Journal of Sheikh Zayed Medical College is a quarterly Journal and accepts manuscripts prepared in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements submitted to the Biomedical Journals” as approved by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, published in the British Medical Journal 1991; 302:334-41, printed in the JSZMC, Vol. 3 No. 2, April – June, 1993, updated and reprinted in 2003, 2007, 2008, 2012 and January 2017, Vol. 27(1).
JSZMC follows publication ethics policy of “Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)” guidelines for publication misconduct, which can be accessed on; http://publicationethics.org/ core-practices and http://www.wame.org/about/recommendations-on–publication-ethics-policies
Authors can submit their manuscripts online via Journal’s online submission system at http://jszmc.com/. Manuscripts must be submitted by the corresponding author of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on his behalf. A successful electronic submission of a manuscript will be followed by a system-generated acknowledgment to the principal/corresponding author. You may contact us at; jszmc.ryk@gmail.com, for any assistance if needed.
A duly filled-in author’s Undertaking Form must be sent to Journal office. The Undertaking Form contains information regarding the contribution of the individual author, in the article. It is advised to read all the guidelines, before filling the Undertaking Form. The Undertaking Form is mandatory starting the processing of manuscript. (Download Undertaking Form). The order of the authors on Undertaking Form submitted initially cannot be changed later on.
It is mandatory to provide the Institutional Review Board or Ethical Committee approval letter, showing the permission to start the research, for all the research articles, at the time of submission of article.
Authorship Criteria
The Journal does not entertain articles from non-medical graduates on clinical subjects. Authors must provide a final list of authors with their contact details such as the workplace, telephone/cell numbers and E-mail addresses on the manuscript at the time of submission, ensuring the correct sequence of the names of authors, which will not be considered for any addition, deletion or rearrangement after final submission of the manuscript. Authors must also mention the contribution of each author in the manuscript according to ICMJE criteria as stated in ICMJE recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria: 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3. Final approval of the version to be published; and 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. All the four conditions are to be fulfilled. Practices of ghost and gift authorship are strongly discouraged.
JSZMC is an open access and free to all readers. The authors have to understand and agree to this policy of journal as mentioned in undertaking form. JSZMC strongly discourages gift and duplicate authorship. Mere supervision, collection of data, statistical analysis and language correction do not grant authorship rights. Ideally all authors should belong to same department of an institute, except for multi-center and multi-specialty studies.
Plagiarism Policy
JSZMC follows the ICMJE, COPE, PMDC and HEC guidelines/criteria for all types of plagiarism. The same can be accessed at www.icmje.org, www.pmdc.com and www.hec.gov.pk. All the submitted manuscripts are subjected to plagiarism checking through the software Turnitin (courtesy HEC). Manuscripts with similarity index more than 19% are not processed further unless rectified. It is the authors’ responsibility to apprise themselves of plagiarism in any form including paraphrasing and self-plagiarism. Manuscripts submitted to JSZMC can be sent to HEC, other medical journals’ editors and international agencies for authentication of originality. The disciplinary committee of JSZMC would deal with cases of plagiarism and comprise of the staff and editors or person nominated by Editor.
For a plagiarized article (multiple submissions) in processing, the identification of act will lead to dropping of article from further processing / consideration of publication. The corresponding author will be asked in written to give an explanation on the issue. In case of an unsatisfactory reply, the matter will be referred to the disciplinary committee that may decide the course of action. For a published articles, the allegedly plagiarized article will be temporarily retracted from publication and a notice to the effect will be published in the JSZMC. The author will be served an explanation letter. In case of non-response in specified time or unsatisfactory response, the article will be permanently retracted and the author will be blacklisted. HEC, COPE, PAME, PMDC and author’s institute will also be notified. In case of multiple submissions, other editors will also be informed at PAME forum. The author(s) will have to provide documentary proof of retraction from publication, if such a defense is pleaded. Those claiming intellectual / idea or data theft of an article must provide documentary proof in their claim.
Publication Ethics
JSZMC follows COPE guidelines for publication ethics. All publication misconducts are dealt by first asking the corresponding author to submit answer in response to allegation, in view of the available evidence. In case of non-response or unsatisfactory response from the authors, the manuscript will be dropped from consideration if unpublished and retracted if published. Due notice of retraction will be given in print and on the website. The authors will be blacklisted for further submissions and considerations at the journal. The authors’ institutional head will also be informed of the action in such a case. The other Editorial Associations may also be informed.
Plagiarism and other publication misconduct, fabrication (picture as well), falsification, citation manipulation, salami slice, duplicate submission, redundant publication, multiple submission, selective and misleading reporting, selective and misleading referencing are liable to strict action.
If tables, illustrations or photographs, which have already been published, are included, a letter of permission for re-publication should be obtained from author (s) as well as the editor of the journal where it was previously published. Written permission to reproduce photographs of patients, whose identity is not disguised, should be sent with the manuscript; otherwise the eyes will be blackened out. If a medicine is used, generic name should be used. The commercial name may, however, be mentioned only within brackets, only if necessary. Ethical consideration regarding the intervention, added cost of test, and particularly the management of control in case-control comparisons of trials should be addressed: multi-centric authors’ affiliation will be asked to be authenticated by provision of permission letters from ethical boards or the heads of involved institutes.
