Author’s guideline

Author’s Guideline

Instructions For Authors
Authors need to submit their manuscripts through the online submission platform available at https://ajms.site/submission/. Articles submitted as hard copies are not accepted. All first-time users need to register themselves. Registration is free. Once registered, authors can use their username and password to submit and keep track of their articles. In case of any problems, the author can contact the Technical Assistance at technicalsupport@ajms.site  Types of Manuscripts:
Academic Journal of Medical Sciences publishes manuscripts in the following categories

• Original Articles
• Review Articles
• Editorials
• Case Reports
• Position Papers
• Consensus Statements
• Special Commentary, etc.

Manuscripts are accepted from all fields of medical specialities.   They will be grouped into sections as required to make it easier for the readers.

General Information:

Academic Journal of Medical Sciences (AJMS) publishes original works and findings that contribute to the advancements in the field of Medicine and Allied Sciences and Publication of Scientific Investigation.

Author Responsibility:

The journal accepts only original work that has not been published elsewhere. All authors must confirm that neither the manuscript nor any part of it was written or published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere. Publication of the content as an abstract during the proceedings of meetings is not considered prior publication and can be submitted for publication. At the time of submission, authors should disclose details, if the study described in the manuscript had been previously presented in a meeting or published as an abstract. The details have to be mentioned in the Acknowledgments section. Any use of previously published material protected by copyright laws must be clearly acknowledged in the manuscript. Publishing of material on a website may be considered prior publication and should be mentioned at the time of submission. Authors should disclose details of related papers even those authored in a different language. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to any of the four components mentioned below:

1. Concept and design of the study, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Aptitude to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the individual included for authorship credit toward the study itself and the writing of the manuscript. Once the article has been submitted, the order cannot be changed without written consent from all the contributors. The journal prescribes a maximum number of eight authors for all categories of manuscripts except for Case Reports and Case Series that will have a maximum of four authors. The authors need to identify one author who will correspond with the Journal office in all matters related to the manuscript called the Corresponding Author. The content of the final manuscript including changes suggested by the Editor or reviewer of the manuscript is the responsibility of the corresponding author.

Ethical Considerations:

• The Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in confronting any ethical misbehavior. The Journal also follows the guidelines mentioned in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
• Studies conducted must adhere to and be in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for researches involving humans. According to (Federal Research Misconduct Policy) scientific misconduct includes:

• Data falsification: Fabrication, deceptive and selective reporting of findings, suppression of data and/or distortion of data
• Plagiarism: Use without permission the language, ideas, or thoughts of another and representation of them as one’s own original work . Direct copying of sentences, whether from their previously published paper or from someone else’s paper, is considered as plagiarism. Authors need to check that they have not inadvertently ‘cut and paste’ verbatim from published works.  
• According to the World Association of Medical Editors Plagiarism is the use of others published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. The intent and effect of plagiarism are to mislead the reader as to the contributions of the plagiarizer. This applies to whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, Institutional Review Board applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format (print or electronic). Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of their previous writings on the same topic in another of their publications, without specifically citing it formally in quotes. This practice is widespread and sometimes unintentional. The journal requires authors to disclose information and cite references about reused content from previously published work of their own or of others. Incorrect authorship: Excluding authors, wrongly presenting the same material as original in more than one publication, the inclusion of authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published; or submission of articles without the concurrence of all authors. Misappropriation of the ideas of others: an important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct. Violation of generally accepted research practices: Improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results. Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: Violations of regulations and laws involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or chemical materials. Any form of unethical behavior is strictly discouraged and will result in the submitting author and his group from being banned from submitting material to the journal for a time frame depending on the severity of malpractice.

• Plagiarism:  Authors are not allowed to utilize verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere. COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in cases in which plagiarism is detected.

