Author Guidelines

World Nutrition (WN) charges neither authors nor readers. It is funded via World Public Health Nutrition Association membership fees and engages in no advertising or marketing activities. WN authors are automatically eligible to join WPHNA, fees for which are lower for certain groups and parts of the world. Editors and peer reviews work on journal tasks on a strictly volunteer basis. The journal is editorially independent of the Association and thus free from conflicts of interest. It is published quarterly, on the last days of March, June, September, and December.

WN is a permanent journal. If events ever suggest that the Association will cease to exist, steps will be taken to ensure that the content of World Nutrition remains available online. Authors and readers are requested to be aware that the name of the journal is simply World Nutrition. Another journal added the word "journal" to the words World Nutrition, starting up in 2016, 6 years after World Nutrition began to publish.

Authors can submit previously unpublished original research, literature reviews, editorials, commentaries, book reviews or letters to the editor. It is unethical and unacceptable to submit an article to more than one publisher or journal at the same time. (Each journal does a lot of work to review and edit your submission and none want to publish something already published elsewhere.) If you would like to publish an article similar to or translated from one published in another in another language, contact the editor to discuss this before submitting it. 

Substantive critique of previously published articles in the journal are welcomed and if warranted will be published as a letter to the editor. The authors of any such critiqued article will be given the opportunity to publish a response in the same issue. If you would like to contribute a regular column to the journal, please contact the editor to discuss this. 

There are no limits to the length of submissions, but literature reviews or commentaries longer than 2000 words should be preceded by an abstract. Adding an abstract to any submission on the metadata page will increase its visibility because each word you input on the metadata page is searchable.

When you write our paper, do not copy anything directly from the internet into your Word document. First remove all hidden formatting, for example by copying first to Notepad or by using the far right paste option on the Word menu. 

All submissions are reviewed by the editors. Research papers, literature reviews, and evidence-based commentaries will also be sent for peer review. Peer reviewer and author identities are masked to make peer reviews double blinded. Usually at least two peer reviews must be complete before they are shared with authors. All submitted material will be handled in confidence except for the purposes of review and/or in order to investigate possible misconduct.

When authors are provided with reviewer responses and requested to revise and resubmit their manuscript, they should revise the manuscript accordingly. While authors are not required to conform to all reviewer requests, for substantive comments from peer reviewers, authors should explain their response if they believe the reviewer is incorrect; or explain how the requested revision is beyond the scope of the article. 

We request that authors disclose the use of AI or translation websites in writing their manuscript. Here are two examples of the kind of language we request be used: 

• "We used the AI tool ChatGPT to generate a draft of the literature review for our manuscript."
• "We used the AI tool LaMDA to translate our manuscript from Spanish to English."

                Typesetting

Research papers are sent for professional typesetting. Authors can see how they will look here. The World Public Health Nutrition Association pays this cost. Typesetting of other typese of papers can be done at the author's discretion. Costs for this will be offset by current membership fees paid by any coauthor. Or authors can reimburse WPHNA for this cost. (We pay $64 plus $1.30 for every 10m references.) 

                Referencing

We encourage authors to use referencing liberally. In academic publishing, references are meant to buttress arguments, establish facts, and give credit where it's due. We ask that you refer to original research, however, rather than literature reviews. So-called "daisy-chain" referencing far too often is responsible for maintaining myths and using poorly done research as "evidence." 

WN uses a simple author-date system of referencing because this is easier for authors who do not have access to reference management software. If that is difficult for you, just let us know; we can accept other systems except for typeset papers, which must use the author-date system. If you do have reference management software, the Chicago author-date style produces a reference list that is easier to read than the default author-date style.

Authors are encouraged, wherever possible, to add URLs (website addresses) to each reference available online at no cost. Each citation in the text must be associated with one of the entries in the alphabetized reference list at the end of the document. Please include the DOI number in all references wherever possible. (Note that these serve as URLs. Clicking on one or pasting it into a browser leads directly to the article.)

In the text, as close as possible to where mention of a reference is needed, the surname of only the author (or both if there are two; first author followed by "et al." if there are more than two) and then the year of the publication, should be placed in one set of parentheses. Thus, the first reference below would be cited in the text as (Awashi et al. 2013). Alternatively, one can write something like, "As Awashi et al. (2013) have pointed out." If you cite two references with the same author and year, label one Smith, 2016a and the next Smith, 2016b. 

Here are examples of the reference formats used in WN. 

1. Journal articles 

Awasthi S, et al. 2013. Vitamin A supplementation every 6 months with retinol in 1 million preschool children in North India: Devta, a cluster-randomised trial. Lancet 381:1469–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(12)62125-4

The journal name is followed by the volume number, a colon, the issue number in parentheses (where needed), and then the page numbers with no spaces. It is optional to list entire page numbers in the page range at the end. Only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized.

2. Books and reports follow a similar format: author, date, title. Then comes city of publication followed by colon and the name of the publisher. Each important word, along with the first and last words in a title are capitalized.

Beaton GH, et al. 1993. Effectiveness of Vitamin A Supplementation in the Control of Young Child Morbidity and Mortality in Developing Countries. Geneva: Administrative Committee on Coordination-Subcommittee on Nutrition (ACC/SCN). https://www.unscn.org/web/archives_resources/files/Policy_paper_No_13.pdf

3. Book chapters or articles within an edited book. First comes the name of the author(s) of the chapter and year. Then the title of the chapter. This is followed by "In:", then the names of the editors, followed by "Eds.", then the title of the book, the city and the publisher. Last comes the page numbers of the chapter referred to.

