Instructions for authors

1. Aims and scope

This international peer-reviewed journal promotes the development of research and practices in the field of therapeutic patient education:

• publishing original quantitative and qualitative research,
• helping multi professional teams to share evaluated experiences, methodologies, innovations,
• stimulating critical thinking and informed debate about all aspects of therapeutic patient education,
• promoting multidisciplinary approaches involving medicine, health sciences and humanities.

Each issue publishes:

• original quantitative and qualitative researche including,
• review articles, descriptions of educational practices and evaluated experiences,
• papers which develop theories, debates, critical analysis of specific policies and practices,
• book reviews (long articles: 7000 words; short articles: 3000 words).

Images and videos may be accepted for the online version of the journal.

2. The submission stage

Authors should submit their manuscripts and all associated files to the editorial office, and can track progress throughout the peer review process via the Manuscript Management System (MMS) available at https://articlestatus.edpsciences.org/is/tpe/. Manuscripts should be submitted in Word or RTF format. Please follow the instructions on MMS website.

• For articles written in English : the English language must have been proofread by a native reviewer.
• For articles written in French : the abstract in English must have been proofread by a native reviewer.

All manuscripts submitted to the journal are made anonymous by the Editor-in-Chief before the review process begins.

Each new submission is checked by the Editor-in-Chief and a member of the Editorial Board or the Scientific Committee to ensure that it is fully compliant with the aims and scope of the journal.

If so, the article is then sent to two independent outside peer reviewers in a double-blind process.

Reviewers evaluation is facilitated using a standardized (open/closed) questionnaire.

Reviewers are advised that manuscripts must remain confidential until accepted and published, and that their identity will not be disclosed to authors.

Following the reviewer’s recommendations, the Editor-in-Chief decides whether the article is:

• Accepted without modification;
• Accepted with minor revision;
• Accepted with major revision;
• Rejected.

Afterwards, authors send a revised version with a detailed response to reviewer’s comments. Revised manuscripts are sent to the original reviewer to check if they approve the revisions.

Revised manuscripts must be returned within 6 weeks maximum. The editor has full authority to accept / reject the re- submitted manuscripts.

Once accepted, articles cannot be withdrawn or published elsewhere.

A short revision time (average of 4 months) is the journal policy to allow fast articles publication.

Attention is paid to the number of authors per article; if too large, the authors are invited to comply with the recommendations of the International Commission of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) at: http://http://www.icmje.org/recommendations.

Submitting an article implies that the work has not been previously published and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. The manuscript publication must be approved by all authors. Authors will find all useful information concerning ethics in publishing on the website http://publicationethics.org/

3. The acceptance stage

Once accepted, the manuscript will be sent to the production department. EDP Sciences require for each figure the "native" electronic files (one file per figure), in one of the following formats: eps (preferably), tiff, bmp or jpeg. Files should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi; colour figures should be registered in CMYK.

4. Style guide

Important

In accordance with ICMJE guidelines, the instructions for authors have been updated.

Please read carefully the following guidelines to prepare your paper accordingly.

Your manuscript must include the following sections between the Conclusion and References : Conflict of Interest, Funding, Ethical approval, Informed consent, Authors contributions, Acknowledgements.

In order to facilitate correspondence between authors and the production department, the author should provide with his/her manuscript: name and address, phone number, e-mail, (phone numbers will not be published). The contribution of each author should be specified.

Title

In French and in English, it should be brief and informative. It must be followed by the authors' names and full addresses. The address should appear as follows: Laboratory/Institute, University, City, Country. For hospitals or other health institutions: Department, Hospital/Institution, City, Country.

Abstracts

Abstracts are required in French and in English (about 200 words each), each one in a single paragraph, the abstracts should summarize the content and the original data supplied, the main conclusions and any interesting results, structured according to the following format: Introduction, Objectives, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion (articles reporting original quantitative and qualitative researches, review articles) or Introduction, Objectives, Contributions/description, Conclusion (descriptions of educational practices and evaluated experiences, papers which develop theories, debates, critical analysis of specific policies and practices).

Keywords (in French and English)

The author should provide a maximum of five keywords. Keywords should be written in bold lowercase letters, separated by slashes: the plural form and uppercase letters should be avoided.
Abbreviations. A list of abbreviations should be provided at the beginning of the article.

Text

The main body of the text must be precise and concise. It should be typed with double spacing; footnotes should be kept to a minimum and numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Information not essential to the understanding of the text belongs in the Appendix at the end of the article or will only be published online.

