Submissions

 All manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” [in International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals. Ann Intern Med 1997;126:36-47].

The instructions to the authors of articles in PMJ are given under the following subheadings:

1. Editorial policies

2. Editorial and peer review processes

3. Types of submissions accepted

4. Manuscript components

 5. Manuscript submission

 6. After acceptance

 

 Editorial policies

 i. Ethical and humane considerations

Pushpagiri Medical Journal is dedicated to the humane and ethical conduct of all studies, human or animal.

 ii. Authorship criteria Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contribution to each of the following three components:

 a. Concept and design of the study, and acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data

b. Drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content

c. Final approval of the version to be published

 

Participation solely in the collection of data or acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research group does not justify authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. Order of naming the authors should be based on the relative contribution towards the study and writing the manuscript. The name of the head of the research group usually appears as the last author. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all authors. Contributors listed in

 

Acknowledgments: All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section, eg:- a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chairperson who provided only general support. Groups of persons who have contributed materially, but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be listed under such headings as 'clinical investigators' and their function or contribution should be described, eg:- 'served as scientific advisors,' 'collected data,' or 'cared for study patients.'

 

 iii. Conflict of interest/ Financial disclosure

 

All authors must disclose any conflict of interests they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or a product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/ or is important to the outcome of the study presented.

 

 iv. Duplicate/ Prior publication

Pushpagiri Medical Journal will not accept duplicate publication of scientific data. Manuscripts submitted to PMJ should not have been published/ accepted for publication or simultaneously submitted. PMJ will accept original manuscripts that contain material that has not been reported elsewhere, except in the form of an abstract of not more than 400 words. Prior abstract presentation should be mentioned in a footnote to the title.

 

v. Privacy and Confidentiality Patients and Study participants:

 Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent/ guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors and Reviewers: Manuscripts must be reviewed with due respect for authors' confidentiality. In submitting their manuscripts for review, authors entrust editors with the results of their scientific work; editors must not disclose any information v about manuscripts to anyone other than authors and reviewers.

 

 Editorial and Peer Review process

 

 The editors of PMJ have full authority over the content of the journal and the timing of publication, and base their decisions on the validity of the work and its importance to the readers. In editorial review the articles which meet the minimum requirements for submission are first looked over by a managing editor or a member of the editorial board. They may be referred back to the authors for revision and re-submission, rejected, or presented to the editorial board for final approval. After this, an article which has good possibilities will be sent out for review by two or more researchers in the specific area for peer review. If these reviews are positive the article may be referred back to the authors to address any comments by the reviewers, or (rarely) may be accepted immediately by the editorial board. (unstructured), Key words, Introduction, Case report, Discussion and up to 10 References.

 

vii. Technical reports They contain descriptions of evaluation of methods or procedures, commentary and analysis of the current knowledge of affairs with regard to medical practice and research. viii. Letters to the Editor Letters can raise some decisive issues related to recently published articles (last 6 months) in the journal. The letters found to be worthwhile will be forwarded to the authors, to provide the opportunity for a response.

 

 ix. Conference/ CME reports Reports of International/ National/ State Conferences, Workshops and CME programmes in Pushpagiri.

 

 x. Achievements International/ National awards or positions achieved by Pushpagiri Faculty members and Scholastic achievements of Pushpagiri Medical students. xi. Student corner It encourages and gives directions to students interested in research activities and bringing outpublications and presenting papers in student conferences.

 

xii. Book review Recently published books can be reviewed by a stalwart/ pioneer in the subject, at the discretion of and assignment by the Editorial Board.

 

 xiii. Announcements Announcement of conferences, meetings, courses, awards, and other events of interest to the readers, with the name and v address of the contact person for additional information.

 

Manuscript components Manuscript should be prepared in UK English in text file, in times new roman or arial font (font size 12), with double spaced text and 2.5 cm margin all around. The manuscript should be submitted in the following order: A. Title page: should contain the following information:

 

 I. The type of manuscript (original article, review article, case report, etc.)

ii. Title - concise but having all information to make its electronic retrieval both sensitive and specific.

iii. Running title - a short running head title of less than 50 characters.

iv. Names of all authors/ contributors with their highest academic degrees, designation and affiliation), names of departments and/ or institutions to which the work should be credited.

v. Total number of pages, photographs and word counts separately for abstracts and text (excluding references, tables and abstract). vi. Sources of support in the form of grants, equipments or drugs. vii. Acknowledgment to contributors, if any.

viii.If the manuscript was presented at a conference, the organization, place and date of presentation.

ix. Copyright transfer form should be signed by all the authors.

x. Conflicts of interest: a statement of financial v Types of submissions accepted

 

 i.Original articles Reports of original clinical and basic research of interest to the medical fraternity are the primary material to be published as original articles. These include randomized controlled trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic tests, outcome studies, cost effective analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rate. The text of original articles, upto 3000 words (excluding abstract, references and tables) should be divided into: Abstract (structured - with introduction, materials and methods, results and conclusions), Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References (max: 40), Tables and Illustrations/ Figures and Legends.