Allen, C. 2007. Bacteria, bioterrorism, and the geranium ladies of Guatemala. In: Cabezas AL, et al. editors. Wages of Empire: Neoliberal Policies, Repression, and Women's Poverty. Boulder (CO): Paradigm Press, pp 169-177.

ADD YOUR METADATA

As part of the submissions process, you will be required to fill in a page asking for a range of information. These metadata are shared widely on the internet and thus assist people in finding your paper, for example in Google Scholar searches. So it should be complete. Add each author's name in the correct order. Some information about each author is obligatory; additional information such as position, department/institution, degree, and ORCID number is optional. When you type in the names of disciplines involved (example: "public health nutrition") or key words (example: "infant feeding"), you must place a comma at the end of each and then hit return or they will all be combined into a single word--and thus be useless. Choose key words that are relevant but not in your abstract or title. 

If your manuscript is accepted, you will be requested to send an image for your paper. This image will then appear ahead of your title on the table of contents. Either use an image of your own or upload one available free and with no copyright restrictions from the internet.  

The criteria for authorship recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors are as follows:

      1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

       Conflicts of interest

In the context of the journal World Nutrition, conflict of interest (CoI) can be defined as "a situation that is present when there is a meaningful risk that a primary professional interest might be unduly influenced by incompatible interests."  Awareness of CoI's are important to authors and readers in maintaining the integrity of World Nutrition.

The existence of a CoI does not mean that someone is corrupt. They might not have allowed this CoI to influence what they think, how they do their research, or what they write. But the risk is there. The perception that this conflict MIGHT influence them is unavoidable.

A good deal of research does suggest that many researchers allow CoI to influence not only their judgement but something about how they conduct, analyze or report research. For example, published studies by drug companies routinely report a higher efficacy for those drugs than studies of the same drugs funded by others. Being suspicious of authors with CoI is not the same as drawing conclusions about the integrity of any particular author, but it is important to be aware of the risks CoI pose. Thus we ask all authors to provide a statement about potential conflicts of interest.

CoIs include relevant financial interests, activities, relationships, and affiliations including, but not limited to, employment, funding and grants received or pending, consultancies, honoraria, membership in speakers' bureaus, stock ownership and options, expert testimony, royalties, and patents planned, pending, or issued. These disclosures should describe any potential conflicts of interest involving the work under consideration for publication (during the time involving the work, from initial conception and planning to present), any relevant financial activities outside the submitted work (over the 5 years prior to submission), and any other relationships or activities that readers could perceive to have influenced, or that give the appearance of potentially influencing what is written in the submitted work (based on all relationships that were present during the 5 years prior to submission).

Authors who are uncertain about what constitutes a relevant financial interest or relationship for an individual author or relevant support for the work being reported should err on the side of complete disclosure, or contact the editor for clarification.

For all accepted manuscripts, summaries of the CoIs will be published in an Acknowledgment section of the article to ensure they are disclosed to readers.

World Nutrition will, at its discretion, consider publishing papers whose authors have only minor CoIs. However, if CoIs are judged to be so severe that the integrity of the article is in doubt, the manuscript may be rejected for that reason alone. Alternatively, the journal may publish a simultaneous commentary about that CoI and/or presenting an opposing point of view.

       Publication Ethics Policy

Research on human subjects or animals must include a statement that an institutional research board/ethics committee has approved your research in advance or waved it. Indicate the name of the IRB. Approval is not needed for secondary analyses, project evaluations, and data obtained via routine project monitoring. 

World Nutrition follows COPE guidelines. Most relevant publication ethical issues are addressed above. The process for dealing with undisclosed conflicts of interest if discovered can be found here. Papers found to be based on plagiarism, series errors, or falsification will be retracted. Guidelines for this process are available here.

                          Plagiarism

We take plagiarism seriously. We define it as copying a sentence or more from another author. We ask that you avoid copying too much even from your own previously published work. Our methods for dealing with it are illustrated here. If you use a large language model, including AI, to write any part of your paper, please indicate this in your methods section.

          Policies for error correction and retraction

 World Nutrition operates the following policy for making corrections to its peer-reviewed content. Publishable amendments must be represented by a formal online notice because they affect the publication record and/or the scientific accuracy of published information. These fall into one of three categories: erratum, corrigendum or retraction.

Erratum: Notification of an important error made by the journal that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of a paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Corrigendum : Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Retraction: Notification of invalid results. All co-authors sign a retraction specifying the error, stating briefly how the conclusions are affected, and submit it for publication. In cases where one or more co-authors disagree, the publishing team will seek advice from independent referees and utilize the type of amendment that seems most appropriate, noting the dissenting author(s) in the text of the published version.

                                Other policies

Once their paper is published, authors are encouraged to offer a copy on Research Gate, Academia, and to announce it, providing a link to it on Facebook, X (Twitter,) LinkedIn, Bluesky, and other academic or social media websites to spread awareness of their work. There are no limitations to what you do with your published paper because you retain all copyrights. The only restriction is that you must indicate that it was first pubished in World Nutrition. For example, many authors wish to deposit a copy of their paper in an institutional or other repository of their choice. Our policy is that authors may deposit:

• Submitted version
• Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript)
• Published version (Version of Record)

 in an institutional or other repository of their choice without embargo.