Information for Authors

The Canadian Journal of Nursing Leadership (CJNL) provides nurses in leadership roles with ideas and innovations to support them in their practice. The journal’s mandate covers themes in management, practice, education and research. Manuscripts selected for publication are of importance to those involved in all aspects of nursing leadership, including: acute care, community-based care, long-term care, public health and primary care. The journal also accepts manuscripts focused on nurse leadership in policy development, regulation, licensure and related topics. The Editor in Chief is Dr. Ruth Martin-Misener, Director of the School of Nursing and Assistant Dean, Research, at the Faculty of Health, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. Martin-Misener is supported by a team of experienced nurse leaders: Editor for Research, Dr. Joan Almost, Editor for Practice, Dr. Mary McAllister; and Editor for Policy and Innovation, Dr. Barbara Mildon.

Publishing Process

CJNL is a refereed journal. Manuscripts are initially reviewed by the editorial team and undergo blind review by at least two external referees. Selection is based on the criteria of originality, timeliness and relevance to the needs and interests of nurse leaders. Authors are provided with feedback and may be requested to revise their manuscript to conform to the editorial standards of the journal. The review process usually takes 10 to 12 weeks from initial submission to initial decision.

Manuscripts are accepted for review on the understanding they are submitted solely to CJNL and have not been published elsewhere. Authors whose manuscripts are accepted for publication will be required to sign a copyright release form.

Manuscripts and supporting material should be submitted as email attachments to Dianne Foster-Kent, Editorial Director at: dkent@longwoods.com.

Types of Manuscripts Accepted for Review

Commentary papers are essays and commentaries that address: 1) important nursing leadership and management issues; or 2) critical issues in health services delivery and policy. Commentary submissions should explore issues relevant to nurse leaders in an evidence-informed manner. Submissions should be a maximum of 2,000 words exclusive of abstract (maximum 100 words, with key messages incorporated) and no more than one table or figure and a maximum of 20 references.

Reflection papers offer the author’s personal insights into a critical nursing leadership issue, situation or question that is commonly faced by other nurse leaders. A reflection paper describes and explains in an introspective, first-person narrative, the author’s personal experience with the issue being examined. Evidence from the literature must be incorporated to substantiate the topic’s relevance and importance. Submissions should be a maximum of 1,500 words exclusive of abstract (maximum 100 words, with key messages incorporated) and a maximum of 20 references.

Research papers - The preferred length is approximately 3000 words (12-15 typewritten, double-spaced pages) exclusive of abstract, figures/tables and references. Pages should be numbered consecutively throughout. 

Research papers should follow a structured format with distinct sections (i.e. Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Implications for Nursing Leadership, Conclusion) organized to present research, analysis and conclusions in a well-organized, comprehensive manner.

Each research paper must include a section titled Implications for Nursing Leadership that describes the relevance of the manuscript’s findings for nurse leaders and also provides recommendations for how the learnings can be applied in practice.

Submissions must also include a structured abstract that follows the structure of the paper. From the abstract, readers should be able to understand why the research being discussed is relevant to nurse leaders and what they will learn from reading the paper.

Knowledge syntheses (integrative reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, qualitative reviews, rapid reviews, and scoping reviews of relevance to nursing leadership). The review must provide a clear understanding of the quality of the studies, the state of the art in the field of interest, and empirically justified recommendations.

Knowledge synthesis papers should follow a structured format with distinct sections (i.e. Background, Aim/Purpose, Methodology, Search Methods, Data evaluation, Data extraction, Methods of Analysis, Results, Discussion, Implications for Nursing Leadership, Conclusion) organized to present the synthesis, analysis and conclusions in a well-organized, comprehensive manner.

Note: Authors are required to follow the reporting guidelines for the type of review used in the research. These should be included with the manuscript upon submission. More information can be found at: https://www.equator-network.org/library/reporting-guidelines-under-development/reporting-guidelines-under-development-for-systematic-reviews/.

Case Study – A case study describes an actual situation or problem requiring leadership intervention, innovation or decision-making. It is a written account, ideally from the leader’s point of view, of a situation as it actually occurred. The outcome of the situation described should generally be measured against selected criteria or benchmarks, and its presentation should illustrate or contribute to best practices, providing a learning exemplar for readers. Finally, in the context of relevant evidence, case studies offer an opportunity to relate real life experience to theory, principles and practices of leadership and administration and may have policy implications.

