About the Journal

Astrocyte is the official publication of National Board of Examinations. A peer-reviewed, indexed, multi-specialty medical journal published every quarter, full text of the  journal is available online at www.astrocyte.in. Astrocyte allows free access to its contents and permits authors to self-archive final accepted version of the articles on any OAI-compliant institutional / subject- based repository.

Scope of the journal

Astrocyte is an independent and authoritative window to evolving medical thought and research in diverse disciplines of medicine. It publishes research; practice changing updates; reflections, scrutiny, and constructive debates; and crystal ball gazing in global medicine. The mission is to instil knowledge, inspire introspection and ignite human minds in pursuit of clinical excellence.

The journal publishes original research, review articles, special reports, meta-analysis, practise guidelines, debates, guest editorials, chronicles of medicine, pictorial essays, book reviews, and case reports. Should a contributor wish to publish a piece of writing of different genre, s/he may write to the editorial board. Astrocyte welcomes such suggestions. We follow a free-thinking approach.Detailed guidelines are given below for each category of contribution.

Indexing of the journal

 Astrocyte is currently indexed with Index Copernicus and is registered with Baidu Scholar, CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), EBSCO Publishing's Electronic Databases, Exlibris – Primo Central, Google Scholar, Hinari, Infotrieve, National Science Library, ProQuest, and TdNet abstracting partners.

The Editorial Process

A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to Astrocyte alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding for formal peer-review. Manuscripts that are unlikely to be of interest to the Astrocyte readers are also liable to be rejected at this stage itself.

Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in Astrocyte are sent to two or more expert reviewers. During submission, the contributor is requested to provide names of two or three qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but this is not mandatory. The reviewers should not be affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor/s. However, the selection of these reviewers is at the sole discretion of the editor. The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. Every manuscript is also assigned to a member of the editorial team, who based on the comments from the reviewers takes a final decision on the manuscript. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/ rejection/ amendments in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point by point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.

Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within three days. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The whole process of submission of the manuscript to final decision and sending and receiving proofs is completed online. To achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the journal publishes articles online as ‘Ahead of Print’ immediately on acceptance.

Clinical trial registry

Astrocyte favors registration of clinical trials and is a signatory to the Statement on publishing clinical trials in Indian biomedical journals. Astrocyte would publish clinical trials that have been registered with a clinical trial registry that allows free online access to public.
Registration in the following trial registers is acceptable:

• http://www.ctri.in/;
• http://www.actr.org.au/;
• http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/;
• http://isrctn.org/;
• http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/index.asp; and
• http://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr.

This is applicable to clinical trials that have begun enrollment of subjects in or after June 2008. Clinical trials that have commenced enrollment of subjects prior to June 2008 would be considered for publication in Journal of the Indian Medical Association only if they have been registered retrospectively with clinical trial registry that allows unhindered online access to public without charging any fees.

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below: 

1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published.

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. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. 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. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope and number of institutions involved (vide infra). The authors should provide a justification, if the number of authors exceeds these limits.

Contribution Details

Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. One or more author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as 'guarantor'.

Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests

All authors of must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

Submission of Manuscripts

All manuscripts must be submitted on-line through the website http://www.journalonweb.com/astrocyte. First time users will have to register at this site. Registration is free but mandatory. Registered authors can keep track of their articles after logging into the site using their user name and password. Authors do not have to pay for submission, processing or publication of articles. If you experience any problems, please contact the editorial office by e-mail at editor [AT] astrocyte . org

The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Guidelines to Authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction, before they undergo editorial/ peer-review. Generally, the manuscript should be submitted in the form of two separate files:

[1] Title Page/First Page File/covering letter:

