Author Guidelines
ARETION Books publishes peer-reviewed open-access scholarly monographs and edited collections across three series: Medicine, Law & Ethics; Public Health Policy; and Clinical Medicine & Emergency Care. The press applies the same editorial and ethical standards as The Journal of Medicine, Law & Public Health, adapted to book-length work. Where these guidelines are silent, the journal's publication ethics policy governs.
Before you submit
The press works from a proposal first, not a finished manuscript. Send a proposal to editorial.board@jmlph.net containing:
- a working title and the series you consider the book belongs to;
- a synopsis of 1,000–1,500 words setting out the argument, its contribution, and why a book rather than an article is the right form;
- an annotated table of contents with an indicative word count per chapter;
- a statement of the intended readership and how the book differs from the two or three closest existing titles;
- one sample chapter, and the introduction if it is drafted;
- a short curriculum vitae for each author or editor;
- an expected delivery date and total word count.
For an edited collection, add the list of contributors with their affiliations and provisional chapter titles, and say which chapters are already committed.
Review
Review happens twice, and both stages are double-blind: the identities of authors and reviewers are withheld from one another.
- Proposal review. The proposal and sample chapter are read by at least two independent expert reviewers, drawn from more than one country wherever the subject allows. A decision to commission follows their reports.
- Full manuscript review. The complete manuscript is reviewed again by at least two reviewers, normally including one who read the proposal. Acceptance is decided on that second round; a commissioning decision is not an acceptance.
Edited collections are reviewed as a whole and chapter by chapter. Volume editors are responsible for securing a review of every chapter, and may not review their own.
Indicative timings: proposal decision within 6–8 weeks; full manuscript review within 12–16 weeks; production 12–16 weeks from acceptance. Authors are told promptly if a stage will run beyond these.
Manuscript preparation
- Length. Monographs normally run 60,000–120,000 words including notes; edited collections 80,000–150,000. Discuss anything outside this at proposal stage.
- Format. Microsoft Word, one file per chapter, double-spaced, with chapters numbered consecutively.
- Language. English, using British spelling.
- References. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) style for medical and scientific sources. Legal sources may follow OSCOLA, and footnotes are permitted for legal argument. Be consistent throughout.
- Front matter. Supply a title page, an abstract of up to 300 words for the book as a whole, an abstract of up to 200 words for each chapter, and five to eight keywords for the book and for each chapter. Chapter-level abstracts and keywords are what make individual chapters discoverable.
- Figures and tables. Numbered consecutively within each chapter, with captions below figures and above tables, at a minimum of 300 dpi. Supply figures as separate files as well as placed in the text.
- Index. Say at proposal stage whether the book needs one. Indexes are prepared after page proofs and are the author's responsibility.
Statements required in every book
These mirror the journal's requirements and are checked before the manuscript goes to review. Where one does not apply, say so explicitly rather than omitting it.
- Ethical approval. For any chapter reporting research with human participants, human data or animals, name the approving ethics committee and give the approval reference, or state why approval was not required.
- Informed consent. Written consent is required for any identifiable patient material, including images and case descriptions.
- Conflict of interest. A declaration for every author and, in an edited collection, for every contributor and volume editor.
- Funding. Name every funder and grant number, or state that the work received no specific funding. Book processing charges paid by a funder must be disclosed.
- Data availability. Where a chapter reports original research, say where the supporting data can be obtained or why they cannot be shared.
- Author contributions. For multi-author work, a statement using the CRediT taxonomy.
- Use of AI tools. Disclose any use, as set out in section 21 of the ethics policy. AI tools cannot be listed as authors.
Permissions and third-party material
Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce any material they do not own — figures, tables, photographs, long quotations, datasets, instruments — and for any fee involved. Permission must cover open-access publication under a Creative Commons licence worldwide and in perpetuity; permission limited to a print edition is not sufficient. Supply evidence of permission with the final manuscript. Material for which permission cannot be obtained must be removed or replaced before production.
Originality and screening
Submissions must be original and not under consideration elsewhere. Every manuscript is screened with Turnitin. Reuse of the author's own earlier work must be disclosed and cited; a book substantially assembled from previously published articles will normally be declined unless the reworking is substantial and the prior publications are cited. Suspected plagiarism is handled under the journal's plagiarism policy.
Copyright, licence and charges
Authors retain copyright. Books are published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, granting ARETION Books the right of first publication. Contributors to edited collections retain copyright in their own chapters on the same terms.
ARETION Books charges no submission fee and no book processing charge. Authors pay nothing to submit or to publish. Should this change, the new charge and its effective date will be published at least 90 days in advance, and proposals already under review will be assessed under the terms in force when they were submitted.
Publication, identifiers and preservation
Each book receives an ISBN and a Crossref DOI, and each chapter receives its own DOI so that chapters can be cited and discovered individually. Books are published as PDF and are deposited to the PKP Preservation Network, a LOCKSS-based dark archive that keeps the content available independently of the publisher. Metadata is registered with Crossref, including references, so that citations to and from the book enter the scholarly record.
Corrections and retractions
Errors identified after publication are handled under sections 17 and 20 of the journal's ethics policy. Corrections are published as separate, citable notices with their own DOI, linked to the affected chapter. The published version is never silently altered.
Contact
Proposals and questions: editorial.board@jmlph.net. Technical problems with the submission system: info@jmlph.net.