What to Include in the Case Study:

• Abstract (approximately 100 words)
• Author(s) and contact information
• Clear and succinct title
• Introduction – outline problem/issue and stakeholders
• Proposed solution/intervention
• Implementation
• Methodology / Change Process / Results
• Discussion / Conclusion
• Recommendations for nursing leaders
• Bibliography / References
• Length – no more than 2,000 words (excluding references, tables and figures).

Submission Cover letter

The Canadian Journal of Nursing Leadership follows the recommendations of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. Thus, the editors require that each manuscript submission must be accompanied a cover letter that includes the following:

• A statement of financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict, or perceived conflict, of interest, if that information is not included in the manuscript itself. (See Disclosure of Financial and Non-Financial Relationships and Activities, and Conflicts of Interest).
• Confirmation that all authors listed meet the three authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors as outlined below. Individuals who contributed to the paper but are not authors should be included in an Acknowledgement section. (See Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors.)
• A statement regarding the use of AI technologies in the development of the manuscript (See Artificial Intelligence (AI)–Assisted Technology.)
• A statement regarding any submissions and previous reports that might be regarded as publication of the same or very similar work. Any such work should be referred to specifically and referenced in the new submission. Copies of previously published materials should be included with the submitted paper, to help the editor decide how to handle the matter. (See Overlapping Publications.)
• Recommendations and contact information for four potential peer reviewers. Each recommended reviewer should have published in the past three years in the domain of the manuscript. The potential reviewer’s relevant publication should be included with the recommendation.
• If required, a statement indicating names of individuals who should not be asked to review the paper because of potential conflicts of interest.
• If required, a statement indicating that Author(s) are a member of the Editorial Board of Nursing Leadership. The author did not take part in the peer review or decision-making process for this submission.

Open Access Agreement

Through this initiative, authors of accepted manuscripts have the opportunity to pay an Open Access publication charge to make their paper freely available online immediately upon publication of the issue. For more information, contact Dianne Foster-Kent at dkent@longwoods.com.

Guidelines for Style

Manuscript submissions will be copy-edited for grammar, punctuation and consistency of spelling and style; in some cases they will be edited for length. All Longwoods publications use Canadian spelling and follow the Oxford Canadian Dictionary (first choice listed). Note, however, that "healthcare" is one word as both an adjective and a noun.

General Points of Style

• use double quotation marks, with single quotation marks within the double as necessary
• commas and periods always within the quotation marks
• series or serial comma not used to separate final elements in lists (e.g., CEOS, directors, managers and supervisors)
• articles and prepositions within titles and headings lowercased
• that/which distinction made for restrictive/nonrestrictive clauses
• Dates:
  
  • March 2003 (no comma)
  • March 12, 2003
  • The 1990s (no apostrophe)
• Numbers:
  • numbers below 10 spelled out; 10 and above as numerals
  • percentages always expressed as numerals, with
  • percentage sign e.g., 2%, 37%
  • dollar amounts - $10 million; $2 billion
• en dash used to set off phrases within sentences; space either side
• ellipses set tight; space either side for three ellipses within sentence ( … )

References - Updated for DOI

The use of footnotes and endnotes is strongly discouraged. Instead, short explanatory remarks should be placed parenthetically in the text.

Longwoods follows a modified APA (American Psychological Association) style for referencing source material. In-text references should be placed in parentheses and consist of last name of the author(s) and the year of publication of the work to which reference has been made. No punctuation separates the two items.

Longwoods has adopted the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system (see: https://www.doi.org/ for more information). Please be sure to include DOI numbers in your citations where ever possible. See examples below in the In-text Referencing section. If accepted and published, your paper will also be identified by a unique DOI generated by Longwoods.

In-text References

One author:

• The theory was first propounded in 1970 (Goodenough 1971).
• Alternatively, author surnames may be integrated into the text, followed immediately by the year of publication in parenthesis: 
• Goodenough (1971) was the first to propound the theory.

Two authors:

• EI has been proven to positively affect an organization's success (Cooper and Sawaf 1997).

Multiple authors/citations:

• Any health organization could potentially benefit from this type of approach (Madden et al. 1995).
• Madden et al. (1995) propose the following solutions …
• This trend is reflected in recent surveys of healthcare organizations (Gaudine 2000; Pimentel 2000; Canadian Physiotherapy Association 2000; Parent et al. 2001)

In-text citations

requiring page references to quoted material should be styled as follows:

• (Goodenough et al. 1979: 22-23; Simcoe 1980: 734-35.)

