Sections

1. Submission
2. Aims and Scope
3. Manuscript Categories and Requirements
4. Preparing Your Submission
5. Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations
6. Author Licensing
7. Publication Process After Acceptance
8. Post Publication
9. Editorial Office Contact Details

1. SUBMISSION

Authors should kindly note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, new submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal here. Should your manuscript proceed to the revision stage, you will be directed to make your revisions via the same submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at anytime by logging on to submission.wiley.com and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact submissionhelp@wiley.com.

Enquiries on submissions should be addressed to the Editorial Office.

For guidance on how to submit articles to biomedical journals, please see Uniform Requirement for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, available from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Submission is considered on the condition that papers are previously unpublished, are not offered simultaneously elsewhere, that all authors (defined below) have read and approved the content, that all authors have declared all competing interests and the work has been conducted under internationally accepted ethical standards after relevant ethical review. Accepted manuscripts become the sole property of Helicobacter and may not be published elsewhere without consent from the publisher.

All articles are subject to review by experienced referees. The Editor and Editorial Board judge manuscripts suitable for publication, and decisions by the Editor are final.

Material accepted for publication is copyedited and typeset. An email alert is sent to the corresponding author to download e-proofs for final review. The corresponding author is responsible for the entire content of the copyedited article. Extensive changes to the proofs will be charged to the contributors and could delay publication.

Open Access Publishing

Open access is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With open access, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee (APC) to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. You can read more about APCs and whether you may be eligible for waivers or discounts, through your institution, funder, or a country waiver. Any authors wishing to send their paper open access will be required to complete the payment form available from our website here. Prior to acceptance, there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper open access if you do not wish to. All open access articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

If the open access option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):

Creative Commons Attribution License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.

If you select the open access option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal's compliant self-archiving policy please visit: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

Data Protection and Privacy

By submitting a manuscript to, or reviewing for, this publication, your name, email address, institutional affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices.wiley.com/statements/data-protection-policy.html.

Preprint Policy

Helicobacter will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Recommended Reviewers

Authors have the option to provide up to 10 recommended reviewers. These reviewers may then be invited by the handling editor. Although this is not mandatory, it is in the author’s best interests to provide at least one recommendation, as this will expedite the review process. The author is also able to provide opposed reviewer suggestion. This should be used if there are significant researchers in the field with conflicting or competing interests.

Free Language Checker Tool:

You can use Wiley's 'Manuscript Language Checker' service at https://en.wileyeditingservices.com/english-language-checker-service-recommender. This is an entirely free service which allows authors to upload their manuscript and have it scanned for language, grammar, and flow. It will deliver a language quality score which suggests how ready the manuscript is for submission.

Wiley Digital Editing Service:

For Authors from India & Turkey, Wiley Digital Editing Service is offered: https://wileyeditingservices.com/en/article-preparation/digital-editing. This is fully AI-powered author service. Within minutes of uploading a manuscript in .doc or .docx file format, the author will receive a thoroughly edited document, complete with tracked changes and suggestions for improvements, for just $29.

The Wiley Digital Editing tool will complete 30 checks based on:

• Language
• Structure and References
• Counts, Figures and Tables
• Disclosures
• Metadata

2. AIMS AND SCOPE

Helicobacter recognises the critical role that has been established for Helicobacter pylori in peptic ulcer, gastric adrenocarcinoma, and primary gastric lymphoma. New Helicobacter species are regularly discovered.

Helicobacter will publish, first and foremost, primary research in a wide range of experimental, scientific and clinical areas including: bacterial physiology, molecular biology, epidemiology, animal models, pathogenesis, immune response, histopathology, gastric cancer, paediatrics, vaccines, diagnosis, and therapy. Manuscripts related to non-Helicobacter pylori species are also welcome.

Effective from the 2011 volume, Helicobacter will be published in an online-only format.

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

Manuscripts will be considered for publication in the form of original articles, reviews, descriptions of techniques, brief communications, and letters. We accept only outstanding Case Reports.

Original manuscripts should be a maximum of 5,000 words (not including references, tables and figures). Manuscripts should include a maximum of 6 Figures and/or tables. Additional tables or figures and/or extra methodological detail can be included in a separate Supplementary Appendix. The production and handling Editors may relocate tables or figures into a Supplementary Appendix prior to the production of page proofs if the manuscript exceeds these specifications at the time of final acceptance.

Letters to the Editor should be no more than three pages, comprising up to six references and one table or figure.