Copyright
Prospective authors should read copyright policy before submitting their articles and other material for publication, as we always share our copyright statement at the end of abstract as follows; “This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited”. All articles published in Journal of Sheikh Zayed Medical College (JSZMC) are open access and freely available online, immediately upon publication. This is made possible by an article-processing charge (APC) that covers the range of publishing services we provide, including online tools for editors and authors, article production and hosting, liaison with abstracting and indexing services, and customer services. The APC is payable when the manuscript is editorially accepted but before publication. For further details visit Creative Commons Website
Policy of selection of Editors, Reviewers and Editorial Board Members
Human Resource policies in relation to selection of Editors, Reviewers, and Editorial Board members and their job descriptions are based upon vision and mission of Advisory Board.
Revenue Sources/Advertisement/Marketing
A fee of Rs: 30,000/- manuscript as charges, including Rs.5000/- for processing fee (non- refundable) is charged. Finance Editor, as nominated by Editor, looks after finances. A joint bank account of two Editorial board members titled as: “Journal of Sheikh Zayed Medical College” at Bank Al-Falah Rahim Yar Khan Branch is used for collecting of funds from fee of articles and all expenses on approval of the Editor are carried out from this account. An auditable record of the all revenues and expenses is maintained in registers, with receipt also preserved in record.
Management
JSZMC works on the directions of Advisory Board and the Editor, is responsible for all day to day and technical issues of the Journal. An office with two rooms for support staff, one Editors office and a meeting room is established in the campus of SZMC at the ground floor. Two Editorial Assistants, one clerical staff and one supporting staff is permanently hired. Additionally, one Joint-Editor, two Assistant Editors are working under the guidance of the Editor. There are ten Editorial Advisory Board Members from both Institute and outside and national to international affiliation.
Ombudsman
Prof. Dr. Abdul Razzaq Malik, Professor of Community Medicine, Amna Inayat Medical College, Sheikhupura, Pakistan, can be contacted by authors or any other for redressal of their grievances on mailsi58@yahoo.com
General Instructions
Authors should submit the manuscript typed in MS Word. Sentences should not start with a number or figure. Components of manuscript should be in the following sequence: a title page (containing names of authors, their postal and email addresses, fax and phone numbers, including mobile phone number of the corresponding author), abstract, keywords, text, references, tables (each table, complete with title and footnotes) and legends for illustrations and photo-graphs. The manuscript should be typed in double spacing as a single column. All randomized trials should also provide a proof of being registered at the International RCT Registry. Except for units of measurement, the first time an abbreviation appears, it should be preceded by the words for which it stands. Generic names should be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand name and the name of the manufacturer in parentheses after first mentioning of the generic name in the Methods section
JSZMC publishes only English language material. The type of manuscript/research submitted to JSZMC includes; Original Research Article, of about 2000-2500 words excluding abstract (of about 250 words). Three to 10 keywords should be given for an original article as per MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). There should be no more than three tables or illustrations. The data should be supported with 20 to 25 references, which should include local as well as international references. Majority of the references should be from last five years from the date of submission. Case Reports (800 words, atleast 3 key words) must be of academic and educational value and provide relevance of the disease being reported as unusual. Systematic Review Article should consist of critical overview/ analysis of some relatively narrow topic providing background and the recent development with the reference of original literature. It should incorporate author’s original work on the same subject. The length of the review article should be of 2500 to 3000 words.
Initial Screening
Every submitted paper is evaluated for plagiarism and references, by staff and one editor and if found to have satisfactory quality, is sent to two external reviewers.
Peer review
After initial screening, the paper selected are subjected to peer review by two external peer reviewers belonging to the subject specialty as identified by the Editor. The Journal follows double blind peer-review procedure. An average of two weeks’ time is given to reviewers for reviewing the manuscript.
Submission of Manuscripts
JSZMC follows ICMJE, COPE, PM&DC and HEC guidelines for manuscript submission. All manuscripts submitted for publication should be sent exclusively to JSZMC. Along with manuscripts should be; a covering letter giving written consent for publication and testifying that material submitted has not been published previously. All submission are subject to review/ alteration by the editorial board/ editor. Authors are advised that all manuscripts of original research should contain following sections:
a) Title Page It should consist of:
1) The title of the article, which should be concise, specific and informative.
2) Full name of each author, with his or her highest academic degree(s) and institutional affiliation.
3) The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed.
4) The name and address of the author responsible for correspondence for any possible request for reprint or corrections.
5) A short running head or footline of no more than 40 characters (count letters and spaces) at the foot of the title page.
b) Abstract and keywords:
The second page should carry structured abstract of not more than 250 words. The abstract should include; objective: purpose of the study or investigation; materials and methods; study design, place and duration of study, basic procedures as selection of study subjects, laboratory animals, observational and analytical methods; results: main findings and their statistical significance, if possible and conclusion: only principal conclusions. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations. Below the abstract authors should provide, and identify as such, 3 to 10 keywords or short phrases. Terms from the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) list of Index Medicus should be used.
