Author Guidelines

JPPS EDITORIAL POLICY DOCUMENT

Author Guidelines 

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

All Manuscripts should be submitted online as a Word document via the link: Submit an Article. Authors may check the progress of their manuscript(s) at any time via the submission website. For assistance with online submission, please email editorjppspak@gmail.com or call + 92 3312111525.

The JPPS agrees to accept manuscripts prepared in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements submitted to the Biomedical Journals” as approved by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, published in the British Medical Journal 1991; 302:334-41. All material submitted for publication should be sent exclusively to the Journal of Pakistan Psychiatric Society. Work that has already been reported in a published paper or is described in a paper sent or accepted elsewhere for publication should not be submitted. However, a complete report following the publication of a preliminary report, usually in the form of an abstract or a paper that has been presented at a scientific meeting, if not published in full in a proceedings or similar publication, may be submitted. Press reports of meetings will not be considered as breach of this rule, but such reports should not be amplified by additional data or copies of tables and illustrations. In case of doubt, a copy of the published material should be included with a manuscript to help the editors decide how to deal with the matter.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

If tables, illustrations or photographs, which have already been published, are included, a letter of permission for re-publication should be obtained from author(s) as well as the Editor of the journal where it was previously published.

Written permission to reproduce photographs of patients, whose identity is not disguised, should be sent with the manuscript; otherwise, the eyes will be blackened out.

MATERIAL FOR PUBLICATION

The material submitted for publication may be in the form of an Original research, a Review Article, Special article, Commentary, Short communication, a Case Report, Recent Advances, New techniques, Debates, Book/CDs Review on Clinical/Medical Education, Adverse Drug Reports or a Letter to the Editor. Original articles should normally report original research of relevance to clinical medicine, and may appear either as papers or as short communications. The paper should be of about 2000 words, with no more than six tables or illustrations; short communications should be of about 600 words, with one table or illustration and no more than five references. Clinical case reports and brief or negative research findings may appear in this section. A Review article should consist of a structured overview of some relatively narrow topic, providing background and recent development with reference to original literature. An author can only write a review article if he or she has written a minimum of three original research articles and some case reports on the same topic.

Editorials are written by invitation.
Authors should keep one copy of their manuscript for reference, and send three copies (laser copies or inkjet, photocopies are not accepted) to the Editor. The author should also submit an electronic copy of the manuscript typed in MS Word. Any illustrations or photographs should also be sent in duplicate.

Each manuscript should include a title page (containing the e-mail address, fax and phone numbers of the corresponding author), an abstract, text, acknowledgements (if any), references, tables, and legends. Each component should begin on a new page, in the following sequence: Title page; Abstract and at least three key words; text; acknowledgements; references; tables (each table, complete with title and footnotes, should be merged in the manuscript); and legends for illustrations.
The manuscript should be typed in double spacing with font size 12. It should not exceed 20 pages, excluding tables and references. There should be no more than 40 references in an Original Article and no more than 60 in a Review Article. 

TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Tables and illustrations should be merged within the text of the paper, and legends to illustrations should be typed on the same sheet. Tables should be simple, and should supplement rather than duplicate information in the text; tables repeating information will be omitted. Each table should have a title and be typed in double space without horizontal and vertical lines on an 8 1/2" X 11" (21.5 X 28.0 cm) paper. Tables should be numbered consecutively with Roman numerals in the order they are mentioned in the text. Page number should be in the upper right corner. If abbreviations are used, they should be explained in footnotes and when they first appear in text. When graphs, scattergrams, or histograms are submitted, the numerical data on which they are based should be supplied. All graphs should be made with MS Excel and be sent as a separate Excel file even if merged in the manuscript. For scanned photographs highest resolution should be used.

S.I. UNITS

System International (S.I) Unit measurement should be used. All drugs must be mentioned in their generic form. The commercial name may, however, be mentioned within brackets, if necessary.

FIGURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Figures and photographs should only be sent when data cannot be expressed in any other form. They must be unmounted, glossy prints in sharp focus, 5" X 7" (12.7X17.3 cm) in size. They may be in black and white or in color. Negatives, transparencies, and X-ray films should not be submitted. The number of the figure, the name of the author(s) should be printed on the back of each figure/photograph. The top of the figure must be identified by the author. These figures and photographs must be cited in the text in consecutive order. Legends must be typed on the same paper. Legends for photomicrographs should indicate the magnification, internal scale and the method of staining. Photographs in published articles will not be returned.

