Submissions

Author Guidelines

BACKGROUND
The MedS Alliance Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences (MJMMS) is an international, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal published biannually in English beginning in 2021. It is an open access journal and published by Centre for Clinical Research and Community Health wing of MedSprit Alliance Inc. Its abbreviated title is MedS. J. Med. Sci. The journal is aimed to contribute to science by publishing high quality publications of scientific and clinical significance and to provide grounds for the exchange of ideas and data developed through research in healthcare delivered by practitioners of different disciplines.

For this purpose, original research articles, review article, case studies, reports, editorials, letters to the editor, brief communications, view points, field note and sharing, event, professional corner and commentaries are published in all fields of healthcare on urgent issues and on unique epidemiological survey, methods investigation, and analysis.

The scope of the journal includes but not limited to all areas of basic and clinical sciences, medicine and medical sciences, nursing and behavioral sciences, health services, environmental and  occupational safety (mechanical, electrical, chemical, and construction), epidemiology, public health, nutrition, hygiene, health system management, medical education, and studies related to economic evaluation and its policy on all aspects of health. The journal covers a very wide range of areas and we welcome submissions from practitioners and researchers at all levels and from all over the world.

The target audience of the journal includes health care workers, scientists and researchers who are interested or working in all fields of healthcare, medicine and medical sciences.

EDITORIAL AND PUBLICATION PROCESS
The editorial and publication processes of the journal are shaped in accordance with the guidelines of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Asso­ciation of Medical Editors (WAME), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), and National Information Standards Organization (NISO).

Originality, high scientific quality, and citation potential are the most important criteria for a manuscript to be accepted for publication. Manuscripts submitted for evaluation should not have been previously presented or already published in an electronic or printed medium. The journal should be informed of manuscripts that have been submitted to another journal for evaluation and rejected for publication. The submission of previous reviewer reports will expedite the evaluation process. Manuscripts that have been presented in a meeting should be submitted with detailed information on the organization, in­cluding the name, date, and location of the organization.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS
Manuscripts submitted to MJMMS will go through a double-blind peer-review process. Each submission will be reviewed by at least two external, independent peer review­ers who are experts in their fields in order to ensure an unbi­ased evaluation process. Editors and editorial board members cannot take part in the editorial processes of the articles they submit. If necessary, an independent editor is invited to man­age the evaluation processes. The Editor-in-Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all submissions.

All manuscripts submitted to MJMMS are subjected to the evaluation process of the Editorial Board and the external review­ers. MedSpirit Alliance, the publisher and the owner of the journal, is not involved in the decision-making process of the submissions.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES
An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements (World Medi­cal Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects,” amended in October 2013, www.wma.net) is required for experimental, clinical, drug studies, case reports and for all study involving human subjects.

If re­quired, ethics committee reports or an equivalent official doc­ument will be requested from the authors. Submissions which do not have ethical approval will be reviewed according to COPE’s Research, Audit and Service Evaluations guideline. Such manuscripts can be rejected after editorial review due to the lack of ethics committee approval.

For manuscripts concerning experimental research on humans, a statement should be included that, written informed consent of patients and volunteers was obtained following a detailed explanation of the procedures that they may undergo.

It is the author’s responsibility to protect the participants/ patient’s ano­nymity carefully. For photographs that may reveal the iden­tity of the participants/ patients, signed releases of the patient or their legal representative should be enclosed, and the publication approval must be provided in the Methods section.

For studies carried out on animals, an approval research pro­tocol by the Ethics Committee in accordance with interna­tional agreements (Guide for the care and use of laboratory animals, 8th edition, 2011” and/or “International Guiding Prin­ciples for Biomedical Research Involving Animals, 2012”) is required. Also, the measures taken to prevent pain and suf­fering of the animals should be stated clearly in such studies.

Information on participant/ patient consent, the name of the ethics com­mittee, and the ethics committee approval number and date should also be stated in the Methods section of the manu­script.

PLAGIARISM AND ETHICAL MISCONDUCT
The MedS Alliance Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences (MJMMS) is extremely sensitive about plagiarism. All submissions are screened by similarity detection software (iThenticate by Cross Check) at any point during the peer-re­view and/or production process. When you are discussing others’ (or your own) previous work, please make sure that you cite the material correctly in every instance. Authors are strongly recommended to avoid any form of pla­giarism and ethical misconduct that are exemplified below.

Self-plagiarism (text-recycling): Overlapping sections or sentences with the author’s previous publications without cit­ing them. Even if you are the author of the phrases or sen­tences, the text should not have unacceptable similarity with the previously published data.

