Instructions to Authors

Announcement: EP Europace is now a fully Open Access journal, as of January 2023. For papers submitted after 1 September 2022, publication charges may apply. Please find more details on our Open Access page. Content published prior to the flip to fully Open Access is free to view, and all rights are reserved. 

EP Europace – EHJ Arrhythmias and Electrophysiology - is an official Journal of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and the ESC Working Group on Cardiac Cellular Electrophysiology. The journal aims to provide an international avenue of communication for top quality original scientific work and reviews in the fields of arrhythmias, cardiac electrophysiology, and pacing. Clinical investigations, basic science translational research, technical issues, short case reports, comprehensive reviews, editorial comments, educational articles, images in pacing and electrophysiology, and correspondence are included.

Papers that do not adhere to the following instructions will be returned for revision before assessment.

Announcement: Author's accepted manuscript

From 15 June 2023, EP Europace publishes authors' accepted manuscripts. The Journal aims to publish authors’ accepted manuscripts on the Advance Articles page within 3 days of acceptance, as long as a license to publish is signed as soon as possible (a link will be sent in the initial email when a paper is sent to OUP production). Delays in completing and signing a publication licence can delay manuscript publication. The accepted manuscript will be published in PDF format. Manuscripts are then copyedited, typeset, proofed out, and corrected. Once the manuscripts are finalized, the uncorrected manuscripts are removed from the Advance Articles page and the final corrected articles in HTML and PDF format are published into the open issue.

Proofs

Page proofs will be submitted to the corresponding author electronically. These should be checked thoroughly for any changes or typographic errors.

It is the Publisher’s intent to review and correct the proofs and publish the accepted work as soon as possible. To achieve this, all corrections must be returned to the Publisher within 3 days.

Publication embargos

If authors have embargos on papers, for example, if they are presenting their research results at a subsequent conference, publication can be delayed accordingly. Authors should include a note in the cover letter at submission, and also when returning proofs, about the embargo and the exact date and time the paper can be published.

Citing papers on Advance Articles

Papers published on Advance Articles are citable using the DOI and publication date. A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is an automatically generated unique identifier for intellectual property in the digital environment (‘10.1093/europace/euad043’ is an example of a DOI). The DOI is attached to the item once it is accepted for publication and remains the same even if different versions of recognizably the same item appear successively. It appears on every version of the manuscript, including the final version online, and reprints or eprints.

A citation to the article in its final form would then also include its issue and volume as well as a page range.

Announcement: Author's accepted manuscripts

Submission of manuscripts

• How to submit
• Fast track review process
• First submission of articles
• Manuscript resubmissions
• Article categories
• Format free submission
• Manuscript preparation
  • Experimental Ethics and Reporting
  • Informed Patient Consent

Editorial Policies

• Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
• Authorship
• Conflict of interest
• Plagiarism and redundant publication
• Open access options for authors
• Availability of data and materials
• Data availability statement
• Peer Review
• Appealing a decision
• Proofs
• Author’s Toll-Free link and discounts
• Preprints and self-archiving
• Post-publication corrections
• Retractions

Contact us

Submission of manuscripts

The Journal will consider submissions within its scope providing:

• it is the original work of the authors and does not duplicate any previously published work, including the work of the authors;
• it is not under consideration or accepted for publication in any journal other than EP Europace;
• it has not been published in any other journal; and
• it contains nothing abusive, defamatory, libelous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

Authors should observe high ethical standards and obey publication best practices. The following are all unacceptable:

• data falsification or fabrication
• plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author’s own work without proper citation
• redundant publication
• misappropriation of work

The Journal expects all authors to have read and understood the editorial policies of the Journal prior to submission.

The Journal does not require the first submission of an article to be formatted to the EP Europace style. Further details can be found under "First submission of articles" below. Text, tables and figures should be prepared in accordance with the instructions given under "Manuscript preparation" below.

How to submit

Please go to the Editorial Manager website for EP Europace, and follow the instructions given on screen. If the corresponding author has not previously submitted to the Journal, they will need to register for an account. Detailed guidelines are available at the Editorial Manager site, by clicking on 'Help' or viewing the author or reviewer tutorials.

You will be asked to supply information about your manuscript and then attach your files containing the text and any figures and tables. Editorial Manager will create a PDF from your data, which is the format in which the manuscript will be made available to the editors and referees during the peer-review process.