 

 ii. Review articles Reviews may be solicited or proposed, and are to be written by individuals who have acknowledged research interest or are outstanding experts in the field. They integrate recent advances with accepted principles and practice, or summarize and analyze the consensus view of controversial issues. The authors are expected to give post-publication updates on the subject. The prescribed word count is up to 3000 (excluding abstract, references and tables). It should have an unstructured abstract (up to 250 words) and up to 50 references.

 

iii. Research articles They must satisfy the following criteria: (a) The study presents the results of primary scientific research (b) Results reported have not been published elsewhere (c) Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail (d) Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data (e) The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity (f) The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.

 

iv. Series articles; A series article is a special sequence of articles that explores a specific theme, and comprises reviews and perspectives that are published consecutively over a period of time. Writing a series of articles is a great way to connect related content together. It is also a great attention-getter, encouraging readers to return for the next part. The series articles must be planned in advance in order to maximize their effectiveness. An article series must have content continuity, lead the reader from one post to another, make them eagerly wait for the next in the series, link together the articles in a sequential order and have a navigational aid to help the reader move between the series posts. The articles should contain more than three parts published in consecutive issues. It is categorized by the series title, article title and author names. The articles of a series are copyrighted by their respective authors.

 

v. Medical ethics Analysis of philosophical, ethical and social aspects of health professions and biomedical sciences.

 

 vi. Case reports Only interesting and rare cases that highlight practical diagnostic and/or management implications shall be accepted. They should have the following headings: Abstract (unstructured), Key words, Introduction, Case report, Discussion and up to 10 References.

 

vii. Technical reports They contain descriptions of evaluation of methods or procedures, commentary and analysis of the current knowledge of affairs with regard to medical practice and research.

 

 viii. Letters to the Editor Letters can raise some decisive issues related to recently published articles (last 6 months) in the journal. The letters found to be worthwhile will be forwarded to the authors, to provide the opportunity for a response.

 

ix. Conference/ CME reports Reports of International/ National/ State Conferences, Workshops and CME programmes in Pushpagiri.

 

x. Achievements International/ National awards or positions achieved by Pushpagiri Faculty members and Scholastic achievements of Pushpagiri Medical students.

 

xi. Student corner It encourages and gives directions to students interested in research activities and bringing outpublications and presenting papers in student conferences.

 

 xii. Book review Recently published books can be reviewed by a stalwart/ pioneer in the subject, at the discretion of and assignment by the Editorial Board. xiii. Announcements Announcement of conferences, meetings, courses, awards, and other events of interest to the readers, with the name and v address of the contact person for additional information.

 

Manuscript components

Manuscript should be prepared in UK English in text file, in times new roman or arial font (font size 12), with double spaced text and 2.5 cm margin all around. The manuscript should be submitted in the following order: A. Title page: should contain the following information:

 I. The type of manuscript (original article, review article, case report, etc.)

ii. Title - concise but having all information to make its electronic retrieval both sensitive and specific.

 iii. Running title - a short running head title of less than 50 characters.

iv. Names of all authors/ contributors with their highest academic degrees, designation and affiliation), names of departments and/ or institutions to which the work should be credited.

 v. Total number of pages, photographs and word counts separately for abstracts and text (excluding references, tables and abstract).

vi. Sources of support in the form of grants, equipments or drugs.

 vii. Acknowledgment to contributors, if any.

viii.If the manuscript was presented at a conference, the organization, place and date of presentation.

 ix. Copyright transfer form should be signed by all the authors.

x. Conflicts of interest: a statement of financial or other issues that might lead to a conflict of interest

xi. A statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors and that the requirements of authorship have been met.

 xii. The name, address, e-mail and telephone number of the corresponding author.

 

B. Abstract

 It should concisely represent the data contained in the manuscript and should be self explanatory because abstracts are the only substantive portion of the article indexed in many electronic databases. Structured abstract of 250 words should be provided for original articles and unstructured abstract of about 150 words for all other manuscripts.

 

C. Text of the manuscript

Please respect the relevance of Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion (IMRD), and avoid repetition. Do not repeat the results and conclusions in the introduction. Conclusions should not be stated in the results section. Results should not be stated in the discussion section; rather explain how each result advances to the overall conclusions of the study. Final part of the discussion should refer back to the rationale for the study and explain how the findings have advanced the area. International system of units (SI units) is recommended. The text should have:

 

 i.Introduction: State the purpose and summarize the rationale for the study or observation.

 

 ii.Materials and methods: Should include the following aspects: Ethics: When reporting studies on living subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards. For prospective studies on human beings authors are expected to mention about Ethical committee approval and obtaining informed consent. In experiments on animals indicate whether the laws on the care of laboratory animals have been followed. Study design: Describe the selection of participants (experimental or observational) including eligibility and exclusion criteria and the source population. Identify all drugs and chemicals used, including the generic names, doses and routes of administration. Reports on randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements.

 

 iii. Results: Present the results in a logical sequence in the text, tables and illustrations. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in the text, graphs and tables.

 

iv. Discussion: Include summary of the key findings, strengths and limitations of the study, interpretation and implication in the context of the totality of evidence, controversies raised by this study and future research directions. The observations could be related to other relevant studies in a logical sequence.