Salami slicing: Using the same data of a research into several different articles. Reporting the same hypotheses, population and methods of a study into different papers is not acceptable.

Data Fabrication: It is the addition of data that never oc­curred during the gathering of data of the experiments. Re­sults and their interpretation must be based on the complete data sets and reported accordingly.

Data Manipulation/Falsification: It means manipulating re­search data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images (e.g. micrographs, gels, radiological images), removing outliers or ‘inconvenient’ re­sults, changing data points, etc. In the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation and data falsification/fabrication, the Editorial Board will follow and act according to COPE flowcharts.

PREPRINT
MJMMS does not consider preprint publications as prior publication. In other words, authors are allowed to pres­ent and discuss their findings on a non-commercial preprint server before submission to a journal.

Authors must provide the journal with the preprint server deposition of their article accompanying its DOI during initial submission. If the article is published in MJMMS, it is the responsibility of the authors to update the archived preprint and link it to the published version of the article.

AUTHORSHIP
Each person listed as an author should fulfil the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE - www.icmje.org). The IC­MJE recommends that authorship is based on the following four criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intel­lectual content.
3. Final approval of the version to be published.
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he/she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. Also, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

MJMMS requires corresponding authors to submit a signed and scanned version of the Copyright Agreement and Acknowledgement of Authorship form during the initial sub­mission process to act appropriately on authorship rights and to prevent ghost or honorary authorship. If the editorial board suspects a case of “gift authorship,” the submission will be rejected without further review. As part of the submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author should also send a short statement declaring that he/she accepts to undertake all the responsibility for authorship during the submission and review stages of the manuscript.

CHANGE OF AUTHORSHIP
MJMMS reviews the authorship according to the au­thor’s declaration in the Title Page; thus, it is the author’s respon­sibility to send the final order of the complete author names. Requests in the change of authorship (e.g. removal/addition of the authors, change in the order etc.) after submission are subject to editorial approval. Editorial Board will investigate this kind of cases and act following COPE flowcharts.

Change of authorship requests should be submitted to the Editorial Office with an official letter stating the reasons of the change. The letter must be signed by all authors and include their approval on the change in authorship. If the re­quest is approved by the Editorial Board, authors need to submit a new ‘Copyright Agreement Form’ according to the final order list.

DECLARATION OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST
MJMMS requires and encourages the authors and the individuals involved in the evaluation process of submit­ted manuscripts to disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interest, including financial, consultant and institutional, that might lead to potential bias or a conflict of interest. Any financial grants or other support received for the submitted study from individuals or institutions should be disclosed to the Editorial Board. To disclose a potential conflict of inter­est, the ‘ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form’ should be filled in and submitted by all contributing authors. The journal’s Editorial Board resolves cases of a potential conflict of interest of the editors, authors or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

APPEALS AND COMPLAINT
The Editorial Board of the journal handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines. In such cases, authors should get in direct contact with the ed­itorial office regarding their appeals and complaints. When needed, an ombudsperson may be assigned to resolve claims that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor-in-Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all appeals and complaints.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
MJMMS requires each submission to be accompa­nied by a Copyright Agreement and Acknowledgement of Authorship form. By signing this form, authors retain the copyright of their work and agree that the article, if accepted for publi­cation by MJMMS will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 In­ternational License which permits third parties to share and adapt the content for non-commerical purposes by giving the apropriate credit to the original work.

When using previously published content, including figures, tables or any other material in both print and electronic for­mats, authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder. Legal, financial and criminal liabilities in this regard belongs to the author (s).

DISCLAIMER
Statements or opinions expressed in the manuscripts published in MJMMS reflect the views of the author (s) and not the opinions of the editors, the editorial board, or the publisher. The editors, the editorial board and the publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such materials. The final responsibili­ty regarding the published content rests with the authors.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with ICMJE- Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (up­dated in December 2019 - http://www.icmje.org/icmje-rec­ommendations.pdf). Authors are required to prepare man­uscripts in accordance with the CONSORT guidelines for randomized research studies, STROBE guidelines for ob­servational original research studies, STARD guidelines for studies on diagnostic accuracy, PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analysis, ARRIVE guidelines for experimental animal studies, TREND guidelines for non-randomized public behaviour, CHERRIES guidelines for internet e-surveys and COREQ guidelines for qualitative studies.

Manuscripts can be submitted through the journal’s on­line manuscript submission and evaluation system available at www.medspirit.org  or send e-mail to: alliance@medspirit.org.