The manuscript text, references and figure legends should be prepared in a single file; if at any point in the process a manuscript with tracked changes is uploaded as well, this should be uploaded as a supplementary file. Papers should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents where possible, although other standard word-processing formats may be acceptable. The manuscript must not be submitted in .pdf format.

Any appendices must be supplied separately, and will be published as online-only supplementary data. Please change any references to Appendices in the manuscript to 'Supplementary', e.g. Supplementary Table S1, Supplementary Appendix 2.

Tables and figures may be included in the manuscript file, but must appear at the end of the text on separate sheets (and not embedded in the text).

If preferred, tables and illustrations may be prepared and submitted in separate files. Electronically submitted figures should be in high resolution and in one of the following formats: tiff, bitmap (.bmp), jpeg (.jpg), postscript (.ps or .eps) or as PowerPoint or Excel files. Tables may be submitted as Word tables, or in .rtf format.

You will be required to enter the Abstract, Representative Figure and Keywords during the submission process. These may be copied and pasted from the manuscript document, but must still appear in the manuscript itself. Please supply the names and addresses of three referees to whom your manuscript may be sent for review in the 'Enter Comments' section of your submission.

When completing the 'Add Authors' section, please enter the names and countries of all the co-authors listed on the manuscript.

Authors are required to add their ORCID iDs to their Editorial Manager accounts and include their ORCID iDs as part of the submission process. If you do not already have one you can create one on the Register for an ORCID iD page.

Authors must specify the category for which their submission is intended.

If you need help with the electronic submission process please contact the editorial office (europace.editorialoffice@oup.com).

Please note that by submitting an article for publication, OUP will retain the email address of the corresponding author for the purpose of further communication regarding the article. In the event of a change of personal information, OUP must be informed immediately. Upon acceptance for publication, OUP will contact the corresponding author directly. Please add europace.oup@novatechset.com to your safe senders list to avoid key emails about the publication of your article potentially going into your spam folder. Please note that OUP does not retain copies of rejected articles.

Fast Track Review Process

Please note: Fast Track petitions are only considered for original research contributions.

To petition for fast track review status, corresponding authors must send their manuscript by e-mail to: europace.editorialoffice@oup.com, ensuring that the manuscript adheres to the Journal's Instructions to Authors. An accompanying cover letter should detail why the authors deem the manuscript suitable for fast track review. All files accompanying the petition should be attached individually (no ZIP file). The Editorial Board will decide whether the manuscript is suitable for fast track or regular review. When petitioning for fast track review, corresponding authors should not enter their manuscripts simultaneously as regular submissions

The Editorial Office will communicate within 48 hours whether or not the fast track review process has been approved. Alternately, the submission may be considered in a standard review process. Please note that fast track review does not in any way guarantee acceptance of the manuscript.

The Europace Editorial Office will notify the corresponding authors if their manuscript has been selected for fast track review. At this time they must then submit the manuscript in its entirety in the Editorial Manager system and notify the Europace Editorial Office immediately after submission (europace.editorialoffice@oup.com). The article type will then be converted into a Fast Track and reviewers will be invited.

For manuscripts entering fast track review, the initial Editorial decision will be made within 5 consecutive days. If provisionally accepted, a revised manuscript must be returned to the Europace Editorial Office as stipulated in the relevant decision letter. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, it should be published online 10 working days after acceptance and in print as soon as possible, provided proofs are returned to the publisher within 48 hours. The corresponding authors will receive a ‘Welcome to Oxford Journals’ email, which will notify them of the DOI of their paper and contain a link to the online license to publish, which must be completed before the paper can be published. Delays in completing and signing a publication licence can delay manuscript publication.

First submission of articles

We will consider initial Original Article and Review Article submissions in which the manuscript file is not formatted according to the EP Europace journal style. Manuscripts can be submitted in any common document format that can be easily opened and read by others. A single PDF or Word file is usually reliable.

• All elements must be completed within the online submission form including manuscript title, author names, affiliations, and address (including email).
• Manuscript file must contain page numbers and figures may be embedded within the manuscript or in separate files.
• Supplementary Material files must be uploaded separately.
• References can be formatted in any readable style at submission. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. Later, authors will be asked to comply with the journal’s citation convention.
• Include acknowledgements, details of funding sources and grant numbers at the end of the text. Use author initials to indicate which authors were in receipt of grants.

