Submissions

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font (Times New Roman or Arial or Roboto); employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Author Guidelines

Introduction:
Nepal Mediciti Medical Journal (NMMJ) is the official journal of Ashwins Medical College and Hospital (Nepal Mediciti), Bhaisepati, Lalitpur, Nepal. It is a peer reviewed, open access, biomedical journal [ISSN 2773-7810 (print)] and publishes the research based articles from the field of biomedical sciences which include Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Psychiatry, Paediatrics, Orthopaedics, Otorhinolaryngology, Ophthalmology, Anaesthesiology, Dermatology, Radiodiagnosis & Radiotherapy, Dental, Forensic Medicine, Pathology, Anatomy, Biochemistry, Community Medicine, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Physiology and other allied biomedical disciplines. The journal is published twice a year (January-June and July-December). Each issue of NMMJ publishes Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Viewpoint, Editorials and Letters to the Editor.

Article Processing Fees:
Authors do not have to pay for the submission, processing or publication of articles.

Copyright and Permissions
Authors transfer their copyright to the Nepal Mediciti Medical Journal.

Articles in NMMJ are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Peer Review Process:
The journal follows a single blind review process. The peer-review process usually takes about 12 weeks and the time taken from submission to publication takes about 16 weeks.

Manuscripts:
Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org). Any manuscripts or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form. The Ethics committee approval statement (IRC approval) is compulsory at the time of manuscript submission.

Please submit manuscript as word file; other required components and formatting are as following:

Use 12 point font size (Times New Roman or Arial or Roboto) and leave margins of 2.5 cm. with double space throughout the manuscript.
Image formats accepted: JPEG, TIFF, GIF. Images should be of high resolution (300 dpi or higher).
Check manuscript for spelling and grammar.

Types of manuscripts:
Original articles
Original articles are full-length reports of original research related to different disciplines of Medical Sciences. Articles cover topics relevant to innovative studies in the areas of interest. Original article submissions to NMMJ cannot exceed 2500 words, excluding the abstract, figure and table legends, and references. The abstract should not exceed beyond 250 words.

Review articles
Scholarly evidence-based review articles will be considered for publication. Reviews must not exceed a total of 3,000 words, excluding the abstract, figure and table legends, and references. A maximum of 100 references are permitted. The abstract should not exceed beyond 250 words.

Case reports
Case reports include the interesting case reports with clinical significance or implications accompanied by the relevant literature review on those cases. They should not exceed a total of 1500 words, excluding references, figure legends or table legends. There should be no more than 15 references.

Editorials
Editorials express opinions on current topics of interest or provide comments on papers published elsewhere in the same issue. Editorials are usually solicited by the Editor.

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor should not contain material that has been submitted or published elsewhere. Letters in reference to a Journal article must not exceed 175 words (excluding references), and must be received within three weeks after publication of the article.

Letters not related to a Journal article must not exceed 400 words (excluding references). A letter can have no more than five references and one figure or table. A letter can be signed by no more than three authors.

Cover Letter
The cover letter must categorize the manuscript into respective discipline of Medical Sciences and mention the article type, which is appropriate for your article. Please write in a cover letter to explain why your manuscript should be published in the journal.

Title Page
Title limit: 120 characters with spaces.

Short running title limit: 45 characters with spaces

Authors - Author name(s) with the highest academic degree of each author, name of the department and institution where work was performed and email addresses of each author.

Grant Support - List grant support and other assistance.

Correspondence - Provide name, complete mailing address, e-mail address, telephone number, and fax number of corresponding author.

Disclosures - All authors must disclose any potential conflicts (financial, professional, or personal) that are relevant to the manuscript. If the author(s) has nothing to disclose, this must be stated.

Writing Assistance - The names and funding source for individuals who provided writing assistance must be listed.

Author Contributions - List how each author was involved with the manuscript (eg, study concept and design; acquisition of data; analysis and interpretation of data; drafting of the manuscript; critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content; statistical analysis; obtained funding; administrative, technical, or material support; study supervision).

Keywords: 3-5 keywords; use key words from MeSH index- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh

Abstract: Abbreviations must be spelled out at least once. Do not use footnotes or references. Limit: 250 words. Organize abstract of original article according to the following headings: Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions.

Body of Paper: Body of original article includes Background, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions.

Background: Describe the importance of the study and the precise research objective(s) or study question(s).

Methods: The methods section may employ subheadings at the discretion of the author.

Design-describe the basic study design, e.g., randomized controlled trial, cross sectional study, cohort study, case series, survey, etc.
Setting-specify whether the study was conducted in a primary or tertiary care setting, in an ambulatory care clinic or hospital, in the general community, etc.
Participants-indicate the number of study subjects and how they were selected, recruited, and assigned to the intervention.
Intervention-report the method of administration and duration of the intervention

Outline statistical methods used. When describing the results of hypothesis testing, report P values and/or confidence intervals; avoid using phrases such as “not significant.”

Results: Provide the main outcomes of the study including confidence intervals or P values. Report the absolute values and risk differences so that readers can determine the absolute, as well as the relative, impact of the results.

Discussion: Describe the innovative and important aspects of the study, but do not repeat in detail data or other information given in the Background or the Results section.

Conclusion: State only conclusions that are linked with the goals of the study and directly supported by the evidence and the implications of the findings.

References: List references using superscripted Arabic numerals by order of appearance in the text. Cite personal communications and unpublished data directly in text without being numbered. All abbreviations should follow the Index Medicus abbreviations.

Follow NMMJ requirements for style:
Article: (list first 3 authors followed by et al):
13. Uemura N, Okamoto S, Yamamoto S, et al. Helicobacter pylori infection and the development of gastric cancer. N Engl J Med 2001; 345: 784-9.

Book:
18. Day RA. How to write and publish a scientific paper. Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information, 1979.

Article in Book:
22. Costa M, Furness JB, Llewellyn- Smith IF. Histochemistry of the enteric nervous system. In: Johnson LR, ed. Physiology of the gastrointestinal tract. Volume 1. 2nd ed. New York: Raven, 1987:1-40.

Note: Author submitting review article should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should be summarized in the abstract.

SUBMISSION CHECKLIST:

Manuscripts submitted to NMMJ should be double-spaced, accompanied by a cover letter and ethics committee approval statement letter and are divided into the following sections:

Title page
Abstract
Body of paper (which includes Background, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions)
List of abbreviations used (if any)
Conflicts of interests
Authors’ contributions
Acknowledgments and Funding
References
Figure legends (if any)
Tables and captions (if any)
Description of additional data files (if any)

All pages of the manuscript must be numbered consecutively, starting with the title page as “page 1”.

The journal accepts only online submission. All manuscripts should be submitted electronically along with a cover letter signed by all authors to:

Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Dr. Umid Kumar Shrestha, MD, PhD
Email: umid.shrestha@nepalmediciti.com
Nepal Mediciti Medical Journal (NMMJ)
Nepal Mediciti, Bhaisepati, Lalitpur, Nepal

Privacy Statement

Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL) is a member of the Ubiquity Partner Network coordinated by Ubiquity Press. According to the EU definitions, NepJOL is the data controller, and Ubiquity Press are the service providers and data processors. Ubiquity Press provide the technical platform and some publishing services to NepJOL and operate under the principle of data minimisation where only the minimal amount of personal data that is required to carry out a task is obtained.

More information on the type of data that is required can be found in Ubiquity Press’ privacy policy below.

Ubiquity Press Privacy Policy

We take seriously our duty to process your personal data in a fair and transparent way. We collect and manage user data according to the following Privacy Policy. This document is part of our Terms of Service, and by using the press portal, affiliated journals, book, conference and repository websites (the “Websites”), you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service. Please read the Terms of Service in their entirety, and refer to those for definitions and contacts.

What type of personal data do we handle?

There are four main categories of personal data stored by our journal platform, our press platform, and our book management system; Website User data, Author data, Reviewer data and Editor data.

The minimum personal data that are stored are:

full name
email address
affiliation (department, and institution)
country of residence

Optionally, the user can provide:

salutation
gender
associated URL
phone number
fax number
reviewing interests
mailing address
ORCiD
a short biography
interests
Twitter profile
LinkedIn profile
ImpactStory profile
profile picture

The data subjects have complete control of this data through their profile, and can request for it to be removed by contacting info@ubiquitypress.com

What do we do to keep that data secure?

