Author Guidelines
Original Copy Submission
A submitted composition must be a unique commitment not already distributed (aside from as a conceptual or a preparatory report), must not be under thought for production somewhere else, and, if acknowledged, must not be distributed somewhere else in comparable structure, in any dialect. Every individual recorded as a creator is relied upon to have taken an interest in the study to a noteworthy degree. In spite of the fact that the editors and arbitrators try to guarantee the legitimacy of distributed original copies, the last duty rests with the Authors, not with the Journal, its editors, or the distributer.
All authors ought to present their compositions online through our Manuscript Submission System at Online Submission System
Submission Guidelines
Contents
Any manuscript submitted to any Open Access Journals must be original. The manuscript, or substantial parts of it, must not be under consideration by any other journal/publisher.
In any case where there is the potential for overlap or duplication transparency from the authors is mandatory. Any potentially overlapping publications should be declared on submission and, where possible, uploaded as additional files with the manuscript. Any overlapping publications should be cited. The Editors of Open Access Journals reserve the right to judge potentially overlapping or redundant publications on a case-by-case basis.
Format
Most of the articles published in Open Access Journals will be organized into the following sections: title, authors, affiliations, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references, acknowledgments, figure legends and table captions. Uniformity in format will help readers and users of the journal. We recognize, however, this format is not ideal for all types of studies. If you have a manuscript that would benefit from a different format, please contact the editors to discuss this further. Although, we have no firm length restrictions for the entire manuscript or individual sections, we urge authors to present and discuss their findings concisely along with maintenance of a logical flow.
Title
The title should be specific to the study yet concise, and should allow sensitive and specific electronic retrieval of the article. It should be comprehensible to readers outside your field. Avoid specialist abbreviations if possible. Titles should be presented in title case, meaning, all words except for prepositions, articles, and conjunctions should be capitalized. If the paper is a randomized controlled trial or a meta-analysis, this description should be in the title. Examples: “Flood Effects on Water Quality and Benthic Fauna Diversity in the Upper Chao Phraya River and the Lower Ping and Nan Rivers, Thailand”. Please also provide a brief "running head" of approximately 40 characters.
Authors and Affiliations
Provide the first names or initials (if used), middle names or initials (if used), surnames, and affiliation details including department, university or organization, city, state/province (if applicable), and country for all authors. One of the authors should be designated as the corresponding author. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that the author list and the summary of the author contributions to the study are accurate and complete. If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all consortium members and affiliations should be listed after the
Abstract
The abstract is divided into the following four sections with these headings: Title, Background, Methods and Findings, and Conclusions. It should contain all the following elements, except for items in square brackets, which are only needed for some study types. Please use the same format for abstracts submitted as pre-submission inquiries.
Background:This section should describe clearly the rationale for the study being done. It should end with a statement of the specific study hypotheses and/or study objectives.
Methods and Findings: Describe the participants or what was studied (e.g. cell lines, patient group; be as specific as possible, including numbers studied). Describe the study design/intervention/main methods used/what was primarily being assessed e.g. primary outcome measure and, if appropriate, over what period. [If appropriate, include how many participants were assessed out of those enrolled, e.g., what was the response rate for a survey.] [If critical to the understanding of the paper, describe how results were analyzed, i.e., which specific statistical tests were used.] For the main outcomes provide a numerical result if appropriate (it nearly always is) and a measure of its precision (e.g. 95% confidence interval). Describe any adverse events or side effects.
It is always preferable that the authors describe the main limitations of the study.
Conclusions: Provide a general interpretation of the results with any important recommendations for future research. [For a clinical trial provide any trial identification numbers and names (e.g. trial registration number, protocol number or acronym).
Introduction
The introduction should discuss the purpose of the study in the broader context. As you compose the introduction, think of readers who are not experts in this field. Include a brief review of the key literature. If there are relevant controversies or disagreements in the field, they should be mentioned so that a non-expert reader can delve into these issues further. The introduction should conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the experiments and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.