Upon request, authors should be prepared to provide high-resolution figures separately, in a common image format (e.g. tif, jpg).

Those papers that are revised or ultimately accepted will be required to be formatted by the authors according to Europace format requirements.

Manuscript resubmissions

Authors resubmitting manuscripts to the journal after a previous decision of 'reject with opportunity to resubmit' should ensure that they respond to all the points raised by reviewers in the initial peer review. Details of these changes can be included in the covering letter.

Article categories

The article types accepted by the Journal are listed below. The section on Submission of Manuscripts includes instructions for each element, such as abstracts, keywords, figures and tables.

All word counts are exclusive of references, figure legends, and text in tables.

ESC Official Output

The Journal publishes official output from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), its Associations, Working Groups and Councils. Authors of ESC official output are required to follow the ESC Scientific Documents Group process.

Case Reports

EP Europace no longer accepts case reports for publication. Please consider submitting your case report to European Heart Journal - Case Reports (EHJ-CR). EHJ-CR is an international, online-only, fully open access journal of the European Society of Cardiology. The Journal publishes high quality, educationally valuable case reports, images, and quality improvement projects in all aspects of cardiology and cardiovascular medicine. More information can be found on the EHJ-CR homepage. If a case report is submitted to EP Europace under a different article type it will automatically be offered for transfer to EHJ-CR.

Format Free Submission

If preferred, authors may submit their manuscript without journal-specific formatting at initial submission.

Authors are still required to:

• Answer all questions in the online submission form
• Submit all parts of the manuscript, including the abstract, figures, figure legends, and supplementary files. Figures may be embedded in the manuscript file or uploaded separately
• State all conflicts of interest (if there are no conflicts to declare, the authors should state “Conflict of Interest: none declared”)
• Include page numbers in the manuscript file

If requested to submit a revised version of the manuscript, authors should refer to Manuscript Preparation for formatting instructions.

Manuscript preparation

Text

The manuscript should be double spaced using 2.5 cm wide margins all round. The text should be arranged as follows: Title page, Structured Abstract and Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Appendices, Tables, Figure legends. (For review articles, the format may be altered, if necessary; an abstract is not required but keywords should be supplied.) References, figures and tables should be numbered in the order in which they are cited in the text. Generic names should be used for drugs and instruments whenever possible.

Title page

The title page should include: (a) title, (b) name/s of authors, (c) institution/s where work was done, (d) mailing address of and email address of the corresponding author.

Abstracts and keywords

Text abstracts with headings should be structured under the headings (1) Background and Aims, (2) Methods (3) Results (4) Conclusion, followed by a list of three to six keywords. Text abstracts with headings are required for the following article types: Clinical Research, Translational Research, Meta-analysis, EHRA surveys, and Trial Designs.

Text abstracts without headings should consist of a short summary of the article. Text abstracts without headings are required for state of the art reviews, viewpoints, controversy papers, EHRA documents, and Practical EP. 

Authors of Clinical Research and Basic Science articles are encouraged to submit a graphical abstract (schematic figure) as part of the article, in addition to the text abstract. The graphical abstract should clearly summarize the focus and findings of the article, and will be published as part of the article online and in PDF. Graphical abstracts help communicate the key messages in your paper to readers in a clear and immediate way. They are well-suited to sharing on social media, which helps disseminate research more widely and allows readers to easily identify papers that are of interest to them. The graphical abstract should be submitted for peer review as a separate file, selecting the appropriate file-type designation in the journal’s online submission system. The file should be clearly named, e.g. graphical_abstract.tiff. See this page for guidance on appropriate file format and resolution for graphics. Please ensure graphical abstracts are in landscape format.

Guidance on how to create an effective graphical abstract

Authors are strongly encouraged to supply rough drafts of their graphical abstracts and key illustrations at submission stage. If your paper is accepted, then a leading medical illustration company may be engaged to redraw your graphics and the ESC will bear the cost of this service.

'What's New?'

Authors of Clinical Research, Basic Science, and Technical Issues papers should include a list of two to six bullet points outlining the key, novel outcomes of the research they present. These should be listed under a heading called ‘What’s New?’ at the start of the paper and should come to no more than 150 words in total.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements and details of support in the form of grants, equipment or drugs are typed at the end of the text before References.