• Data Fabrication/Falsification:  Falsification is the practice of omitting or altering research materials, data, or processes so that the results of the research are no longer accurately reflected. Fabrication is the practice of inventing data or results and reporting them in the research. Both of these misconducts are fraudulent and seriously alter the integrity of the research. Therefore, articles must be written based on original data and the use of falsified or fabricated data is strongly prohibited. In confronting cases with fabricated or falsified data COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are followed. Researchers who perform randomized controlled or clinical trials (RCTs) are advised to keep their original data at hand. The Journal keeps the right to ask for raw data even after publication.

• Image Manipulation:
  The AJMS encourages authors to send their original images. All digital images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be checked for inappropriate manipulation. No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable as long as they are applied to the entire image and do not misrepresent any information present in the original, including the background. The editors will request the original data from the authors to compare the manipulated figures in cases suspected of inappropriate manipulation.
  

• Human & Animal Rights Statement:
  Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board).
  When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare.
• Informed Consent:
  All patients and participants in a research project should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects of the drugs and interventions. Written informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians is necessary for any such studies. The Journal reserves the right to request the related documents. Articles that require informed consent should contain related statements in the “Methods” section.
• Authorship:
  According to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, released by the ICMJE, an “Author” is generally considered to be someone who simultaneously meets the following conditions 1, 2, 3, and 4.
  1-Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  2-Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  3-Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  4-Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
• Conflict of Interest:
  We request all authors and reviewers to inform us about any kinds of “Conflict of Interest” (such as financial, personal, political, or academic) that would potentially affect their judgment. Authors are preferably asked to fill the uniform disclosure form available through: (http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf)

• Copyright:
  If a manuscript contains any previous published image or text, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders. The author is required to obtain and submit the written original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscript.
  

•  Open Access Policy:
   This journal provides an option of open access publication . The article published in open access option is immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
  Authors have the option of open access publication . Our open access policy is work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
  
  
• Retraction Policy: The AJMS uses the COPE flowchart for retraction of a published article to determine whether a published article should be retracted.
• Assignment of Authorship Responsibilities:  Your article will not be published unless you warrant that “This article is an original work, has not been published before, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form”. The AJMS Assignment Form (available in the Forms tab of the website) should be signed and dated by all authors and sent along with the manuscript.
• Scientific and Initial Review process:  AJMS staff would check the structure and content of manuscripts to ensure compliance with standard structures (based on the type of study), the Journal’s scope, standard guidelines, quality, novelty, and adherence to ethical issues. In this step, articles would be screened and triaged in the shortest possible time. As a result, such screening would assist the editor in making fair final decisions on articles and ultimately improve the final quality of published articles.
• Peer-Review Process:  Submitted articles are primarily evaluated by our statisticians who check the articles for any methodological flaws, format, and their compliance with the Journal’s instructions. Then, a submission code will be allocated and all the future contacts should be based on this code. Through a single-blind review, the articles will be reviewed by at least two external (peer) reviewers. Their comments will be passed to the authors and their responses to the comments along with the reviewers’ comments will then be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief, and a final reviewer who can be a member of the Editorial Board. The final review process will be discussed in regular editorial board sessions and on the basis of the comments, and the Journal’s standards, the Editors-in-Chief will decide which articles should be published. It should be noted that articles submitted by the staff and editors of the AJMS will also be subjected to peer review.

Requirements for Different Types of Articles

• Original articles: Should contain a structured abstract, 3-5 keywords, introduction, materials (patients) and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement (if applicable), and references sections, and maximum 4 tables and 4 figures. The length should not exceed 3000-3500 words excluding the references, abstract, figures and tables. 15-40 references should be stated for original articles.
• Clinical trials: The format is similar to original articles. However, the CONSORT flow diagram should be added as a figure. RCTs should be registered at any RCT Registry approved by the WHO and their registration number should be mentioned in the title page.
• Brief reports: Should contain a non-structured abstract, 3-5 keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement (if applicable), and references sections, and maximum 2 tables and figures. However, the word count should not exceed 2000 words. 10-15 references should be stated.
• Case reports: Should contain a non-structured abstract, 3-5 keywords, introduction, case presentation, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement (if applicable), and references sections, and maximum 1 table and 3 figures. 5-10 references should be stated. Case reports should optimally be accompanied by relevant figures to document findings. Informed consents should be obtained from the patients to report their cases. The Journal keeps the right to ask for original signed informed consents.
• Review articles:

• Narrative reviews- Should contain at least 60 references. Abstract should be non-structured. The word count should not exceed 4500 words. Narrative reviews should critically assess the current knowledge of the field.
• Systematic reviews- Systematic reviews of RCTs or Observational Studies will be accepted by the Journal. The protocol of the study should adhere to PRISMA or MOOSE guidelines for systematic reviews of RCTs or Observational studies, respectively. Up to 40 references can be stated. Abstracts should be structured.

• Letters to the Editor: Letters should be less than 750 words. Letters discussing articles published in the AJMS should be submitted at most within 4 months after the publication of the main article. Letters will undergo peer review and will be edited for clarity. Up to 5 references should be stated.
• Photo clinics: Figures that contain a significant medical point can also be accepted. Photo clinics should contain one or two high quality figures and a description of the figures no more than 500 words. Up to 5 references should be stated.

Paper Preparations:

•  Cover letter should contain the rationale of performing the research and selecting the AJMS as well as a statement that you will not resubmit your article to another journal until the reviewing process will be completed. Also please indicate whether the authors have published or submitted any related papers from the same study.
•  Title page of the article should include 1) the title of the article; 2) authors’ names; 3) name of the institution where the work was done; 4) running title (short form of the main title presented on the top of published pages); and 5) complete mailing address, telephone/fax numbers, and email address of the corresponding author. This page is not numbered.
• What’s Known and What’s New boxes should contain at most 50 words stating the current knowledge on the topic of your article according to previous studies (what’s known), and the novel points/results your article adds to the literature (what’s new).
• Abstract should be structured for original articles providing the background/objective of the study, methods, results, and conclusion. It should not exceed 250 words altogether. Number this page as page 1. Abstracts of other types of contributions should be non-structured providing the essential information. When abstracting a review article, a concise summary of the salient points should be addressed. Preferably, abbreviations should not be mentioned in the abstract.

                 Keywords are used for indexing purposes; each article should provide three to five keywords selected from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).

• Introduction should contain a short background of previous studies and possible gaps in the literature, and specify the purpose and objective of the study or observation.
• Methods section must indicate clearly the steps taken to acquire the data. Be sure that it includes only information that was available at the time the plan or protocol for the study was written. It should be detailed (including: controls, inclusion and exclusion criteria, etc) and may be separated into subsections. Repeating the details of standard techniques is best avoided.  For reports of randomized controlled trials, authors should refer to the CONSORT statement (http://www.consort-statement .org/). Reporting guidelines such as STROBE, STARD, and PRISMA would help you report high quality research and to provide all required information and evidence for related methodology. EQUATOR Network website would help you in using these guidelines.  The software used for statistical analyses and description of the actual method should be mentioned.Reports of randomized, controlled trials should follow the recommendations of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement.Reporting guidelines for specific study designs:
  

  Initiative	Type of Study	Source
  CONSORT	Randomized controlled trials	http://www.consort-statement.org
  STARD	Studies of diagnostic accuracy	http://www.consort-statement.org/stardstatement.htm
  QUOROM	Systematic reviews and meta-analyses	http://www.consort-statement.org/Initiatives/MOOSE/moose.pdf
  STROBE	Observational studies in epidemiology	http://www.strobe-statement.org
  MOOSE	Meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology	http://www.consort-statement.org/Initiatives/MOOSE/moose.pdf

 Results should be presented in a chronological sequence in the text, table, and illustration. Organize the results according to their importance. They should be based on your own findings.Tables:

• Each table should be given on a separate page, paginated as part of the paper. Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and the number should be followed by a brief descriptive caption, occupying not more than two lines, at the head of the table (e.g. Table 1: Effect of drug on blood pressure). Tables should normally be self-explanatory, with necessary descriptions provided underneath the table. Each column should have a heading and the units of measurement should be given in parentheses in the heading. Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.Figures and Legends

