Information for authors

The objectives of the Virtual Library are:
   (1) To provide an open access library to publish articles on good practices in the response to TB, HIV and Viral Hepatitis in the WHO European Region; and
   (2) To build capacity in health systems to respond to the epidemics within the WHO European Region.

What is a good practice?
Practices that have shown evidence of effectiveness in improving population health when implemented in a specific real-life setting and are likely to be replicable in other settings.

A good practice should hence meet most, if not all, of nine identified evaluation criteria: Relevance, sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness, ethical appropriateness, equity/gender, possibility for scale-up/replicability, stakeholder collaboration, community involvement.

Relevance	Addresses at least one of the targets or areas of intervention of the action plans for TB, HIV and viral hepatitis in the WHO European Region.
Sustainability	Is implementable or can be maintained over a long period of time (and in a changing policy climate) without any major injection of additional resources.
Efficiency	Produces results with a reasonable level of resources and time.
Effectiveness	Works and achieves measurable results.
Ethical appropriateness	Respects current ethical rules for dealing with human populations.
Equity/Gender	Addresses the needs of key populations and/or gender in an equitable manner.
Possibility to scale-up/Replicability	Can be scaled up to a larger population.
Stakeholder collaboration	Involves satisfactory collaboration between several stakeholders.
Community involvement	Involves participation from affected communities.
Political involvement	Has support from relevant national or local authorities.

General instruction
For more information on the online submission please click here.
The article must be 2500 words maximum (excluding the abstract).

The article should include the following sections:
Abstract → (150 words maximum)
Background → (150 words minimum - 400 words maximum)
Method & Materials → (50 words minimum -500 words maximum)
Results → (200 words minimum - 600 words maximum)
Discussion → (200 words minimum -500 words maximum)
Conclusion → (150 words minimum - 500 words maximum)

The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point Arial font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end. Use only one (maximum two) graph/ chart in order to display data;

Be concise: Only one primary good practice should be included in the article, although the country may submit more than one good practice narrative (it should be concise and focused on the primary example of good practice selected for the submission by the authors);

Focus on OUTCOMES as opposed to OUTPUTS, and if the focus is on OUTPUTS (e.g. increases in testing) then make sure you can connect them to health-related OUTCOMES [e.g. health outcomes of increased treatment coverage (outcome) following sharp increases in testing of key populations (output)];

Please note that only Pdf and Word files can be uploaded to the system.

References
Reference the most recent and relevant publications. Please use the Vancouver referencing style with in-text citations and a bibliography at the end of the text. Sample references can be viewed on the National Institutes of Health website.

Examples:
Journals are normally written as:
(1st 6 authors, et al. Title of article. Journal. Year;Volume(Issue):pages.)
Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002;935(1-2):40-6.

E-references are normally written as:
(Title of article/webpage. Location: Organization; year published (web address, accessed date).
Measles SIAs planning and implementation field guide. Brazzaville: World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa; 2010 (https://www.measlesrubellainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/WHO-AFRO-Measles-Fieldguide-April-2011.pdf, accessed 28 October 2016).

Place the bibliography at the end of the article text and not as footnotes. Write journal names in full. Use superscript sequential numbering for citing references in the text. Place the number after any punctuation. For example: These results are consistent with the original study.11
Reference personal communication in the text only and include the person's full name and institution.
Caution should be used in referencing websites; it should be done only when their content has been substantially described in the article.

Acknowledgements
Contributors who do not fulfil the authorship requirements may be acknowledged. Permission from all contributors in the acknowledgement section should be sought. We assume that permission has been granted and will not follow up with the authors to confirm.

Ethics and Permissions
It is the responsibility of authors to gain appropriate ethics approval for their work. A statement of ethics approval obtained or an explanation of why ethics approval was not required should be included for all articles during the submission process.

Conflicts of Interest
A conflict of interest is defined by ICMJE as “when an author or author's institution, reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions”. Conflicts of interest may be financial, institutional, research or personal. A relationship does not always represent a conflict of interest and does not necessarily preclude publication in the virtual library. All authors and reviewers will be required to state any potential conflicts of interest, which will be assessed by the Editorial Board.

Funding
Authors will be required to state the sources of funding for their work. When this is part of routine work, and there is no additional funding source, then a funding statement is not required.

Photographs for Cover
If authors have taken photographs that are relevant to their article, they may be submitted for consideration for publication on the cover of the issue. Submission of a photograph does not guarantee its publication.

Language
Articles should be written in English or Russian. Once published, all abstracts and most articles are translated into Russian or English.