.
Online Supplementary Material
We strongly encourage authors to make all the datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript are based available. Online supplementary material is hosted for free with a published article. For ease of reader access, we strongly recommend that files be less than 10 MB. Authors wishing to associate larger amounts of supplementary material with their article should deposit their data in an appropriate public data repository.
Illustration Charges
After Acceptance and Sharing Policies
Early View
Accepted papers are published online in the unedited, original manuscript version within a few days of acceptance, subject to the authors accepting and confirming applicable conditions of publication, including publication charges. The Early View version will be replaced by the version of record once available.
Copyediting and Proofs
Manuscripts accepted for publication by Karger Publishers will undergo basic proofreading to check for obvious spelling and grammar mistakes. If you would prefer a more in-depth language editing service to improve clarity and style, please consult a service provider prior to submission. Please note that the use of a language editing service before submission is not a requirement for publication in the journal and does not guarantee that the manuscript will be considered for peer review or accepted.
Karger Publishers’ house style is based on internationally recognized standard manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style.
Proof Central
An email containing a link to access the proofs will be sent to the contact author. The authors should check the document and respond to any questions that have been raised during copyediting within 48 hours. A provisional PDF can be viewed for an impression of the final layout of the manuscript.
Corrections to the text and tables should be made directly in the template. Changes to figures are discouraged but can be indicated with comments. Final layout and typesetting take place at a later stage.
Alterations made to proofs, other than the correction of errors introduced during production, are subject to review and may require editorial approval which could delay the publication of your manuscript
Please note that the revised proofs are not sent to the authors prior to typesetting and online publication unless there are exceptional circumstances. The article layout will be created according to the Karger standard.
DOI Number
A DOI number will be available as a unique identifier on the title page of each article. DOIs are useful for identifying and citing articles published online without volume or issue information (for more information, see www.doi.org).Online First Publication
All articles are published electronically ahead of print with full citation details, including DOI, volume, and page numbers. The articles become available immediately after the authors’ approval to print.Licenses and Copyright
Articles published in Public Health Genomics are
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license,
unless otherwise agreed with Karger Publishers. When sharing or reusing any article, attribution must be
given to the original source, using the statement "The final, published version of this article is available
at http://karger.com/?doi=[insert DOI number]" (e.g., http://karger.com/?doi=10.1159/000365070). Reuse
for commercial purposes requires permission from the publisher.
More information is available on the Karger website.
The copyright of the article is retained by the authors. The authors grant S. Karger AG, Basel, an
exclusive unlimited license to publish the article under a Creative Commons license and identify S. Karger
AG as the original publisher. Submission of a manuscript for publication implies the authors’ consent to
publication under the applicable Creative Commons license and the terms and conditions of the Publisher’s
Licensing Agreement.
Please note that metadata – essentially, data tags about article information such as authors and keywords that helps make articles discoverable by, for example, search engines – is governed by a separate policy. Refer to the FAQ on our Open Access web pages for details.
Archiving and Self-Archiving
All articles are archived in Portico. Articles may also be archived in PubMed Central if the journal is indexed there. Karger permits authors of Open Access articles to post the Version of Record (VOR) of their articles in Open Access repositories or on other websites. Preprints may be shared without restriction. Re-posted Open Access articles must follow the terms of the relevant Creative Commons license.
To ensure citations are credited to the Version of Record, Karger encourages authors to link to the published article on karger.com and include the following statement: "The Version of Record of this article is available at http://karger.com/?doi=[insert DOI number](e.g. http://karger.com/?doi=10.1159/000365070)."
Manuscripts to be archived in PubMed Central due to NIH funding requirements will be submitted by Karger on
the authors’ behalf, as outlined under Funding Organizations.
Karger policies on Open Access,
licensing and self-archiving can also be found at Sherpa
Romeo.
Funding Organizations
If the authors are affiliated with an organization that has an Open Access agreement with Karger, the authors are prompted during submission to select from a list of these organizations. By choosing one of the listed organizations, eligibility can then be assessed.NIH-Funded Research
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy mandates
that the Author's Accepted Manuscript must be archived in its digital repository PubMed Central (PMC)
within 12 months of the official publication date. As a service to authors, Karger Publishers submits
the Version of Record of Open Access NIH-funded papers to PMC upon publication.
Plan S
To facilitate compliance with Coalition S/Plan S Open Access mandates, Karger publishes Plan S-funded Open Access articles with a CC BY license. Some Coalition S funders, such as Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and FWF, designate PMC as the repository in which to archive articles. Where PMC is the designated repository, Karger will deposit the Version of Record on the author’s behalf with the CC BY license. Authors should refer to their funders’ policies for details. Authors should check their funders’ requirements about how to declare their funding and any associated mandates within their manuscript.
Karger publishes some journals under the Transformative Journals model, compliant with Plan S. Find more
information about Transformative Journals on the Karger
website.
Other Funding Sources
Karger Publishers also complies with other funders’ requirements for submission to PMC. Authors should inform Karger about their grant providers during submission and include information on their grants in the Funding Sources section of their papers.
More information on funding sources can be found on the Karger website.
