The Editorial Process

Types of Manuscripts and word limits

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. 

Short reports: new/interesting/very rare cases with clinical significance. Up to 600 words excluding references and abstract and up to 5 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. 

Neuro Image: Classical clinical/radiological/pathological image Up to 250 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. 

Limits for number of images and tables: for all the above-mentioned categories the number of images and tables should not be more than one per 500 words. 

Authorship criteria

The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors. 

For a study carried out in a single institute the number of contributors should not exceed six. For a case-report and for a review article the number of contributors should not exceed four. For images and Letter to the Editor the number of contributors should not be more than three. A justification should be included, if the number of contributors exceed these limits. 
 

Sending the Manuscript to the Journal

Online submission of articles

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 color images. Each image should be less than 400 kb in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep up to 1024x760 pixels or 5 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. 

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 (one set), for articles submitted online, should be sent to the journal office at the time of submission of a revised manuscript. 
 

Preparation of the Manuscript

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). 

When reporting studies on human, 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. 

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 

Include 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, analysis and interpretation); Interpretation and implications in the context of the totality of evidence (is there a systematic review to refer to, if not, could one be reasonably done here and now?, what this study adds to the available evidence, effects on patient care and health policy, possible mechanisms); Controversies raised by this study; and Future research directions (for this particular research collaboration, underlying mechanisms, clinical research). Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction or the Results section. 

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. 

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 media, newspaper items, etc. please refer http://www.icmje.org. 

1. Standard journal article: Jain VK, Behari S. Management of congenital atlanto-axial dislocation: some lessons learnt. Neurol India 2002;50: 386-97. 
   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. pp. 465-78. 

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 used in 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 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, 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/marker/pencil. 
• 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 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, wherever applicable) gives informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients' names from figures unless they have obtained informed consent from the patients. The journal abides by ICMJE guidelines:

1) Authors, not the journals nor the publisher, need to obtain the patient consent form before the publication and have the form properly archived. The consent forms are not to be uploaded with the cover letter or sent through email to editorial or publisher offices.

2) If the manuscript contains patient images that preclude anonymity, or a description that has obvious indication to the identity of the patient, a statement about obtaining informed patient consent should be indicated in the manuscript.

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 during transit. 

Proofs and Reprints

Journal does not provide any free printed reprints. Reprints can be purchased at the time of submitting the proofs. Proofs are usually send by e-mail 3-4 weeks prior to scheduled publication.
 

Copyrights

Check list

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 
• Key words provided (three or more) 
• 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 

• Uniformly American English 
• 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 

• Number within specified limits. 
• 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) 
 

Contributors' form