References

References are identified in the text by arabic numerals and numbered in the order cited. References are typed double spaced on sheets separate from the text in the Vancouver style. Complete information should be given for each reference, including title of article, abbreviated journal title and inclusive page numbers. The first six authors should be listed, followed by et al. If there are more than six authors, the first six authors should be listed followed by ‘et al.’.

Examples:

Gianfranchi L, Brignole M, Menozzi C, Lolli G, Bottoni N. Determinants of development of permanent atrial fibrillation and its treatment. Europace 1999; 1: 30–46.

Abello M, Merino JL, Peinado R, Gnoatto M, Arias MA, Gonzalez-Vasserot M, et al. Syncope following cardioverter defibrillator implantation in patients with spontaneous syncopal monomorphic ventricular tachycardia. Eur Heart J 2006; 27:89-95.

Ebels T, Elzenga NJ, Brenken U. Right atrial auricle as inter-caval tunnel in the cavopulmonary connexion: method to avoid the sinus node and its blood supply. In: Minami K, Korfer R, Wada J, eds. Cardiothoracic Surgery. Amsterdam: Elsevier Excerpta Medica 1992: 9–16.

ESC Knowledge Centre Surveys Program, Heart Failure II. http://www.escardio.org/guidelines-surveys/ehs/heart-failure/Pages/survey-hf2.aspx#.VDewJvldXTo (10 October 2014, date last accessed).

Personal communications, manuscripts in preparation and other unpublished data are not cited in the reference list but are mentioned in the text in parentheses. Titles of journals should be abbreviated in accordance with Index Medicus (see list printed annually in the January issue of Index Medicus).

Figures

There is no charge for colour figures in EP- Europace.

Authors are asked to use the journal's colour scheme in charts and diagrams as much as possible. PowerPoint allows the specification of custom colour according to the RGB definition.

The Publisher may re-draw any charts or graphs using the colour palette where necessary during the production process. Authors will have the opportunity to correct any inappropriate changes at the proof correction stage.

All illustrations should be referred to as figures and should be numbered in a single sequence in the order in which they are mentioned in the text.

Figures should be in high resolution and in one of the following formats: tiff, bitmap (.bmp), jpeg (.jpg), portable data format (.pdf) or postscript (.ps or .eps). The resolution required for publication is 300-500 dpi.

Representative Figure

If the Authors have not submitted a graphical abstract (see above at ‘abstract and keywords’), authors should designate a single figure that best summarizes their techniques, their results or the impact of their work.

Tables

Tables are typed on separate sheets with the table number (in arabic numerals) and title above and any explanatory notes below.

Supplementary data

Supporting material that is not essential for inclusion in the full text of the manuscript, but would nevertheless benefit the reader, can be made available by the publisher as online-only content, linked to the online manuscript. The material should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper, but should contain data that is additional or complementary and directly relevant to the article content. Such information might include more detailed methods, extended data sets/data analysis, list of Investigators, or additional figures.

• Supplementary material must be cited in the text of the main manuscript.
• Supplementary material will be available online only and will not be copyedited or typeset.
• Style and formatting of supplementary material should be consistent with that of the manuscript.
• Supplementary material should be formatted to function on any internet browser.
• Supplementary material files should be no larger than 15MB each.

All material to be considered as Supplementary data must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer review. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication. Please indicate clearly the material intended as Supplementary data upon submission. Also ensure that the Supplementary data is referred to in the main manuscript where necessary.

Videos 

If supplied alongside the manuscript and cited within the article text, published videos will appear as streamable content within the article body.

Videos should be submitted in .mp4 or .avi format under the header “Video” in Editorial Manager. The Journal cannot use videos hosted on third-party sites such as YouTube, as the link may expire.

Videos should be numbered consecutively (e.g., Video 1, Video 2) and referenced in the text.

Authors should provide a still image for each video, which will be used in the PDF version of the article. These still images should be cleared numbered (e.g., Video 1 still image, Video 2 still image).

Legends for videos should be included in a separate section under the heading ‘Legends’, after the ‘References’ section of the manuscript. Define all symbols and abbreviation used in the video. Common abbreviations and other in the preceding text should be not redefined in the legend.

Additional videos may be submitted as supplementary online-only material if permitted for the article type.

Videos should not be submitted if the copyright of the video is unclear (e.g., a video downloaded from the internet). Permission must be sought and granted for all videos being reproduced in the Journal, and correct attribution must be given in accordance with the licence of the original work.