  Authors are encouraged to use color to enhance the impact and clarity of figures. There is no charge for using color in International Journal of Advances in Medicine. For figures supplied in parts, please use A, B, C, etc. to label the panels or parts of the figure. Name your figure files with Figure and the figure number, e.g., Figure 1: Liver enzyme levels. For the best quality final product, it is highly recommended that you submit all of your artwork photographs, line drawings, etc. – in an electronic format. Computer prepared images must be at a minimum of 300 dpi at the final publication size. Lower resolution will result in pixilation and poor quality images. These should be submitted as JPEG or TIFF.
  Figure legends should be typed on a separate page of the main manuscript document. Legends should explain the figures in sufficient detail that, whenever possible, they can be understood without reference to the text. Legends, captions and labels should be consistent with terminology or nomenclature used in the text. 
• Discussion should challenge the findings of the study with other available evidence in the format of arguments and counterarguments. It should emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow them. Possible mechanisms or explanations for these findings should be explored. The limitations of the study and the implications of the findings for future research or clinical practice should be explored. The purpose of the discussion is to present a brief and pertinent interpretation of the results against the background of existing knowledge. Any assumptions on which conclusions are based must be stated clearly.
• Conclusion The main conclusions should be conveyed in a final paragraph with a clear statement of how the study advances knowledge and understanding in the field. should state the final result and recommendation that the author(s) has (have) reached. Such results and recommendations should be derived from the researcher’s own study and the results of other studies should not be stated in this section.

• Supplementary materials such as movie clips, questionnaires, etc may be published on the online version of the Journal. Any technical, general, financial, and material support or contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, can be cited at the end of the text as Acknowledgments.
• References
  should be complied numerically according to the order of citation in the text in Vancouver style. The numbers of references should preferably not exceed 40 for original articles, 15 for brief, and 10 for case reports. References should optimally be prepared with EndNote software.  For the references credited to more than 6 authors please provide the name of the first six authors and represent the remaining authors by the phrase “et al.” For various references please refer to “the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers”. Listed below are sample references. Moreover, AJMS has its own EndNote style. Authors are advised to prepare their references based on this style. This style is available at this link.

•  Journal Article:
  Gaydess A, Duysen E, Li Y, Gilman V, Kabanov A, Lockridge O, et al. Visualization of exogenous delivery of nanoformulated butyrylcholinesterase to the central nervous system. Chem Biol Interact. 2010;187:295-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cbi.2010.01.005. PubMed PMID: 20060815; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2998607.
  Javan S, Tabesh M. Action of carbon dioxide on pulmonary vasoconstriction. J Appl Physiol. In press 2005

•  Complete Book:
  Guyton AC: Textbook of Medical Physiology. 8th ed. Philadelphia, PA, Saunders, 1996.
•  Chapter in Book:
  Young VR. The role of skeletal muscle in the regulation of protein metabolism. In Munro HN, editor: Mammalian protein metabolism. Vol 4. San Diego; Academic; 1970. p. 585-674.
• Website:
  National Cancer Institute. Fact sheet: targeted cancer therapies, 2012. Available at http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/targeted#q1. Accessed 9 June 2012.

 

• Language and Style:
  Contributions should be in either American or British English. The text must be clear and concise, conforming to accepted standards of English style and usage. Non-native English speakers are advised to seek professional help with the language. All materials should be double-spaced and pages should be numbered. Abbreviations should be standard and used just in necessary cases, after complete explanations in the first usage. The editorial office reserves the right to edit the submitted manuscripts in order to comply with the Journal’s style. In any case, the authors are responsible for the published material.

Correction of Errata:
The Journal will publish an erratum when a factual error in a published item has been documented.

Article publication Fees:
There are no submission and processing fees .  For Open Access publications, authors have to pay 200 Euro ($250 US) before publications and after final acceptance issued by the journal. It should be noted that choosing the open access publication by the author did not affect the review process
For further information, please contact the Editorial Office:
Email: editor-in-chief@ajms.site

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