Submissions

Author Guidelines

Editorial Process

A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to APCRI Journal alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorise one of them (corresponding author) to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, lack of a significant message, and lack of rabies expertise or not conforming to the journal norms are rejected before proceeding for formal peer-review.

Manuscripts that are found suitable for formal review are sent to two or more expert reviewers. During submission, the contributor is requested to provide names of at least two qualified reviewers who have experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript and are not associated as contributor/s, but this is not mandatory. However, the selection of the reviewers is at the sole discretion of the editor/ managing editor. The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. Based on the comments from the reviewers, the editorial team takes a final decision on the manuscript. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/ rejection/ amendments in the manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point-by-point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.

Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within three days. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The whole process of submission of the manuscript to the final decision and sending and receiving proofs is completed online.

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:

1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data.
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published.

Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without a written consent of all the contributors.

Contribution Details

Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. The description should be divided into the following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as 'guarantor(s)'.

Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests

All authors must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with the publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/ or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

Submission of Manuscripts

All manuscripts must be submitted online. If you experience any problems, please send an e-mail to admin@adrpublications.in.

The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Instructions to Authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction, before they undergo editorial/ peer-review. Generally, the manuscript should be submitted in the form of two separate files:

1. Title Page/First Page File/Covering letter

       The files should be submitted in doc/docx format. Do not zip the files.

        This file should provide the following:

• The type of manuscript (original article, brief research article, case series report, review article, Letter to editor, images, etc.),
• Title of the manuscript, and running title,
• Names of all authors/ contributors (with their highest academic degrees, designation and affiliations) and name(s) of department(s) and/ or institution(s) to which the work should be credited,
• Details of corresponding author (e-mail id, Orcid id, and phone number),
• Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these,
• Acknowledgement, if any.
• One or more statements should specify 1) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chair; 2) acknowledgements of technical help; and 3) acknowledgements of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support. This should be included in the title page of the manuscript and not in the main article file.
• Registration number in case of a clinical trial and where it is registered (name of the registry and its URL),
• Conflicts of Interest of each author/ contributor, a statement of financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict of interest, if that information is not included in the manuscript itself or in an authors' form,
• A statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors, that the requirements for authorship as stated earlier in this document have been met, and that each author believes that the manuscript represents honest work, and
• The name, address, e-mail id, Orcid id, and telephone number of the corresponding author, who is responsible for communicating with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the proofs.

2. Blinded Article file

         The manuscript must not contain any mention of the authors' names or initials or the institution in which the study was done or acknowledgements. Page headers/running title can include the title but not the authors' names. Manuscripts not in compliance with the Journal's blinding policy will be returned to the corresponding author. The main text of the article, beginning from the Abstract to References (including tables) should be in this file. Use doc/docx files. Do not zip the files. Do not incorporate images in the file. The pages should be numbered consecutively, beginning with the first page of the blinded article file.

3. Images

        Submit good quality colour images. Each image should be less than 4 MB in size. The size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep up to 1800 x 1600 pixels or 5-6 inches). Images can be submitted as jpeg files. Do not zip the files. Legends for the figures/ images should be included at the end of the article file.  Maximum 5 images per document are allowed to be uploaded.

4. Contributors'/ copyright transfer form

        It has to be submitted in original with the signatures of all the contributors via email (neha.awasthi@advancedresearchpublications.com), as a scanned image.

5. Documents of clearance by the Institutional Ethics Committee or equivalent

       They should also be sent as a scanned image with the first-page file.

Preparation of Manuscript

Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals" developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (October 2006). The uniform requirements and specific requirements of the Association for Prevention and Control of Rabies in India are summarised below. Before submitting a manuscript, contributors are requested to check for the latest instructions available.

Copies of any Permission(s)

It is the responsibility of authors/ contributors to obtain permissions for reproducing any copyrighted material. A copy of the permission obtained must accompany the manuscript. Copies of any and all published articles or other manuscripts in preparation or submitted elsewhere that are related to the manuscript must also accompany the manuscript.

Types of Articles

• Original articles: These include population-based surveys, programme evaluations, impact assessment studies, randomised controlled trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic tests, outcome studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, cohort studies and case-control studies. The text of original articles amounting to up to 3000 words (excluding Abstract, References and Tables) should be divided into sections with the headings Abstract, Key-words, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References, Tables and Figure legends.

           The abstract should be structured, not more than 250 words, briefly mentioning background, objectives, methods, results and conclusion.

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

Materials and Methods: It should include and describe the following aspects:

Ethics: The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the ‘Materials and Methods’ section. When reporting studies on human beings, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html). For prospective studies involving human participants, authors are expected to mention approval of (regional/ national/ institutional or independent) Ethics Committee or Review Board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary as per regional and/ or national guidelines. Ensure the confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants’ names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution’s or a national research council’s guide, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) and World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Humans for studies involving experimental animals and human beings, respectively.

These articles generally should not have more than six authors.