REFERENCES
References should be numbered in the order in which they are cited in the text. At the end of the article, the full list of references should be in Vancouver style and give the names and initials of all authors (unless there are more than six, when only the first six should be given, followed by et al). The authors’ names are followed by the title of the article; title of the journal abbreviated according to the style of the Index Medicus (see "List of Journals Indexed," printed yearly in the January issue of Index Medicus); year, volume and page number; e.g., Hall, RR. The healing of tissues by C02 laser. Br J. Surg: 1971; 58:222-225. References to books should give the names of the editors, place of publication, publisher, and year. The author must verify the references against the original documents before submitting the article.

PEER REVIEW

Every paper will be read by at least two members of the editorial board. The papers selected will then be sent to two or more external reviewers. If statistical analysis is included, further examination by a statistician will be carried out.

ABSTRACT
Abstracts of original articles should be in structured format with following sub-headings:
i. Objective. ii. Design. iii. Place & duration of study iv. Methods. v. Result vi. Conclusion.
Four elements should be addressed: why did you start, what did you do, what did you find, and what does it mean. Why did you start is the objective. What did you do constitutes the methodology and could include design, setting, patients or other participants, interventions, and outcome measures. What did you find is the results, and what does it mean would constitute your conclusions. Please label each section clearly with the appropriate sub-headings. A structured abstract for an original article should not be more than 250 words.

Review article, case report and other require a short, unstructured abstract. Commentaries do not require an abstract.

INTRODUCTION
This should include the purpose of the article. The rationale for the study or observation should be summarized; only strictly pertinent references should be cited; the subject should not be extensively reviewed. Data or conclusions from the work being reported should not be presented.

METHODS
Study design and sampling methods should be mentioned. Obsolete terms such as retrospective studies should not be used. The selection of the observational or experimental subjects (patients or experimental animals, including controls) should be described clearly. The methods and apparatus used should be identified (with the manufacturer’s name and address in parentheses) and procedures described in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. References to established methods should be given, including statistical methods; references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well-known should be provided; new or substantially modified methods should be described, giving reasons for using them and evaluating their limitations. All drugs and chemicals used should be identified precisely, including the generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.

RESULTS
These should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations. The data in the tables or illustrations should not be repeated in the text; only important observations should be emphasized or summarized.

DISCUSSION
The author’s comment on the results, supported with contemporary references, including arguments and analysis of identical work done by other workers. A summary is not required. A brief acknowledgement may be made at the end.

CONCLUSION
A conclusion should be provided under a separate heading and highlight new aspects arising from the study. It should be in accordance with the objectives.

SUBMISSION:

Submit your article in MS Word format with the following documents:

a) Letter of Submission*

A Letter of Submission should declare the following:

  i) The conception, conduction, Analysis, and reporting of the research is original idea/ effort of the authors.

  ii) The manuscript has not been published or submitted to be published in part or full to any where else in any capacity.

  iii) All the authors mutually agree to publish the manuscript, along with the name, signature and contact of Corresponding Author.

  iv) The understanding that authors stand informed that as the article is accepted by JPPS, copyrights would be transferred to JPPS.

b) Undertaking Statement*

The undertaking statement should list each of the authors, his or her affiliation, his or her contribution in the study/manuscript, and his or signatures in tabular format (as shown below).

c) A copy of the Ethical Approval* of the research from the concerned competent authority, with the reference number of the letter and the signature of the designated member of the authority.

                                                               Sample of Undertaking Form

*Note: The submitted manuscripts will not be accepted without the Submission Letter, Ethical Approval and Undertaking Statement. (The Contact numbers will not be published).

FEES
There is no submission or publication fee for papers published in JPPS. All papers published in JPPS become freely available online immediately after publication.

Copyright
By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree that the copyright of their article is transferred to the publishers if and when the article is accepted for publication.

Plagiarism
All the papers submitted for publication in JPPS will be subjected to a Turnitin Plagiarism Report indicating similarity index up to the HEC allowable limits.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Meritorious Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal Afridi
Editor-in-Chief,
Journal of Pakistan Psychiatric Society