Experimental Ethics and Reporting

Human experimentation: Studies should comply with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the research protocol must be approved by the locally appointed ethics committee. Informed consent must be obtained from the subjects (or their legally authorized representative). These facts must be stated in the manuscript.

Clinical Trials: Randomised clinical trials should be reported according to CONSORT guidelines. All clinical trials, in particular those involving pharmaceuticals, devices, or aspects relating to nutrition, should be registered prospectively in publically accessible databases (such as ClinicalTrials.gov and EU Clinical Trials Register), and the paper should include registration numbers and the name of the register.

Animal experimentation: EP Europace aims at detailed and high quality reporting of animal experiments and suggests authors follow the ARRIVE guidelines when preparing their manuscript. Authors may be required to provide evidence that they obtained ethical and /or legal approval prior to conducting the research.

Informed Patient Consent

Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication ethics as set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and ICMJE recommendations for reporting about patients. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without prior informed consent.

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has given written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires the patient be shown the manuscript to be published.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should never be altered or falsified to attain anonymity. We understand that complete anonymity is difficult to achieve. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity.

A statement addressing informed patient consent must be included as part of the manuscript under the heading ‘Consent’.

Patient Consent Form

The journal requires at the point of submission that a consent form has been completed for any case report or clinical image in which an individual or a group of individuals can be identified. The list below outlines potential patient identifiers to be aware of.

• Direct:
  • Name
  • Initials
  • Address, including full or partial postal code
  • Contact information e.g.
    • Email addresses
  • Unique identifying numbers
  • Vehicle identifiers
  • Medical device identifiers
  • Web or internet protocol addresses
  • Biometric data
  • Facial photograph or comparable image
  • Audiotapes
  • Names of relatives
  • Dates related to an individual (including date of birth)
• Indirect: (may present a risk if present in combination with others in the list)
  • Place of treatment or health professional responsible for care (Could be inferred from investigator affiliations)
  • Sex
  • Rare disease or treatment
  • Sensitive data, such as illicit drug use or "risky behaviour"
  • Place of birth
  • Socioeconomic data, such as occupation or place of work, income, or education (MRC requirement is for “rare” occupations only)
  • Household and family composition
  • Anthropometry measures
  • Multiple pregnancies
  • Ethnicity
  • Small denominators–population size of <100
  • Very small numerators–event counts of <3
  • Year of birth or age (Age is potentially identifying if the recruitment period is short and is fully described)
  • Verbatim responses or transcripts

More guidance

Completed consent forms are not to be submitted to the journal. Completed forms should be held by the treating institution according to locally approved procedures. The consent form should be made available to the journal Editor if specifically requested.

Use of the Oxford University Press Patient Consent Form is recommended where a consent form is required for submission of a manuscript to an Oxford University Press publication. If another consent form is to be used, for example the standard consent form used by your institution, a blank copy of this form should be submitted to the journal so that the journal can verify that it meets best practice recommendations.

If the patient or relatives of a deceased patient cannot be traced and consent cannot be obtained, the case report can only be considered for publication if it is sufficiently anonymised.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject papers for which the ethical aspects are, in the Board’s opinion, open to doubt. Please contact the Editorial Office if you have any queries regarding consent.

Funding

Details of all funding sources for the work should be given in a separate section entitled “Funding”. This should appear before the “Acknowledgements” section in the manuscript.

The following rules should be followed:

• Funding agency names should be given in full without abbreviations: e.g., National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health
• Grant numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in brackets: e.g., (grant number ABX CDXXXXXX)
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma: e.g. (grant numbers ABX CDXXXXXX, EFXXXXXX)
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency)
• Where individuals must be specified for certain sources of funding, the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.

Funding statement examples:

• Wellcome Trust (grant numbers AA-10101, BB949/2-3) to M.H. and P.P.F. Funding for open access charge: Wellcome Trust (grant number CB5453961-7).
• National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (grant number L-130-A); National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health (grant number A-158912/1); and National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers W-1120, G-819-1).

NIH-funded articles:

OUP will deposit all NIH-funded articles in PubMed Central. Authors must ensure that manuscripts are clearly indicated as NIH-funded using the guidelines above.

Crossref Funding Data Registry:

To meet funding requirements, authors are required to name their funding sources, or state if there are none, during the submission process. For further information on this process or to find out more about CHORUS, visit the CHORUS initiative.

