Journal of Indian Academy of Forensic Medicine

Instructions to the Authors

About the Journal (Print ISSN: 0971-0973. Electronic ISSN:0974-0848):

JIAFM is a peer-reviewed medical journal published quarterly by the Editor of the Academy on behalf of the Indian Academy of Forensic Medicine.

Scope of the Journal

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The Journal covers all technical, medico-legal, and clinical aspects including the ethical and social issues related to the subject speciality of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology and allied specialities. The journal promotes the dissemination of original research findings, and interesting case reports or series.

Indexing: The journal is indexed with Scopus, Index Copernicus, IndMED & Indian Citation Index. JIAFM is a UGC Approved Journal (No. 28596). Journal issues are available online at: www.iafmonline.in; http://indmed.nic.in; and www.indianjournals.com. It fulfills the criteria laid down by the NMC pre-requisite for publications and eligibility for promotions.

Copyrights: The entire contents of the JIAFM are protected under Indian and International copyrights. The journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right to access and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work 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.

Preparation of Manuscript

Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with “Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals (”often known as the “Vancouver system”), in combination with the JIAFM style.

The uniform requirements and specific requirements of the JIAFM are summarized below. Types of manuscript

1- Original Article

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These include randomized controlled trials, outcome studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rates. 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, Keywords, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, and Figure legends.

Abstract: An abstract (unstructured) of no more than 250 words must accompany all article types, except Letters to the Editor and short communications.

Keywords: should be (three or more) separated by a semicolon (;), and starting with capital letter.

Introduction: Should briefly introduce the topic, state the purpose and summarize the rationale for the study or observation.

Material & Methods: It should include and describe the following aspects: Statement on the approval of research from the Institutional Ethics Committee.

Study Design: The study design should be described in detail using standard methodological terms such as retrospective or prospective cohort study, case-control study, etc. Describe your selection of the observational or experimental participants clearly, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population.

Technical Information: Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer's name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references for the established methods, including statistical methods? provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known? describe new or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them and evaluate their limitations. Statistical methods used for analyzing data should be described in detail.

Results: Present your results in a logical sequence in the text, suitably supported with tables, and illustrations. Avoid duplication of results in the text and tables or illustrations, graphs, etc. Extra or supplementary materials and technical details can be placed in an appendix where they will be accessible but will not interrupt the flow of the text.

Discussion: Include a summary of key findings (primary outcome measures, secondary outcome measures, results as they relate to a prior hypothesis), Strengths and limitations of the study (study question, study design, data collection, and analysis), Interpretation and implications in the context of the totality of the evidence. What this study adds to the available evidence, effects on patient care and health policy, controversies raised by this study, and future research directions. New hypotheses may be stated if needed, however, they should be clearly labelled as such.

2- Review Article:

It is expected that the review article would be written by authorities who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field. The prescribed word count is up to 2500 words (excluding tables, references, and abstracts). The manuscript should have an unstructured abstract (limited to 250 words) representing an accurate summary of the article and keywords (not exceeding 6). The section titles would depend upon the topic reviewed. Authors submitting the review article should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.

3- Case Report:

Should include interesting and rare cases. Reported cases should be unique, describing a medical challenge and providing a learning point for the readers. Cases with clinical and medicolegal 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, not exceeding 250 words), Keywords (maximum 4), Introduction, Case report, Discussion, References, 3 Tables and Legends in that order. Each figure/picture should be submitted in jpeg / tiff format as a separate file.

4- Letter To The Editor:

Should be concise with decisive observations, preferably related to articles previously published in the journal, and may also relate to other topics of interest to the medical professional. The Word count for this category is limited to 500 words

5- Short Communication

Authors can submit short communication which should be related to some recent judgments of courts, diseases, or clinical problems of medicolegal significance, or any other recent topic of interest to the readers of this journal. It should not exceed 800 to 1000 words with an abstract of about 100 words. It should be having 3 to 5 keywords.

6- Research Brief

Small original studies are published as research briefs. The text should be divided into sections i.e., abstract, introduction, methods, results & discussion. A series of cases can also be considered as a research brief, provided the number of cases is reasonably large. The abstract should be 100-150 words with 3-5 keywords. The text should not contain more than 1500 words.

7- Other Categories:

Editorial, Guest Editorial, and Commentary articles are solicited by the Editorial Board.

References

References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript, after the comma or full stop. 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 the 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. 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.

The commonly cited types of references are shown here, for other types of references such as electronic media; newspaper items, etc. please refer to ICMJE Guidelines (http://www.icmje.org or http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).

