Guide for Authors

Submission Checklist

Read the Aims & Scope to gain an overview and assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal Use the Microsoft Word template to prepare your manuscript according to the ICMJE Guidelines Read the Research and Publication Ethics guidelines and ensure that they are reflected in your manuscript Make sure that issues about publication ethics, copyright, authorship, plagiarism, conflict of interest etc have been appropriately considered. Read the policy documents under "Journal Policies" on the main page Ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript. Download the Author Declaration Form, get it signed from all authors (Without this document your manuscript will not be processed) An Ethical Review board approval letter is required for every original study. If an ethical review board is not present in your institute, download the Ethical Declaration Form. (Without this document your manuscript will not be processed) Click Register and log in to the OJS system as an author. Attach the Manuscript in Word format along with the authorship form and ethical approval letter.

Manuscript Submission Overview

Type of Publications:

JRMC has no restrictions on the length of manuscripts, provided that the text is concise and comprehensive. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. JRMC requires that authors publish all experimental controls and make full datasets available where possible.The Manuscripts submitted to JRMC should neither be published before nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are as follows:

Articles: Original research manuscripts. The journal considers all original research manuscripts provided that the work reports scientifically sound experiments and provides a substantial amount of new information. Authors should not unnecessarily divide their work into several related manuscripts, although Short Communications of preliminary, but significant, results will be considered. Quality and impact of the study will be considered during peer review. Reviews: These provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in a given area of research. Systematic reviews should follow the HEC or PMDC guidelines. Preprints and Conference papers: JRMC previously did not accept/publish preprint and conference proceedings. However, expanded and high-quality conference papers can be considered as articles if they fulfill the following requirements: (1) the paper should be expanded to the size of a research article; (2) the conference paper should be cited and noted on the first page of the paper; (3) if the authors do not hold the copyright of the published conference paper, authors should seek the appropriate permission from the copyright holder; (4) authors are asked to disclose that it is conference paper in their cover letter and include a statement on what has been changed compared to the original conference paper. JRMC does not publish pilot studies or studies with inadequate statistical power. Case Reports: We publish case reports and case series for conditions that are novel. Submission Process: Manuscripts for JRMC should be submitted through the online submission system at http://journalrmc.com/index.php/JRMC. The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. To submit your manuscript, register, and log in to the OJS. All co-authors can see the manuscript details in the submission system if they register and log in using the e-mail address provided during manuscript submission.

Manuscript Preparation

Go through articles published in JRMC and follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidelines regarding manuscript preparation. Click the link above and review these guidelines before submitting your manuscript.

We follow Code of Ethics and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors detailed in COPE Research Publication Ethics

Research Involving Human Subjects
  • When reporting on research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data, authors must declare that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, revised in 2008. According to point 23 of this declaration, an approval from an ethics committee should have been obtained before undertaking the research. At a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be cited in the Methods Section of the article. Data relating to individual participants must be described in detail, but private information identifying participants need not be included unless the identifiable materials are of relevance to the research (for example, photographs of participants’ faces that show a particular symptom). Editors reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.
  • Example of an ethical statement: "All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code)."
  • A written informed consent for publication must be obtained from participating patients who can be identified (including by the patients themselves). Patients’ initials or other personal identifiers must not appear in an image. For manuscripts that include any case details, personal information, and/or images of patients, authors must obtain signed informed consent from patients (or their relatives/guardians) before submitting to our journal. Patient details must be anonymized as far as possible, e.g., do not mention specific age, ethnicity, or occupation where they are not relevant to the conclusions.
  • You may compete the Ethical Declaration Form after consulting with your affiliated institution. Alternatively, you may provide a detailed justification of why informed consent is not necessary. For the purposes of publishing in JRMC, a consent, permission, or release form should include unlimited permission for publication in all formats (including print, electronic, and online), in sublicensed and reprinted versions (including translations and derived works), and in other works and products under open access license. To respect patients’ and any other individual’s privacy, please do not send signed forms. The journal reserves the right to ask authors to provide signed forms if necessary.
Publication Ethics Statement

The editors of this journal enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of JRMC take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero-tolerance policy. Authors wishing to publish their papers in JRMC must abide to the following:

  • Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
  • Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
  • Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
  • Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
  • Republishing content that is not novel is not tolerated (for example, an English translation of a paper that is already published in another language will not be accepted).
  • If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this journal so that appropriate actions can be taken. Please refer to our COPE retraction guidelines.
  • Your manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license.

Having a list of all the authors makes it easy for the journal, as it tells readers who did the work and it ensures that the right people get the credit, and also take responsibility, for the research.

To ensure that the principles laid down by editors are not breached and by-lines reflect who really did the work, both editors and investigators feel that in order to avoid this misrepresentation which is a form of research misconduct, authorship in written form is necessary.

JRMC adopts the following policies regarding authorship:-

Authorship

Authors should state their contribution to the project. They should provide a description of what each contributed, by signing & mentioning the task done on the authorship declaration form. We publish this information in print. As per ICJME guidelines, an author must have,

  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;
  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.

If an contributor doesn’t fulfil this criteria, he/she should not sign the authorship form as an author.

Corresponding author

The person who receives the reviewers’ comments, the proofs, etc. and whose contact details are printed on the article so that readers can request reprints or contact the research group.

Acknowledgements

We permit acknowledgement of contributions to a research project that do not merit authorship. The ICMJE guidelines state: ‘All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgments, and what they did should be described’. All those who are listed in this way should be aware of it.

Order of authors

The ICMJE guidelines state that the order of authorship, should be ‘a joint decision of the coauthors’. Authors should ideally make these decisions before starting to write up the project.

Number of authors

There is no limit to this but since we use the Vancouver style of referencing names of only the first six authors will be available whenever anyone cites their article.

Fill the authorship declaration form according to this policy.

Further Readings:

Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers

Processing charges are to be paid when the processing of the article (plagiarism check and peer review) starts.

Publication charges are to be paid when the article is accepted for publication.

 

Article Processing and Publication Fee can be deposited at,
Title of Account: Journal of Rawalpindi Medical College
IBAN: PK34NBPA0395004061396387
Bank Name: National Bank of Pakistan
Branch Code: 0395- Rawalpindi city Branch H-128 opp. Talia Shahal Murree Road
Manuscript Processing Workflow JRMC Editorial Office