Case Reports and Clinical Case Reports

We work together with Wiley’s open access journal, Clinical Case Reports, to enable rapid publication of good quality case reports that we are unable to accept for publication in our journal. Authors of case reports rejected by our journal will be offered the option of having their case report, along with any related peer reviews, automatically transferred for consideration by the Clinical Case Reports editorial team. Authors will not need to reformat or rewrite their manuscript at this stage, and publication decisions will be made a short time after the transfer takes place. Clinical Case Reports will consider case reports from every clinical discipline and may include clinical images or clinical videos. Clinical Case Reports is an open access journal, and article publication fees apply. For more information please go to www.clinicalcasesjournal.com.

Manuscripts

Authors should observe the following guidelines.

1. Do not attempt to make your output approximate or match the typeset page.

2. Be consistent in style (i.e. units, abbreviations).

3. End paragraphs in a uniform manner, and in a different manner from line endings within paragraphs. A frequently used paragraph ending is simply two carriage returns.

4. Use '1', not 'el' for 'one'. Do not use 'oh' for zero.

5. Use double spacing in your document. Do not add extra line spacing (except as a normal paragraph ending indication) above or below titles, subheads, or between paragraphs.

6. Avoid using multiple spaces (horizontal) in your electronic manuscript. End sentences with only one space. Never use multiple spaces for horizontal positioning of text.

7. Tables and figure captions should be prepared in separate files. The copyeditor will indicate the placement of this material within the text.

8. Do not divide words by hyphenating at line endings.

9. Title should not exceed 60 words.

10. Running head should not exceed 160 words.

11. See reference style guide below. Do not attempt to incorporate small capital letters when typing authors' names.

4. PREPARING YOUR SUBMISSION

Parts of the Manuscript

Main Text File

Manuscripts can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTex (.tex) format.

If submitting your manuscript file in LaTex format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. When submitting a Latex Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the Latex Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.”

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations
• The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
• Acknowledgments;
• Abstract  
• Up to seven keywords;
• Main body: formatted as introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, conclusion
• References;
• Tables;
• Figures: Figure legends must be added beneath each individual image during upload AND as a complete list in the text.

Authorship

Please refer to the journal’s Authorship policy in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section for details on author listing eligibility.

Acknowledgments

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. Financial and material support should also be mentioned. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Authors will be asked to provide a conflict of interest statement during the submission process. For details on what to include in this section, see the ‘Conflict of Interest’ section in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section below. Submitting authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

Abstract

The abstract should not exceed 300 words and must be structured in four separate sections headed Background, Materials and Methods, Results, and Conclusions. The abstract should state clearly the relevance of the work to human disease.

References

All references should be numbered consecutively in order of appearance and should be as complete as possible. In text citations should cite references in consecutive order using Arabic superscript numerals.

For more information about this reference style, please see the AMA Manual of Style.

Reference examples follow:

Journal article

1. King VM, Armstrong DM, Apps R, Trott JR. Numerical aspects of pontine, lateral reticular, and inferior olivary projections to two paravermal cortical zones of the cat cerebellum. J Comp Neurol 1998;390:537-551.

Book

2. Voet D, Voet JG. Biochemistry. New York: John Wiley & Sons; 1990. 1223 p.

Please note that journal title abbreviations should conform to the practices of Chemical Abstracts.

Internet Document

1. American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts & Figures 2003. http://www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/CAFF2003PWSecured.pdf. Accessed March 3, 2003.

Tables

Tables should be self-contained and complement, not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files, not pasted as images. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend, and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for P-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

Figure Legends

Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement.

Figures

Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are accepted. Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.

Guidelines for Cover Submissions 

If you would like to send suggestions for artwork related to your manuscript to be considered to appear on the cover of the journal, please follow these general guidelines.

Additional Files

Appendices

Appendices will be published after the references. For submission they should be supplied as separate files but referred to in the text.

Supporting Information

Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article, but provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online and appears without editing or typesetting. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc.

Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Note: if data, scripts, or other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.

General Style Points

The following points provide general advice on formatting and style.

• Give all measurements in metric units
• Use generic names of drugs
• Adhere to acceptable English usage and syntax
• Avoid jargon, euphemistic phrasing and obscure terms and abbreviations

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.       

5. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Peer Review and Acceptance

The acceptance criteria for all papers is the quality and originality of the research and its significance to our readership. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are single-blind peer reviewed. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements. Wiley's policy on confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.

Human Studies and Subjects

For manuscripts reporting medical studies that involve human participants, a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study and confirmation that the study conforms to recognized standards is required, for example: Declaration of Helsinki; US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects; or European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice. It should also state clearly in the text that all persons gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study.

Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized (or an eye bar should be used). Images and information from individual participants will only be published where the authors have obtained the individual's free prior informed consent. Authors do not need to provide a copy of the consent form to the publisher; however, in signing the author license to publish, authors are required to confirm that consent has been obtained. Wiley has a standard patient consent form available for use.

Clinical Trial Registration

The journal requires that clinical trials are prospectively registered in a publicly accessible database and clinical trial registration numbers should be included in all papers that report their results. Authors are asked to include the name of the trial register and the clinical trial registration number at the end of the abstract. If the trial is not registered, or was registered retrospectively, the reasons for this should be explained.

Research Reporting Guidelines

Accurate and complete reporting enables readers to fully appraise research, replicate it, and use it. Authors are expected to adhere to recognised research reporting standards. The EQUATOR Network collects more than 370 reporting guidelines for many study types, including for:

• Randomised trials: CONSORT
• Observational studies: STROBE
• Systematic reviews: PRISMA
• Case reports: CARE
• Qualitative research: SRQR
• Diagnostic / prognostic studies: STARD
• Quality improvement studies: SQUIRE
• Economic evaluations: CHEERS
• Animal pre-clinical studies: ARRIVE
• Study protocols: SPIRIT
• Clinical practice guidelines: AGREE

We also encourage authors to refer to and follow guidelines from:

• Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship (FORCE11)
• National Research Council's Institute for Laboratory Animal Research guidelines
• The Gold Standard Publication Checklist from Hooijmans and colleagues
• Minimum Information Guidelines from Diverse Bioscience Communities (MIBBI) website
• FAIRsharing website

Genetic Nomenclature

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see http://varnomen.hgvs.org/, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.

Sequence Data

Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL, or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’. Addresses are as follows:

• DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ): http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp

• EMBL Nucleotide Archive: ebi.ac.uk/ena
• GenBank: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Proteins sequence data should be submitted to either of the following repositories:

• Protein Information Resource (PIR): pir.georgetown.edu
• SWISS-PROT: expasy.ch/sprot/sprot-top

Conflict of Interest

The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to: patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Funding

Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/

Authorship

The list of authors should accurately illustrate who contributed to the work and how. All those listed as authors should qualify for authorship according to the following criteria:

1. Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;

2. Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

3. Given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content; and

4. Agreed 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.

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section (for example, to recognize contributions from people who provided technical help, collation of data, writing assistance, acquisition of funding, or a department chairperson who provided general support). Prior to submitting the article all authors should agree on the order in which their names will be listed in the manuscript.

Artificial Intelligence Generated Content:

Wiley’s guidance on artificial intelligence generated content (such as ChatGPT) is available here. If an author has used Artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC) tools—such as ChatGPT and others based on large language models (LLMs)— to develop any portion of your manuscript, its use must be described, transparently and in detail, in the Methods or Acknowledgements section.

Additional Authorship Options. Joint first or senior authorship: In the case of joint first authorship, a footnote should be added to the author listing, e.g. ‘X and Y should be considered joint first author’ or ‘X and Y should be considered joint senior author.’

Publication Ethics

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found here.

Correction to authorship

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Helicobacter will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. [Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”]


Author Name Change Policy
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

6. AUTHOR LICENSING

If a paper is accepted for publication, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to log in to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be required to complete a copyright license agreement on behalf of all authors of the paper.

Authors may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or open access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

General information regarding licensing and copyright is available here. To review the Creative Commons License options offered under open access, please click here. (Note that certain funders mandate that a particular type of CC license has to be used; to check this please click here.)

Self-Archiving definitions and policies. Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions. Please click here for more detailed information about self-archiving definitions and policies.

Open Access fees: If you choose to publish using open access you will be charged a fee. For more information about this journal's Article Publication Charges, please click here.

7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Accepted Articles

All accepted manuscripts are subject to editing. Authors have final approval of changes prior to publication.

Proofs

Once the paper is typeset, the author will receive an email notification with full instructions on how to provide proof corrections.

Please note that the author is responsible for all statements made in their work, including changes made during the editorial process – authors should check proofs carefully.

8. POST PUBLICATION

Access and Sharing

When the article is published online:

• The author receives an email alert (if requested).
• The link to the published article can be shared through social media.
• The author will have free access to the paper (after accepting the Terms & Conditions of use, they can view the article).
• The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert and free online access to the article.

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Measuring the Impact of an Article

Wiley also helps you measure the impact of your research through our specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

9. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

Editorial Office: helicobacter@wiley.com

Author Guidelines updated 22nd April 2024