Child Abuse Review

Child Abuse Review Author Guidelines

Sections

1. Submission and Peer Review Process
2. Article Types
3. After Acceptance

1. Submission and Peer Review Process

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://submission.wiley.com/journal/CAR.

For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected]

This journal does not charge submission fees.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been previously published and should not be submitted for publication elsewhere while they are under consideration by Wiley.

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://submission.wiley.com/journal/CAR. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

A guide to writing for publication in Child Abuse Review: Read this concise, practical guide to writing an article for publication.

Open Access

This journal is a subscription journal that offers an open access option. You’ll have the option to choose to make your article open access after acceptance, which will be subject to an APC, unless a waiver applies. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

Preprint policy

Please find the Wiley pre-print policy here. Child Abuse Review will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Data Sharing and Data Availability

This journal encourages data sharing. Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.

Data Citation

Please review Wiley’s Data Citation policy.

Data Protection

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication. Please review Wiley’s Data Protection Policy to learn more.

Funding

You should list all funding sources in the Title Page of your submission. You are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version. Review editorial standards and scroll down for a description of authorship criteria.

ORCID

This journal requires an ORCID number when making a submission. Please refer to Wiley’s resources on ORCID.

Reproduction of Copyright Material

If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is your responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ.

The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce the material "in print and other media" from the publisher of the original source, and for supplying Wiley with that permission upon submission.

Cover Letter

Cover letters are optional however, authors of Short Reports (case report or case series) should follow the Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles section below.

Title Page 

The title page should contain: 

1. A brief informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);
2. The full names, affiliations and email addresses of the authors (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
3. A footnote for an author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
4. The word-length of the manuscript;
5. Statements relating to ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):

• • data availability statement
  • sponsorship or research funding statement
  • conflict of interest disclosure (including null statements)
  • ethics approval statement
  • patient consent statement
  • permission to reproduce material from other sources
  • clinical trial registration

6. Acknowledgements

Main Text File

Please follow Main Text File guidelines for the relevant article type:

• Original Articles,and Short Reports
• Systematic Review articles
• Continuing Professional Development articles

The language of the journal is British English and any related corrections will be made during the production process.

Further details on preparing your manuscript

• Use appropriate headings and subheadings in the manuscript to help the reader. No more than three levels of unnumbered headings should be used.
• Quotations should be set within single quote marks within the text for short quotes, and as a separate paragraph for block quotes.
• Please note that footnotes are not permitted, apart from annotations to included tables or figures. Please include all relevant information within the main text, or as a cited reference.

Reporting and interpretation of Statistical Results

 When reporting and interpreting the findings of a statistical analysis the authors should focus on the clinical importance of the results rather than simply the statistical evidence. In order to do this, the confidence interval for any parameter estimate is crucial, although the standard error would also be acceptable. Do the implications of these results differ depending on where in the confidence interval the true value may lie?

The p-value indicates the statistical evidence (against the null hypothesis). Authors should refrain from the use of the word “significant” to describe results for which a p-value is less than 0.05, instead considering the level of evidence against the null hypothesis in combination with the clinical importance as described above. Authors should give the actual p-value down to a level of 0.001; below that level, p-values should be stated as <0.001, not as p=0.000.

For further reading, see Sifting the evidence - what's wrong with significance tests? Sterne JA, Davey Smith G. BMJ 2001; 322:226

Reference Style

This journal uses Harvard reference style. Review your reference style guidelines prior to submission. Reference formatting will be corrected by our production processes upon acceptance of a submission.

Where there are three or more authors for citation, the first author's name followed by et al. should be used in the text, e.g. Goldberg et al. (1994). Where possible the DOI for the reference should be included at the end of the reference. Online citations should include date of access. If necessary, cite unpublished or personal work in the text but do not include it in the reference list. The reference list should be prepared with names listed in alphabetical order and must be complete and accurate.