This file should provide

1. The type of manuscript (Article types: Original Article, Case Reports, Review Article, Letter to Editor), Title of the manuscript, Running title, Names of all authors/ contributors (with their highest academic degrees, designation and affiliations) and Name(s) of Department(s) and/ or Institution(s) to which the work should be credited. All information which can reveal your identity should be here.
2. Use docx/doc files.
3. Do not zip the files.
4. The total number of pages, total number of photographs and word counts separately for abstract and for the text (excluding the references, tables and abstract), word counts for introduction + discussion in case of an original article.
5. Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs or all of these.
6. Acknowledgement, if any. 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 included in the title page of the manuscript and not in the main article file.
7. If the manuscript was presented as part at a meeting, the organization, place, and exact date on which it was read. A full statement to the editor about all submissions and previous reports that might be regarded as redundant publication of the same or very similar work. Any such work should be referred to specifically, and referenced in the new paper. Copies of such material should be included with the submitted paper, to help the editor decide how to handle the matter.
8. Registration number in case of a clinical trial and where it is registered (name of the registry and its URL)
9. Conflicts of Interest of each author/ contributor. A statement of financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict of interest, if that information is not included in the manuscript itself or in an authors' form
10. Criteria for inclusion in the authors’/ contributors’ list
11. A statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors, that the requirements for authorship as stated earlier in this document have been met, and that each author believes that the manuscript represents honest work, if that information is not provided in another form (see below); and
12. The name, address, e-mail, and telephone number of the corresponding author, who is responsible for communicating with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the proofs, if that information is not included on the manuscript itself.

[2] Blinded Article file:The main text of the article, beginning from Abstract till References (including tables) should be in this file. The file must not contain any mention of the authors' names or initials or the institution at which the study was done or acknowledgements.

• Page headers/running title can include the title but not the authors' names.
• Use docx/doc files.
• Do not zip the files and limit the file size to 1 MB.
• 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.
• The pages should be numbered consecutively, beginning with the first page of the blinded article file.

[3] Images: Submit good quality color images. Each image should be less than 4 MB in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep up to 1800 x 1200 pixels or 5-6 inches).Images can be submitted in jpg, gif, png, tiff format. Do not zip the files. Legends for the figures/images should be included at the end of the article file.

[4] Copyright transfer form: The contributors' / copyright transfer form (template provided below) has to be submitted in original with the signatures of all the contributors within two weeks of submission as a scanned image/pdf.

Preparation of Manuscripts

Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals" developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (October 2006). The uniform requirements and specific requirement of Astrocyte are summarized below. Before submitting a manuscript, contributors are requested to check for the latest guidelines available. Guidelines are also available from the website of the journal(www.astrocyte.in)  and from the manuscript submission site (http://www.journalonweb.com/astrocyte ).

Astrocyte accepts manuscripts written in American English.

Copies of any permission(s)

It is the responsibility of authors/ contributors to obtain permissions for reproducing any copyrighted material. A copy of the permission obtained must accompany the manuscript. Copies of any and all published articles or other manuscripts in preparation or submitted elsewhere that are related to the manuscript must also accompany the manuscript.

Types of Manuscripts

1. Original Contributions:
   1. The Original articles are self-conducted novel research and investigations conducted in the group and collaborations of the first and the corresponding authors.
   2. The original articles can be of the following categories:
      1. Clinical Investigations or Academic Research having strong clinical implications.
      2. Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) and Intervention trials.
      3. Studies of Screening and Diagnostic test.
      4. Surveys with high response rate.
   3. The text of Original articles should preferably be amounting to approximately 3500 words (excluding Abstract, References and Tables)
   4. The text should be divided into sections of Abstract, Key-words, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion and References with tables and figure legends.
   5. The manuscript should have an Abstract (300 words) representing an accurate summary of the article.
   6. The Original articles may have up to 10 illustrations and not more than 50 references.