We regularly backup our databases, and we use reliable cloud service providers (Amazon, Google Cloud, Linode) to ensure they are kept securely. Backups are regularly rotated and the old data is permanently deleted. We have a clear internal data handling policy, restricting access to the data and backups to key employees only. In case of a data breach, we will report the breach to the affected users, and to the press/journal contacts within 72 hours.

How do we use the data?

Personal information is only used to deliver the services provided by the publisher. Personal data is not shared externally except for author names, affiliations, emails, and links to ORCiD and social media accounts (if provided) in published articles and books which are displayed as part of the article/book and shared externally to indexes and databases. If a journal operates under open peer review then the reviewer details are published alongside the reviewer details.

How we collect and use your data:

1. When using the website

1.1 what data we collect

When you browse our website, we collect anonymised data about your use of the website; for example, we collect information about which pages you view, which files you download, what browser you are using, and when you were using the site.
When you comment on an article or book using Disqus, we are not collecting, controlling or processing the data. More details on the DISQUS privacy policy can be found on their website.
When you annotate an article or book, this is done via a 3rd party plugin to the website called Hypothes.is. In using this plugin we are not collecting, controlling or processing the data. More details on the Hypothes.is privacy policy can be found on their website.

1.2 why we collect the data

We use anonymised website usage data to monitor traffic, help fix bugs, and see overall patterns that inform future redesigns of the website, and provide reports on how frequently the publications on our site have been accessed from within their IP ranges.

1.3 what we do (and don’t do) with the data

We do not collect personal information that can be used to identify you when you browse the website.
We currently use Google Analytics for publication reports, and to improve the website and services through traffic analysis, but no personal identifying data is shared with Google (for example your computer’s IP is anonymised before transmission).

1.4 what to do if you want to get a copy of your data, or want your data to be removed

Please contact info@ubiquitypress.com to request a copy of your data, or for your data to be removed/anonymised.

2. When registering as an author, and submitting an article or book

2.1 what data we collect

When registering an account we ask you to log in and provide certain personal information (such as your name and email address), and there is the option to register using an ORCiD which will pre-fill the registration form.
As part of submitting an article for publication, you will need to provide personally identifying information which will be used for the peer review process, and will be published. This can include ‘Affiliation’, ‘Competing interests’, ‘Acknowledgements’.

2.2 why we collect the data

Registering an account allows you to log in, manage your profile, and participate as an author/reviewer/editor. We use cookies and session information to streamline your use of the website (for example in order for you to remain logged-in when you return to a journal). You can block or delete cookies and still be able to use the websites, although if you do you will then need to enter your username and password to login. In order to take advantage of certain features of the websites, you may also choose to provide us with other personal information, such as your ORCiD, but your decision to utilize these features and provide such data will always be voluntary.
Personal data submitted with the article or book is collected to allow follow good publication ethics during the review process, and will form part of the official published record in order for the provenance of the work to be established, and for the work to be correctly attributed.

2.3 what we do (and don’t do) with the data

We do not share your personal information with third parties, other than as part of providing the publishing service.
As a registered author in the system you may be contacted by the journal editor to submit another article.
Any books published on the platform are freely available to download from the publisher website in PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats on the publisher’s site.
Any personal data accompanying an article or a book (that will have been added by the submitting author) is published alongside it. The published data includes the names, affiliations and email addresses of all authors.
Any articles published on the platform are freely available to download from the publisher website in various formats (e.g. PDF, XML).
Ubiquity Press books and articles are typeset by SiliconChips and Diacritech.This process involves them receiving the book and book associated metadata and contacting the authors to finalise the layout. Ubiquity Press work with these suppliers to ensure that personal data is only used for the purposes of typesetting and proofing.
For physical purchases of books on the platform Ubiquity Press use print on demand services via Lightning Source who are responsible for printing and distribution via retailers. (For example; Amazon, Book Repository, Waterstones). Lightning Source’s privacy policy and details on data handling can be found on their website.

2.4 why we store the data

We store the account data so that you may choose to become a reviewer and be able to perform those tasks, or to become an author and submit an article and then track progress of that article.
Published personal data that accompanies an article or a book forms part of the official published record in order for the provenance of the work to be established, and for the work to be correctly attributed.

