Journal follows editorial recommendations of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (available at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/). 

Via Medica strongly recommends journal editors to adhere to the principles of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), particularly to deal with acts of ethical misconduct. For more information Authors, Readers and Editors may visit the COPE website: http://publicationethics.org/.

The International Maritime Health will publish original papers on medical and health problems of seafarers, fishermen, divers, dockers, shipyard workers and other maritime workers, as well as papers on tropical medicine, travel medicine, epidemiology, and other related topics.

Typical length of such a paper would be 2000-4000 words, not including tables, figures and references. Its construction should follow the usual pattern: abstract (structured abstract of no more than 300 words); key words; introduction; participants; materials; methods; results; discussion; and conclusions/key messages.

Case Reports will also be accepted, particularly of work-related diseases and accidents among maritime workers.

Please do not provide the authors details (personal details and institutional affiliations) in the file containing the text of the paper, as the reviews are anonymous: neither the reviewer knows who has authored the paper nor the authors know who has reviewed their paper. All papers will be double blind peer-reviewed. The comments made by the reviewers will be sent to authors, and their criticism and proposed amendments should be taken into consideration by authors submitting revised texts.

Review articles on specific topics, exposures, preventive interventions, and on the national maritime health services will also be considered for publication. Their length will be from 1000 to 4000 words, including tables, figures and references.

Letters to the Editor discussing recently published articles, reporting research projects or informing about workshops will be accepted; they should not exceed 500 words of text and 5 references.

There also will be the section Chronicle, in which brief reports will be published on the international symposia and national meetings on maritime medicine and health, on tropical parasitology and epidemiology, on travel medicine and other subjects related to the health of seafarers and other maritime workers. Information will also be given on training activities in this field, and on international collaborative projects related to the above subjects.

All articles should be submitted to International Maritime Health electronically online at www.intmarhealth.pl where detailed instruction regarding submission process will provided.

Only English texts will be accepted.

Manuscripts should be typed in double line spacing on numbered pages and conform to the usual requirements (Ref.: International Committee on Medical Journals Editors. Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, JAMA, 1997; 277; 927-934).

Only manuscripts that have not been published previously, and are not under consideration by another publisher, will be accepted.

Full texts of oral presentations at meetings (with abstracts printed in the conference materials) can be considered.

All authors must give written consent to publication of the text.

Manuscripts should present original material, the writing should be clear, study methods appropriate, the conclusions should be reasonable and supported by the data. Abbreviations, if used, should be explained.

Drugs should be referred to by their approved names (not by trade names). Scientific measurements should be given in SI units, except for blood pressure, which should be expressed in mm Hg.

Authors should give their names, addresses, and affiliations for the time they did the work. A current address of one author should be indicated for correspondence, including telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address.

All financial and material support for the reported research and work should be identified in the manuscript.

References

The style of references is that of Index Medicus/NLM:(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/policy/cit_format.html). References should be numbered in the order in which they appear in the text. At the end of the article the full list of references should give the names and initials of first three authors should be given followed by: et al.).

The authors’ names are followed by the title of the article; the title of the journal abbreviated according to Medline; the year of publication, the volume number; and the first and last page numbers.

PLEASE NOTE: It is recommended to include DOI numbers of the cited papers (if applicable) – it will enable the references to be linked out directly to proper websites. (e.g. Redon J, Cifkova R, Laurent S et al. Mechanisms of hypertension in the cardiometabolic syndrome. J Hypertens 2009; 27: 441–451. doi: 10.1097/HJH.0b013e32831e13e5.).

Reference to books should give the title, names of authors or of editors, publisher, place of publication, and the year.

Information from yet unpublished articles, papers reported at meetings, or personal communications should be cited only in the text, not in References.

AUTHORSHIP

All collaborators who have made significant and substantial contributions to a study are considered coauthors. The nature and level of contribution of all authors of accepted manuscripts must be indicated, i.e. conception, design, execution and interpretation of the data being published, wrote the paper. An author may list more than one contribution, and more than one author may have contributed to the same aspect of the work. Other contributions to the work, such as providing of reagents or analytic tools, should be listed in the Acknowledgements. Ghostwriting and guest-authorship are forbidden. In case of detecting ghost written manuscripts, actions will be taken involving both the submitting authors and the participants involved.

FEES
There are no submission or processing charges.

PREVENTING PLAGIARISM
To exclude, even unintentional, plagiarism International Maritime Health has introduced Ithenticate software, widely known in the academic community. All papers accepted for publication are now automatically screened within the manuscript system. Additionally, Editors may decide to run a similarity report at any other point during the review process or post-publication. Our Editorial team is aware of recognized limitation of this tool and realize that a high similarity score does not necessarily indicate plagiarized text. Thus, every doubtful report will be delt with individually to determine whether there are any grounds for concern.

Author statement

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Registration and login are required to submit items online and to check the status of current submissions.

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).

2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word or RTF document file format.

3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.

4. The text is written using font size 12 and 1.5 space between the lines; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); all illustrations, figures, and tables are  attached in separate file(s). Figures should be submitted in separate files.

5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.

6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

7. The cover letter has been signed by author who obtained the consent of the co-authors (if any).

Completion of the online submission form electronically is tantamount to automatically and free-of-charge transferring of the copyright for publishing and distribution of the submitted material (in all known now and developed in the future forms and fields of exploitation) to the Owner, i.e. International Maritime Health Foundation, under condition that those materials are accepted for publication. The authors agree not to publish any data or figures presented in their work anywhere and in any language without the prior written consent of the owner of the copyrights, i.e. the Owner.
Legal relations between the Publisher and the author(s) are in accordance with Polish law and with international conventions binding to Poland. The legal bases to acquiring the copyright are article 921 section copyright law and related law as well as the international conventions binding to Poland.

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.