Units and abbreviations

Use SI units of measurement. Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract and explain abbreviations when they first occur in the text.

DNA sequences and GenBank accession numbers

For each and every gene accession number cited in an article, authors should type the accession number in bold, underlined text. Letters in the accession number should always be capitalised. Example: "(GenBank accession nos. AI631510, AI631511, AI632198, and BF223228), a B-cell tumour from a chronic lymphatic leukaemia (GenBank accession no. BE675048), and a T-cell lymphoma (GenBank accession no. AA361117)".

Statistics 

The application of adequate statistical methods is required for publication in European Heart Journal. The Journal advises authors to ‘be as simple as possible, but as sophisticated as needed’. For example, clinical trials with their formalized framework must meet more specific statistical standards than pathophysiological studies. Authors are advised to include absolute risk as well as relative risk where possible. For studies with a sophisticated design, the collaboration of a professional statistician is recommended.

Authors should refer to the following guidance before submitting:

• ‘Statistical Analysis’ in the European Heart Journal Quality Standards document 
• A detailed summary of relevant points regarding study design, analysis and reporting 

Third Party Permissions

Authors must obtain permission for any material being reproduced – including quotations, images, tables or videos – for which they are not the copyright holder. Permissions should be sought from the original copyright holder. Permission letters for reproduced text or illustrations must accompany the manuscript. If you have been unable to obtain permission, please point this out.

Further information on obtaining permissions is available here.

Pre-submission Language Editing

If you are not confident in the quality of your English, you may wish to use a language-editing service to ensure that editors and reviewers understand your paper. Language editing is optional and does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted. Edited manuscripts will still undergo peer review by the journal.

Oxford University Press partners with Enago, a leading provider of author services. Prospective EHJ Case Reports authors are entitled to a discount of 30% for editing services at Enago, via the Specialist English Editing Services for Oxford University Press Authors page. 

Editorial Policies

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

EP Europace and Oxford University Press are members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This journal follows the guidance provided in in the Core Practices issued by COPE. The journal also subscribes to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals. The journal expects all parties involved in the publication of content in EP Europace (the publisher, editors, authors, and reviewers) to follow these guidelines on best practice and publication ethics. The Editors are further supported by the ESC Journal Publication Ethics Committee.

The Journal is committed to investigating all cases of alleged editor, author, and reviewer misconduct arising from its activities. The Journal will follow COPE Guidelines in all cases.

Authorship

All individuals listed as authors should qualify for authorship and should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Each author included in the manuscript must meet ALL of the following conditions, as specified in the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To qualify as an author, the individual must have:

1. made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. drafted the work or reviewed it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. given final approval of the version to be published; 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.

All individuals who meet the authorship criteria listed above should be listed as authors. Individuals who do not meet the above authorship criteria should not be listed as authors. The Journal considers all forms of ghost authorship, in which an individual contributes in the role of an author (according to the criteria above) but is not listed as an author on the manuscript, and all forms of guest or gift authorship, in which individuals are included though they do not meet the above criteria, as unethical and unacceptable.

For more information about authorship, including changes in authorship, see the relevant section of the OUP Publication Ethics page, and also the ICMJE guidelines.

Artificial Intelligence

Natural language processing tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) do not qualify as authors, and the Journal will screen for them in author lists. The use of AI (for example, to help generate content or images, write code, process data, or for translation) should be disclosed in a cover letter at the point of submission and explained in full in a Methods or Acknowledgements section in the manuscript. Please see the COPE position statement on Authorship and AI for more details.

Co-Authorship Verification

The corresponding author is responsible for providing the full list of co-authors on the manuscript. The co-authors will receive an email asking them to verify their contribution to the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that this step is completed in a timely manner. Delays in co-authorship verification can delay manuscript publication.

Contributors

Any other individual contributor or group of contributors to the work who do not qualify for authorship but who meet some of the four ICMJE criteria listed above should be listed in the article in a section under the heading “Acknowledgements”. As per the ICMJE guidelines, the contribution of each individual or group must be specified. For more information, refer to section 3 of the ICMJE guidelines.

Conflict of Interest

All authors must declare any conflicts of interest (COI). It is the responsibility of each co-author to declare any conflicts of interests on submission and it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that the Journal receives all declarations from each co-author. Any potential conflict of interest that might constitute an embarrassment to any of the authors if it were not to be declared and were to emerge after publication should be declared. A detailed definition of conflicts of interests can be found on OUP's Publication Ethics page.