2. Practice Changing\Continuing Education\Review Articles:
   1. It is expected that these articles would be written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field.
   2. A short summary of the work done by the contributor(s) in the field of review should accompany the manuscript.
   3. The word count is preferably up to 3600 words excluding Tables, References and Abstract.
   4. The manuscript should have preferably 4-5 illustrations and about 50-60 References.
   5. The manuscript should have an Abstract (360 words) representing an accurate summary of the article.
   6. The section titles would depend upon the topic reviewed.


3. Special Reports:
   1. Case series\experiences which bring to the fore a new thought process, recent advances or challenges in a specific condition, disorder or sub-specialty may be presented as special reports.
   2. They should provide a learning point for the readers and be unique in nature.
   3. Only those case series which carry strong clinical significance or implication shall be considered.
   4. These communications should be limited preferably to 3000 words (excluding Abstract and References) and should have the following headings: Abstract (unstructured), Key-words, Introduction, and Point of Report, Discussion, Reference, Tables and Legends in that order.
   5. The manuscript should preferably be having 3 or more live images and up to 12 references.
   6. The article should preferably have strong medical statistics, which are presented in a tabular form.
   7. These reports could be authored by up to three authors.


4. Pictorial Essay:
   • The essay should aim to provide both textual and visual portrayals of a topical issue.
   • It should consist of a short unstructured abstract, brief introduction, subheadings to organize the material and a summary.
   • The number of references is preferably up to 12.
   • The text should approximately be having 1000-2000 words in length, with much of the message contained in the figure legends.
   • The article should allow for a large number of figures, typically up to 20 figures or 30 figure parts.


5. Chronicles of Medicine:
   • A chronicle is an extended account in prose of historical events, sometimes including legendary material, presented in chronological order and without authorial interpretation or comment. In medicine, a recount of such historic events promotes greater understanding of milestone developments in a particular field and may motivate new experiments and charting of unmapped waters. The number of references is preferably restricted to 10.


6. Debates:
   • Debates should present an argument that is not essentially based on practical research.
   • They can report on all aspects of the subject including sociological and ethical aspects.


7. Crystal ball
   • In clinical parlance, crystal ball essays are those which portend the future, and are based on recent advances and predictions.
   • The text should be up to 3000 words excluding tables, references and abstract. The manuscript should have an abstract (360 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The manuscript may have 4-5 illustrations and up to 20-30 references.


8. Medicine and Society (Ethics):
   • This is an interdisciplinary forum which delves into the diverse realms of medical science and their relationship with the human society.
   • The articles may range from broad theoretical, philosophical and policy explorations, to detailed case studies of particular intellectual and practical activities at the intersection of medical science and society.


9. Case Reports:
   • These should be short and decisive observations.
   • They should preferably be related to articles previously published in the journal or views expressed in the journal.
   • They should not be preliminary observations that need a later paper for validation. The letter could have up to 600 words with preferably 5-6 References.
   • It should be preferably be authored by not more than two authors.


10. Editorials:
    Editorial, Guest Editorial, Commentary and Opinion are solicited by the editorial board.


11. Book Reviews:

    Standard Book Reviews should be no longer than 2000 words although depending on the book being reviewed they may be shorter or long, book reviewers should discuss the length of the review with the General Editor before writing. All book reviews should be prepared and submitted following the general Guidelines to Authors of this journal.

    The following information should be given about the book being reviewed at the start of each review:

    • Author / Editor Name, Book Title, Publisher, Year of Publication, ISBN: 000-0-00-000000-0, number of Pages, Price.
    • The intended audience for the book and who would find it useful.
    • The main ideas and major objectives of the book and how effectively these are accomplished.
    • The soundness of methods and information sources used.
    • The context or impetus for the book - political controversy, review research or policy etc.
    • Constructive comments about the strength and weaknesses of the book.

Ethical guidelines:

• When reporting studies on human beings, 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).
• For prospective studies involving human participants, authors are expected to mention about approval of (regional/ national/ institutional or independent Ethics Committee or Review Board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary as per regional and/ or national guidelines. Ensure confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants’ 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.
• Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand.
• Animal experimental procedures should be as humane as possible and the details of anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the CPCSEA and World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Humans for studies involving experimental animals and human beings, respectively).
• The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the ‘Materials and Methods’ section.