Units and symbols

The international system of units (SI) should be used. Latin locution should be written in italic.

Illustrations

Tables should be numbered using Roman numerals (Tab. I), Figures Arabic numerals (Fig. 1). The author must label every Table and Figure in the text. In the paper version of the journal, figures will be printed in black and white (at no cost) or in colour (prices available upon request). In the online version, the original colours of the figures will be reproduced at no extra cost. In case scanning is necessary, please provide good-quality originals for your figures.
Authors should keep in mind that the final reproduction of their figures essentially depends on the originals.
For best results, figures should be provided respecting the guidelines detailed below:

• Final height of capital letters should be between 1.6 and 2.3 mm (10 to 12 point).
• Avoid using bold lettering.
• Letter size should be homogeneous in all figures of the article.
• Where possible, avoid using grey levels. Hatching is preferable.
• For curves, standard symbols must be used .
• Tables should be kept in their simplest form, lines and columns being unambiguously identifiable.

Important. Any reproduction of previously published figures or tables must be accompanied by written permission from the copyright holder.

References

It is important to confirm the accuracy of bibliographic information in the references. This has become more important with the online version. Hyperlinks will be programmed to enable readers to jump directly to the material cited. If your reference citations are incorrect or incomplete e.g., missing author name, or incorrect volume number or page, the associated hyperlinks may fail, and your paper may be less relevant online. All references must be cited in the text by placing sequential numbers in brackets (for example, [1], [2,5,7], [8-10]). They should be numbered in the order in which they are cited. Authors may be cited in the text by name, but without initials. Authors should use layout and punctuation examples as indicated below in the final reference list.

Journals

1. Warsi A. Self-management education programs in chronic diseases: a systematic review and methodological critique of the literature. Arch Intern Med 2004; 164:1641-1649.
2. 2. D'Ivernois JF, Gagnayre R. Éducation pour la santé, éducation thérapeutique : quelles formations ? Santé publique 2006; 18:351-352.

Books

1. 1. Lacroix A, Assal JP. L'éducation thérapeutique des patients, nouvelles approches de la maladie chronique. 3e éd. Collection Éducation du patient, Paris: Maloine; 2004, p. 87-89.
2. Bandura A. Social learning theory. New York: General Learning Press; 2004, p. 53-54.

Proceedings

1. Conférence internationale des doyens de facultés de médecine d'expression française. Politique et méthodologie d'évaluation des de médecine et des programmes d'études médicales. CIDMEF; 2006, disponible sur : http//www.cidmef.u-bordeaux2.fr.
2. Haenni C, Anzules C, Golay A (2006). Art-therapy and body image: a new approach for obese patients. In: Proceedings of Therapeutic patient education, 2006 April 27-30, Florence, Italy. Book of abstracts; 2006, p. 49.

Note: when the reference has more than 6 authors, the journal cites 6 authors et al.

5. Proofs

Proofs will be sent to the first or nominated author by e-mail in PDF format and must be returned within 48 hours of receipt. Authors will be charged for major revisions.

Offprints

The PDF file of the article is provided free of charge at the final stage. The file is sent to the corresponding author.

6. Conflicts of interest, ethics and copyright

Conflict of interest

Any conflict of interest must be reported to the editorial office.

Authors should indicate whether they have a financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research, even if it is their employment and / or home institution (university laboratory, hospital, other social or health structure. They must also confirm that they have complete control over the primary data and that they agree to a possible review of this data by the journal.

At the time of submission, the manuscript must be accompanied by a duly completed “declaration of conflict of interest” form available at: http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/.

Any other conflict of interest, personal or not, must also be declared, particularly when the author is a member of the Editorial Board or the Scientific Committee.

Members of the editorial board or scientific committee are not involved in the review process of the articles they have written. The evaluation of these articles is entrusted to independent experts.

When there is no conflict of interest in connection with the drafted article, the following statement must appear at the end of the manuscript : The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Funding

This field should not be left empty.

All sources of funding should be indicated in this section.

Authors must describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in the study design ; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

For compliance purpose, funding sources should be listed as following:

Funding: This work was supported by the A Foundation [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the B Agency [grant number zzzz];

If no funding has been provided for the research, please include the following sentence: This research did not receive any specific funding.

Education Thérapeutique du Patient – Therapeutic Patient Education subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Special attention is drawn to the various kinds of academic misconduct : plagiarism, data falsification. Education Thérapeutique du Patient – Therapeutic Patient Education subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/).