Manuscripts submitted to the journal will first go through a technical evaluation process where the editorial office staff will ensure that the manuscript has been prepared and submitted in accordance with the journal’s guidelines. Submissions that do not conform to the journal’s guidelines will be returned to the submitting author with technical correction requests.

Authors are required to submit the following:

• Copyright Agreement and Acknowledgement of Authorship Form, and
• ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form (should be filled in by all contributing authors) during the initial sub­mission. These forms are available for download.

Guidelines for manuscript preparation

Title page (page 1):
A separate title page should be submitted with all submissions and this page should include:

• The full title of the manuscript as well as a short title (run­ning head) of no more than 50 characters.
• Full name of each author(s), institution affiliations, highest academic degree (s), and ORCID iDs of the author (s).
• Grant information and detailed information on the other sources of support,
• Name, address, telephone (including the mobile phone number) and email address of the corresponding author.

Abstract (page 2)
An abstract should be submitted on a separate page for all submis­sions except for Letters to the Editor. The abstract of Original Articles should be structured with subheadings (Background with objective, Methods, Results and Conclusion). Please check Table 1 be­low for word count specifications. The abstract should not contain any unidentified abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords: Each submission must be accompanied by 3-5 keywords for subject indexing at the end of the abstract. The keywords should be listed in full without abbreviations. The keywords should be selected from the National Library of Medicine, Medi­cal Subject Headings database (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).

Main Article (page 3 onwards)
A complete set of the manuscript should be submitted; typed in double space on one side of the page throughout (including references, tables and legends to illustrations). Font of the article should be in Palatino Linotype of size 10. Articles should be in Microsoft Word format. Acrobat format will not be accepted. The pages of the manuscript should be numbered consecutively beginning with the title page.

Manuscript Types

Original Article
The manuscript should be prepared in accordance with the ‘Uniform Requirement for Manuscript Submitted to Biomedical Journals’ compiled by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Titles should be written in capitalized each word. The main text of origi­nal articles should be structured with IMRAD format [Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion (including conclusion) subheadings]. Tables, figures and legends to illustrations should be included within the text. In a study that requires eth­ical reporting, the information about the ethics committee ap­proval and financial disclosure should be included in the text. Author requires to confirm that there is no any conflict of interest in the paper submitted. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for original articles. All acknowledgements, including financial support should be mentioned under acknowledgements heading. It may appear at the end of the text, before the references. At the end of the article, a full list of references should be included.

All references, tables and figures should be referred to within the main text, and they should be numbered consecutively in the order they are referred to within the main text.

Limitations, drawbacks and the shortcomings of original ar­ticles should be mentioned in the Discussion section before the conclusion paragraph.

All acronyms and abbreviations used in the manuscript should be explained at first occurrence, both in the abstract and in the main text. The abbreviation should be provided in parenthe­ses following the definition. Avoid the use of full stops in between abbreviations (MBBS, not M.B.B.S).

When a drug, product, hardware or software program is mentioned within the main text, product information, includ­ing the name of the product, the producer of the product, and city and the country of the company (including the state if possible), should be provided in parentheses in the follow­ing format: “Discovery St PET/CT scanner (General Electric, Milwaukee, WI, USA)”. Give generic rather than trade names of the drugs.

Reporting Statistical Analysis
Statistical analysis to support conclusions is usually necessary. Statistical analyses must be conducted in accordance with in­ternational statistical reporting standards (Altman DG, Gore SM, Gardner MJ, Pocock SJ. Statistical guidelines for contrib­utors to medical journals. Br Med J 1983: 7; 1489-93). Informa­tion on statistical analyses should be provided with a separate subheading under the Materials and Methods section and the statistical software that was used during the process must be specified. For further information on presenting statistical anal­ysis, please see AMA Manual of Style section 19.0. Units should be prepared in accordance with the Internation­al System of Units (SI), with the exception of blood pressure values which are to be reported in mmHg. Please use the metric system for the expression of length, area, mass and volume. There should be a space between the numerals and the unit symbol. When indicating time, the 24 hour system is to be used.

Tables
Tables should be included in the main document, presented after the reference list, and they should be numbered consec­utively in the order they are referred to within the main text. A descriptive title must be placed above the tables. Abbrevi­ations used in the tables should be defined below the tables by footnotes (even if they are defined within the main text). Tables should be created using the “insert table” command of the word processing software and they should be arranged clearly to provide easy reading. Data presented in the tables should not be a repetition of the data presented within the main text but should be supporting the main text.