Use Vancouver guidelines for reference writing. Visit link: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/library/public/vancouver.pdf Or link: https://library.westernsydney.edu.au/main/sites/default/files/cite_Vancouver.pdf

Articles in Journals

• Standard journal article: Bavdekar SB, Gogtay NJ, Muzumdar D, Vaideeswar P, Salvi V, Sarkar M. The path ahead. J Postgrad Med 2007;53(3):153-3.
• Where the number of authors are more than six, list the first six authors, followed by et al.

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. 465-78.

Authorship Criteria and Contribution Details

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions

• Conception and design of the study
• Acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
• Final approval of the version to be published.

Conditions 1 to 4 must 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. A short summary of the work done by the contributor(s) in the field of review should accompany the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all the contributors.

Contributors should provide a description of what each of them contributed to the manuscript. 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 ‘corresponding author’. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Acknowledgements, if any should be mentioned at the end of the article (before the References).

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

Funding

JIAFM requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. If no funding was received then the author should state: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors”.

Conflict of Interest

All authors must declare any conflict of interest they have with the publication of the manuscript or an Institution or a product that is mentioned in the article. Declaration of Conflicting Interests statement should be included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements, and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’

Ethics and Consent

A statement that the original research was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee must be included in all research articles in the “Materials and Methods” section. It is recommended that the confidentiality of participants is ensured by desisting from mentioning participants’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Written informed consent should be obtained from the patients for study participation and dissemination of the case findings. The same should be indicated in the article. The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable.

Plagiarism

JIAFM takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practices in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in JIAFM. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that the manuscript is their original work and free of any plagiarism. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. If an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, the editor reserves the right to take action including, but not limited to publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

Submission of Manuscripts

Before submitting a manuscript, contributors are requested to check for the latest instructions available at the IAFM website (www.iafmonline.in). All manuscripts should be submitted to the Editor, JIAFM by email at editorjiafm2022@gmail.com for consideration of its possible publication. The Manuscripts submitted to the JIAFM should be in a) UK English and b) MS Word file only. No other formats shall be accepted. c) Arial 12 font throughout, with headings and subheadings in bold d) Line-spacing of 1.5, and text justified throughout the manuscript should be sent in separate files for the following:

1. Title Page:

a) Type of manuscript - Original Article/ Case Report/ Review Article/ Letter to the Editor etc.

b) Title of the manuscript, names & and affiliation of all the authors in the order that these should appear.

c) Name, email address and contact number of the corresponding author

2. Manuscript file: The manuscript file should be anonymised and must not contain any mention of the author's names or initials or the institution in which the said study was done. The main text of the article from the abstract to the references including tables and legend for figures should be in this file. The tables must be prepared using the Table feature of the word processor. Tables should not duplicate information given in the text, should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text, and should be given a brief title. All the tables should be included in the manuscript file after the references. Legends for the figures/ graphs/ images should be included on a separate page at the end of the manuscript.

3. Figure/ Graphs/ Images: All figures should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text, and must be accompanied by a figure legend. Legends for the figures/ graphs/ images should be included in the end of the main manuscript file, and should be in jpeg/tiff format. Photographic images must be supplied as 300 dpi. Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. While online reproduction of the illustration will be free, the authors are required to pay the requisite fees for colour reproduction of the figures/ images/ graphs in the print version. There should not be more than 6 tables or graphs (both inclusive)

Abbreviations: Abbreviations must be defined in full at their first mention in the text. Authors should not create new abbreviations and acronyms.

Units: All measurements should be expressed in SI units.

Copy Right Transfer Form: This has to be submitted in original with the signatures of all the contributors in duly filled contributors’ form. It should be sent as a scanned copy via email in pdf or jpg format. All the authors should give the effect that the manuscript has been read and approved by all and that all of them agree with the sequence of the authorship. The certificate should also state that the manuscript sent for publication is their original and honest work, and free of any plagiarism.

Copies of any permission(s)

It is the responsibility of the authors/contributors to obtain permission for reproducing any copyrighted material. It will be entirely their responsibility to verify the authenticity of the information and facts stated in the manuscript. Sending a revised manuscript, the revised version of the manuscript should be submitted in a manner similar to that used for the submission of the manuscript for the first time. The corresponding author is required to include a ‘Response Letter’ to include, the ‘referees’ remarks along with point-to-point clarification and changes made in the revised draft. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as coloured text in the revised article.

