Author Policies and Guidelines
Who may contribute:
Submissions to the Virginia Henderson Global Nursing e-Repository (Henderson Repository) may be made by authorized* individual nurses and/or nursing students. Membership in the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) is not a requirement for submission. Although the primary author must be a nurse (nursing student), co-author(s) may work outside of the field of nursing. Submissions must be made by the author as copyright holder of an original work. In the case of joint works where all parties involved intend for the work to be joined as an inseparable unit, one co-author, as joint-owner of the entire work, may choose to submit the item to the repository without permission of the other co-authors. It is suggested that all co-authors agree to the submission. *Any person with a degree (or currently pursuing a degree) from a school of nursing with a program or programs accredited by a recognized accrediting body such as the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) and/or the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) or their equivalent for those submitters outside of the U.S. and/or the jurisdiction of the two aforementioned accreditation agencies.What may be submitted:
Any item to be submitted must be an original, unpublished, nursing research, research-related, educational material, or evidence-based practice document created by the author/co-authors (the "Work"). Submitting another person's/entity's Work is not permitted unless you are the copyright holder of that Work or you are the officially authorized proxy and have a signed proxy agreement on file with the Henderson Repository staff. The Work must be related to the field of nursing. The Work must be based on or related to research or evidence-based practice materials and rely on solid methodology or other accepted methods applicable to the nature of the work. General opinion pieces/editorials/commentaries (i.e., those works suited for magazines or blogs) are not acceptable. Research may be primary (quantitative - qualitative) or secondary (statistical analysis - information research). The Work may take the form of, but is not limited to, the following types:- Conference presentations (slides and/or papers)
- Posters
- DNP capstone projects
- Dissertations
- Theses or other final graduate papers
- Undergraduate work of significant impact
- Reports (committee, technical, grant related, outcomes, etc.)
- Quality improvement tools
- Faculty-created learning objects
- Educational (patient, public, or student) brochures, guides, and materials
- Article pre-prints** (the final draft as submitted to a journal prior to peer-review revisions and copyediting)
- Article post-prints** (the final version of the article after the peer-review revisions)
- Articles as-published** (the final as-published version of the article after peer-review revisions, copyediting, and formatting).
- Datasets
Submission process:
Please see the registration/login and submission instructions guides posted on the repository's "Policies and Guidelines" page.Collection workflow:
Items posted in the Henderson Repository pass through a vetting process according to each collection’s assigned workflow (i.e., moderation/evaluation, or single-blind peer-review) with the exception of nursing organizations and hospitals/health care systems as corporate authors where the materials go through a vigorous internal review/publishing process prior to completion. Upon approval items are cataloged/indexed with the addition of subject headings and other pertinent descriptive information prior to posting.Self-archiving previously published materials:
Some publishers and individual journals place certain conditions on authors regarding their rights to self-archive previously published materials in a repository. These conditions may include, but are not limited to:- Stipulations on which version(s) of the published writing may be deposited in a repository (see pre-print, post-print, and as-published article definitions above.)
- Time restrictions on when a previously published writing may be deposited in a repository, commonly known as embargo polices.
