Guide for Authors

Original Articles: It usually needs to be broken down into an abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion and references. The abstract should contain a maximum of 400 words. A maximum of 20 authors is permitted, and additional authors should be listed in an ad hoc appendix.

Review Articles: no particular format is required for these articles. However, they should have an informative, unstructured abstract of about 250 words. Reviews may also include meta-analyses, guidelines and consensus papers by scientific societies or working groups. These studies must be conducted following proper, widely accepted ad hoc procedures.
Short Communications: are articles with a simple layout and containing limited data (no more than two figures or tables) and a small number of citations (not more than 25). They should be limited to 2,000 words of text (figure captions, table headings and references lists are additional to this limit).

Letters to the editor: should be from 250 to 1,000 words in length. Authors of letters to the editor should provide a short title for their letter.

Original Articles:

The manuscript should be organized according to the below mentioned sections:

Title page

➤ The title must be relevant to the research being processed in the paper. It should be brief i.e. approximately 15 to 25 words.

➤ Author list, his/her contributions, and affiliation. Complete names (first, middle and last name) of all the authors along with the name, physical address, phone number, email of the corresponding author must be mentioned.

➤ Affiliations of the author and co-authors should be included in this section.
At least one contribution of each other should be mentioned.

Abstract

➤ The abstract should be managed in 250-300 words, briefly describing the research method and findings.

➤ It should be concise and include precise details about the background, methodology and the significance of the topic making sure that the most relevant details and the most important results are mentioned, only.

Keywords

➤ Appropriate words need to be selected as keywords at the bottom of abstract.

➤ It is better if these keywords are different from the words of the title.

➤ 5-7 words are enough to characterize the keywords.

Introduction:

➤ The purpose of introduction is to provide a clear explanation of the problem under investigation hence the authors should state the significance and rationale for the study being conducted in this section.

Materials and Methods:

➤ This section should include the details of materials and methods, enough for the reproduction of the findings. Mention the previously conducted studies on the topic with appropriate references, if required. Suggestions and further modifications can also be included.

Results and Discussion:

➤ The results need to be clearly displayed through tables, figures, and equations. Although clarity and brevity are encouraged, a comprehensive discussion on results is needed so as to bring out a reasonable conclusion.

Conclusion:

➤ It should include the outcomes of the study and summarize the whole article.

Ethical Clearance

➤ The authors must provide formal declaration or approval of the ethics committee and their reference number, wherever appropriate in the manuscripts, if they carry out experiments involving investigations on humans or animals.

➤ In obtaining consent, the authors should discuss the purpose(s) of publication, the possible risks and benefits to the patient and the patient’s right to withhold or withdraw consent. In the case of a minor patient, consent should be obtained from the guardian(s).

➤ In studies involving experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates and plants, the authors must confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with the national and international standards and guidelines.

➤ In cases where the study has been exempted from requiring an ethical approval, it’s required by the authors to include the relevant details in their manuscripts. Furthermore, the Editor can request for further information regarding this, if the need arises.

➤ The Editor holds the right of rejecting the manuscripts if he regards the research as not being carried out within an appropriate ethical framework or if the research involves procedures that are not consistent with the generally accepted norms of animal research.

Conflict of Interest:

➤ The authors are required to declare any conflict of interest, either financial or non-financial. These conflicts should be included at the end of the manuscript, before the references, under the heading of “Conflict of Interest”.

➤ The authors should disclose any past and present affiliations, funding sources, financial and personal interests related to the reported research that might raise questions about possible sources of bias.

➤ The mention of such interests does not make the manuscripts unethical but they should be acknowledged as the editor must know about any competing interests that the author might have. In case of no conflict, the authors are required to include this in their manuscripts as well.

Acknowledgments

➤ Often a paper acquires its final shape through ideas generated by a number of people. In such cases, it is important to mention all those names that have participated in the execution of the paper.

➤ Even minor participation requires acknowledgment so as to take care of grievances that may occur later on.

References

➤ References must be listed in the numerical system (APA style).
The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10), when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.