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GUIDELINES
FOR SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS
EDITORIAL POLICIES SMC Watch! is a web based medical journal launched to provide common academic base for students, faculty and alumni of Sindh Medical College, Karachi-Pakistan. Statements and opinions expressed in the articles and communications herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Editor(s), SMC Watch!, Sindh Medical College, and any other university or hospital with which the Editors are affiliated. The Editors and SMC Watch! disclaim any responsibility or liability for the material in the Journal. THE REVIEW PROCESS Each manuscript is assigned a special number, and its record is kept in a computer-based inventory. The editorial staff releases information on manuscripts only to the corresponding authors who give the manuscript number. Decisions on acceptance or rejection are communicated only by the Editors to the corresponding author mentioning the number. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT A special electronic receipt with the number assigned to the manuscript will be e-mailed to the corresponding author within 10 days of receipt of a manuscript. The manuscript number is a confidential communication and should be given only to other authors of the paper. INTERNAL REVIEW BY EDITORS Each manuscript is read by the Editor-in-Chief and one Executive Editor. Together, they decide whether or not to send the paper to outside reviewers. PEER REVIEW Papers are first read by SMC Watch! Editors and could be sent to an external "Content Referee" who is also an expert in that field. After receiving the opinion of "Content Referee" the paper will be sent to the "Statistics Editor". The "Editorial Board" will consider all opinions before taking the final decision. The authorship details are removed from each paper received before sending the paper for an outside review. REJECTED MANUSCRIPTS Rejected manuscripts are not returned to authors but are destroyed; no part of the manuscript is retained. PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS Summary of Technical Requirements · Double space all parts of manuscripts. · Begin each section or component on a new page. · Include permission to reproduce previously published material or to use illustrations that may identify human subjects. · Enclose completed Author’s Form and Electronic Content Description Form. · Submit 2 complete copies of the entire manuscript. · Keep copies of everything submitted. · Entire manuscript must also be submitted in Microsoft Word 6.0 or higher version in 3.5’ inch 1.44 MB Floppy formatted for IBM or compatible PC only. · Corresponding author MUST include a valid E-mail address. · Please print the submission address of the journal on the envelope. COMPONENTS OF
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PAPER
Title Page 1. The title of the article, which should be concise but informative; 2. The name by which each author is known, 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. Disclaimers, if any. 5. The name, address and e-mail of the author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript. 6. Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, technical or all of these. 7. Word count for the text inclusive of the abstract, references, tables, figures, and figure legends. Authorship All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to 1) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on 3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author. Editors may ask authors to describe what each contributed; this information may be published. Abstract & Key Words The second page should carry an abstract (of no more than 150 words for unstructured abstracts or 250 words for structured abstracts). The abstract should state the purposes of the study or investigation, basic procedures (selection of study subjects or laboratory animals; observational and analytical methods), main findings (giving specific data and their statistical significance, if possible), and the principal conclusions. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations. Below the abstract authors should provide, and identify as such, three to ten key words or short phrases that will assist indexers in cross-indexing the article and may be published with the abstract. Introduction State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale for the study or observation. Give only strictly pertinent references and do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported. Methods & Aims 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 subjects. The definition and relevance of race and ethnicity are ambiguous. Authors should be particularly careful about using these categories. Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer'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), dose(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 methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract. 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 details about randomization. Describe the methods for and success of any blinding of observations. Report complications of treatment. Give numbers of observations. Report losses to observation (such as dropouts from a clinical trial). References for the design of the study and statistical methods should be to standard works when possible (with pages stated) rather than to papers in which the designs or methods were originally reported. Specify any general-use computer programs used. Put a general description of methods in the Methods section. When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess 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. 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. 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. Link the conclusions with the goals of the study but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by the data. In particular, authors 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. Conclusions The paper should conclude with a brief section that summarizes the clinical and research implications of the work, as appropriate. Acknowledgments At an appropriate place in the article (the title-page footnote or an appendix to the text; see the journal's requirements), 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; 3) acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support; and 4) relationships that may pose a conflict of interest. Persons who have contributed intellectually to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be named and their function or contribution described-for example, "scientific adviser," "critical review of study proposal," "data collection," or "participation in clinical trial." Such persons must have given their permission to be named. Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission from persons acknowledged by name, because readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions. Technical help should be acknowledged in a paragraph separate from that acknowledging other contributions. References References should be numbered consecutively 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 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. Avoid using abstracts as references. References to papers accepted but not yet published should be designated as "in press" or "forthcoming"; authors should obtain written permission to cite such papers as well as verification that they have been accepted for publication. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source. The references must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents. PRINTING &
SUBMISSION Type or print out the manuscript on white bond paper, ISO A4 (212 x 297 mm), with margins of at least 25 mm (1 inch). Type or print on only one side of the paper. Use double spacing throughout, including for the title page, abstract, text, acknowledgments, references, individual tables, and legends. Number pages consecutively, beginning with the title page. Put the page number in the lower right-hand corner of each page. MANUSCRIPT ON DISKS A copy of the entire manuscript in electronic form must also be submitted in Microsoft Word 6.0 (or higher) for Windows format in a 3.5 inch 1.44 MB Floppy disk. Make sure to format the floppy for IBM or Compatible PC only before copying the final version of the manuscript. Graphic files are acceptable in JPEG and GIF formats only. When submitting disks, authors should:
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