Instructions for Authors

 

Aims & Scope

Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems publishes Editorials, Regular Articles, Short Reviews, Reviews, Preliminary Communications, Short Communications, Reports, Expert Opinions, Case Reports, and Letters to the Editor on subjects regarding heroin addiction and related clinical problems. Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems is particularly interested in therapies, including all aspects of translation from bench to bedside: identification of novel therapeutic targets, epidemiology, clinical trials, drug safety and meta-analyses. Reviews should include systematic literature revision concerning the topics treated and meta-analyses. Short reviews are dedicated to particular aspects of heroin addiction. Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems accepts for publication only unpublished data. The structured abstract must not exceed 300 words.

Peer Review Process

All submitted manuscripts undergo an internal editorial review to assess their originality, scientific merit, methodological soundness, and relevance to the aims and scope of Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems. The journal follows a single-blind peer review process. The evaluation is conducted primarily by members of the editorial staff with the help of reviewers who are experts in the field. The Editor-in-Chief has final and binding authority on all editorial decisions. Manuscripts are generally reviewed directly by the editorial board members; however, when specific expertise is required, experts may be consulted and asked to provide independent opinions. The journal does not guarantee acceptance and reserves the right to reject manuscripts at any stage of the review process. Authors may be asked to revise their manuscripts in response to reviewers’ comments and suggestions. The typical review timeline ranges from 1 to 3 months, depending on the complexity of the subject matter and the availability of reviewers when involved. The standard editorial workflow is as follows: Submission → Evaluation → Decision → Revision (if required) → Acceptance → Publication. Authors will be informed of the outcome of the evaluation via email. Once accepted, articles proceed to production and are published online in succession. Printing on demand is possible.

Manuscript Submissions

Authors should submit manuscripts, including figures, to the Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems website using exclusively the downloadable form. Papers must be submitted solely to the Journal and accepted because they have not been published elsewhere and will not be. The submission process requires a full declaration of the personal interests of all Authors and funding interests by the presenting author; these details should also be included in the manuscript's text. By submitting your manuscript to the journal, you accept that your manuscript may be screened for plagiarism.

Authorship

Each author must fulfil the following criteria:

• They must have contributed substantially to research design or data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation.
• They must have drafted the paper or revised it critically.
• They must have approved the submitted and final versions.

Copyright Transfer Agreement: Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems: Authors must NOT sign a copyright declaration. The Editors retain the usual right to modify the style and length of a contribution (significant changes being agreed with the corresponding Author) and decide the publication time.

Illustrations

For production purposes, you must supply every figure in A4 .pdf format (minimum 300 dpi). Figure and table legends must be able to stand alone in the text; thus, full descriptive legends for all figures and tables should be supplied.

Statistics

Methods should be referenced. Two-tailed significance tests should be used unless explicitly stated otherwise. Controls should be described as entirely as experimental subjects. Measures of location should be accompanied by variability (e.g. mean and confidence intervals) and conventional probability values. Clinical trial reports should include the power of the study design.

Acknowledgements

Some examples are:

• All authors were involved in the literature review, critically reviewed the manuscript, had full editorial control, and were ultimately responsible for the decision to submit the paper for publication.
• All authors were involved in the study design, had full access to the survey data and analyses, interpreted the data, critically reviewed the manuscript and had full control, including final responsibility for the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Role of the funding source

Some examples are:

• This study was funded [in part or in whole] by [insert name of funding organisation], grant number [insert grant or other identification number].
• This paper's [writing or preparation] was funded in part by [insert name of funding organisation].
• Initial data analyses were undertaken by [name of individuals if not listed as Authors] who are employees of [name company] and received funding from [insert name of funding organisation].
• Writing support was provided by [insert name of individual(s)] of [name company] and funded by [insert name of funding organisation].

Conflict of Interest

Sources of financial support during the last two years must be acknowledged. Please read the following statements, adding relevant sections at the end of your submitted manuscript under the heading ‘Conflict of interest.

Some examples are:

• The authors declared no conflict of interest.
• [Name of individual] has served as a speaker, a consultant, and an advisory board member for [names of organisations] and has received research funding from [names of organisation].
• [Name of individual] is an employee of [name of organisation].
• [Name of individual] owns stocks and shares in [name of organisation].
• [Name of individual] owns patent [patent identification and brief description].

Ethics and Malpractice

Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and takes all reasonable measures to prevent publication malpractice. The journal adheres to the principles of integrity, transparency, and responsibility in scientific publishing, and follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This statement outlines the ethical responsibilities of authors, editors, and reviewers, as well as the journal's position on ethical review and scientific misconduct. All research involving human participants must be conducted in accordance with the ethical principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 2013). Authors must confirm that their study protocol was reviewed and approved by an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review board before participant enrolment, and that informed consent was obtained from all participants. For randomised, double-blind clinical trials, authors are required to provide evidence of prior registration in a publicly accessible clinical trial registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov or EU Clinical Trials Register). Any research involving the collection of original data from human subjects (e.g., observational studies, interviews, surveys, or experimental protocols) must receive prior ethics committee approval and comply with all relevant national and institutional guidelines.

Ethical approval is generally not required for studies based on: Fully anonymised, pre-existing data; Public datasets; Audit and service evaluations that do not involve experimental interventions or identifiable personal information; Anonymous surveys on non-sensitive topics involving competent adult participants, provided participation is voluntary and appropriately documented (e.g., preferences regarding service delivery, satisfaction with care, non-personal academic experiences, professional opinions, non-identifying demographic data, or general lifestyle habits such as diet or physical activity); Data collected during routine clinical practice, when treatments provided were standard of care and not influenced by data collection; Researcher-maintained databases derived from prior ethically approved and protocolled studies; Data collected during institutional or private clinical activity, including for off-label treatments, when data were not collected as part of a research protocol but rather for routine documentation, and are used retrospectively in a fully anonymised and non-interventional context.

Authors are responsible for verifying that their study qualifies for exemption under national and institutional regulations, and must explicitly declare the basis for such exemption in the manuscript.

Manuscripts are assessed solely based on scientific content and relevance, without regard to the authors’ gender, race, religion, political views, or institutional affiliation. Editors must maintain the confidentiality of all submitted manuscripts and must not disclose any information about a submission to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and publisher. The Editor-in-Chief holds full responsibility for editorial decisions. Manuscripts are accepted or rejected based on scientific merit, clarity, and relevance to the journal's aims. In cases of suspected misconduct, editors will initiate appropriate investigations. If unethical behaviour is confirmed, the journal may issue retractions, corrections, or notices of concern, following COPE guidelines.

Reviewers must treat all manuscripts as confidential documents and must not share or discuss them with third parties. Reviews should be objective, constructive, and based on academic merit, with clear arguments and no personal criticism. Reviewers must declare any conflicts of interest and decline the review if necessary. Reviewers are expected to complete reviews within the agreed timeframe. If a delay is unavoidable, they should inform the editorial office promptly.

Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems takes all allegations of misconduct seriously. This includes but is not limited to: plagiarism, data falsification, ghost authorship, duplicate publication, and unethical experimentation. When misconduct is suspected or proven, the editorial board will take appropriate actions, which may include contacting the authors’ institutions, issuing retractions or corrections, and notifying indexing services.

The journal endorses the COPE Core Practices and encourages all parties involved in the publication process to adhere to these principles.

More information: https://publicationethics.org

References

References must be ordered alphabetically by authors’ names. Start each reference with a bibliography number; use these numbers in squared parentheses for in-text citations. Personal communications, unpublished manuscripts, submitted but not yet accepted, and similar unpublished items should not appear in the reference list. Such citations may be noted in the text.
Please use the following guidelines for arranging references:

• Journal article:
  Maremmani A. G. I., Rovai L., Maremmani I. (2012): Heroin addicts' psychopathological subtypes. Correlations with the natural history of illness. Heroin Addict Relat Clin Probl. 14(1): 11-22.
• Book:
  Tagliamonte A., Maremmani I. (1995): Drug Addiction and Related Clinical Problems. Springer-Verlag, Wien, New York.
• Book Chapter:
  Dole V. P. (1995): Methadone Maintenance. Comes of Age. In: Tagliamonte A., Maremmani I. (Eds.): Drug Addiction and Related Clinical Problems. Springer-Verlag, Wien New York. pp. 45-49.