Main manuscript of original article:
The main manuscript of original article is divided into subsections according to “IMRAD” structure, with the headings Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. The original paper should be of about two thousand words excluding abstract and references. It should contain a structured abstract of about 250 words. There should be no more than three tables or illustrations. The data should be supported with 20-25 references, which should include local as well as international references. Most of the reference should be from last five years from the date of submission.
c) Introduction:
It should provide background for the study (What has previously been done on the topic), State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale (What is not known and what new aspect will be added or negated by this study) for the study or observation(s). Give only strictly pertinent references and do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported. It should end with a statement of the study objectives. (Objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Repeatable and Time bound). It is preferable to cite about 10-15 references in this segment.
d) Material and Methods:
Describe your selection of the observational or experimental subjects, patients or laboratory animals, including controls clearly. Identify the age, sex, and other important characteristics of the subject. Because the relevance of such variable as age, sex and ethnicity the object of research is not always clear, authors should explicitly justify them when they are included in a study report. The guiding principle should be clarity about how and why a study was same in a particular way. For example, authors should explain why only subjects of certain ages were included or why women were excluded. Authors should avoid terms such as “race,” which lacks precise biological meaning, and use alternative descriptors such as “ethnicity” or “ethnic group” instead. Authors should specify carefully what the descriptors mean, and tell exactly how the data were collected. Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacture’s name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references to 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. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), and route(s) of administration. Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol (study Population, interventions or exposures, outcomes, and the rationale for statistical analysis), assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding). Authors submitting review manuscripts should include a section describing the method used for locating, selecting, extracting and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.
e) 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, as revised in 1983. We follow COPE guidelines for ethics related issue. Authors must state that the consent of the patient/guardian was taken prior to the writing of the manuscript if applicable. Ethical approval letter must be submitted along with the manuscript, duly issued from Institutional Review Board / Ethical committee of the Institute or in case of non applicability of the ethical approved, as per institutional policy.
f) Statistics:
Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Avoid relying solely on statistical hypothesis testing, such as the use of P-values, which fails to convey important quantitative information. Discuss the eligibility of experimental subjects. Give detail about randomization describe the method for and success of any blinding of observations. Report the complications of the treatment. Give numbers of observations. Report losses to observation (such as dropouts from a clinical trial). Specify any general-use computer programs used computer programs, e. g. SPSS, EPI Info. Put a general description of methods in the method section. When data are summarized in the results, specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to access its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Avoid non technical uses of technical terms in statistics such as “random” (which implies a randomizing device), “normal”, “significant”, “correlations” and “sample”. Define statistical terms, abbreviations and most symbols.
g) Results:
Present your results in logical sequence in the text, tables and illustrations. Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or illustrations; emphasize or summarize only important observations.
h) Discussion:
Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the introduction or the results section. Include in the discussion section the implications of the findings and their limitations, including for future research. Relate the observations to other relevant studies. Recommendations when appropriate may be included.
i) Acknowledgments:
List all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship, such as a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged. Groups of persons who have contributed materially to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be listed under a heading such as “clinical investigators” or “participating investigator”, and their function or contribution should be described for example, “served as scientific advisors,” “critically reviewed the study proposal,” “collected data,” or “provided and cared for study patients”.
j) References:
References should be in the Vancouver Style. References should be numbered in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in parentheses. References should include the names and initials of all authors, in case of more than six authors, after first six authors et al be entered. This is followed title of the article, journal name year, volume, issue number and inclusive page numbers e.g. Flanagin A, Fontanarosa PB, DeAngelis CD. Authorship for research groups. JSZMC. 2002; 288:3166-8. Reference to books should include author’s chapter title, Editor’s name, title of book, city of publication, publisher and year. All references must be complete and accurate. List all authors if the total number of authors is six or less and for more than six authors use et al. after six (the term “et al.” should be in italics). Date of access should be provided for online citations. Journal names should be abbreviated according to the Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
k) Illustrations and legends:
Submit 2 hard copies on high-quality laser printer paper or bond paper. For best possible reproduction, avoid using shading or dotted patterns; if unavoidable, submit this type of illustration in the form of a glossy photograph for best results. Use thick, solid lines and bold, solid type.
l) Tables:
Tables should be self-explanatory and numbered in Roman numerals in the order as mentioned in the text. Provide a brief title for each. Type each table double spaced, on a separate page. Abbreviations should be defined in a double-spaced footnote at the end of the table. If any material in a table or a table itself has been taken from previously copyrighted material, a double spaced footnote must give full credit to the original source and permission of the author and publisher must be obtained. Send letters of permission to the Editor with the manuscript.
m) Conflict of Interest Notification Page:
Authors should declare any potential conflict of interest and any financial support for the study may be disclosed as well. JSZMC follows COPE practices and guidelines for dealing with conflict of interest / Competing interests.
n) Archiving / Data Preservation Policy:
Journal of Sheikh Zayed Medical College is registered with PKP Preservation Network to ensure long-term digital preservation of material published. Additionally we also maintain published material on hard disk annually.