INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journal" developed by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. The uniform requirements and specific requirement of Journal of are summarized below.

THE EDITORIAL PROCESS

The submitted 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, or already accepted for publication elsewhere.

Initially the editors will review all submitted manuscripts. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific flaws, or absence of importance of message are rejected. Other manuscripts are sent to two or more expert reviewers without revealing the identity of the authors to the reviewers. Articles accepted would be copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs will be sent to the first author, which has to be returned within five days.

TYPES OF MANUSCRIPTS AND WORD LIMITS

Original research articles

Randomized controlled trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, costeffectiveness analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rate.Up to 2500 words excluding references and abstract.

Short communication

Up to 1000 words excluding references and abstract and up to 5 references.

Case reports

New/interesting / very rare cases with clinical significance or implications will be given priority, whereas, mere reporting of a rare case may not be considered. Up to 2000 words excluding references and abstract.

Review articles

Systemic critical assessments of literature and data sources. Up to 3500 words excluding references and abstract.

Letter to the Editor

Should be short, decisive observation. They should not be preliminary observations that need alater paper for validation. 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.

Authorship Criteria

All person designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the· work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions ofthe content.

The author/authors must have contributied substantially to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpreta~on of data.

The order of authorship on the byline should be ajoint decision of the co-authors. Authors should be prepared to explain the order in which authors are listed. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the authors.

For a study carried out in a single institute, the number of authors should not exceed six. For a case-report and for a review article, the number of authors should not exceed four. For short communication, the number of authors should not be more than three. A justification should be induded, if the number of authors exceeds these limits.

PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT

The manuscripts should be typed in A4 size paper, with margins on all the four sides. Use 1.5 spacing throughout. Number pages consecutively, beginning with the title page. The language should be British English.

TITLE PAGE

The title page should carry

1. Type of manuscript
2. The title of the article, which should be concise, but informative;
3. Running title or short title not more than 50 characters;
4. Name of the authors (the way it should appear in the journal), with his or her highest academic degree(s) and institutional affiliation;
5. The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which I·j the work should be attributed;
6. The name, address, phone numbers, facsimile numbers, and e-mail address of the contributor responsible for correspondence about the manuscript;
7. The total number of pages, total number of photographs and word counts separately for abstract and for the text (excluding the references and abstract).
8. Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these; and
9. If the manuscript was presented as part at a meeting, the organization, place, and exact date on which it was read.

Abstract Page

The second page should carry the full title of the manuscript and an abstract (of no more than 150 words for case reports, brief reports and 250 words for original artides). The abstract should be structured and state the Context (Background), Aims, Settings and Design, Methods and Material, Statistical analysis used, Results and Conclusions. Below the abstract should provide 3 to 10 key words.

Introduction

State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale for the study or observation.

Methods

The selected subjects wether observational or experimental should be specified clearly. The age, sex, the methods, apparatus, the procedures performed or other important characteristics must be discribed in detail. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods; provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published. If new or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations.

Reports of randomised clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, based on the CONSORT statement (http://www.consort-,statement.org/).

Ethics

When reporting experiments on human subjects, 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.

Statistics

When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used to analyse them. Avoid non-technical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as 'random' (which implies a randomising device), 'normal', 'significant', 'correlations', and 'sample'. Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. Use upper italics (P < 0.05).

Results

Present the results in logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations. Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or, illustrations; emphasise or summarise only important observations. Discussion Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. Include in the Discussion section the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research. Relate the observations to other relevant studies.

In particular, contributors should avoid making statements on economic benefits and costs unless their manuscript includes economic data and analyses.

Acknowledgments

As an appendix to the text, 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. Acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support.

References

References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). Identity references in text, tables, and legends in superscript. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. 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. Use complete name of the journal for non-indexed journals. Avoid using abstracts as references. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source.

Journal references

Standard journal article

Kulkarni SB, Chitre RG, Satoskar RS. Serum proteins in tuberculosis. J Postgrad Med 1960; 6:113-120.

Volume with supplement

Shen HM, Zhang OF. Risk assessment of nickel carcinogenicity and occupational lung cancer. Environ Health Perspect 1994; 102 Suppl1:275·282.

Issue with supplement

Payne DK, Sullivan MD, Massie MJ. Women's psychological reactions to breast cancer. Semin Onco11996; 23(1. SuppI2):89-97.

Books and other monographs

Personal author(s)

Ringsven MK, Bond D. Gerontology and leadership skills for nurses. 2nd ed. Albany (NY): Delmar Publishers; 1996.

Editor(s), compiler(s) as author

Norman IJ, Redfern SJ, editors. Mental health care for elderly people. New York :Churchill Livingstone; 1996.

Chapter in a book

Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, editors. Hypertension: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management. 2nd ed. New York: Raven Press; 1995. pp 465-478.

Tables

Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material.

• Tables with more than 10 columns and 25 rows are not acceptabl.
• Type or print out each table with double spacing on a separate sheet of paper. If the table must be continued [repeat the title on a second sheet followed by "(Contd)".
• Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading.
• Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations that are used in each table.
• Obtain permission for all fully borrowed, adapted, and modified tables and provide a credit line in the footnote.
• For footnotes use the following symbols, in this sequence: *, †, ‡, §, ¦, **, ††, ‡‡, §§

Illustrations (figures)

• Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text.
• Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background and should be marked neatly Titles and detailed explanations belong in the legends for illustrations not on the illustrations themselves.
• When graphs, scatter-grams or histograms are submitted the numerical data on which they are based should also be supplied.
• The photographs and figures should be trimmed to remove all the unwanted areas.
• If photographs of people are used, either the subjects must I. not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use the photograph.
• The Journal reserves the right to crop, rotate, reduce, or enlarge the photographs to an acceptable size.

Copyrights

The whole of the literary matter is the copyright of the Editorial Board. The Journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work (either in pre-print or post-print format) publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights.