About us
| Authorship Criteria |
Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions
- to conception and design or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
- drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
- final approval of the version to be published.
Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors.
For a study from in a single institute the number of contributors should not exceed six. For a case-report, images, Letter to the Editor and review article the number of contributors should not exceed four. A justification should be included, if the number of contributors exceed these limits.
Only those who have done substantial work in a particular field can write a review article. A short summary of the work done by the contributor(s) in the field of review should accompany the manuscript. The journal expects the contributors to give post-publication updates on the subject of review. The update should be brief, covering the advances in the field after the publication of article and should be sent as letter to editor, as and when major development occur in the field.
The manuscripts will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that they are being submitted to one journal at a time and have not been published, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere.
The Editors review all submitted manuscripts initially. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific flaws, or absence of importance of message are rejected. On an average 20% of manuscripts get rejected at the initial stages. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. The journal will not return the unaccepted manuscripts. Other manuscripts are sent to two or more expert reviewers without revealing the identity of the contributors to the reviewers. Each manuscript is also assigned to a member of the editorial team, who based on the comments from the reviewers takes a final decision on the manuscript. Within a period of 10 to 12 weeks, the contributors will be informed about the reviewers’ comments and acceptance/rejection of manuscript. On an average, the submission to first decision period was less than 32 days in the year 2004. Up to 70% of the manuscripts submitted to the journal do not get accepted.
Articles accepted would be copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs will be sent to the first contributor, which has to be returned within three days. Correction received after that period may not be included.
The contributor may provide names of two or three qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but who are not affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor/s.
Original articles: Randomised controlled trials, intervention studied, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, cost effectiveness analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rate. Up to 3000 words excluding references and abstract.
Review articles: Systemic critical assessments of literature and data sources. Up to 4000 words excluding references and abstract.
Case reports: new/interesting/very rare cases can be reported. Cases with clinical significance or implications will be given priority, whereas, mere reporting of a rare case may not be considered. Up to 1000 words excluding references and abstract and up to 10 references.
Letter to the Editor: Should be short, decisive observation. They should not be preliminary observations that need a later paper for validation. Up to 400 words and 4 references.
Announcements of conferences, meetings, courses, awards, and other items likely to be of interest to the readers should be submitted with the name and address of the person from whom additional information can be obtained. Up to 100 words.
| Contribution Details |
Contributors should provide a description of what each of them contributed towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, as applicable: concepts, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing, and manuscript review. Authors’ contributions will be printed on the first page of the article. One or more author should take responsibility of the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as ‘guarantor’