Submissions

Author Guidelines

Rhetoric of Health & Medicine
Author Guidelines

Submission Types:

• Original research articles, including pilot and case studies. Articles with significant multimedia components may be published in online form on the RHM website. Research article submissions should be no longer than 10,000 words, though longer manuscripts may be considered at the discretion of the editors.
• Dialogues (invited and proposed) among multiple scholars and stakeholders about the role of and/or study of rhetoric in health and medical issues; the editors especially welcome dialogues that include public and other nonacademic stakeholders and that propose new ways of engaging or studying health and medicine. Dialogues can take different forms but should be no longer than 5,000 words. Topics, contributors, and forms of dialogues should be approved by the editors before submission.
• Review essays that put in conversation three or more fairly recent publications (including article- and book-length scholarly publications across a range of disciplines, publications in a range of media, and publications in health or medical forums) related to RHM as a scholarly field of inquiry. Review essays should include substantial synthesis, critique, and original larger observations about the field and its future directions.
• “Persuasion briefs” or white papers that explain the role of rhetoric in and synthesize rhetorical insights about a particular set of health or medical practices (including applied communication contexts), written for non- or extra-academic audiences (e.g., policymakers, health/medical practitioners, publics and community members, business representatives) with the purpose of informing, improving, and advocating; in some cases, these briefs will be commissioned by the editors and follow up on research articles and dialogues.

Review Process
All research articles, dialogues, review essays, and “persuasion briefs” will first be screened by the editors and, if found to be appropriate for the journal and ready for review, undergo peer review by at least two anonymous reviewers, usually from different areas of the field. A decision about whether to send a manuscript for review will usually be made within two weeks of submission, and a decision about publication will usually be made within six to eight weeks after a manuscript is sent for review.

Submission Instructions
By submitting a manuscript to RHM, you are acknowledging that the work has not been previously published, that the work is not being considered for publication in other venues, and that you will not allow the manuscript to be so considered before notification in writing of an editorial decision by RHM.

Submit manuscripts by creating an account by registering (see link to do so above) or by logging in to your existing account. 

• Include a title and, in most cases, informative headings.
• Include an abstract of approximately 150 words and 5–7 keywords that do not appear in the title.
• The manuscript should not be longer than 10,000 total words (including abstract, notes, references, tables/figures, and appendixes) for research articles, and not be longer than 5,000 total words for dialogues, review essays, and persuasion briefs.
• The manuscript must conform to the guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7^th edition) with the sole exception to use authors’ first names in the list of references as well as when named in the text. 
• Do not include identifying information about the author in the text or file properties.
• Use endnotes rather than footnotes, if applicable.
• Submit as Microsoft Word files (.doc or .docx) that are page-numbered and double-spaced (including the abstract, block quotations, tables and figures, endnotes, and references); tables and figures should be placed in appropriate locations within the text, not in additional files. Please do not include line numbers.
• If applicable, include a statement confirming that research data about human subjects was collected in accordance with the standards and guidelines of any and all relevant IRBs (or equivalent bodies).
• Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission and paying any associated fees for use of any images or other material that has been previously published elsewhere.

Illustrations
Manuscripts accepted for publication should be accompanied by separate high-quality files of any illustrations. Digital files are recommended for best reproduction. These should be 300 dpi or higher; sized to fit on journal page (within 4.75” wide by 7.75” high); EPS, TIFF, or PSD (Photoshop) format. All illustrations and tables should include titles and should be clearly labeled and credited.

Copyright
Authors transfer copyright to the University of Florida Press but retain the following specific rights: (1) to use the article in their own teaching activities; (2) to publish the article in any book they may write; (3) to include a preprint version of the article on their departmental or institutional database, or personal website (4) to include a PDF of the final, copyedited, and proofread version of the article as it appears in the journal on their departmental or institutional database or personal website 12 months after final publication To obtain permission for other uses, please contact the University of Florida Press: journals@upress.ufl.edu.

Inclusive Language

The RHM journal asks that authors adhere to using inclusive language in all submitted manuscripts. Please consult the American Psychological Association’s “General Principles for Reducing Bias” along with guidelines for using inclusive language when addressing and referring to

Age

Disability

Gender and Gender Identity

Racial and Ethnic Identity

Sexual Orientation

Socioeconomic Status

And Intersectionality

We expect authors to be willing to revise/edit for inclusive langauge where necessary. 

Additional Guidance on Emprical Studies

Policy and Rationale on Writing with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• The use of Generative AI is prohibited for the preparation and writing of  manuscripts submitted to the RHM journal. 
• Clearly disclosed use of AI for computational research will be permitted at the discretion of the editorial team.
• With exceptions for when AI is used to conduct computational research or as an object of scrutiny, the expectation is that the entire manuscript text is human-written. In instances with any AI usage, the extent of use must be carefully documented in a note to the editors and reviewers. 
• Citation managers that aid authors with developing accurate reference lists may  be used without documentation.
• AI and text generators that assist with grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, and clarity must be used with great caution as they may result in dramatically changed text that reads like AI, which and thus will be treated as AI-generated.
• The journal reserves the right at any stage to not publish a manuscript if it is determined to have ethical issues, including but not limited to AI usage.
• Similarly, reviewers must not use AI tools to generate reviews. Do not paste any portion of manuscripts into text generators or other LLMs.
• Authors must not input reader reports or editorial decisions into generative AI platforms to create revision plans unless they have received explicit permission to do so. In addition to providing authors with synthesized feedback from reviewers, the editorial team at RHM would be happy to meet with authors to discuss their plans for revisions.