Tables and Illustrations:

1. Tables
   1. Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material.
   2. Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading.
   3. Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations that are used in each table.
   4. Tables with their legends should be provided at the end of the text after the references.
   5. The tables along with their number should be cited at the relevant place in the text.


2. Figures (Illustrations):
   1. Upload the images in JPEG format. The file size should be within 1024 kb in size while uploading.
   2. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text.
   3. Labels, numbers, and symbols should be clear and of uniform size.
   4. Titles and detailed explanations belong in the legends for illustrations not on the illustrations themselves.
   5. The photographs and figures should be trimmed to remove all the unwanted areas.
   6. If a figure has been published elsewhere, 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.
   7. Send sharp, glossy, un-mounted, color photographic prints, with height of 4 inches and width of 6 inches at the time of submitting the revised manuscript.
   8. Print outs of digital photographs are not acceptable. If digital images are the only source of images, ensure that the image has minimum resolution of 300 dpi or 1800 x 1600 pixels in TIFF format.
   9. The Journal reserves the right to crop, rotate, reduce, or enlarge the photographs to an acceptable size.

References

Reference style information:

1. References are listed and numbered in the order that they appear in the text.
2. Reference style:
   1. Journal References
      [Name of Authors]. [Article Title]. [Journal name] [year; volume_ number: first_ page-last_page] For e.g.: Mineharu Y, Koizumi A, Wada Y, Iso H, Watanabe Y, Date C, et al. Coffee, green tea, black tea and oolong tea consumption and risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease in Japanese men and women. J Epidemiol Community Health 2011;65:230-40. If there are more than six authors, only first six authors are listed followed by "et al."
   2. Web References
      ClinicalTrials.gov. Treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus with N-acetylcysteine (NCT00775476). Available from:
      http://clinicaltrialsgov/ct2/show/NCT00775476?term=NAC+AND+SLE&rank=1. [Last accessed on 2010 Apr 01].Abstracts and author summaries should not contain citations.
3. The parts of the manuscript should be in the correct order before ordering the citations: body, boxes, figure captions, tables, and supporting information captions.
4. Journal name abbreviations should be those found in the NCBI databases: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals

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 with square bracket after the punctuation marks. 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. Avoid citing a "personal communication" unless it provides essential information not available from a public source, in which case the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text.

The commonly cited types of references are shown here, for other types of references such as newspaper items please refer to ICMJE Guidelines ( http://www.icmje.org or http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).

Download a PowerPoint presentation on common reference styles and using the reference checking facility on the manuscript submission site.

Articles in Journals

1. Standard journal article (for up to six authors): Bavdekar SB, Gogtay NJ, Muzumdar D, Vaideeswar P, Salvi V, Sarkar M. Astrocyte: The path ahead. J Postgrad Med 2007; 53:153-3.
2. Standard journal article (for more than six authors): List the first six contributors followed by et al.
3. Seethalakshmi R, Parkar SR, Nair N, Batra SA, Pandit AG, Adarkar SA, et al. Regional brain metabolism in schizophrenia: The influence of antipsychotics. J Postgrad Med 2007;53:241-6
4. Volume with supplement: Shen HM, Zhang QF. Risk assessment of nickel carcinogenicity and occupational lung cancer. Environ Health Perspect 1994; 102 Suppl 1:275-82.
5. Issue with supplement: Payne DK, Sullivan MD, Massie MJ. Women's psychological reactions to breast cancer. Semin Oncol 1996; 23(1, Suppl 2):89-97.

