Breastfeeding Review

For Authors

Submit Manuscript

Instructions to authors

Breastfeeding Review welcomes the submission of original research papers and articles on human lactation and breastfeeding management, as well as commentaries on recent research, clinical comments, case studies, reviews and letters.

Breastfeeding Review will not:

  • Accept any original article which has been funded by an artificial baby milk company
  • Reprint any article funded by an artificial baby milk company
  • Publish any material that has been funded by an artificial baby milk company, including abstracts, summaries or reviews.

The submitted manuscript must not have been published elsewhere, other than in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or thesis, nor should it be under consideration by any other journal.

Manuscripts based upon conference presentations are acceptable.

All submissions are read by two or more reviewers, in a double-blinded peer review process. Accepted manuscripts will be copyedited for style and grammar.

Author responsibilities

Protection of human rights
Authors of research-based papers are required to show evidence of Ethics approval for their research from a recognised tertiary institution ethics committee (health facility and/ or University). This should include how informed consent to participate was obtained, how privacy, anonymity and confidentiality was protected.

Preparation of manuscript Information regarding authorship should be attached in a covering letter: author(s) name(s); academic qualifications; job titles and affiliations; biographical note in two or three sentences; and the name of the institution or setting where the work was done.

Articles of fewer than 5000 words have the best chance of publication.

The de-identified manuscript must be typed with double spacing and all pages and lines should be numbered in a MS Word document. The abstract should be no longer than 200 words and include the aim of the study, its design, setting, participants, key findings, conclusions and future implications.A separate front page should include the title of the paper and the author(s) name(s) with up to four academic qualifications.

‘Breastfeeding’ and ‘breastmilk’ are printed in this journal as single words. Authors are asked to distinguish between exclusive and partial breastfeeding and follow definitions outlined by the World Health Organization .

Breastfeeding Review expects that breastfeeding be presented as the standard for infant health and nutrition and that artificial-feeding has risks/disadvantages rather than breastfeeding having benefits/advantages.
Supplementary material may be added without specific page limits. The readability of the article, however, must not depend upon access to supplementary materials.

Clear science writing
Use the active voice as much as possible. The active voice, where the subject of the verb undertakes the action (e.g. ‘explored’), injects life and clarity into the text whereas the passive voice is less direct (e.g. ‘was explored’) and may cause ambiguity.

Use the passive voice when the subject is unknown or when you want to focus on the action or the recipient of the action. Passive voice is often suitable for the Methods section.

File type
Word documents are the preferred format (.doc or .docx) Page numbers and line numbers should be included in the deidentified document for the convenience of the peer-reviewers and the provision of feedback/ recommendations to the author(s)..

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) provides helpful guidelines on careful sentence construction and grammar.

Title page

  • Title — short and informative (abbreviations should not be used in title)
  • Running head — short title of 30 characters and spaces
  • Authors — list all authors by first name, all initials, last name and qualifications
  • Address of all institutions where the work was done — list departmental affiliations of each author after each institutional address. Connect authors to departments using numbered superscripts
  • Corresponding author — provide the name, postal address with postal code, telephone number and email address of the author to whom communications, proofs, and requests for reprints should be sent
  • Word count — state the word count, excluding the Abstract, References, Tables and Figures.

Abstract
The structured abstract should be no longer than 200 words and should include (without headings): aim, methods, key findings, conclusions. Avoid acronyms and references.

Keywords
Up to five key words or short phrases that will assist indexers in cross indexing the article should be provided. Suitable terms can be obtained from the medical subject headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus

Main text
Text should be organised as follows:

Introduction (including hypothesis or guiding question and outline of the paper)

Literature review (critical but brief review of directly related literature)

Methods
The ethical guidelines that were followed by the investigators must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. State clearly that the subject(s) gave informed consent. Anonymity should be preserved.
The role(s) of the funding organisation, if any, in the collection of data, its analysis and interpretation and in the right to approve or disapprove publication of the finished manuscript must be described in the Methods section of the text.

Results
Quantitative research results should be concisely reported in tables and figures, with brief text descriptions. For qualitative research a balance must be struck between conciseness and sufficient data to support the discussion and conclusion. There should be no discussion of results in the Results section.
Measurements and weights should be given in standard metric units.
Cite illustrations, figures, graphs and tables in numeric order by order of mention in the text.

Discussion (clear and concise interpretation of results)

Conclusion (summarise key points)

Acknowledgments and disclosures
Grants, financial support and technical or other assistance are acknowledged at the end of the text before the references. All financial support for the project must be acknowledged. If there has been no financial assistance with the project, this must be clearly stated.

Conflict of interest
Authors are required to provide a declaration of any conflict of interest, including financial, professional and/ or personal. Where no author contributing to the manuscript has a conflict, a clear statement to that effect is required.

References
The referencing style for Breastfeeding Review follows the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Authors should maintain a balance between ease of reading and the need to cite authorities. Accuracy of the references is the responsibility of the author.

Examples of end list references:
Australian Breastfeeding Association. (2015). Vision & mission. Retrieved 10 June, 2015, from https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/aboutaba/purpose
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2011). 2010 Australian national infant feeding survey: Indicator results (Cat. no. PHE 156). Canberra: AIHW. Retrieved 14 December, 2015, from http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=10737420927
Brodribb, W. (2012). Breastfeeding management in Australia (4th ed.). Melbourne: Australian Breastfeeding Association.

National Health and Medical Research Council. (2012). Infant feeding guidelines. Canberra, Australia: NHMRC.
Newby, R., Brodribb, W., Ware, R. S., & Davies, P. S. (2015). Internet use by first-time mothers for infant feeding support. Journal of Human Lactation. doi:10.1177/0890334415584319 Yimyam, S. (1998). Breastfeeding, work and women’s health among Thai women in Chiang Mai. Breastfeeding Review, 6(1), 17–22.

Tables
Tables should ideally be within the text or, if sent separately please indicate preferred placement within text. Tables created within spreadsheet programs, such as Excel, are often low resolution when added to Word documents. Authors should supply such tables as separate files to the manuscript.
Each table should be numbered and have a title above. Do not use vertical lines. Legends and explanatory notes should be placed below the table. Abbreviations used in the table follow the legend in alphabetic order. Lower case letter superscripts beginning with ‘a’ and following in alphabetic order are used for notations of within-group and between-group statistical probabilities. Tables should be self-explanatory and the data should not be duplicated in the text or figures.

Figures
Figures or illustrations should ideally be within the text or, if sent separately please indicate preferred placement within text. If submitted as separate files, use the figure number (e.g. Figure 1A) as the image filename. High quality JPG files (>1MB) are acceptable. Digital photos need to be 200–300dpi. PowerPoint (.ppt) files are also accepted, but you must use a separate PowerPoint image file for each PowerPoint figure. Each figure should be numbered and have a title above.
A clear legend must accompany each figure. All abbreviations used on a figure and in its legend should be defined in the legend.
Symbols, letters, numbers and contrasting fills must be distinct, easily distinguished and clearly legible when the illustration is reduced in size.
Black, white and widely crosshatched bars are preferable; do not use stippling, grey fill or thin lines.

Written permission must be obtained to reproduce figures and tables that may have appeared elsewhere and the following phrase inserted: ‘Reproduced by kind permission of (publishers) from (reference)’.
Photographs are welcome. Written permission from unmasked patients appearing in photographs must be obtained by the authors and submitted with the manuscript.