Figures and Figure Legends
All photographs and diagrams should be referred to as a ‘figure’ and should be numbered consecutively (1,2,3, etc). Multipart figures ought to be labeled with lower case letters (a,b,c, etc). Provide a detail legend (without abbreviation) to each figure and refer to the figure in the text and note its approximate location in the margin. Thick and thin arrows, arrowheads, stars, asterisks, and similar marks can be used on the images to support figure legends. Relatively small text and great variation in text sizes within figures should be avoided.

Figures, graphics and photographs should be submitted as separate files (in TIFF or JPEG format) through the submis­sion system. The files should not be embedded in a Word doc­ument or the main document. When there are figure subunits, the subunits should not be merged to form a single image. Each subunit should be submitted separately through the sub­mission system.

Like the rest of the submission, the figures too should be blind. Any information within the images that may indicate an individual or institution should be blind­ed. The minimum resolution of each submitted figure should be 300 DPI. To prevent delays in the evaluation process, all submitted figures should be clear in resolution and large in size (minimum dimensions: 100 × 100 mm). Figure legends should be listed at the end of the main document.

Clinical Trials
MJMMS adopts the ICMJE’s clinical trial registration policy, which requires that clinical trials must be registered in a publicly accessible registry that is, a primary register of the WHO International Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) or International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) or in ClinicalTrials.gov.

Instructions for the clinical trials are listed below:

• Clinical trial registry is only required for the prospective research projects that study the relationship between a health-related intervention and an outcome by assigning people.
• To have their manuscript evaluated in the journal, author should register their research to a public registry at or be­fore the time of first patient enrollment.
• Based on the most up to date ICMJE recommendations, MJMMS accepts public registries that include mini­mum acceptable 24-item trial registration dataset.
• Authors are required to state a data sharing plan for the clinical trial registration. Please see details under “Data Sharing” section.
• For further details, please check ICMJE Clinical Trial Policy at www.icmje.org

Data Sharing
A data sharing statement is required for the registration of clinical trials. Authors are required to pro­vide a data sharing statement for the articles that reports the results of a clinical trial. The data sharing statement should indicate the items below according to the ICMJE data shar­ing policy:

• Whether individual deidentified participant data will be shared.
• What data in particular will be shared.
• Whether additional, related documents will be available.
• When the data will be available and for how long.
• By what access criteria will it be shared.

Authors are recommended to check the ICMJE data sharing examples at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publish­ing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

While submitting a clinical trial to MJMMS;

• Authors are required to make registration to a publicly ac­cessible registry according to ICMJE recommendations and the instructions above.
• The name of the registry and the registration number should be provided in the Title Page during the initial submission.
• Data sharing statement should also be stated in the Title Page, even if the authors do not plan to share it.

Review articles:
The MJMMS also accepts comprehensive review articles on topics of current interest in medicine and medical sciences. Review articles should be up-to-date, precise, informative and topics of general interest. Authors who have extensive knowl­edge on a particular field and whose scientific background has been translated into a high volume of publications with a high citation potential are invited by the journal to prepare an invit­ed review on a specific topic in health care. All invited review articles will also undergo peer review before acceptance. Invit­ed reviews should describe, discuss, and evaluate the current knowledge of a topic in public health and clinical practice and guide future stud­ies. The subheadings of the review articles should be planned by the authors. However, each review article should include an “Introduction” and a “Conclusion” section. Please note that unsolicited review submissions will not be evaluated. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Review Articles.

Letter to the Editor:
This type of manuscript discusses important parts, overlooked aspects, or lacking parts of a previously published article. Articles on subjects within the scope of the journal that might attract the reader’s attention, particularly educative cases, may also be submitted in the form of a “Letter to the Editor.” Readers can also present their comments on the published manuscripts in the form of a “Letter to the Editor.” Abstract, Keywords and Tables should not be included. The text should be unstructured. The manuscript that is being commented on must be properly cited within this manuscript.

Field note and sharing:
A brief summary should be followed by an introduction, the report and discussion. Case reports should also confirm to these guidelines. Please check Table 1 for the limitations.

Event, professional corner and brief communications
Each of the note related to event, professional corner and brief communication can be any topic of interest in the field of medicine and medical sciences. If it is related to any materials published previously in the journal, it should be sent immediately following the publication of the article. The editor will try to get the authors comments on this letter and attempt to publish both together. The first reference quoted should be the article in response to which the letter is being written. Please check Table 1 for the limitations.