Books and Other Monographs

1. Personal author(s): Ringsven MK, Bond D. Gerontology and leadership skills for nurses. 2nd ed. Albany (NY): Delmar Publishers; 1996.
2. Editor(s), compiler(s) as author: Norman IJ, Redfern SJ, editors. Mental health care for elderly people. New York: Churchill Livingstone; 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.

Electronic Sources as reference
Journal article on the Internet
Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [serial on the Internet]. 2002 Jun [cited 2002 Aug 12];102(6):[about 3 p.]. Available from: http://www.nursingworld.org/AJN/2002/june/Wawatch.htm

Monograph on the Internet
Foley KM, Gelband H, editors. Improving palliative care for cancer [monograph on the Internet]. Washington: National Academy Press; 2001 [cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309074029/html/ .

Homepage/Web site
Cancer-Pain.org [homepage on the Internet]. New York: Association of Cancer Online Resources, Inc.; c2000-01 [updated 2002 May 16; cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: http://www.cancer-pain.org/ .

Part of a homepage/Web site
American Medical Association [homepage on the Internet]. Chicago: The Association; c1995-2002 [updated 2001 Aug 23; cited 2002 Aug 12]. AMA Office of Group Practice Liaison; [about 2 screens]. Available from: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/1736.html

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.

Sending a revised manuscript

The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. However, there is no need to submit the “First Page” or “Covering Letter” file while submitting a revised version. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, the ‘referees’ remarks along with point to point clarification at the beginning in the revised file itself. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article.

Reprints and proofs

Journal provides no free printed reprints. Authors can purchase reprints, payment for which should be done at the time of submitting the proofs. Proofs will be sent to the corresponding authors by email approximately 3 weeks before the publication date. the issues are published in last week of December, March, June and September.

Manuscript submission, processing and publication charges

Journal does not charge the authors or authors’ institutions for the submission, processing and/or publications of manuscripts.

Copyrights

The entire contents of the Astrocyte are protected under Indian and international copyrights. 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 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 under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 Unported License.

Checklist

Covering letter

• Signed by all contributors
• Previous publication / presentations mentioned
• Source of funding mentioned
• Conflicts of interest disclosed

Authors

• Last name and given name provided along with Middle name initials (where applicable)
• Author for correspondence, with e-mail address provided
• Number of contributors restricted as per the guidelines
• Identity not revealed in paper except title page (e.g. name of the institute in 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
• Page numbers included at bottom
• Title page contains all the desired information
• Running title provided (not more than 50 characters)
• Abstract page contains the full title of the manuscript
• Abstract provided (structured abstract of 250 words for original articles, unstructured abstracts of about 150 words for all other manuscripts excluding letters to the Editor)
• Key words provided (three or more)
• Introduction of 75-100 words
• Headings in title case (not ALL CAPITALS)
• The references cited in the text should be after punctuation marks, in superscript with square bracket.
• References according to the journal's guidelines, punctuation marks checked
• Send the article file without ‘Track Changes’

Language and grammar

• Uniformly American English
• Write the full term for each abbreviation at its first use in the title, abstract, keywords and text separately unless it is a standard unit of measure. Numerals from 1 to 10 spelt out
• Numerals at the beginning of the sentence spelt out
• Check the manuscript for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors
• If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer's name and address (city and state/country).
• Species names should be in italics

Tables and figures

• No repetition of data in tables and 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 permission taken)
• Credit note for borrowed figures/tables provided
• Write the full term for each abbreviation used in the table as a footnote

Contributors' form

Click here to download instructions

Click here to download copyright form

These ready to use templates are made to help the contributors write as per the requirements of the Journal.

Save the templates on your computer and use them with a word processor program. 
Click open the file and save as the manuscript file.

In the program keep 'Document Map' and 'Comments' on from 'View' menu to navigate through the file. 


Download Template for Original Articles/ABSTRACT Reports. (.DOT file)

Download Template for Case Reports.  (.DOT file)

Download Template for Review Articles.  (.DOT file)

Download Template for Letter to the Editor.  (.DOT file)