Nutrition and Health: Notes on policy and writing style

1. Nutrition and Health is a peer-reviewed academic journal that exists to explore new ideas and to disseminate the findings of nutrition research of all kinds. The journal serves both a professional and a general readership and aims to carry research-level papers that, in the main, are intelligible to the interested layperson. To this end it aims to be interesting, clear and readable.

An incidental aim is to enhance the reputation of the McCarrison Society for Nutrition and Health by association with it but it is not a ‘house-journal’ of the McCarrison Society (the latter purpose is served by the Society’s UK and Scottish Newsletters).

1. The journal is impartial and open to all viewpoints about nutrition and health provided they are well argued. Within the field of nutrition there are no barred subjects and submissions do not have to be in accord with general opinion within the McCarrison Society. In fact courteous and well-argued debate is welcomed, especially within the letters section.

1. An author’s affiliation and any vested interest, whether commercial or through membership of some society or pressure group, must be disclosed. This would usually be done by a declaration of conflict of interest in a separate sub-headed paragraph at the end of the paper.

1. Before a paper is considered for publication, it should meet the following criteria:

1. As noted in (1) above, it should be interesting, clear, readable and in reasonably good British English. It is appreciated that some relaxation of this rule is appropriate for non-native English speaking authors and in such case the editor may largely rewrite the paper if it is considered worthwhile, although he or she reserves the right to reject it without review on these grounds alone if the work required is thought to be too great.

2. The paper should always have at least some element of novelty. This may be in facts or observations presented or in the interpretation or presentation of these or other available data. Alternatively, novelty in the form of ideas and hypotheses is equally legitimate provided that these meet Popper’s definition of being scientific (that is that they are, at least in principle, capable of being falsified by observation or experiment).

3. A paper must have a certain minimum content (not rigidly defined) that is about nutrition and papers that, for example, are judged to be wholly or almost wholly about clinical matters and therefore better suited to a medical journal, will not be accepted. Somewhat greater latitude is allowed for conference reports and letters.

1. The commonest writing faults, besides faulty and careless use of English, are:

i) Ambiguity. Editors and reviewers must be able to understand what an author means. This sounds obvious but all too often is not the case.

ii) Needless jargon. Some specialised and technical ‘jargon’ words are necessary but they should be kept to a minimum. If a common English word, or phrase that is not too long and has the same meaning, is available it should always be used.

iii) Needless repetition. Findings and arguments should not be repeated over and over again. If results are presented in tabular form they should be summarised briefly within the discussion and abstract, not re-stated item by item.

iv) Unfamiliar acronyms. Acronyms have their place but however apparently obvious they are to the author they should always be defined at first mention.