African Journal of Psychiatry (AJOP)

1. Copies should be neatly typewritten, with double spacing and wide margins. The manuscript should be submitted electronically. Authors are required to state that their material is original and not previously published or currently submitted elsewhere.
2. All abbreviations should be spelt out when first used in the text and thereafter used consistently.
3. Scientific measurements should be expressed in SI units throughout, with two exceptions: blood pressure should be given in mmHg and haemoglobin values in g/dl.
4. Author’s full name & surname, affiliation & correspondence address (including email address) to be set out in full on title page of article.
5. All articles (review, original research ) are to have an Abstract, giving a brief succinct overview of the article. The abstract should reflect the essence of the paper and be 200 to 250 words. For Original Research articles, the abstract should be structured as follows:- Objective, Method, Results and Conclusion. Review articles should be approximately 5000 words, and original articles approximately 3000 words.
6. Authors must give a minimum of three key words, and should use the MeSH (Medical subject headings list of index medicus) catalogue.
7. A clear statement on ethical issues in clinical and animal research must be provided; conflict of interests and patient confidentiality issues must be indicated. This should appear in the Methods section and must contain the name of the Ethics Committee responsible as well as the name of the Chairperson or the person who approved the protocol. For case reports a statement needs to be included regarding consent to publish case material from the patient, failing which permission from the relevant ethics committee should be included as per the for clinical and animal research.
8. For multi authored papers, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) states that, there are three necessary conditions one must meet in order to claim (co) authorship:
   1. Substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretations of data.
   2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
   3. Final approval of the version to be published.

1. Figures consist of all material which cannot be set in type, such as photographs and line drawings. Photographs should be forwarded electronically.
2. Tables and legends for illustrations should be typed on separate sheets and should be clearly identified. Tables should carry Roman numerals, thus I, II, III, etc, and illustrations Arabic numerals, thus: 1, 2, 3, etc.
3. Where identification of a patient is possible from a photograph the author must submit a consent to publication signed by the patient, or by the parent or guardian in the case of a minor.
4. If any tables or illustrations submitted have been published elsewhere, written consent to republication should be obtained by the author from the copyright holder and the author(s).

1. References should be inserted at the end of the sentence, outside the full stop, as superior numbers, and should be listed at the end of the article in numerical order. Do not list them alphabetically.
2. It is the author’s responsibility to verify references from the original sources.
3. References should be set out in the Vancouver style, and only approved abbreviations of journal titles should be used; consult the List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus for these details. Names and initials of all authors should be given unless there are more than six, in which case the six names should be given followed by “et al”. First and last page numbers should be given.

1. Peter S, Jones A, Smith B. Acute hamstring injuries. Am J Sports Med 1994; 12(7):395-400.

1. Williams G. Textbook of Sports Medicine. 2nd Edition: Butterworth, 1989: 101-104.
2. Vandermere P, Russel P. Biomechanics of the hip joint. In:Nordien PE. Jeffcoat A, eds, Clinical Biomechanics. Philadelphia:WB Saunders, 1990:472-479.