Instructions for the author/s:

• The corresponding author submits their conflicts of interest declaration by answering the mandatory COI questions in the submission system at the time of submission.
• Any co-authors listed will be contacted by email to confirm their co-authorship and to submit their COI declaration by answering a series of mandatory questions in the submission system.
• Authors are still required to provide a response to the COI questions even if there are no conflicts of interest to declare (state “none declared”).
• The corresponding author must, at revision stage (at the latest), submit a concise and accurate summary of any conflicts of interest declared under the “Disclosures” header. If there are no conflicts of interest, state “Conflict of interest: none declared”. The text under “Disclosures” will be included at the end of the article when published.

To ensure that all manuscripts receive unbiased evaluation, it is the Journal’s policy that papers where an EP Europace Editor is an author or contributor will be assigned to another handling editor (who is not at the same institution). This also applies for papers where an Editor has declared any other conflict of interest. The handling editor will oversee the peer review and decision-making process. For articles in which the handling editor or reviewer has a conflict of interest, they are obliged to withdraw from the process.

Instructions for the submitting author:

• When submitting your paper please indicate in your cover letter if an Editor from EP Europace is a co-author on the manuscript or has been a contributor to the manuscript in any other way.
• Please include the following declaration in a section of the submitted manuscript entitled “Disclosures”: ‘[author initials, e.g. X.X] is an Editor of EP Europace and was not involved in the peer review process or publication decision’.

Plagiarism and Redundant Publication

COPE defines plagiarism as “when somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were his/her own and without proper acknowledgement”.

COPE defines redundant publication as “when a published work (or substantial sections from a published work) is/are published more than once (in the same or another language) without adequate acknowledgment of the source/cross-referencing/justification or when the same (or substantially overlapping) data is presented in more than one publication without adequate cross-referencing/justification, particularly when this is done in such a way that reviewers/readers are unlikely to realise that most or all the findings have been published before”.

Manuscripts submitted to the Journal may be screened with iThenticate anti-plagiarism software to detect and prevent plagiarism and redundant publication. Any manuscript may be screened, especially if there is reason to suppose that part or all the of the manuscript has been previously published. Prior to final acceptance any manuscript that has not already been screened may be screened with iThenticate. More information is available on the iThenticate website.

Open access options for authors

Assignment of copyright

All papers submitted after 1 September 2022 will be published under an open access licence. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.

An APC of € 4177 (CC BY, CC BY-NC licence) applies to the following article types: Clinical Research Article, Translational Research Article, Meta-analysis, State of the Art Review, Controversy, Trial Design, Practical EP.

An APC of € 2088 (CC BY, CC BY-NC licence) applies to the following article types: Research Letter, Images in Electrophysiology, Viewpoint.

There is a 30% discount available to Fellows of the European Heart Rhythm Association and a 10% discount available to silver members of the European Heart Rhythm Association. Find out more about European Society of Cardiology membership. Find out more about European Heart Rhythm Association membership.

Please note that there is no charge for correspondence.

If the corresponding author is based in one of the countries included in our Developing Countries Initiative, your article will be eligible for a full waiver of the open access charge.

Please note that delays in completing and signing a publication licence can delay manuscript publication.

Details of the open access licences and open access charges.

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

To be eligible for one of OUP’s Read and Publish agreements, the corresponding author must provide their qualifying institution as their primary affiliation when they submit their manuscript. After submission, changing the corresponding author in order to access Read and Publish funding is not permissible.

Third-Party Content in Open Access papers

If you will be publishing your paper under an Open Access licence but it contains material for which you do not have Open Access re-use permissions, please state this clearly by supplying the following credit line alongside the material:

Title of content

Author, Original publication, year of original publication, by permission of [rights holder]

This image/content is not covered by the terms of the Creative Commons licence of this publication. For permission to reuse, please contact the rights holder.

Availability of Data and Materials

Where ethically feasible, EP Europace strongly encourages authors to make all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. Authors are required to include a Data Availability Statement in their article.

We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. Information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, is available on OUP's Research Data Policy page.

Data Availability Statement

The inclusion of a Data Availability Statement is a requirement for articles published in EP Europace. Data Availability Statements provide a standardised format for readers to understand the availability of data underlying the research results described in the article. The statement may refer to original data generated in the course of the study or to third-party data analysed in the article. The statement should describe and provide means of access, where possible, by linking to the data or providing the required unique identifier.