Figures and Supporting Information

Figures, supporting information, and appendices should be supplied as separate files. You should review the basic figure requirements for manuscripts for peer review, as well as the more detailed figure requirements in your final revision pre-acceptance. At revision, the figures should be implemented and referred to within the main text. Figures should have a clear, short legend which identifies what the figure is about. View Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Tables

Tables may be supplied separately or included at the appropriate point in the main manuscript. Tables should be kept to a minimum and clearly relevant to the material presented. All tables must be referred to in the manuscript text. Results should not be repeated in both tables and text. All tables should have a clear, short legend which identifies what the table is about, e.g. Table 1: Results of initial audit.

Peer Review

This journal operates under a single-anonymised peer review model. Submissions will only be sent to review if the Editors-in-Chief determine that the submission meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the journal, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.

See Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the peer review process.

This journal participates in Wiley’s Transfer Desk Assistant program.

Refer and Transfer Program

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles

The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details on IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission and within your title page. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

Research involving human participants will only be published if such research has been conducted in full accordance with ethical principles, including the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki and the additional requirements, if any, of the country where the research has been carried out. Submissions must be accompanied by a statement on the Title Page that the research was undertaken with the understanding and written consent of each participant (or the participant’s representative, if they lack capacity), and according to the above mentioned principles. A statement confirming the study has been independently reviewed and approved by an ethical board should also be included. Statements may also be included in the Material and Methods section if authors so wish. Editors reserve the right to reject submissions if there is doubt as to whether appropriate procedures have been used.

For case reports and case series (Short Reports), consent of the subjects or their legal guardian to publication is required, unless authors can adequately outline extenuating circumstances. Requests to consider publication in the absence of consent should include an explanation of why it has not been possible to obtain consent in this instance and why publication is nonetheless justified. Requests should be included in the cover letter to the Editors who will determine at their discretion whether publication is appropriate. Child Abuse Review adopts the CARE guidelines and advises authors to follow the CARE checklist when writing their case report or case series for submission. Authors should take steps to ensure that no individual could be identified through publication (such as through removing all identifying details, including location; use of pseudonyms or anonymisation; or amendment of specific identifiable details. A statement of the approach taken to ensure confidentiality should be included on the Title Page.

Clinical trials should be reported using the CONSORT guidelines available at www.consort-statement.org. A checklist (available from the CONSORT site) should also be included with the submission. Child Abuse Review encourages authors to register the clinical trial in any of the following free, public clinical trials registries: www.clinicaltrials.gov, www.isrctn.org. The clinical trial registration number and name should be included on the Title Page and will be published with the article.

This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

This journal uses CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines. Authors must avoid duplicate publication, which is reproducing verbatim content from their other publications.

2. Article Types

Detailed author guidance for different article types is available below under the ‘Main Text File’ subheading.

3. After Acceptance

Wiley Author Services

When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. You will be asked to sign a publication license at this point as well as pay for any applicable APCs.

Copyright & Licensing

You may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

Standard re-use and licensing rights vary by journal. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used. For Open Access articles, this journal uses the CC-BY Creative Commons License.

Self-Archiving Definitions and Policies: Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions.

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email. The production office may be contacted on [email protected].

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Author Pronouns
Authors may now include their personal pronouns in the author bylines of their published articles and on Wiley Online Library. Authors will never be required to include their pronouns; it will always be optional for the author. Authors can include their pronouns in their manuscript upon submission and can add, edit, or remove their pronouns at any stage upon request. Submitting/corresponding authors should never add, edit, or remove a coauthor’s pronouns without that coauthor’s consent. Where post-publication changes to pronouns are required, these can be made without a correction notice to the paper, following Wiley’s Name Change Policy to protect the author’s privacy. Terms which fall outside of the scope of personal pronouns, e.g. proper or improper nouns, are currently not supported. 

Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognising that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office ([email protected]) with their name change request.

Correction to authorship

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Child Abuse Review will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial office [email protected] or production office [email protected], depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found above or in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”

Last Updated: 10 June 2025