• Review Articles: It is expected that these articles would be by invitation, written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field.

          Articles by other rabies experts can be accepted on the basis of merit of the articles.

          A short summary of the work done by the contributor(s) in the field of review/ their area of expertise should accompany the manuscript.

         The prescribed word count is up to 3000 words excluding tables, references, and abstract. The manuscript may have about 90 references. The manuscript should have an unstructured summary (250 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles would depend upon the topic reviewed. Authors submitting review articles should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesising data.

        These methods should also be summarised in the abstract. The maximum number of tables and/ or figures should be restricted to four.

        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 the article and should be sent as a letter to editor, as and when major development occurs in the field.

        Review articles can be authored by up to six authors.

• Brief Research Article: Brief Research articles should contain interesting observations/ brief reports of original studies presenting the authors' views on a topic of current interest. The purpose of a brief research article in the APCRI Journal is to provide additional insights into topics of current rabies concerns. It should be limited to 1,500 words with an unstructured abstract not exceeding 150 words, no more than two tables and/ or figures, and no more than 10 references. It could be authored by up to six authors.

           Ethical considerations should be followed as per original article.

• Case Studies/ Case Series Report: New, interesting and intriguing case studies can be reported. They should be unique and should have demonstrated methods to overcome any rabies challenge by use of novel tools and techniques and provide a learning point for the readers. Case studies with rabies significance or implications will be given priority. These communications could be of up to 1000 words (excluding Abstract and references) and should have the following headings: Abstract (unstructured summary not exceeding 150 words), Key-words, Introduction, Case report, Discussion, Reference, Tables and Legends in that order. It must not have more than 10 references.

           Case Reports could be authored by up to four authors.

• Letter to the Editor: These should be short and decisive observations. They should preferably be related to articles previously published in the Journal or views expressed in the Journal. They should not be preliminary observations that need a later paper for validation. The letter could have up to 500 words and 5 references. It could be generally authored by not more than four authors.

References

References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetical order). Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript after the punctuation marks. Use the style of the examples below, which are based on the formats used by the NLM in Index Medicus. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Avoid using abstracts as references. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted/ published should be cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source. Avoid citing a "personal communication" unless it provides essential information not available from a public source, in which case the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text.

Commonly cited types of references are shown below:
Journal

1. Huie MJ, Casazza GA, Horning MA, Brooks GA. Smoking increases conversion of lactate to glucose during submaximal exercise. J Appl Physiol. 1996;80(5):1554-9. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
2. Holick MF. Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2004 Dec;80(6):1678S-88S. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Book

1. Park K. Preventive and Social Medicine. 17th ed. Jabalpur: Banarasidas Bhanot Publishers; 2002.
2. Larson R, Wilson S. Adolescence across place and time: Globalization and changing pathways to adulthood. In: Lerner R, Steinberg L, editors. Handbook of adolescent psychology. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley; 2013. p. 297-330.

Reprints and Proofs 

Journal provides no free reprints. Request for reprints may be made after acceptance of the articles for publication.

Checklist   

• Covering letter signed by all contributors
• Previous publication/ presentations mentioned
• Source of funding mentioned
• Conflicts of interest disclosed

Authors

• Last name and given name provided along with Middle name initials (where applicable)
• Author for correspondence, with e-mail address, Orcid id, and mobile number
• Number of contributors restricted as per the instructions
• Identity not revealed in the article except the title page (e.g. name of the institute in Methods, citing previous study as 'our study', names on figure labels, name of institute in photographs, etc.)

Presentation and format

• Double spacing
• Margins 2.5 cm from all four sides
• Page numbers included at the bottom
• Title page with all the desired information
• Running title provided (not more than 50 characters)
• Abstract page containing the full title of the manuscript
• Abstract provided (unstructured summary of 250 words for review articles, structured abstract of about 250 words for original articles, unstructured summary of about 150 words for brief research article and case series report)
• Keywords provided (three or more)
• Introduction of 75-100 words
• Headings in title case (not ALL CAPITALS)
• The references cited in the text should be after punctuation marks, in superscript.
• References according to the journal's instructions, punctuation marks checked
• Send the article file without ‘Track Changes’          

Language and grammar          

• American English.
• Write the full term for each abbreviation at its first use in the title, abstract, keywords and text separately unless it is a standard unit of measure. Numerals from 1 to 10 should be written in words.
• Numerals at the beginning of the sentence should be speltwritten in words.
• Check the manuscript for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.
• If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer's name and address (city and state/country).
• Species names should be in italics.

Tables and figures    

• No repetition of data in tables and graphs and in text
• Actual numbers from which graphs drawn, provided
• Figures necessary and of good quality (colour)
• Table and figure numbers in Arabic letters (not Roman)
• Figure legends provided (not more than 40 words)
• Patients' privacy maintained (if not permission taken)
• Credit note for borrowed figures/ tables provided
• Full term for each abbreviation used in the table mentioned as a footnote