Guidelines for Authors

The Canadian Journal of Physician Leadership is a peer-reviewed journal published by the Canadian Society of Physician Leaders. It focuses on topics and issues related to leadership and the health care system as they pertain mainly, but not exclusively, to physicians and physician leaders. Download guidelines

Article classification

CJPL accepts papers in the following categories. Please indicate which category your paper matches most closely:

Research paper — A paper that reports on any type of research undertaken by the author(s). The research may involve the construction or testing of a model or framework, action research, testing of data, market research or surveys, empirical, scientific or clinical research.

Opinion/viewpoint — Any paper, where content is dependent on the author’s opinion and interpretation.

Conceptual paper — These papers are not based on research but will develop hypotheses. Papers are likely to be discursive and cover philosophical discussions and comparative studies of others’ work and thinking.

Case study — Case studies describe actual interventions or experiences within organizations. They may well be subjective and may not report on original research, although links to the literature will be made. A description of a case around a leadership challenge or a hypothetical case study used as a teaching exercise would also fit into this category.

Literature review — Reserved for papers whose main purpose is to annotate and/or critique the literature in a particular subject area. This may be a selective bibliography providing advice on information sources or it may be comprehensive by covering the main contributors to the development of a topic and explore their different views.

General review — Papers that provide an integrative overview or historical examination of some concept, construct, event, or phenomenon.

Book review — Include a summary of a book of interest to leaders and health systems in the broadest sense, as well as a brief personal opinion of its quality and interest and, possibly, mention of previous publications on the same subject.

Letter to the editor — CJPL welcomes letters to the editor – in response to an article or raising a new issue of concern to physician leaders. If an opinion expressed in a letter is controversial, we will try to ensure a response or provide another viewpoint in the same issue of the journal in which we print the letter.

Format

Please submit articles in Microsoft Word format. Acceptable file types for figures are listed below.

Abstract

Please provide a short abstract of up to 250 words. Abstracts may be structured or unstructured.

Article length

Articles may be up to 2500 words in length (about 6 pages double-spaced). This does not include the abstract, references, legends, and appendices. Book reviews are limited to 1000 words.

Article title and running title

The article title should not exceed 12 words. A running title of up to eight words may also be provided.

Author details

Please provide the full names of all contributing authors, arranged in the correct order for publication. A corresponding author should be identified and a correct email address provided for each author. No more than two designations are included after author names in the byline, but others may be included in the author’s bio at the end of the article.

Biographies and acknowledgements

Please provide a very brief bio including each author’s current affiliation and/or position to appear at the end of the article. If these differ from an author’s affiliation at the time the research was carried out or the article was written, please provide both.

Sponsorship and funding

Please declare all sources of funding and sponsorship and a statement to this effect in an Acknowledgements section. Please disclose any conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest — or confirm that there are no such conflicts.

Informed consent and research ethics review

If your article includes primary data about individual patients, volunteers, or any other individual, you must confirm in writing that you have obtained their fully informed, voluntary, and written consent to collect and publish these primary data. The principal study of primary data that this article reports was approved by the research ethics board(s) of [institution(s)].

Author attestation (for multiple authors)

Each author must declare his or her individual contribution to the article. All authors must have participated substantially in the research and/or article preparation (please specify). The statement that all authors have approved the final article should be true and included with the article.

Keywords

Please provide up to 6 appropriate keywords that encapsulate the principal topics of the paper.

Headings

Concise subheadings may be used, but please ensure that a hierarchy is clear. The preferred format is bold for first level subheadings and italics for second-level subheadings. Lower levels of headings should not be necessary.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used only if absolutely necessary. Please use footnote symbols.

Figures

Please provide a clear title describing the content of each figure and ensure that each figure is mentioned in the text. Please submit all figures (charts, diagrams, line drawings, web pages/screenshots, and photographic images) in electronic form and ensure they are of high quality, legible, and numbered consecutively. Submissions in colour are encouraged to maximize the quality of their appearance.

• Figures created in MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, Illustrator may be supplied in their native format. Electronic figures created in other applications should be copied from the origination software and pasted into a blank MS Word document or saved and imported into an MS Word document or alternatively create a .pdf file from the origination software.
• Figures which cannot be supplied as above are acceptable in the standard image formats which are: .pdf, .jpeg, .TIF, .BMP and .png in a resolution of 300 dpi.
• Photographic images should be submitted electronically and of high They should be saved as .tif or .jpeg files at a resolution of at least 300 dpi.

Tables

Tables should be typed and included in a separate file. Please ensure that tables are mentioned in the text to ensure that they will appear soon after first mention. Please provide a clear title describing the content of each table. Footnotes may be used to highlight or explain data; please use standard footnote symbols.

References

Please ensure that the work of other authors is correctly referenced. We use superscripted consecutive numbers in the text and list references at the end of the article in the order they are cited.

Please ensure that references are complete, accurate, and consistent. This is very important in an electronic environment where readers may link back to the works you have cited.

Book — Surname Initials. Title of book. Place of publication: Publisher; year. e.g., Harrow R. No place to hide. New York: Simon & Schuster; 2005.

Book chapter — Surname Initials. Chapter title. In Editor’s surname Initials. Title of book.

Place of publication: Publisher; year. pages.

e.g., Calabrese FA. The early pathways: theory to practice – a continuum. In Stankosky M (editor), Creating the discipline of knowledge management. New York: Elsevier; 2015. pp. 15-20.

Journal article — Surname Initials. Title of article. Journal Name year;volume( number):pages.

e.g., Capizzi MT, Ferguson R. Loyalty trends for the twenty-first century. J Consumer Marketing 2005;22(2):72-80.

Conference proceedings — Surname Initials. Title of paper. In Surname, Initials (editor), Title of published proceeding which may include place and date(s) held. Place of publication: Publisher. Page numbers.

e.g., Jakkilinki R, Georgievski M, Sharda N. Connecting destinations with an ontology- based e-tourism planner. In Information and communication technologies in tourism 2007 proceedings of the international conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2007. Vienna: Springer-Verlag; 2005. pp. 12-32.

Newspaper article — Surname Initials. Article title. Newspaper year;date:pages. e.g., Smith A. Money for old rope. Daily News 2008;21 January:1,3-4.

Electronic sources — If available online, the full URL should be supplied at the end of the reference, as well as a date that the resource was accessed. Please provide the name of the author if there is one, the publisher, and the name and location of the web site on which the document or information appears.

e.g., Choosing Wisely Canada. Ottawa and Toronto: Canadian Medical Association and University of Toronto. http://www.choosingwiselycanada.org/ (accessed 12 Nov 2007).

Archival or unpublished sources —Surname Initials. Title of document. Unpublished manuscript, collection name, inventory record, name of archive, location archive. e.g., Litman S. Mechanism & technique of commerce. Unpublished manuscript, Simon

Litman Papers, Record series 9/5/29 Box 3. Urbana-Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Archives.

For more information

Colleen Galasso, Executive Director
Canadian Society of Physician Leaders
875 Carling Avenue, Suite 323 Ottawa ON K1S 5P1
Email: colleen@physicianleaders.ca
Telephone: 613 369-8322