Checklist for manuscript submission Files to be included in submission are:

• Covering letter (as per the template provided by the journal) link for Template-cover-letter
• Contributor's form duly signed by all the contributors (available on the website) link for Template contributor's form
• Title Page (as per the template provided in Microsoft word by the journal) link for Template title page

(4) Manuscript for Review (Anonymised in MS word including unstructured abstract, references, tables if any, and legend for figures at the end)

(5) Figures, if any (each figure at the end in JPEG/ TIFF format)

Reporting Guidelines for Specific Study Designs

Initiative	Type of Study	Link Source
CONSORT	Randomized controlled trials	Consort-statement
STARD	Studies of diagnostic accuracy	Equator-network reporting-guidelines
PRISMA	Systematic reviews and meta-analyses	Prisma-statement
STROBE	Observational studies in epidemiology	Strobe-statement
MOOSE	Meta-analyses of observationa Studies in epidemiology	Meta-analysis-obs-studies-in-epidemiology
CARE	Case reports	Care-statement

Note: Authors submitting a review article should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.

The Editorial and Review Process

• The initial review of the submitted article will take atleast 21 days from the date of submission. It is kindly requested not to communicate via either mail or telephonically regarding the article status prior to that. The corresponding author would be informed by editor likewise.
• Manuscripts sent to the JIAFM should be accompanied by a certificate signed by all the authors that the said Manuscript is their original work and is not under consideration, accepted or already published elsewhere.
• Once received, the corresponding author will be communicated a Reference Number of the manuscript after duly acknowledging its receipt.
• The manuscript will be 1st reviewed by the Editorial Team. The Editors reserve the right to reject the manuscript at this stage itself if it is found to be deficient in originality / has serious technical flaws/ does not add anything to the literature already available on the subject.
• Manuscripts that pass this stage will be sent to subject experts for peer-review. This will be a double-blind process; i.e. the authors and the reviewers will not be revealed each other's identity.
• The manuscript is liable to be rejected if the editor and / or reviewers do not find the manuscript suitable for publication. In which case the final decision will be communicated to the corresponding author along with reviewer's comments/ reasons for rejection of the article.
• If the reviewers suggest a revision of the submitted article, then the reviewers’ comments will be sent to the corresponding author who will be asked to make necessary changes in the manuscript. While submitting the revision, the authors should submit a response letter with a point-by-point reply to the comments of the reviewers. This process is repeated till the reviewers and the editors agree to the suitability of the manuscript for its inclusion in the JIAFM.

Manuscript Handling Charges and Account Details

• Once the manuscript has been found to be acceptable for publication in the JIAFM, the corresponding author will be asked to deposit the “manuscript handling charges” towards handling/ processing of the manuscript. Manuscript handling charges of Rupees 1000 will be charged for each manuscript if the first/corresponding author is a life member of the IAFM. For others, manuscript handling charges will be Rupees 2000. Manuscript handling charges for the ‘letter to editor’ are fixed at Rupees 500. The bank details for payment of manuscript handling charges are mentioned in the editor's message.
• As per GBM Minutes Hyderabad 31.01.2020, in 41st ANC Forensic Medicon-2020. Provision for fast-track review and issuance of acceptance letter on request for promotion purposes was introduced at an enhanced fee of Rs 5000 per article. The proposal was accepted with a condition that though an acceptance letter will be issued on an urgent basis, there will not be any breaking of the queue or out-of-turn preference for publication of such articles.
• The corresponding author shall send the scanned copy of the transaction slip to the editor at editorjiafm2022@gmail.com, once the manuscript handling charges are remitted in the bank. The editor will then issue an acceptance letter.

The Account Details Are As Follows -

NAME – INDIAN ACADEMY OF FORENSIC MEDICINE

ACCOUNT NO – 327101000763

IFSC CODE – ICIC0003271

MICR CODE – 462229023

BASE BRANCH NAME – BHOPAL – BAWADIYA KALA

BRANCH ADDRESS – 334, WARD NO. 52, ROHIT NAGAR BAWADIA KALA BHOPAL, MP, 462023

Note: Manuscript handling charges are non-refundable and shall be remitted ONLY when the editor communicates to the corresponding author to do so. Claim for refund of payments made any time before the acceptance of the manuscript will not be entertained.

Proofs

Proofs will be sent to the corresponding authors by email. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct. Authors should confirm that the text is error free, and Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.

Subscription Information

JIAFM is published quarterly, and the following are its annual subscription rates:

Individual: Rs.1000 (In India) and USD 200 or equivalent (Rest of the world)

Institutions: Rs.7500 (In India) and USD 400 or equivalent (Rest of the world).

Payments for subscription orders should be made in above mentioned account detail. All communications in this regard should be made with the Editor - editorjiafm2022@gmail.com

Dr. Manish Nigam Chief Editor (JIAFM)