Pursuit of traditional publication with material that has been previously posted in this repository:
Some publishers and individual journals consider depositing an item in an open-access, subject-based repository such as this one to be a form of prior-publishing and therefore may not accept the item for publication in their journal. If a journal refuses to consider an article that has circulated as a pre-print, that is an optional journal submission policy, not a requirement of copyright law. It is the author’s responsibility to check prior publication rules in the author information section of the target journal and to request an embargo, if necessary. This information is also available by searching the name of the specific journal in the SHERPA/RoMEO database. Contact the Henderson Repository staff at repository@stti.org with any questions or to request an embargo. Embargo requests may be made in the same email requesting submission authorization.Copyright guidelines:
Placing Works in the Henderson Repository will not alter previously existing copyright ownership status. Contributing authors must represent that they either own or possess all the necessary rights to submit their Work to the repository. Agreement to the Non-exclusive Distribution License is a required step in the submission process. The author may enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of a Work as long as such contracts do not conflict with the author’s optional choice of a Creative Commons License in connection with the submission of the item. The Henderson Repository is not responsible for any breaches of copyright or ownership for material submitted and posted in the repository. The Henderson Repository is not responsible for any mistakes, omissions, or legal infringements within the Work nor is it obliged to undertake legal action on the submitting author’s behalf in respect of the submitted material.Confidential information:
Please consider if your research and/or data is of a sensitive nature and divulges trade secrets or other confidential information that should not be openly available to the public. Your submission will not be scrubbed or otherwise edited prior to its availability on the Internet. It is the author’s responsibility to remove all such information from the material prior to submission.Document copyediting and proofing:
The Henderson Repository does not offer copyediting services; this includes proofreading. Please make sure that your submission is ready for public dissemination at the time of submission. This includes removal of all signatures, if applicable.Item formatting:
The Work must be submitted in English, but authors may choose to attach a second copy of their Work in their native language as part of the submission. Only the English version will be reviewed. A specific font, font-size, and line-spacing protocol is not prescribed by the Henderson Repository; however, the Work must be readily legible. Works that are difficult to read may be rejected so that the author may edit the formatting and resubmit. All files uploaded during the repository submission process, whenever applicable, must be converted to Adobe PDF format. The author will have the ability to convert the file(s) to Adobe PDF file(s) during the submission process, or files may be converted prior to beginning the submission process. The repository prefers to utilize Adobe PDF files whenever possible in lieu of other options because of the ease of accessibility and usability for patrons around the world (i.e., it is the free global standard for reliable viewing and printing.) The PDF files render correctly at any size on most devices using a variety of operating systems. Interoperability issues with PDF files do still occur, but they are rare. The system's submission process will prompt the submitting author to enter specific information related to the Work, such as title, item type, abstract, keywords, publishing information (if applicable), sponsor (if applicable), etc. The abstract may be copied from the first few sentences or paragraphs of the Work but should not exceed 500 words. Alternatively, an original abstract may be created for the submission and should follow the standard format:- Introduction
- Aims/Objectives
- Material & Methods
- Results/Discussion
- Conclusion
Vetting process:
Peer-review process (Independent Submissions community collections only)- Reviewers are placed in collections under the Independent Submissions Community based on interest-area expertise. To be qualified, they must hold a graduate degree in nursing and display expertise in their area by having published works in scholarly/scientific journals associated with their field and/or by having previous experience as a peer reviewer in a scholarly/scientific journal or other acceptable publishing venue.
- Reviewers are vetted via the same qualifying procedure that assesses the reviewers for the STTI-sponsored events and grant process.
- Reviewers are members of STTI, ensuring that they have demonstrated achievements in nursing and attained academic excellence.
- Several reviewers may be assigned to each collection, but each item will be reviewed by only one reviewer in a single-blind process. Submitting authors will not know the identity of the reviewer assigned to their submission.
- Items are reviewed on the following criteria:
- The submitter must be the primary author, co-author, and/or copyright holder of the Work being submitted.
- The submitting author must be a qualified nurse as noted above. Co-authors do not need to be nurses.
- The submission must be related to nursing research and/or evidence-based practice.
- The submission must contain a full-text document (i.e., the submitting author must upload a file during the submission process.)
- The item topic must fit within the collection under which it was submitted.
- The submitted item must be:
- Accurately and completely described by the author-supplied information description fields.
- Complete and ready (i.e., error free) for public dissemination as initially submitted.
- Scrubbed of any and all information of a sensitive, confidential, or proprietary nature. This includes faculty signatures on the Doctoral or Thesis Committee signature page.
- The submitted item must be based on sound scientific research methodology or created using other accepted methods applicable to the nature of the work.
- The submission must be written in the language of the discipline (i.e., contain specialized terminology that would normally be present in works of this discipline/area).
- Each collection under the Schools of Nursing community is moderated by at least one faculty member/administrator who has volunteered to serve in the capacity of reviewer for their academic institution's collection.
- Items are approved or rejected by the collection moderators according to the Henderson Repository's guidelines as set forth here and the guidelines and requirements set forth by the individual nursing program.
- Each collection under the Nursing Organizations, Events community is moderated by at least one staff member who has volunteered to serve in the capacity of reviewer for their organization's collection.
- Items are approved or rejected by the collection moderators according to each organization's event policies. Items submitted to the repository must match the poster or session as it was approved for and presented at the specific event.