Guidelines for Authors
The Journal of Academy of Hospital Administration (JAHA) invites the following types of manuscripts for publication: -
1.Original Research Articles (ORA):-
These include descriptive studies, quasi-experimental research, newer interventions, evaluation of services/facilities, costing and cost effectiveness analyses, case-control series, and operational/applied research on different aspects of hospital management/administration including planning and project management, legal and ethical issues,
patient safety, quality of care, digital and financial management, human resource planning and management, Hospital Operations and Supply chain management etc.
The ORA manuscript should have around 2500-3000 words (excluding Abstract, References and Tables); and should be divided into sections with the headings- Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Material and Methods,
Results, Discussion, References, Tables and Figure legends.
Introduction: State the purpose, context, and summarize the rationale for the study or observation.
Materials and Methods: It should include and describe the following
aspects:-
Study design: should conform to guidelines as shown in the table below.
Selection and Description of Study Participants: Describe your selection of the observational or experimental participants (patients/staff including controls) clearly, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description
of the source population.
Technical information: Identify the methods, apparatus /equipment / tools/software etc (give the manufacturer's name and address inparentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods (see below); provide references and brief descriptionsfor methods that have been published but are not well known; describenew or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used,
including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.
Reports of randomized control trials should present information on allmajor study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT Statement (http://www.consort-statement.org).
Ethical Considerations: When reporting studies on human beings, indicatewhether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013.(available at https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wmadeclaration- of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involvinghuman-subjects/).For prospective studies involving human participants,authors are expected to mention about approval of (regional/ national/institutional or independent Ethics Committee or Review Board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary as per regional and/ or national guidelines. Ensure confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants’ names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative
material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution’s or a national research council’s guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.Evidence forapproval by Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) must be supplied by theauthors on demand. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the CPCSEA (https://ccsea.gov.in/Auth/index.aspx) and World Medical.Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for MedicalResearch Involving Humans for studies involving experimental animals and human beings, respectively). The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all original research articlesunder the ‘Materials and Methods’ section.
The authors are required to use the downloadable word document templates provided at the end of this page to prepare the manuscripts. The reporting guidelines checklist is provided in these templates which must be
duly followed. The authors can also choose the reporting guidelines for thespecific study design from the web links provided in the table below andupload it along with the manuscript. Manuscripts with the incomplete
checklist will be sent back to the authors.
Table-1 Reporting Guidelines for Specific Study Designs
The reporting guidelines for other type of studies can be found
at https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/.
Statistics: Whenever possible quantify findings and present them withappropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such asconfidence intervals). Authors should report losses to observation (such as,dropouts from a clinical trial). When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used to analyse them. Avoid nontechnical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as 'random' (which implies a randomizing device), 'normal', 'significant', 'correlations', and 'sample'. Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. Specify the computer software used. Use upper italics (P 0.048). For all P values include the exact value and not less than 0.05 or 0.001. Mean differences in continuous variables, proportions in categorical variables and relative risks including odds ratios and hazard ratios should be accompanied by their confidence intervals.
Results: Present your results in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations, giving the main or most important findings first. Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or illustrations; emphasize or
summarize only important observations. Extra- or supplementary materials and technical detail can be placed in an appendix where it will be accessible but will not interrupt the flow of the text; alternatively, it can be published
only in the electronic version of the journal.
When data are summarized in the Results section, give numeric results not only as derivatives (for example, percentages) but also as the absolute numbers from which the derivatives were calculated, and specify the
statistical methods used to analyse them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Where scientifically appropriate,analyses of the data by variables such as age and sex should be included.
Discussion: Include summary of key findings (primary outcome measures,secondary outcome measures, results as they relate to a prior hypothesis); Strengths and limitations of the study (study question, study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation); Interpretation andimplications in the context of the totality of evidence (is there a systematic review to refer to, if not, could one be reasonably done here and now?,what this study adds to the available evidence, effects on patient care and health policy, possible mechanisms); Controversies raised by this study;and Future research directions (for this particular research collaboration,underlying mechanisms, clinical research).
Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction orthe Results section. In particular, contributors should avoid making statements on economic benefits and costs unless their manuscript includes economic data and analyses. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. New hypotheses may be stated if needed, however they should be clearly labelled as such. About 40 references can be included. These articles generally should not have more than six authors.
2) Review Articles:- (RA)
[NB:-It is expected that these articles would be written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field. A short summary of the work done by the contributor(s) in the field ofreview should accompany the manuscript.]
The prescribed word count for RA is up to 4000 words (max), excluding tables, references and abstract. The manuscript may have about 80-90 references. The manuscript should have an unstructured Abstract (250
words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles would depend upon the topic reviewed. Authors submitting review article should include a section describing the methods used for locating,
selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also besummarized in the abstract. Please adhere to PRISMA guidelines as mentioned in the table above.
The journal expects the contributors to give post-publication updates on the subject of review. The update should be brief, covering the advances in the field after the publication of the article and should be sent as a letter to
editor, as and when major development occurs in the field.
The Journal prefers systematic reviews that have been registered in PROSPERO https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/. The PROSPERO registry number should be provided in the review article under the “methodology” section.
3) Brief Communication:- (BC)
Authors are encouraged to submit concise relevant and high impactfindings or reports on various aspects/domains of Hospital Administration and related fields with word limit of 1300-1500 words, with a structured abstract of 150-200 words (comprising of Background, Significance,Methods, Results and Conclusion). Administratively sensitive data andidentifiers should be anonymized, and it can have a maximum of 3 tables/figures. References should be as per ORA guidelines.
4) Case reports:- (CR)
New, interesting, and rare cases pertaining to Hospital Administration and related issues in Hospitals can be reported. They should be unique,describing any administrative or financial or legal or architectural or human
resources or procurement related challenge; and providing a learning pointfor the readers. These CR manuscripts should be of up to 1000 words(excluding Abstract and references) and should have the following
headings: Abstract (unstructured), Keywords, Introduction, Case report,Discussion, Reference, Tables and Legends in that order. These could besupported by upto 20 references, and can have a maximum of 4 authors.
5) Conference Proceedings:- (CP)
Authors, are encouraged to submit reports of Conferences(National/International) organized by Dept of Hospital Administration in theconcerned field/speciality, during the past 6 months. These should be within 2500 words, with maximum 5 photos of academic events, and submitted by Organising Secretary/Chairperson, who should be Life
members of Academy of Hospital Administration. The objective of this newsection is to provide a glimpse into the conduct of Conferences forResidents in the speciality.
6) Residents & Students Corner:- (RSC)
Manuscript may fall in any of the above categories but should be authoredonly by the students/residents of hospital management/hospital administration. The scientific rigor may be less, but nonetheless shouldbroadly pertain to the category. Dissertations carried out by Residents willfall under this category.
7) Perspectives:-
This manuscript can be a viewpoint/comment or perspective on any issuepertaining to the topic of healthcare delivery including budget, legal issue,financial aspects, disaster etc. The manuscript should not merely repeat
the event/amendment/budget but must reflect critical view point orcommentary on the same. It should conform to word limit of 1500 words.
8) Letter to the Editor:- (LTE)
These should be short and decisive observations. They should preferably berelated to articles previously published in the Journal or views expressed inthe journal. They should not be preliminary observations that need a later
paper for validation. The letter could have up to 500 words and 4 references. It could be generally authored by not more than four authors.
Other:
Editorial, Guest Editorial, Commentary and Opinion are solicited by the
editorial board.
