Submission guidelines
Submit manuscript
Please read the guidelines in full before submitting your manuscript.
Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
The Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the author responsibilities section on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with our Editorial Policies and our Publication Ethics Policies.
Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions and peer review from a diverse range of authors and reviewers from across all countries and backgrounds. Read our diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal. Open access options are available – see below.
Please read the guidelines below then submit your manuscript here.
Access: Subscription
Accepts preprints? Yes
Identity transparency: Single anonymized
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.
Figures submitted in color will be published in color in the online version of the journal at no cost. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
Optional open access publishing is available for a fee via the Sage Choice program, and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Open Access agreement eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation matching an agreement at acceptance. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access.
For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
Open access fees do not cover color charges and are charged separately.
Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.
The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.
Article types
View our Special Collections currently accepting submissions.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
The journal encourages the submission of short, full-length, comparative and review articles from different backgrounds (health management, organizational psychology and sociology, applied economics, and others).
Health Services Management Research publishes seven main types of paper – reports of original primary research; reports of theoretical or methodological developments in health services, organisational or management research; evidence syntheses conducted rigorously and in accordance with accepted guidelines; theory-to-practice works; perspectives on emerging issues; and invited papers commissioned or solicited on important topics by the Editor and Editorial Board.
You will be asked which type of paper you are submitting when you submit a paper online, and will be able to choose from these seven types. Some editorial requirements of each type are outlined briefly below.
Original primary research
These papers present the findings from original empirical research using qualitative or quantitative methods. They should be up to 6000 words in length with up to six tables or figures and up to 30 references. They should be presented using conventional structured headings, and should contain a clear summary of the research findings and their implications for healthcare managers in one table or figure.
Theoretical or methodological developments
These papers present developments in theories, concepts or models in health services management research, or developments in research methods applied to health services. They should not simply contain reviews or reports on theory or methods, but should report a substantive advance or development. They should be up to 6000 words in length with up to four tables or figures and up to 30 references. They should be presented using structured headings though no particular structure is prescribed, and they should contain a clear summary of the key findings and conclusions from the paper in one table or figure.
Evidence syntheses
These papers present the results of secondary research – reviews of the existing research evidence conducted rigorously using recognised and accepted methods for review including (but not limited to) Cochrane systematic reviews, and realist or metanarrative reviews. They should be up to 6000 words in length with up to four tables or figures and up to 30 references. They should be presented using conventional structured headings including a clear explanation of the review methodology and process and they should contain a clear summary of the research findings and their implications for healthcare managers in one table or figure.
Theory-to-practice papers
These papers present the results of implementation of theoretical advances in managerial practices. They can report case studies, incidents, histories, interviews and all other forms of research that help to investigate heath management practices of organizations and systems, and their impacts and lessons. Papers submitted should ensure rigorous investigation of causal relationships and reliable assessment of the impacts, as well as highlight potentially generalizable interventions or practices.
They should be presented using structured headings though no particular structure is prescribed, and they should contain a clear summary of the key findings and conclusions from the paper in one table or figure. They should be up to 6000 words in length with up to six tables or figures and up to 30 references.
Perspectives papers
Papers that are short work that aim at highlighting, framing and discussing emerging health management issues in the agenda of organizations and systems. They are papers on cutting-edge topics, envisioning, provoking and providing brilliant “food-for-thought” for academics and practitioners. They should be presented using structured headings though no particular structure is prescribed. They should be up to 2000 words in length with up to 10 references.
Ph.D breakthroughs
Papers that are directly derived from Ph.D works and dissertations. Tough sometimes they might be still immature and could be further developed in the current academic discourse, their rigorous and innovative methodological approaches and the new research questions they address make them of interest for the academics and practitioners community. They often anticipate new streams of research, or addresses old question with fresh and lateral views. They should be up to 6000 words in length with up to six tables or figures and up to 30 references. They should be presented using conventional structured headings, and should contain a clear summary of the research findings and their implications for healthcare managers in one table or figure. Given time issues of Ph.D candidates, a specific peer-review fast-track is designed for these submissions.
Invited or commissioned papers
These papers are invited or commissioned by the Editor and Editorial Board of the journal on important topics, and may present original empirical research, or theoretical or methodological developments, or evidence syntheses and in each case should follow the guidelines set out above. In inviting a contribution, the Editor may provide specific guidance on its intended purpose, audience and format. All invited or commissioned papers are subject to the same processes of peer review as other papers, please see Peer Review policy.
HSMR also promotes candidacy as guest editor for special issues.
To achieve the journal's objectives, authors are encouraged to write in a non-technical style, which is understandable to health management practitioners and specialists from other disciplines and in other countries.
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Summary of article types:
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Clinical trial registration
The journal conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first participant enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
Reporting guidelines
Your manuscript must follow the relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines, depending on the type of study. The EQUATOR wizard can help identify the appropriate guideline. You will need to upload the appropriate checklist with your submission.
Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.
If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Formatting your manuscript
Accepted file types
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. You do not need to follow a template, but please ensure your heading levels are clear, and the sections clearly defined.
The LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTeX template is available on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Your article title, keywords, and abstract all contribute to its position in search engine results, directly affecting the number of people who see your work. For details of what you can do to influence this, visit How to help readers find your article online.
Title
Your manuscript’s title should be concise, descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reflect the precise contents of the manuscript. A descriptive title that includes the topic of the manuscript makes an article more findable in the major indexing services.
Abstract
Please include an unstructured abstract of 200 words between the title and main body of your manuscript that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions. If your research includes clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract. Submissions that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.
For clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
Keywords
Please include a minimum of 4 keywords, listed after the abstract. Keywords should be as specific as possible to the research topic.
Artwork, figures, and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please read Sage’s artwork guidelines.
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. If you have requested color reproduction in the print version, we will advise you of the costs on receipt of your accepted article.
Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Acknowledgments
If you are including an Acknowledgements section, this will be published at the end of your article. The Acknowledgments section should include all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship. Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your manuscript.
Writing assistance and third party submissions: if you have received any writing or editing assistance from a third-party, for example a specialist communications company, this must be clearly stated in the Acknowledgements section and in the covering letter. Please see the Sage Author Gateway for what information to include in your Acknowledgements section. If your submission is being made on your behalf by someone who is not listed as an author, for example the third-party who provided writing/editing assistance, you must state this in the Acknowledgements and also in your covering letter. Please note that the journal editor reserves the right to not consider submissions made by a third party rather than by the author/s themselves.
Author contributions
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
You will be asked to list the contribution of each author as part of the submission process. Please include the Author Contributions heading within your submission after the Acknowledgements section. The information you give on submission will then show under the Author Contributions heading later at the proofing stage.
Statements and declarations
Please include a section with the heading ‘Statements and Declarations’ at the end of your submitted article, after the Acknowledgements section [and Author Contributions section if applicable] including each of the sub-headings listed below. If a declaration is not applicable to your submission, you must still include the heading and state ‘Not applicable’ underneath. Please note that you may be asked to justify why a declaration was not applicable to your submission by the Editorial Office.
Ethical considerations
Please include your ethics approval statements under this heading, even if you have already included ethics approval information in your methods section. If ethical approval was not required, you need to explicitly state this. You can find information on what to say in your ethical statements as well as example statements on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.
All papers reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must state that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board approved the study, or waived the requirement for approval, providing the full name and institution of the review committee in addition to the approval number. If applicable, please also include this information in the Methods section of your manuscript.
Consent to participate
Please include any participant consent information under this heading and state whether informed consent to participate was written or verbal. If the requirement for informed consent to participate has been waived by the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (i.e. where it has been deemed that consent would be impossible or impracticable to obtain), please state this. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section. More information and example statements can be found on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.
Consent for publication
Submissions containing any data from an individual person (including individual details, images or videos) must include a statement confirming that informed consent for publication was provided by the participant(s) or a legally authorized representative. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. Please do not submit the participant’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent to publish but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file in addition to the statement confirming that consent to publish was obtained within the manuscript text. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.
Declaration of conflicting interest
The journal requires a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors so that a statement can be included in your article. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, see our policy on conflicting interest declarations and the ICMJE recommendations.
If no conflict exists, your statement should read: ‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.
Funding statement
All articles need to include a funding statement, under a separate heading, even if you did not receive funding. You’ll find guidance and examples on our Funding page.
Data availability
The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- Include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.
- Cite this data in your research
Reference style and citations
The journal follows the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms.
Every in-text citation must have a corresponding citation in the reference list and vice versa. Corresponding citations must have identical spelling and year.
Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.
EndNote
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver EndNote output file.
Supplemental material
This Journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Author Services. Visit Sage Author Services for further information.
As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.
Preprints
The journal will consider submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.
Please enter the preprint DOI in the designated field when submitting your manuscript. We advise that you inform the Journal Editorial office about your posted preprint at submission.
Note that you should not post an updated version of your manuscript on a preprint server while it is being peer reviewed.
Submission site
Submit your manuscript online via Sage Track.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.
Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Authorship
Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
Files
- Cover letter. To help the Editor in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the manuscript suitable for publication.
- Title Page : The first page of your manuscript should contain the full title of the manuscript, a short title, the author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s), and the name, postal and email addresses of the author for correspondence, the exact word count for the manuscript (not including appendices, figures/tables or the references list), and details of competing interests and other declarations (see above for more details.
- Your manuscript, properly formatted according to all stipulations above, and within the scope of the journal.
- Figures and images.