Authors are invited to comply with the "Recommendations for the conduct, presentation, writing and publication of research work submitted to medical journals", published by the International Commission of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and available at: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations.

Allegations of academic misconduct (for example, data fabrication, forgery, or plagiarism) are taken seriously and will be investigated. When a suspicion of fraud is confirmed, the sanction prescribed will be applied. SimilarityCheck is regularly used to spot plagiarism.

Statement of Informed Consent

This field should not be left empty

This journal requires that research contained in your article must have been carried out in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans http://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/ It should be explicitly stated at an appropriate point in the article that these guidelines have been followed.

The privacy of patients and other individuals involved in studies must be preserved; any mention of them requires their consent. The authors should obtain appropriate written consents and permissions and retain copies; the journal does not need to receive these copies.

Whatever the method of questioning patients or individuals (interview or anonymous questionnaire), their prior informed consent must be obtained by the authors and this must be indicated in the article. Information identifying patients or individuals (name, initials, medical file number) should not appear in the description of the case, in photographs or in the family history, unless it is scientifically essential. In this case, the patient or individual (or a parent or guardian) must have given their informed consent before publication; when identifiable, the patient or individual must have seen the manuscript before it is published to give informed consent. Details allowing identification should be removed if they are not essential.

When informed consent has been obtained, it must be stated in the published article :

Written informed consent was obtained from all involved patients, individuals and/or families.

Sample sentence if not applicable : This article does not contain any studies involving human subjects.

Ethical Approval

This field must be completed. Your manuscript should indicate whether ethics approval was required or not.

For articles involving experiments on human subjects, authors must indicate somewhere in the manuscript whether the procedures followed were approved by the institutional or national ethics committee. If there is any doubt about the ethical nature of the research, the authors should explain the reasons and demonstrate that the ethics committee has explicitly validated the questionable aspects of the study.

If your study requires ethical approval, please indicate the ethical protocols followed and the name of the committee that approved the study, for example : This study received approval from the Ethics committee of Hospital X under protocol number XXXX

Authors contributions

Authors should use this section to outline their individual contributions to the article with the corresponding roles:

The ICMJE recommends authorship to be based on the following 4 criteria:

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.

The following format should be used :

J. Arnaud : Conceptualization, Methodology, T. Gaston : Writing original draft. R. Raymond : Visualization, Investigation. M. Leroy : Supervision: B. Arnaud Writing-Reviewing and Editing.

Acknowledgements

Contributors who do not meet all the criteria mentioned above for authorship should be listed at the end of the main text in the Acknowledgements section. Any funding received should be declared. The names of the individuals who provided assistance during the research should be listed with a clear contribution statement (e.g., S. André : language editing, B. Champion : proof reading the article, etc.)

Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading (e.g. "Clinical Investigators" or "Participating Investigators"), and their contributions should be specified (e.g., "served as scientific advisors," "critically reviewed the study proposal," "collected data," "provided and cared for study patients", "participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript").

Please ensure that all individuals have given written permission to be acknowledged.

Corrections and withdrawal after publication

If an author discovers a material error or inaccuracy after the article has been published, he / she agrees to promptly inform the editor-in-chief of the journal or the publisher and to cooperate with the publisher to either retract or correct the paper (by an erratum).

If the editor or publisher learns from a third party that a published article contains a material error, he or she must inform the author who must either retract promptly, correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor for the correctness of the original article.

Copyright

Proofs must be accompanied by a letter signed by one of the authors on behalf of all the co-authors to agree to transfer the copyright.

ORCID

From October 2024, only authenticated ORCIDs will be published in this journal. Any ORCIDs included in the manuscript files or provided outside of the authentication process outlined below will not be included in the published article. At the time of acceptance, corresponding authors should enter their co-authors details (names and email addresses) in EDP Sciences’ production system, SAGA. Co-authors listed this way will be automatically invited to validate their ORCID. This should be done as soon as possible, before the author’s first proof corrections. ORCIDs provided after author proof correction will not be taken into account. See also EDP Sciences ORCID policy https://www.edpsciences.org/en/publishing-policies-ethics#anchor_ORCID-policy.

7. Contact

Any question regarding production, offprints, colour figures, should be sent to:
EDP Sciences
BP 112, 17, avenue du Hoggar
P.A. de Courtabœuf
F-91944 Les Ulis Cedex A
France

or by email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.