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Instructions for Contributors
Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journal" developed by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (October 2001). The uniform requirements and specific requirement of Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery are summarised below. Articles can be submitted online from http://journalonweb.com/ijps.
The Editorial Process
The 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, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The Editors review all submitted manuscripts initially. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific flaws, or absence of importance of message are rejected. The journal will not return the unaccepted manuscripts. Other manuscripts are sent to two or more expert reviewers without revealing the identity of the contributors to the reviewers. Within a period of eight to ten weeks, the contributors will be informed about the reviewers' comments and acceptance/rejection of manuscript. Articles accepted would be copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format.
Types of Manuscripts and word limits
Original articles: Randomised controlled trials, intervention studied, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, cost effectiveness analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rate. Up to 3000 words excluding references and abstract.
Review articles: Systemic critical assessments of literature and data sources. Up to 4000 words excluding references and abstract.
Case reports: new/interesting/very rare cases can be reported. Cases with clinical significance or implications will be given priority, whereas, mere reporting of a rare case may not be considered. Up to 1000 words excluding references and abstract and up to 10 references.
Letter to the Editor: Should be short, decisive observation. They should not be preliminary observations that need a later paper for validation. Up to 400 words and 4 references.
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. Up to 100 words.
Online submission of articles
Articles can also be submitted online from http://www.journalonweb.com. New authors will have to register as author, which is a simple two step procedure. For online submission articles should be prepared in two files (first page file and article file). Images should be submitted separately. If article is submitted online there is no need to send hard copies of the article. On acceptance, however, images and copyright form should be sent to the journal office.
First Page File: Prepare the title page, covering letter, acknowledgement, etc. using a word processor program. All information which can reveal your identity should be here. Use text/rtf/doc/pdf files. Do not zip the files.
Article file: The main text of the article, beginning from Abstract till References (including tables) should be in this file. Do not include any information (such as acknowledgement, your names in page headers, etc.) in this file. Use text/rtf/doc/pdf files. Do not zip the files. Limit the file size to 400 kb. Do not incorporate images in the file. If file size is large, graphs can be submitted as images separately without incorporating them in the article file to reduce the size of the file.
Images: Submit good quality colour images. Each image should be less than 100 kb in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep up to 400 pixels or 3 inches). All image formats (jpeg, tiff, gif, bmp, png, eps, etc.) are acceptable; jpeg is most suitable. Do not zip the files.
Legends: Legends for the figures/images should be kept ready for copy-paste during the submission process.
Sending the Manuscript to the Journal
Send three copies of the manuscript along with a covering letter, contributors' form signed by all the contributors, checklist and floppy. Place the photographs in a separate envelope. The covering letter must include information on prior or duplicate publication or submission elsewhere of any part of the work/study; and a statement of financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict of interest.
Copies of any permission(s) to reproduce published material, and to use illustrations or report information about identifiable people must accompany the manuscript. The manuscript should be sent to the Dr. Mukund Thatte, Editor, Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, 167-F, Dr. Ambedkar Road, Dadar, Mumbai - 400014, India. (E-mail: editor.org).
Preparation of the Manuscript
Send laser printout, on white thick paper, of A4 size (212 × 297 mm), with margins of 25 mm (1 inch) from all the four sides. Type or print on only one side of the paper. Use double spacing throughout. Number pages consecutively, beginning with the title page. The language should be American English.
Title Page
The title page should carry
1) Type of manuscript (Original/Review/Case)
2) The title of the article, which should be concise, but informative;
3) Running title or short title not more than 50 characters;
4) The name by which each contributor is known (Last name, First name and initials of middle name), with his or her highest academic degree(s) and institutional affiliation;
5) The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which 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, etc.; and
9) If the manuscript was presented as part at a meeting, the organisation, 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 articles). 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 word.
Introduction
State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale for the study or observation.
Methods
Describe the selection of the observational or experimental subjects (patients or laboratory animals, including controls) clearly. Identify the age, sex, and other important characteristics of the subjects. Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer's name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail. 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), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.
Reports of randomised clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomisation, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT statement (Moher D, Schulz KF, Altman DG: The CONSORT Statement: Revised Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Reports of Parallel-Group Randomized Trials. Ann Intern Med. 2001;134:657-662, also available at 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, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html). Do not use patients' 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 for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
Statistics
When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Report losses to observation (such as dropouts from a clinical trial). Put a general description of methods in the Methods section. 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 = 0.046).
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. 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 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. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. State new hypotheses when warranted, but clearly label them as such. Recommendations, when appropriate, may be included.
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 technical help; and 3) acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support. This should be the last page of the manuscript.
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. 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. Contributors should obtain written permission and confirmation of accuracy from the source of a personal communication. The commonly cited types of references are shown here, for other types of references such as electronic
1. Standard journal article: Seshadri L, George SS, Vasudevan B, Krishna S. Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and human papilloma virus infection in renal transplant recipients. Indian J Cancer 2001;38:92-5.
List the first six contributors followed by et al.
2. Personal author(s): Ringsven MK, Bond D. Gerontology and leadership skills for nurses. 2nd ed. Albany (NY): Delmar Publishers; 1996.
3. 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. pp465-78.
Tables - Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material.
- Tables with more than 10 columns and 25 rows are not acceptable.
- Number tables, in Arabic numerals, consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each.
- 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) - Submit three sets of figures.
- Send sharp, glossy, un-mounted, colour photographic prints, with height of 4 inches and width of 6 inches.
- Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text.