- All figures must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text – they will appear in the published article in the order they are numbered.
- Figure resolution is 300dpi. More information on figure/image preparation can be found here.
- Supplemental material. This journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images, etc) alongside the full-text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Other information required for submission
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ORCID ID of the submitting author.
- It is strongly encouraged that all co-authors ensure their ORCID IDs are linked to their accounts in the submission system prior to article acceptance, as this is the only way to have their ORCID ID present on the published article. ORCID IDs cannot be added to manuscripts after acceptance/publication. Please note that each co-author must log in to the submission system to add their own ORCID ID to their account. To add an ORCID ID, edit your account, click the link when prompted, and sign into your ORCID account to validate your ID. You will then be redirected back to the submission system and your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata.
- Please create an ORCID ID if you do not already have one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
- Complete list of authors, with their institutional affiliations.
- The author information you enter at submission must exactly match what is included on your manuscript and/or title page, including full names, academic affiliations, and corresponding author contact details.
- The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript.
- All listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship (above).
- All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission.
- All authors must have given consent for the manuscript to be submitted in its current form.
- Keywords: During submission, you may be asked to select or enter keywords for your manuscript. These keywords are used to match appropriate reviewers to your manuscript.
- The number of figures, tables, and words in your manuscript.
- Funder information: Name, grant/award number.
- You may be required to enter your declaration of conflicting interest as part of the submission process, in addition to listing it on your manuscript and/or title page. Please have it on hand.
- If you have posted your manuscript to a preprint server, you will be asked to supply the DOI (this does not prohibit submission, but no changes should be made to the preprint version while your manuscript is under evaluation in this journal). Please see our guidelines on prior publication. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your manuscript is accepted, you must include a link in your preprint to the final version of your published article.
The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency: Single Anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor / Other reviewers.
Review information published: None
Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.
After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.
Health Services Management Research: Theory, Evidence, Implications adheres to an anonymized peer review process in which the reviewer’s name is routinely withheld from the author unless the reviewer requests a preference for their identity to be revealed. The journal supports the philosophy of open peer review, in which authors and reviewers are aware of each other’s identities and the review process is a constructive and mutual exercise in learning and improvement and encourages reviewers to make their identity known to authors, but we do not require them to do so. Two independent reviews are required for a manuscript to reach a Revise or Accept decision.
Perspectives and non-scientific manuscripts, such as letters, commentary pieces or editorials may not require two independent reviews to be accepted.
To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.
All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor.
The main steps in the process are set out below:
- All submitted and commissioned/invited papers are initially reviewed by the Editor. Papers which are of poor quality, outside the scope of the journal, or not considered sufficiently original or important given the space constraints of a quarterly journal, will be rejected at this stage without peer review. In such cases the authors will receive brief editorial feedback and guidance.
- The Editor will select an Associate Editor based on specific expertise and assign the paper to him/her. The Editor or the Associate Editor will identify two appropriate reviewers given the content of the paper, usually combining both content and methodological expertise. We ask reviewers to conduct their review within 4 weeks.
- We make it clear to reviewers that the contents of submitted papers should be treated as confidential and should not be discussed with anyone else without prior permission from the Editor.
- Reviewers are asked to comment on the following issues:
- Scientific quality, rigour and methodological strengths and weaknesses, appropriate to the nature of the paper and the methods used.
- Importance, relevance or salience of the topic or subject to both the academic and practice communities in health services management.
- Structure, organisation and presentation of the paper including its comprehensibility to the journal’s audience.
5. The Editor or Associate Editor aims to decide on each paper within 4 weeks of receipt of the two reviews. Three decisions are available: accept (often with some minor corrections or revisions); revise and resubmit; or reject. Authors are sent the editorial decision together with copies of the two reviewers' comments. The Editor or Associate Editor usually sends feedback letters to authors, if the authors are being invited to resubmit the paper. Resubmission must be accompanied with a letter responding analytically to the reviewers’ and Editors’ comments. Reviewers are sent the other reviewer's comments for information. If the decision is revise and resubmit, the Editor or Associate Editor has evaluated the work as worth of being published on HSMR. In this respect, HSMR supports the idea of a developmental review process for which the Editor/Associate Editors as well as the reviewers aim at providing to the authors constructive feedback and support them to reach the desired standards for publication
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
Read Sage's complete peer review policy.
Plagiarism
The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.
Contributor’s Publishing Agreement
Before publication, we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Preprints
If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.
Production
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.
Publication
OnlineFirst publication: This enables us to publish final articles online immediately, without waiting for assignment to a future issue of the Journal. This usually significantly reduces publication lead time. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite OnlineFirst articles.
Access to your published article: We provide you with online access to your published article. The online access link is provided to the corresponding author for sharing with their co-authors.
Promoting your article
Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.
The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.
You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.
Contact us
You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office: