The Quarterly Report Publication
Guidelines for Authors

The Quarterly Report is the professional issues publication of APTA Home Health, an Academy of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). The mission of the publication reflects the mission of the Academy: to provide a means by which Association members having a common interest in the delivery of physical therapy in the home and other alternative settings within the community may meet, confer, and promote these interests.

The Quarterly Report will consider material for publication with the understanding that the material has not been published elsewhere and is consistent with themes relevant to the practice of physical therapy in the home health setting. Material published in The Quarterly Report is the property of the author(s) and may be submitted by the author to other publications following its appearance in The Quarterly Report.

Relevance

The Academy will consider for publication only articles or subjects relevant to the practice of physical therapy in the home health setting. The Academy prefers articles authored by physical therapists, physical therapist assistants, or physical therapy students, but welcomes contributions from other professionals. With The Quarterly Report, the Academy wants to publish case reports or other related articles that provide valuable clinical lessons and are deemed of particular educational value for home health physical therapy practice. The Quarterly Report articles may be focused on issues related to access and the management in home health services. Articles could also be focused on evidence based management and treatment of conditions frequently encountered in the setting in addition subjects that may have economic, social or political they impact on individual patient’s lives and care provided in the home health setting would also be appropriate. These articles may provide critical insight on recent advances in home health practice, implications for practice, and future directions. The perspectives presented in the article should be supported by relevant sources and cited in American Medical Association (AMA) format. Please note that Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation source.

Ways to Contribute

The Academy encourages the participation of all readers of The Quarterly Report. If you have story ideas or recommendations, please contact the The Quarterly Report Editor. The current Editor is listed on Page 2 of each The Quarterly Report issue and on the APTA Home Health website: www.aptahomehealth.org • About Us > Leadership/Governance > Academy Leadership > Publications Chair. Materials may be submitted to The Quarterly Report under one of the following three categories:

• Letters. Letters may be in response to an article, a series of articles, or the publication as a whole, or they may relate to professional issues in physical therapy. Receipt of letters will not be acknowledged; however, correspondents will be notified if their letter will be published. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Letters to the editor are typically opinion in nature and as such do not require support of relevant references. (1500 words or less)
  
  
• Articles. Articles considered for publication in The Quarterly Report typically address topics of relevance to physical therapists working in the home health practice setting. If you are unsure of the relevance of your topic to our publication content, please send an inquiry prior to submitting an entire article. (1500 to 3000 words)
  
  
• Case Reports. This is a narrative description of an unusual patient case, disease condition, or response to home health physical therapy. The intent is to update practitioners’ knowledge regarding management. The main components are an introduction, case description including test and measures, intervention, and discussion. The takeaway provides important guidelines and raises awareness of current practice in home health physical therapy.¹ (1500 to 3000 words)

How to Submit an Article

For most reference, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and usage conventions, The Quarterly Report follows the style outlined in the current edition of the American Medical Association Manual of Style. The AMA style reference is available here. In addition, terminology usage in all submissions should be consistent with definitions provided in APTA’s Guide to Physical Therapist Practice.

Required information in the document:

• Title: Give your article a working title. The title should appear at the top of the article. If your article is accepted, the Editor or Publication Committee may recommend revisions to the title.
  
  
• Author’s Name with Credentials: The author’s name(s) should be listed under the title exactly as he/she desires it should be listed and should include credentials listed as prescribed by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA):
• Designations and Credentials: Authors should follow APTA’s guidance related to designations, credentials, and certifications as required by the APTA House of Delegates position CONSUMER PROTECTION THROUGH LICENSURE OF PHYSICAL THERAPISTS AND PHYSICAL THERAPIST ASSISTANTS (HOD P06-14-08-18, Principle II) to limit the use of abbreviated designations after a physical therapist's or physical therapist assistant's name. The intention of this position is to decrease consumer confusion: the use of abbreviations is reduced, while other designations—including many honors and certifications—are either written out in full or omitted, depending on the circumstances. The Academy will correct designations not provided by authors in the correct format.
  
  
• Author’s Bio: Articles should include a short biographical statement about the author (full name and credentials, current position) and how they may be reached (e-mail address or phone number).

Format
Articles should be submitted in electronic format as a word processing file attachment, preferably Microsoft Word, e-mailed to the editor listed on the APTA Home Health website as previously referenced or through the on-line form linked on the Publications webpage.

Articles should be submitted single-spaced, single column in Times New Roman or a similar standard font in black (font color). Please do not send multiple-column documents.

Please do not use headers, footers, page numbers, horizontal or vertical lines in your article.

Place endnotes, footnotes, and references at the end of the article.

All abbreviations used should be defined within the text at first use. Example, if the author used VAS they would first need to define it. It should read "...visual analog scale (VAS)...". Please also refrain from use of jargon or slang. 

Graphics and Photographs
All graphics and graphic elements, including charts and graphs, may be in either black and white or color. All graphics must be provided in their original, native formats so that they can be modified if necessary. If this isn’t possible, they should be exported to a high resolution universal format and provided in a separate attachment.

Photographs may be submitted in either color or black and white. Please be sure to submit a high resolution file if providing photographs in electronic format.

All tables and figures should have a title and a brief explanation indicating the content of that table/figure. Readers should be able to look at these and have an idea of what each table represents at a glance, without having to go through the text to find a description.

Unless it is available in the public domain (such as tables in regulatory documents from CMS) to reprint illustrations, photographs, figures, or tables taken from other sources, authors must obtain and submit written permission from the original sources, in the name of APTA Home Health.

References within the article to graphics or photographs should be numeric rather than generic. For example:

Graphics and photographs should be provided via e-mail in files separate from the article to the editor. Please include the graphics in your original article to provide us with guidance regarding their placement within the article. 

Manufacturer Information
When mentioning equipment or products in an article, authors should provide the names and addresses of the manufacturers. Mention of specific products or companies does not imply endorsement by The Quarterly Report or APTA Home Health. Trademark indication should be included if applicable.

Editorial Process
When an article is received by the Academy, an acknowledgment of receipt is sent to the author, and the article is forwarded to the Editor for review. The Editor may assign the article for review to a member of the Publications Committee. The reviewer will contact the author directly with any recommended revisions or questions. By submitting the author understands that grammatical errors will be corrected by the editorial board. Content errors and more substantial errors will be returned to the author with comments for correction. If the author and reviewer agree upon the revisions, the article is forwarded to the Editor and scheduled for publication. Unless authors request otherwise, submissions are generally considered for publication in the next issue of The Quarterly Report, although the Editor may postpone publication at his/her discretion. Each author will receive a complimentary copy of the issue in which the article appears. Publications revert to the author(s) following the appearance of the article in The Quarterly Report.

Policies of Note

People-First Language
The Quarterly Report adheres to the use of “people-first” language. A subject should not be referred to by disability or condition (eg, “patients with stroke,” not “stroke patients”), and terms that could be considered biasing or discriminatory in any way should be removed.

Academy Operational Documents
In addition to providing a forum for discussion of topics of interest to APTA Home Health members, The Quarterly Report is also acknowledged as a tool for communicating Academy activities to its members. Publication of Academy operational documents, such as minutes, Bylaws, and meeting reports, is at the discretion of the Editor. Whenever possible, these items will be printed separately, as an insertion in The Quarterly Report, rather than included in the body of the publication.

Publication Conventions

Current conventions for The Quarterly Report are listed in the last page of this document. Please note that conventions change periodically. We recommend downloading this document and reviewing it prior to submitting an article to the Academy.

Conventions for The Quarterly Report

• Endnotes, Footnotes & Reference Numbers
• Format: superscript
• With Punctuation: A note number should generally be placed at the end of a sentence or at the end of a clause. The number normally follows a quotation (whether it is run into the text or set as an extract). Relative to other punctuation, the number follows any punctuation mark except for the dash, which it precedes.
• Home Care Spelling
• home care vs homecare
• Health Care Spelling
• health care vs healthcare
• Punctuation Between Sentences
• A single period, followed by a single space.
• Use of numbers in narrative
• Except in the case of research references, spell out numbers of values less than eleven when used in narration.

References
Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references. References should be in American Medical Association (AMA) citation style. The AMA style reference is available here. Please include complete references when discussing particular concepts, principles, or statistics. References should be numbered consecutively within the text, with a full reference list provided at the end of the article. Suggested reading lists may also be included at the end of an article.

1. Reference: Sun Z. Tips for writing a case report for the novice author. J Med Radiat Sci. 2013;60(3):108– 113. doi:10.1002/jmrs.18