2.5 what to do if you want to get a copy of your data, or want your data to be removed

You are able to view, change and remove your data associated with your profile. Should you choose to completely delete your account, please contact us at support@ubiquitypress.com and we will follow up with your request as soon as possible.
To conform to publication ethics and best practice any personal data that is published alongside an article or book cannot be removed. If you have a query about a publication to which you are attributed please contact info@ubiquitypress.com

3. When registering as a reviewer

3.1 what data we collect

To become a reviewer you must first register as a user on the website, and set your preference that you would like to be considered as a reviewer. No new personal data is collected when a registered user elects to become a reviewer.
When registering an account we ask you to log in and provide certain personal information (such as your name and email address), and there is the option to register using an ORCiD which will pre-fill the registration form.
Reviewers can also be registered by editors who invite them to review a specific article. This requires the editor to provide the reviewer’s First Name, Last Name, and Email address. Normally this will be done as part of the process of inviting you to review the article or book.
On submitting a review, the reviewer includes a competing interest statement, they may answer questions about the quality of the article, and they will submit their recommendation.

3.2 why we collect the data

The data entered is used to invite the reviewer to peer review the article or book, and to contact the reviewer during and the review process.
If you submit a review then the details of your review, including your recommendation, your responses to any review form, your free-form responses, your competing interests statement, and any cover letter are recorded.

3.3 what we do (and don’t do) with the data

This data is not shared publicly and is only accessible by the Editor and system administrators of that journal or press.
The data will only be used in connection with that journal or press.
Data that is retained post final decision is kept to conform to publication ethics and best practice, to provide evidence of peer review, and to resolve any disputes relating to the peer review of the article or book.
For journals or presses that publish the peer reviews, you will be asked to give consent to your review being published, and a subset of the data you have submitted will become part of the published record.

3.4 what to do if you want to get a copy of your data, or want your data to be removed

If you would no longer like to be registered as a reviewer you can edit your profile and tick the box ‘stop being a reviewer’. This will remove you from the reviewer database, however any existing reviews you may have carried out will remain.
If you have been contacted by an editor to peer review an article this means that you have been registered in the system. If you would not like to be contacted for peer review you can reply to the email requesting that your data be deleted.

4. When being registered as a co-author

4.1 what data we collect

Co-author data is entered by the submitting author. The submitting author will already have a user account. According to standard publishing practice, the submitting author is responsible for obtaining the consent of their co-authors to be included (including having their personal data included) in the article/book being submitted to the journal/press.
The requested personal data for co-authors are at the bare minimum; first name, last name, institution, country, email address. This can also include; ORCID ID, Title, Middle Name, Biographical Statement, Department, Twitter Handle, Linkedin Profile Name or ImpactStory ID.

4.2 why we collect the data

Assuming that it is accepted for publication, this data forms part of the official published record in order for the provenance of the work to be established, and for the work to be correctly attributed.
Author names, affiliations and emails are required for publication and will become part of the permanent cited record.

4.3 what we do (and don’t do) with the data

The co-author’s personal data is stored in the author database. This personal data is only used in relation to the publication of the associated article.
Any co-author data collected is added to the author database and is only used in association with the article the user is co-author on.

4.5 what to do if you want to get a copy of your data, or want your data to be removed

To receive a copy of your data, please contact info@ubiquitypress.com
To conform to publication ethics and best practice any personal data that is published alongside an article or book cannot be removed. If you have a query about a publication to which you are attributed please contact info@ubiquitypress.com

5. When signing-up to receive newsletters

5.1 what data we collect

We require you to include your name and email address

5.2 why we collect and store the data, and for how long

This data would be collected to keep you updated with any news about the platform or specific journal

5.3 what we do (and don’t do) with the data

We use mailchimp to provide our mailing list services. Their privacy policy can be found here

5.4 what to do if you want to get a copy of your data or want your data to be removed

All emails sent via our newsletter client will include a link that will allow you to unsubscribe from the mailing list

Notification about change of ownership or of control of data

We may choose to buy or sell assets. In the case that control of data changes to or from Ubiquity Press and a third party, or in the case of change of ownership of Ubiquity Press or of part of the business where the control of personal data is transferred, we will do our best to inform all affected users and present the options.

(Updated: 18 May 2018)