More information and example Data Availability statements can be found on OUP's Research Data Policy page.

Data Citation

EP Europace supports the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and requires that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI). Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite:

• [dataset]* Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier

*The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list.

Peer review

All material submitted to EP Europace will be reviewed by the Editorial team. Papers may be rejected without full peer review, remaining papers will be sent for external peer review.

The journal operates a single-anonymised peer review process, meaning that the Authors’ identities are known to the Editor and the Reviewers, but that the Reviewers’ identities are known only to the Editor and are hidden from the Authors. During the online submission process, authors have the opportunity to name preferred or non-preferred referees, or both, but the Editor is under no obligation to act upon any suggestions.

Authors may be requested to produce the data on which their manuscript is based (or associated documents, e.g. ethical approval letter) by the Editor(s) or their assignee for examination. Authors must comply with such a request.

Appealing a Decision

If the authors have reason to believe that the review process or final decision has not been fair or well-informed, the authors may submit an appeal to the Journal. Appeals can be submitted within one month of the final decision on the manuscript. Appeals received after this date will not be considered. Only one appeal per manuscript will be considered. The appeal will be considered carefully by the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board.

The authors should provide the appeal in a word document and attach it to an email to europace.editorialoffice@oup.com. The appeal should include:

• Names of all authors submitting the appeal
• Email addresses and contact details of the authors, or the corresponding author
• Full manuscript title
• Manuscript ID from Editorial Manager
• An explanation outlining why the final decision was unfair or not merited
• Specific comments in relation to the peer review reports

Proofs

Page proofs will be submitted to the corresponding author electronically. These should be checked thoroughly for any changes or typographic errors.

It is the publisher’s intent to review and correct the proofs and publish the accepted work as soon as possible. To achieve this, it is mandatory that all corrections are returned to OUP within 3 days. Subsequent additional corrections will not be possible, so please ensure that all amendments are marked up comprehensively in the proofs.

Author’s Toll-Free Link and Discounts

All corresponding authors will be provided with a free access link to their article upon publication.  The link will be sent via email to the article’s corresponding author who is free to share the link with any co-authors.  Please see OUP’s Author Self-Archiving policy for more information regarding how this link may be publicly shared depending on the type of license under which the article has published.  

All authors have the option to purchase up to 10 print copies of the issue in which they publish at a 50% discount. Orders should be placed through this order form. Orders must be made within 12 months of the online publication date.

Preprints and self-archiving

Preprints

Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels and this does not prevent submission to the Journal. At initial submission, authors should indicate if any preprint is available in a server or repository. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including adding the published paper’s DOI. For full details on allowed channels and updating your preprint, please see our Author self-archiving policy.

Version of Record

Authors of papers published open access are entitled to make their published article (the “Version of Record”) publicly available according to the terms of the licence they select.

• CC BY-NC: Authors who have published under a CC BY-NC licence may share and distribute their article on non-commercial websites and repositories immediately upon publication. More information about the CC BY-NC licence
• CC BY: In addition to the reuses included with CC BY-NC, authors who have published their article under a CC BY licence may also share and distribute their article anywhere including commercial platforms immediately on publication. More information about the CC BY licence

More information about this policy

Post-publication corrections

The Publisher will only make changes to published papers if the publication record is seriously affected by the academic accuracy of the published information.

Changes to published papers are always accompanied by a formal correction notice. This applies to papers on Advance Access and those published within an issue. This means that any change carried out to a paper already published online will have a corresponding correction published with its own separate DOI. The notice will be published online at the earliest opportunity (on the Journal’s Advance Articles page if possible, otherwise in the earliest available issue), and will be clearly linked to the paper being corrected. A link will also appear on the paper being corrected, notifying readers that a correction has been published.

Changes cannot be made to archival papers (i.e. published online more than 12 months before). In such instances a correction will be published explaining the error, but the paper will not be updated. The correction will be published online with links to the original paper as described above.

To submit a correction the corresponding author should email journals.corrections@oup.com.

OUP’s full corrections policy.

Retractions

The Journal subscribes to the COPE Retraction Guidelines, which outlines appropriate use cases for retractions. The Journal also has the option of consulting the ESC Journal Family Ethics Committee.

Contact Us

For any questions or feedback please contact the Editorial Office: europace.editorialoffice@oup.com