Author Guidelines

The Health Science and Nursing Research Journal (HSNRJ) welcomes original and scientifically rigorous manuscripts that contribute to the advancement of nursing, health sciences, healthcare practice, and population health.

Authors should ensure that their manuscripts comply with the journal's aims and scope, ethical standards, reporting requirements, and manuscript preparation guidelines before submission.

General Requirements

Manuscripts submitted to HSNRJ must:

  • be original and not previously published in substantially the same form;
  • not be simultaneously submitted to another journal;
  • fall within the aims and scope of HSNRJ;
  • demonstrate scientific and methodological rigor;
  • comply with applicable research and publication ethics;
  • clearly identify all authors and institutional affiliations;
  • appropriately acknowledge funding and conflicts of interest;
  • properly cite relevant sources; and
  • be written in clear academic English.

Submission of a manuscript indicates that all listed authors have approved the submitted version and agree with its submission to HSNRJ.

Language

HSNRJ publishes articles in English.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts are written in clear, accurate, and academically appropriate English. Manuscripts whose language substantially interferes with scientific evaluation may be returned for language revision before or during editorial assessment.

Article Types

HSNRJ primarily considers:

Original Research Articles
Reports of original quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, experimental, observational, or other empirical research.

Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
Evidence syntheses conducted using transparent, reproducible, and appropriate systematic methods.

Review Articles
Critical and scholarly analyses of relevant topics that provide meaningful synthesis and insight into nursing or health sciences.

Other article types may be considered when explicitly permitted by the journal and relevant to its aims and scope.

Manuscript Structure

Original Research Articles should generally include:

  1. Title
  2. Abstract
  3. Keywords
  4. Introduction
  5. Methods
  6. Results
  7. Discussion
  8. Conclusion
  9. Acknowledgments, when applicable
  10. Author Contributions
  11. Funding Statement
  12. Conflict of Interest Declaration
  13. Data Availability Statement
  14. Ethics Approval and Informed Consent, when applicable
  15. References

The exact structure may be adapted when justified by the study design.

Title

The title should be concise, informative, scientifically accurate, and representative of the main focus of the study.

Avoid unnecessary abbreviations, overly broad claims, and promotional language.

Where appropriate, authors are encouraged to identify the study design in the title or subtitle.

Abstract

Original research manuscripts should provide a structured abstract that concisely presents:

Background: scientific or clinical context of the research.

Objective: primary aim or research question.

Methods: study design, participants or data source, major procedures, and analytical approach.

Results: principal findings supported by relevant data.

Conclusion: interpretation and implications supported by the results.

The abstract should accurately represent the manuscript and should not contain claims unsupported by the main text.

Keywords

Authors should provide appropriate keywords representing the principal concepts of the manuscript.

For biomedical and health research, authors are encouraged to use standardized terminology such as Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) when appropriate.

Introduction

The Introduction should clearly explain:

  • the scientific or healthcare problem;
  • relevant current knowledge;
  • the unresolved problem or research gap;
  • the significance of the study; and
  • the study objective, research question, or hypothesis.

The literature review should be focused and directly relevant to the research problem.

Methods

The Methods section should provide sufficient information to allow readers to understand and critically evaluate how the research was conducted.

Where applicable, authors should describe:

  • study design;
  • setting and study period;
  • population and participants;
  • eligibility criteria;
  • sampling procedures and sample-size considerations;
  • variables and operational definitions;
  • instruments and their validity or reliability;
  • intervention or exposure;
  • data collection procedures;
  • outcome measures;
  • statistical or qualitative analytical methods;
  • strategies for minimizing bias; and
  • ethical considerations.

Established methods may be appropriately referenced, but modifications should be clearly described.

Research Ethics

Research involving human participants must comply with applicable ethical principles and institutional or national requirements.

Where ethical review is required, manuscripts should identify the approving ethics committee or institutional review board and, where applicable, the approval number.

Authors should describe the informed-consent procedure when required.

Research involving animals must comply with applicable ethical and regulatory requirements.

Reporting Guidelines

Authors should use internationally recognized reporting guidelines appropriate to their study design whenever applicable, including:

  • CONSORT for randomized controlled trials;
  • STROBE for observational studies;
  • PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses;
  • COREQ or other appropriate guidelines for qualitative research;
  • CARE for case reports;
  • STARD for diagnostic accuracy studies; and
  • other relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines.

Authors may be requested to provide the relevant reporting checklist when appropriate.

Results

Results should be presented clearly, logically, and objectively.

Tables and figures should complement rather than unnecessarily duplicate information presented in the text.

Authors should report relevant estimates and measures of uncertainty where appropriate and avoid interpreting the findings extensively within the Results section.

Discussion

The Discussion should:

  • interpret the principal findings;
  • relate the findings to relevant previous research;
  • explain potential mechanisms or interpretations where appropriate;
  • discuss scientific, clinical, community, or policy implications;
  • acknowledge important study limitations; and
  • avoid conclusions that extend beyond the evidence.

Conclusion

The Conclusion should directly address the study objective and be supported by the findings.

Unsupported generalizations, exaggerated claims, and recommendations not justified by the evidence should be avoided.

Tables and Figures

Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively and referred to in the manuscript.

Each table should have a clear title, and each figure should have an informative caption.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted material when permission is legally required.

Images must not be manipulated in a manner that could misrepresent the underlying scientific information.

References

References should be accurate, relevant, and sufficient to support the scientific context and interpretation of the study.

Authors should prioritize relevant peer-reviewed primary research and authoritative sources. Recent literature should be incorporated where appropriate without excluding important foundational research.

References should not be added solely to increase citations to particular authors, institutions, journals, or HSNRJ.

Authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy of all references, including author names, article titles, journal information, publication year, volume, pages or article number, and DOI where available.

The citation and reference format must follow the style specified in the current HSNRJ Manuscript Template.

Authorship

Authorship should reflect substantial intellectual contributions to the work and accountability for the published article.

All authors must approve the final manuscript and agree to be accountable for their respective contributions and for the integrity of the work.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately.

Author Contributions

Authors should provide a contribution statement describing their roles in the research and manuscript.

HSNRJ encourages transparent contributor statements based on the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) where appropriate.

Conflicts of Interest

All authors must disclose financial, professional, personal, institutional, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation.

If no conflict exists, authors should explicitly state this.

Funding

All sources of financial or material support should be disclosed.

The funding organization and grant number should be provided when applicable.

When no external funding was received, this should be stated.

Data Availability

Authors should include a Data Availability Statement describing whether and under what conditions data supporting the findings may be accessed.

Data sharing must respect ethical approval, informed consent, participant confidentiality, privacy, legal restrictions, and legitimate intellectual-property considerations.

Plagiarism and Publication Integrity

Authors must ensure that submitted work is original and appropriately acknowledges the work of others.

Plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate image manipulation, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, and other forms of research or publication misconduct are not acceptable.

HSNRJ may use similarity-detection tools as part of its editorial assessment. Similarity results are evaluated contextually and are not interpreted solely on the basis of a numerical percentage.

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must not be listed as authors because such systems cannot assume responsibility or accountability for scholarly work.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, citations, confidentiality, and content of their manuscripts.

Where generative AI has been used substantively in manuscript preparation, authors should disclose its use in accordance with the journal's current Generative AI Policy.

AI-assisted tools must not be used to fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or misrepresent research data, images, references, or scientific findings.

Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted through the HSNRJ online submission system.

Authors should ensure that all required metadata, declarations, manuscript files, and supplementary materials are complete and accurate at the time of submission.

Submission does not guarantee publication. All manuscripts are subject to editorial assessment and applicable peer-review procedures.