Many scholarly publication venues have recently had to consider how best to address the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic scholarship and research. These decisions have needed to balance thoughtfulness with expediency given that, as David Lyford-Tilley (2025) has commented, “‘No AI use policy’ is a de facto ‘use AI all you like’ policy” (emphasis in original).  Currently, the University of Florida Press is drafting AI guidelines and although many journals have adopted their publishers’ umbrella policies (Hollister, et al., 2024, p. 3) or adapted them to meet their needs (Wientroub & Hefti, 2023), like various other publishers (see Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023; Taylor & Francis, n.d.), U of FL Press has allowed each journal the flexibility to craft their own in-house policies that may suit their needs.  We come to the above policy with the understanding that AI can serve as a useful tool, yet, as we explain, the potential harm in incorporating AI into the writing, editing, submission, and reviewing processes outweighs the potential gains that may come from its implementation. 

Only recently have researchers begun to publish studies on scholarly journals’ AI policies (Lin, 2024; Almobayed, et al., 2025). Particularly in the areas of health and medicine, these overviews have tended to show a wide range of policies pertaining to the usage of AI in manuscript submissions. Lin (2024) for example, found that of the major publication venues in science and medicine that included a policy on AI usage, the scope and instructions for authors to disclose such use varied immensely. As Lin explains, some journals may not explicitly restrict the usage of AI, while others may prohibit only the use of AI-generated images and videos due to legal issues; others may put restrictions on AI to “improve readability and language of the work” (p. 85). Equally inconsistent is how to disclose such usage when permitted. Most journals put forth a “general” request that authors simply “describe AI use” while others request more specificity by asking authors to list what tool was used and/or what content was generated via AI. 

Common across AI policies, however, is the explicit (and sometimes implicit) conviction that only humans can be considered authors, and therefore AI-generated information cannot be included as a cited reference (see for example, Hollister, et al, 2024). Statements that are put forth by organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) each underscores this belief in descriptions of their policy rationales. 

Thus, some journals, ours included, have explicitly prohibited the use of any AI content for authors and/or peer reviewers (Hosseini, 2023). We agree with Lyford-Tilley when he writes that large language models can only look for patterns in text usage based on the written data it has available, increasing the potential for it to emulate biased and incomplete information. Relatedly, we may become numb to the various hallucinations that it produces, resulting in writing that is not only biased but also inaccurate. At RHM, we ask authors not to use AI in their writing and discourage its use for assisting with grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, and clarity given the potential it has to overtake one’s writing.

Likewise, we ask reviewers to not generate reviews based on generated predictive text, joining presses like the University Press of Colorado, which has forbidden the use of AI tools to draft peer review reports because of intellectual property rights issues that inputting manuscripts into large language models can create. Additionally, the press writes “AI lacks the capacity for nuanced human judgement and cannot engage in the reflective process for providing meaningful academic critique.” Sage (n.d.) joins this practice, outlining consequences for reviews found to have been generated with AI. 

As many presses have noted, the use of AI continues to be an evolving topic which requires us to stay informed of developments and consider and reconsider such policies as new developments arise. Based on the information we have available presently, we have found this policy prohibiting AI to be appropriate in order to preserve the integrity of our authors’ research and encourage thinking critically about one’s writing.

References

Almobayed, Amr, et al. (2025). Do ophthalmology journals have AI policies for manuscript writing? American Journal of Ophthalmology, 271, 38 – 42.

Hollister, C. V., Schweikhard, A., Hosier, A., & Williams, J. A. (2024). CIL's new generative AI policy. Communications in Information Literacy, 18 (1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2024.18.1.1

Hosseini, M., Rasmussen, L. M., & Resnik, D. B. (2023). Using AI to write scholarly publications. Accountability in Research, 31(7), 715–723. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2023.2168535

Johns Hopkins University Press. (2023, July 24). Press.jhu.edu. Generative AI policy for authors https://www.press.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/media/2023/07/Generative%20AI%20for%20Authors_final_0.pdf 

Lyford-Tilley, D. (2025): Debate: Not having an AI policy is a policy to use AI freely. Public Money & Management. DOI: 10.1080/09540962.2024.2437867

Sage. (n.d.) Artificial Intelligence policy. Sagepub.com. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/artificial-intelligence-policy

Taylor & Francis (n.d.). AI policy. Taylor and Francis. https://taylorandfrancis.com/our-policies/ai-policy/ 

University Press of Colorado. (n.d.) Policy preventing the use of AI in peer review. UPColorado.com. https://upcolorado.com/publish-with-us/policy-preventing-the-use-of-ai-in-peer-review 

Wientroub S, Hefti F. (2023). Introducing Journal of Children’s Orthopaedics’ ChatGPT and generative AI policy. Journal of Children’s Orthopaedics, 17(4), 297-298. doi:10.1177/18632521231191687