- Each figure should have a label pasted on its back indicating the number of the figure, the running title, top of the figure and the legends of the figure. Do not write the contributor/s' name/s. Do not write on the back of figures, scratch, or mark them by using paper clips.
- Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background and should marked neatly with transfer type or by tissue overlay and not by pen.
- If a figure has been published, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material. A credit line should appear in the legend for figures for such figures.
Legends for Illustrations - Type or print out legends (maximum 40 words, excluding the credit line) for illustrations using double spacing, with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations.
- When symbols, arrows or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend.
- Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.
Protection of Patients' Rights to Privacy
Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the article and copy of the consent should be attached with the covering letter.
Electronic Version - The manuscript must be accompanied by a 3.5 inch (1.44 MB) floppy containing the manuscript.
- Do not use `oh' (O) for `zero' (0), `el' (l) for one (1). Do not use space bar for indentation. Do not type headings or any other text in ALL CAPITALS. Do not break words at the end of lines. Do not use an extra hard return/enter between paragraphs. Do not insert a tab, indent, or extra spaces before beginning of a paragraph. Do not use software's facility of automatic referencing, footnotes, headers, footers, etc.
- Use a hyphen only to hyphenate compound words. Use only one letter space at the end of sentence. Use hard return/enter only at the end of paragraphs and display lines (e.g. titles, headings and subheadings). Incorporate notes or footnotes in the text, within parentheses, rather than their usual place at the foot of the page.
- Provide the tables and charts at the appropriate place in the text and not at the end of the manuscript.
- Care should be taken to prevent damage to floppy while sending it through post.
Sending a revised manuscript
While submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, along with single copy of the final revised manuscript, a photocopy of the revised manuscript with the changes underlined in red and copy of the comments with the point to point clarification to each comment. The manuscript number should be written on each of these documents.
If the manuscript is submitted online, the contributors' form and copyright transfer form has to be submitted in original with the signatures of all the contributors within two weeks from submission. Hard copies of the images, for articles submitted online, should be sent to the journal office at the time of submission of a revised manuscript.
Reprints
Journal does not provide any free printed reprints. Reprints can be purchased at the time of submitting the proofs.
Copyrights
The whole of the literary matter in 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. The journal also grants the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal non-commercial use.
Contributors' form (to be modified as applicable and one singed copy attached with the manuscript)
Manuscript Title:
Manuscript number:
I/we certify that I/we have participated sufficiently in the intellectual content, conception and design of this work or the analysis and interpretation of the data (when applicable), as well as the writing of the manuscript, to take public responsibility for it and have agreed to have my/our name listed as a contributor. I/we believe the manuscript represents valid work. Neither this manuscript nor one with substantially similar content under my/our authorship has been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere, except as described in the covering letter. I/we certify that all the data collected during the study is presented in this manuscript and no data from the study has been or will be published separately. I/we attest that, if requested by the editors, I/we will provide the data/information or will cooperate fully in obtaining and providing the data/information on which the manuscript is based, for examination by the editors or their assignees. I/we also certify that we have taken all necessary permissions from our institution and/or department for conducting and publishing the present work.
Financial interests, direct or indirect, that exist or may be perceived to exist for individual contributors in connection with the content of this paper have been disclosed in the cover letter. Sources of outside support of the project are named in the cover letter.
I/We hereby transfer(s), assign(s), or otherwise convey(s) all copyright ownership, including any and all rights incidental thereto, exclusively to the Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, in the event that such work is published by the Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery. The Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery shall own the work, including 1) copyright; 2) the right to grant permission to republish the article in whole or in part, with or without fee; 3) the right to produce preprints or reprints and translate into languages other than English for sale or free distribution; and 4) the right to republish the work in a collection of articles in any other mechanical or electronic format.
We give the rights to the corresponding author to make necessary changes as per the request of the journal, do the rest of the correspondence on our behalf and he/she will act as the guarantor for the manuscript on our behalf.
All persons who have made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript, but who are not contributors, are named in the Acknowledgment and have given me/us their written permission to be named. If I/we do not include an Acknowledgment that means I/we have not received substantial contributions from non-contributors and no contributor has been omitted.
Name Signature Date signed
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Checklist (to be tick marked, as applicable and one copy attached with the manuscript) - Key words provided (three or more)
- Key messages provided
- Introduction of 75-100 words
- Headings in title case (not ALL CAPITALS, not underlined)
- References cited in superscript in the text without brackets
- References according to the journal's instructions.
Language and grammar - Abbreviations spelt out in full for the first time
- Numerals from 1 to 10 spelt out
- Numerals at the beginning of the sentence spelt out
Tables and figures - No repetition of data in tables/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)
- Labels pasted on back of the photographs (no names written)
- Figure legends provided (not more than 40 words)
- Patients' privacy maintained (if not, written permission enclosed)
- Credit note for borrowed figures/tables provided
Manuscript provided on a floppy (with single spacing)
Covering letter - Signed by all contributors
- Previous publication / presentations mentioned
- Source of funding mentioned
- Conflicts of interest disclosed
Authors - Middle name initials provided
- Author for correspondence, with e-mail address provided
- Number of contributors restricted as per the instructions
- Identity not revealed in paper except title page (e.g. name of the institute in material and 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
- Title page contains all the desired information (vide supra)
- Running title provided (not more than 50 characters)
- Abstract page contains the full title of the manuscript
- Abstract provided (not more than 150 words for case reports and 250 words for original articles)
- Structured abstract provided for an original article
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