vHealth Communications

The visual approach of vHealth communications does not aspire to replace normal-length articles, but aims at facilitating communication to the wider set of stakeholders involved in research today, i.e. government offices, decision-makers, funding agencies, diseases programme managers as well as the very people who live and work in endemic areas. To make visualization an integral part of the scientific communication, the journal welcomes the combination of a short manuscript and a complementing video clip, which form together a vHealth communication. The video clip is at the core of a vHealth communication, presenting objectives, concepts, methodologies and spatial associations in a manner that is entertaining and easily understandable, yet coherent and scientifically sound. In accordance with the focus of the journal, vHealth communications need to show application of geographical information systems, remote sensing, global positioning systems, spatial statistics or other geospatial tools in the context of human and veterinary health.

How to prepare a vHealth communication

The manuscript of a vHealth communication needs to follow the instructions as provided by the journal's Guidelines for Authors, with the following exceptions and additions:

Manuscript

  • Abstract not exceeding 100 words (visualisation needs to be mentioned somewhere in the abstract);
  • 3-5 keywords;
  • Background of the visualisation (maximum 1,400 words), introducing the topic, the methodology of the research presented), some key findings of the research and the motivation behind the vHealth communication;
  • One figure or table;
  • One box summarizing the overall aim/motivation of the vHealth communication (50-100 words);
  • One box describing the software used for producing the video clip (100-150 words). The objective of this box is to encourage other researchers to produce video clips for disseminating their research findings to a wider audience;
  • No more than 12 references.

Video clip

  • The video clip should be entertaining and easily understandable, yet coherent and scientifically sound;
  • The video should have a clear structure/story line (e.g. introduction, methodology, visualized findings, outlook);
  • Duration of the video clip: maximum 10 minutes;
  • Video clip must be in good quality (picture and sound).

An Internet link to the video clip has to be provided when submitting a vHealth communication. It is the responsibility of the authors that no copyrights are violated in the final video clip, which will be published on YouTube by the journal.