References
At the end of the article a full list of references should be included. The references must be prepared according to the AMA Manual of style. The references should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they first appear in the text. The name of journal should be abbreviated in accordance with the journal abbre­viations in Index Medicus/MEDLINE/PubMed and should be in Italic. While citing publications, preference should be given to the latest, most up-to-date publications. If an ahead-of-print publication is cited, the DOI number should be provided. When there are six or fewer authors, all authors should be listed. If there are seven or more authors, the first three authors should be listed followed by “et al.”

In the main text of the manuscript, references should be cited in non-superscript and Arabic numerals in squared brackets, in the order they appear in the text, and be placed before punctuation. References cited in tables or figure legends should be included in sequence at the point where the table or figure is first mentioned in the main text. Do not cite personal communications and unpublished articles. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of all references.

The reference styles for different types of publications are presented in the following examples.

Examples:
Journal Article:  Economopoulos KJ, Brockmeier SF. Rota­tor cuff tears in overhead athletes. Clin Sports Med. 2012;31(4):675-692.

Book Section: Fikremariam D, Serafini M. Multidisciplinary approach to pain management. In: Vadivelu N, Urman RD, Hines RL, eds. Essentials of Pain Management. New York, NY: Springer New York; 2011:17-28.

Books with a Single Author:  Patterson JW. Weedon’s Skin Pahology. 4th ed. Churchill Livingstone; 2016.

Editor (s) as Author: Etzel RA, Balk SJ, eds. Pediatric En­vironmental Health. American Academy of Pediatrics; 2011.

Conference Proceedings: Morales M, Zhou X. Health prac­tices of immigrant women: indigenous knowledge in an ur­ban environment. Paper presented at: 78th Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting; No­vember 6-10; 2015; St Louis, MO. Accessed March 15, 2016. https://www.asist.org/files/meetings/am15/proceedings/openpage15.html

Thesis:  Maiti N. Association Between Behaviours, Health Charactetistics and Injuries Among Adolescents in the Unit­ed States. Dissertation. Palo Alto University; 2010.

Online Journal Articles: Tamburini S, Shen N, Chih Wu H, Clemente KC. The microbiome in early life: implications for health outcometes. Nat Med. Published online July 7, 2016. doi:10.1038/nm4142

Epub Ahead of Print Articles: Websites: International Soci­ety for Infectious Diseases. ProMed-mail. Accessed Febru­ary 10, 2016. http://www.promedmail.org

Reference from Websites:
Marchildon GP, DiMatteo L. Health care cost drivers: the facts [Internet]. Canadian Institute for Health Information; 2011 Oct [cited 2015 Jan 15]. Available from: https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/health_care_cost_drivers_the_facts_en.pdf

Canadian Dental Hygienists Association. Our history [Internet]. Ottawa: CDHA; 2018 [cited 2019 Sep 16]. Available from: https://www.cdha.ca/cdha/About_folder/History_folder/CDHA/About/History.aspx? hkey=065b136f-72d3-4a84-a7aa-51cc7b519cd5

REVISED SUBMISSIONS
When submitting a revised version of a paper, the author must submit a detailed “Response to the reviewers” that states point by point how each issue raised by the reviewers has been covered and where it can be found (each reviewer’s comment, followed by the author’s reply and line numbers where the changes have been made) as well as an annotat­ed copy of the main document. Revised manuscripts must be submitted within 30 days from the date of the decision letter. If the revised version of the manuscript is not submitted with­in the allocated time, the revision option may be cancelled. If the submitting author (s) believe that additional time is required, they should request this extension before the initial 30-day period is over.

Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited for grammar, punctu­ation and format. Once the publication process of a manu­script is completed, it is published online on the journal’s web­page as an ahead-of-print publication before it is included in its scheduled issue. A PDF proof of the accepted manuscript is sent to the corresponding author and their publication ap­proval is requested within 2 days of their receipt of the PDF proof.

Principal Contact:
Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Jitendra K. Singh
The MedS Alliance Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences (MJMMS)
Address: Centre for Clinical Research and Community Health (CC-REACH), MedSpirit Alliance,  Kathmandu, Nepal
Phone: +977-9841462885  
E-mail:     alliance@medspirit.org
Website:  www.medspirit.org        

Executive Editor: Dr. Dilaram Acharya
Address: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Phone: +14389789995
E-mail: alliance@medspirit.org 

Support Contact
Publisher: MedSpirit Alliance
Address: Kathmandu, Nepal
Phone: +977-9803561743
E-mail: alliance@medspirit.org