Instructions to Authors

The journal follows ICMJE and COPE guidelines. All of the work submitting to the journal should be prepared in accordance with these guidelines. Already published work or work which is already aceepteb by other publication house should not be submitted to the journal. At the same time, manuscripts should not be submitted to multiple journals. The work found to be submitted in multiple journal at the same time will be considered as publication fraud and the journal would have authority to report this act to Higher Education Commission and Pakistan Medical & Dental Council.

All of the material should be submitted through online journal management system (link) with an undertaking form (download PDF). All primary research work including original articles, clinical trials, and short reports should be submitted with an ethical approval letter on institutional letter head bearing letter number and mentioning the study title clearly, signed by chair of institutional ethical committee. The researchers conducting studies in primary or secondary healthcare setups which do not have ethical committee may provide ethical approval letter sought from institutional committee of other institutes entertaining outside researchers.

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA

The journal discourages the practice of gift authorship. ICMJE and COPE criteria should be followed in assigning the authorship on different orders. Details of all authors including affiliation with institute, designation, department, degree, e-mail address, contact number and their signature should be provided in undertaking form. All authors’ details should also be entered in journal management system at the time of manuscript submission. Any change in author position, affiliation or designation will not be allowed once entered in journal management system and declared in undertaking form. However, spelling mistake in name of authors will be entertained at the time of final proofing of the article.

TYPE OF ARTICLE

EDITORIAL

Editorials may be authored by the editor or by a third party who has been invited. It also serves many other purposes, such as reviewing original articles that were published in the same issue of the journal, providing brief reviews of subjects that don't require a full-length invited review, and discussing other subjects on very recent developments that the editor believes are significant for the journal's readers and the community.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

An observational study or a clinical trial reporting primary data collected during this study will considered as original article. The minimum word count for original article excluding references and abstract is 2000 with at least 20 references, not exceeding 30 references. Maximum 5 tables/illustrations may be presented in original manuscript. Equator guidelines should be followed for reporting results of observational studies and clinical trials.

REVIEW ARTICLE

Review are focused at summarizing the previously available literature on a specific topic and emphasizing on gaps in existing literature and unaddressed issues. The review article may be a narrative review and evidence based review.

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW & META-ANALYSIS

Systematic reviews retrieve, appraise and summarize all the available evidence on a specific research question. Meta-analysis is the pooled analysis of the effect of individual studies which was collected in a systematic review. PRIMSA guidelines and Cochrane guidelines on systematic reviews and meta-analysis should be followed in preparation and reporting of systematic review and meta-analysis.

CASE REPORTS

A case report is a presentation of an unusual disease cases, discussing their diagnosis, treatment and patients’ follow-up. The word count for case report should be 800-1200 words with 5-10 references and with a non-structured abstract of 150 words. There must be at least 3 keywords. Maximum two figures and one table are accepted in case reports.

SHORT COMMUNICATION

Short communication focuses on a specific aspect of the problem or a new finding that is expected to have a significant impact. They may not normally exceed about 1500 - 1800 words and may have a non-structured abstract of about 150 words along with 10-12 references.

SHORT REPORTS

These are brief reports in which a manuscript explains the study done on the small number of population with restricted outcome and setting.