Reference List

Ensure that all sources cited in the text are included in a "Reference" list at the end of the article. The accompanying list should be in alphabetical order and include full publication details. For multiple entries by the same author, arrange citations in chronological order, earliest year first. In the examples shown here, the following rules are observed:

• in citations with multiple authors, invert the first-name initial and surname only for the first author listed
• no parentheses for year of publication
• article titles in title case
• In accordance with the most recent APA guidelines, location of publishers is not required.
• journals and book titles in italics
• volume number, issue number, page references styled as follows (all in romans - no italics): 15(3): 319-25

Sample References

Birch, S., G. Kephart, G.T. Murphy, L. O'Brien-Pallas. R. Alder R and A. MacKenzie. 2009. Health Human Resources Planning and the Production of Health: Development of an Extended Analytical Framework for Needs-Based Health Human Resources Planning. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. Nov;15(6 Suppl):S56-61. doi: 10.1097/PHH.0b013e3181b1ec0e.

Anis, A.H., D. Guh and X. Wang. 2001. A Dog's Breakfast: Prescription Drug Coverage Varies Widely across Canada. Medical Care 39(4): 315-26.

Evans, R. 2013. It Doesn't Have to Be This Way. Healthcare Policy 8(4): 10-18. doi:10.12927/hcpol.2013.23400.

Boyatzis, R., D. Goleman and K. Rhee. 2000. Clustering Competence in Emotional Intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI). In R. Bar-On and J.D.A. Parker, eds., The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence. Jossey Bass.

 Drinka, T.J.K. and P.G. Clark. 2000. Healthcare Teamwork: Interdisciplinary Practice and Teaching. Auburn House.

Shortell, S.M., J. Zimmerman, D.M. Rousseau, R.R. Gillies, D.P. Wagner, E.A. Draper, W.A. Knaus and J. Duffy. 1994. The Performance of Intensive Care Units: Does Good Management Make a Difference? Medical Care 32(5): 508-25.

Citations of all material accessed on-line should be as complete as possible and include all the information that would normally be cited for a print source. In addition, the data of access/retrieval should be included.

Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). 2018, January. Environmental Scan: Biosimilars — Regulatory, Health Technology Assessment, Reimbursement Trends, and Market Outlook. Retrieved August 14, 2019. <https://cadth.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/ES0317_biosimilars.pdf>.

Tables and Figures

All illustrations consisting of line art (pie charts, bar graphs, etc.) should be labeled as "Figures" and numbered consecutively within the article (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.). Include an appropriate title, legend and sourceline, where required, for each Figure. Similarly, all Tables should be numbers consecutively within the article (Table 1, Table 2, etc.)

For production purpose, all figures and embedded graphics in Word documents should also be provided with the manuscript as separate high-res files (jpeg, eps, psd (photoshop) or ai (illustrator) as 300 dpi.)

How to submit graphs & figures (PDF)
More information on high resolution photos (PDF)

Appendices

For submission, appendices should be supplied as separate text files; and clearly labelled as Appendices. Appendices will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. Decisions about whether to include supplemental material files will be made by the journal editors during the manuscript review process.

Once accepted, appendix files should be provided in pdf. format and will be uploaded online as supplied. They will not be checked for accuracy, copyedited, typeset or proofread. The responsibility for scientific accuracy, readability and file functionality remains with the authors. A disclaimer will be displayed to this effect with any appendix published. Longwoods Publishing does not provide technical support for the creation of supplemental material.

Permission

Authors must obtain written permission from the publisher of previously copyrighted material, including extensive quotations (longer than 500 words), tables, figures, graphs, etc. Permission should accompany the manuscript.

Editor

Address all correspondence to the Editorial Director:

Dianne Foster Kent
Editorial Director
Longwoods Publishing Corporation
260 Adelaide Street East, No. 8
Toronto, ON M5A 1N1
Telephone: 416 864-9667
Fax: 416 368-4443
Email: dkent@longwoods.com

Indexing

The Canadian Journal of Nursing Leadership is indexed in the following: Pubmed/Medline,CINAHL, Nursing Citation Index, Nursing Abstracts, CSA (Cambridge), Ulrich’s,IndexCopernicus, Scopus, and is a partner of HINARI,