 

 v. References: The author is fully responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the references. They should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetical order). Identify references in the text, tables and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript before the punctuation marks. If there are more than six authors name only the first six and then add et al.

 

a. Reference to journal articles: should include authors, title of the article, name of the journal, year, volume number, issue number and inclusive page numbers. Eg:- Shukla N, Hussain N, Agarwal G G, Husain M. Utility of cysticercus fasciolaris in antigen in Dot ELISA for the diagnosis of neurocysticercosis. Indian J Med Sci 2008;62(2):222-7.

 

b. Reference to books: should include authors, chapter, editor (if any), title of the book, edition and volume number, domicile and name of the publisher, year of publication and page numbers. Eg:- Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, editors.Hypertension: nd pathophysiology, diagnosis, andmanagement. 2 ed. New York: Raven Press; 1995. Pp. 465-78.

 

c. Electronic sources as reference: Online journal: Horton MA, Boyde A, Rimmer EF. What is it all about? Arch Pediatric Adolesc Med [serial online] Available at http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs.html.Accessed November 10, 2001. Online reference (website information, not journal related): Williams A, Lea A, Allen D Kidneys and Cartwheels. Available at: http://www.science.com/. Accessed November 10, 2001.

 

vi. Figures/ Illustrations: Do not send original drawings or roentgenograms. Upload the images in JPEG format; file size should be within 1024 kb in size while uploading. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order of their citation in the text. When graphs, scatter diagrams or histograms are submitted, the numerical data on which they are based also should be submitted. If a figure has been published elsewhere, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder. Mention the magnification and the method of staining in photomicrographs. The journal reserves the right to crop, rotate, reduce or enlarge any photograph to an acceptable size. Legends for illustrations (maximum 40 words) to be typed out using double spacing, with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations.

 

 vii. Tables: They should be self explanatory and should not duplicate textual material. Tables with more than ten columns and 25 rows cannot be accepted. Explain all nonstandard abbreviations in footnotes, and use the following symbols, in sequence: *, †, ‡, §, ||, ¶, **, ††, ‡‡. If data from another published or unpublished source is used, obtain permission and acknowledge that source fully. Tables with their legends v should be provided at the end of the text after the references.

 

Manuscript submission PMJ requires all manuscripts to be submitted electronically.

v After acceptance Page proofs and corrections Corresponding authors will receive electronic page proofs to check the copyedited and typeset articles before publication. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that there are no errors in the proofs. Changes that have been made to conform to journal style should be allowed to stand if they do not alter the meaning of the content.

 

 

Copyright Transfer/ Financial Disclosure/ Conflict of Interest

 

CONDITIONS FOR SUBMISSION

 

The articles must represent original research material, should not have been published before, and should not be under consideration of publication elsewhere. This however does not include previous publication in the form of an abstract or as a part of published literature (review or thesis). It is the duty of the author to obtain the necessary permissions for extensive quotations, tables, illustrations, or any other copyrighted material they are using in the paper before a paper can be considered for publication.

 

COPYRIGHT TRANSFER FORM

 

Copyright of the article gets transferred to the publishers, once the article has been accepted for publication. The author has to sign the “Copyright Transfer Form” before his/her article is considered for publication. Once the Copyright Transfer statement has been signed by the corresponding author, no change in authorship or in the order of the authors listed in the article would be accepted by the publishers. Also by signing the above mentioned form, the author reassigns the right of co-publishing, or translation, if considered necessary in future, to the publisher. In the advent of occurrence of any dispute, the matter would be resolved within the jurisdiction of Tiruvalla court.

 

 LEGAL OBLIGATIONS While all care has been taken to provide accurate and correct information in accordance with the date of publication, neither the authors, editors or publisher takes any legal responsibility for any unintentional omission or error. The publisher makes no expressed or implied warranty with respect to the information contained herein. The published material cannot be photocopied for the following purposes: general distribution, promotion, new works or resale. If this is required, specific written permission requires to be obtained from the publisher. Exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the articles in this journal have been protected by copyright. This also covers the rights to reproduce or distribute the article as well as the translation rights. No material published in this journal can be reproduced in digital format or stored in the form of electronic databases, video disks etc.

 

1. COPYRIGHT TRANSFER AGREEMENT I have read the above mentioned details related to copyright of the manuscript submitted and I ................................, the author of ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... ..................certify that I willingly assign the copyright of my work/ title.......................................................................................... to the publisher of Pushpagiri Medical Journal, who will have the exclusive right of producing ( in print or digital format) the complete work or any portion of it. I hereby certify that the work which I am submitting to the publisher is my own and does not contain any matter which no way is infringement of the copyright law.

 

Name: Signature:                                       Date signed:

 

 

2. FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE This is to certify that I ..................................................................................................................................................., the author of................................................................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................................................................... do not have any commercial association or financial interest in the publication of this manuscript.

 

Name: Signature:                                                   Date signed:

 

3. CONFLICT OF INTEREST This is to certify that I ................................................................................................................................................, the author of ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... ......................................................... have no conflict of interest regarding the publishing of the manuscript.

 

Name: Signature:                                                    Date signed: