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Mental Health Nursing,  Nov/Dec 2000  

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Mental Health Nursing wants to promote an exchange of ideas and showcase fresh ideas and innovative practice. There are a number of ways you can contribute:

* Professional papers: These should be 3,000 words maximum. They can be descriptions of original research or study projects, academic papers addressing professional, research, educational or practice issues; literature reviews covering published studies on a particular topic or topics. They should follow an academic structure of: abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion. References, in Harvard style, should be given in full (see below).

* Care studies: These should be 2,000 - 3,000 words long. They are descriptions of particularly challenging or unusual interventions with a particular client or group. They should be broken down as synopsis, introduction, description of client's problem, intervention, outcome, analysis of reasons for success (or failure), conclusion and debate.

* Debate: 1,000 - 1,500 words. Short opinion pieces, polemical contributions, preferably evidence based.

* Speak up: 500 words. Short, pithy opinion piece dealing with an issue that the writer feels strongly and personally about. We also encourage light hearted and humorous contributions to this section.

* Book reviews: We invite reviews of new books and literature you have recently read which are relevant to mental health. Please see the panel (right).

* Short reports: 500 words. Please feel free to contribute reports of conferences and seminars you have recently attended.

* Readers' letters: We welcome letters from readers responding to any material published in Mental Health Nursing.

The process Authors submitting papers to Mental Health Nursing will receive an immediate acknowledgement of the receipt of their article.

This will be sent 'blind' to a professional referee (the referee will not know who the author is). The referee's own identity is not known to the author. The referee will accept, reject or suggest amendments to the paper. The majority of papers are returned with suggestions for amendments, expansions or correction of omissions.

The editor will return the referee's comments to the author. If the paper is amended in a way that meets the referee's queries then it will be accepted for publication.

References

The Mental Health Nursing editorial board has recently altered the referencing system from Vancouver to Harvard. This will take full effect from January 2001.

The author should be referred to in the text and all the references listed alphabetically by author at the end of the article. A reference should comprise author's name, year of publication, title of paper, title of journal, volume number, issue number, page numbers.

Books should be referenced: author, year, title of book, place of publication, publisher.

Editorial responsibilities

The editor reserves the right to edit and shorten articles where necessary. Major alterations will only be made in consultation with the author.

Book reviews

The book reviews editor, Ben Hannigan, seeks to ensure that a wide range of new material is featured in Mental Health Nursing. He is happy to receive both offers to review and unsolicited reviews (although he cannot guarantee publication). Contact is through Mental Health Nursing's editorial address and number (see contents page).

It must be stressed that Mental Health Nursing has a policy which requires reviewers to declare if they have any conflict of interest when reviewing a book. For instance, a reviewer should not undertake or offer a review if he or she has a piece of work, potentially rivalling the reviewed work, pending publication.

New writing

Mental Health Nursing is keen to encourage the development of new writers. The editor, Lawrence Pollock is happy to offer advice to anyone proposing an idea or submitting an article. For further advice contact the editor on 01234 757689 or e mail pollock@cranfield68.fsbusiness.co.uk

Technical advice

Authors submitting material should note the following guidelines

1. Submit a paper version of your article - two copies please. This should be double-spaced with a one inch margin all round and extra space between paragraphs.

2. Enclose a floppy disk using a version of Microsoft Word plus a version saved as `plain text'.

3. If returning an amended paper, please send a second disk clearly marked as a revise. Alternatively, or in addition, email the new material as an attachment to pollock@cranfield68.fsbusiness.co.uk (Laurence Pollock) or kirstya@btclick.com (assistant editor Caroline Keenan).

4. Indent paragraphs using the tab key.

5. One space only after a full stop.

6. Do not embolden or italicise any words.

7. Subheadings should be typed on a line of their own, with extra space above and below.

8. Single quote marks.

Copyright Community Psychiatric Nurses Association Nov/Dec 2000
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