Journal names should be abbreviated as they appear in Index Medicus; journals not currently indexed there should not be abbreviated.

In organising references in the text, we strongly suggest using a “reference manager”, namely EndNote. Please insert the reference code in the article text, permitting us to export a travelling bibliography. On our website, you can download the EndNote style for Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems to facilitate making a bibliography. Manuscripts must comply with these rules to be considered further.

The EndNotes© output file is downloadable at Heroin_Addiction.ens.

Drug Names

Generic names should, in general, be used. If an Author so desires, brand names may be inserted in parentheses. Drug names are spelt out according to the European Pharmacopoeia, but the American spelling should be used after the first use of a drug name.

Cost of Publication

Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems combines the characteristics of a fee-based and no-fee open-access journal. Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems is a scholarly journal available online to the reader without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. Editorial coordination, editing, and printing of an article requires the author's payment.

Subsidised activities are financed voluntarily and by educational grants from the Association for the Application of Neuroscientific Knowledge to Social Aims (AU-CNS), a not-for-profit agency located in Pietrasanta, Lucca, Italy (www.aucns.org); those requiring additional costs are typically financed by money made available to researchers for that purpose by a public or private funding agency, as part of a research grant.

AU-CNS was founded in Viareggio (Lucca) in 1994. It is a not-for-profit association aiming to promote the spread of scientific knowledge and its application to mental illness and substance abuse issues. AU-CNS is involved in research and teaching activities and organising seminars, conferences and public debates with either scientific or popular audience targets. Among these, the most remarkable are the National Conference of Addictive Diseases, which is held in Italy every two years, The European Opiate Addiction Treatment Association (EUROPAD) Conference, which is held in various European towns every two years, and a EUROPAD satellite meeting within the American Opioid Treatment Association Conference (AATOD) in the USA, which is held once every 18 months. AU-CNS directly cooperates with national and international associations based on everyday purposes and fields of interest and runs an editing activity comprising psychiatry and substance abuse textbooks.

Donations can be made to Support Europad Activities.

The articles are published in .pdf format with a fee of € 250.00 after acceptance. The fee covers the editorial expenses and the DOI registration fee. Printed versions of journal issues and articles can be obtained separately after negotiation with the editorial office.

Authors pay a one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the costs of peer review administration and management, professional production of articles in PDF, and dissemination of published papers in various venues and other publishing functions. There are no charges for rejected articles, submission charges, figures, or supplementary data. Some items (Editorials, Corrections, Addendums, Retractions, Comments, etc.) are published free of charge.

AU-CNS accept payments only in euros (EUR). Upon acceptance, the corresponding/submitting author will receive an e-mail with a link to pay the fees.

AU-CNS currently supports the following payment methods:

• Wire transfer
• Payment with a Credit Card
• Online Payment by PayPal

At: https://www.europad.org/become-a-member.php

APCs are payable within 5 to 10 business days.

Invoices are emailed shortly after acceptance to the payment contact provided by the authors. Only official invoices issued by AU-CNS are valid. We do not authorise any third party to collect the APCs. AU-CNS is the sole service provider and cannot be held liable for actions by third parties.

Journal Supplements

You can contact the Editor in Chief, Icro Maremmani, MD, at info@heroinaddictionrelatedclinicalproblems.org. Our team will be able to provide advice and quotations for journal supplements.

 

Archiving Policy

 

Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems is committed to ensuring the long-term preservation, accessibility, and integrity of its published content. All articles published in the journal are archived and permanently stored on the official journal website:
https://www.heroinaddictionrelatedclinicalproblems.org

Each article is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to ensure persistent and reliable citation and retrieval. Authors are allowed and encouraged to archive the final published version (PDF) of their articles in:

• Institutional repositories (university libraries or departmental websites)
• Subject-specific repositories (e.g., PubMed Central, where applicable)
• Personal websites and academic networking platforms (e.g., ResearchGate, Academia.edu)

No embargo period is required. Proper citation of the original source and DOI is mandatory in all cases.

In the unlikely event that Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems ceases publication, all published content will remain accessible via:

• The journal’s archived website;
• DOI-based links;
• Partner repositories, if available.

The publisher and editorial board are committed to preserving open access to all past issues.