Methods
This section should provide enough detail for reproduction of the findings. Protocols for new methods should be included, but well-established protocols may simply be referenced. Detailed methodology or supporting information relevant to the methodology can be published on our Web site. This section should also include another section with descriptions of any statistical methods employed. These should conform to the criteria outlined by the Uniform Requirements, as follows: "Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Avoid relying solely on statistical hypothesis testing, such as the use of P values, which fails to convey important quantitative information. Discuss the eligibility of research participants. Give details about randomization. Describe the methods related to success of any blinding of observations. Authors should report complications of treatment whenever necessary. It is mandatory for the authors to provide the numbers of observations. Data loss during an analysis or observation (such as dropouts from a clinical trial) should be reported by the authors. References for the design of the study and statistical methods should be provided from the standard works when possible (with pages stated) rather than to papers in which the designs or methods were originally reported. Specify any general-use computer programs used."
Results
The results section should include all relevant positive and negative findings. The section may be divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading. Large datasets, including raw data, should be submitted as supporting files; these are published online alongside the accepted article. The results section should be written in past tense. As outlined in the Uniform requirements, authors that present statistical data in the Results section should "...specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Avoid nontechnical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as "random" (which implies a randomizing device), "normal," "significant," "correlations," and "sample." Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols."
Discussion
The discussion should be concise and tightly argued. It should start with a brief summary of the main findings. It should include paragraphs on the generalizability, clinical relevance, strengths, and, most importantly, the limitations of the study.
You may wish to discuss the following points also. How do the conclusions affect the existing knowledge in the field? How can future research build on these observations? What are the key experiments that must be done?
References
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors offers guidance to authors in its Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals publication. The recommended style for references is based on the National Information Standards Organization NISO Z39.29-2005 (R2010) Bibliographic References as adapted by the National Library of Medicine for its databases. Details are in Citing Medicine. (Note Appendix F which covers how citations in MEDLINE/PubMed differ from the advice in Citing Medicine). Sample references typically used by authors of journal articles are provided here.
Acknowledgments
People who contributed to the work, but do not fit the criteria for authors should be listed in the Acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must also ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being so named.
Details of the funding sources that have supported the work should be confined to the funding statement. Do not include them in the Acknowledgments.
Funding
This section should describe sources of funding that have supported the work. Please also describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the paper; and decision to submit it for publication.
Competing and conflicting Interests
It is important to consider this carefully. If you don’t declare a conflict of interest and you are subsequently found to have one your paper will lose credibility. Conversely, full disclosure of conflict of interest does not prevent a paper being published but does allow you to be open with your readers. This section should list specific competing interests associated with any of the authors. If authors declare that no competing interests exist, we will print a statement to this effect. For guidelines on what is and what is not conflict of interest have a look at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/coi/
Abbreviations
Please keep abbreviations to a minimum. List all non-standard abbreviations in alphabetical order, along with their expanded form. Define them as well upon first use in the text. Non-standard abbreviations should not be used unless they appear at least three times in the text.
Nomenclature
The use of standardized nomenclature in all fields of science and medicine is an essential step toward the integration and linking of scientific information reported in published literature. We will enforce the use of correct and established nomenclature wherever possible: We strongly encourage the use of SI units. If you do not use these exclusively, please provide the SI value in parentheses after each value.
Species names should be italicized (e.g., Homo sapiens) and the full genus and species must be written out in full, both in the title of the manuscript and at the first mention of an organism in a paper; after that, the first letter of the genus name, followed by the full species name may be used.
Genes, mutations, genotypes, and alleles should be indicated in italics. Use the recommended name by consulting the appropriate genetic nomenclature database, e.g., HUGO for human genes. It is sometimes advisable to indicate the synonyms for the gene the first time it appears in the text. Gene prefixes such as those used for oncogenes or cellular localization should be shown in roman: v-fes, c-MYC, etc.
The Recommended International Non-Proprietary Name (rINN) of drugs should be provided.
Accession Numbers
All appropriate datasets, images, and information should be deposited in public resources. Please provide the relevant accession numbers (and version numbers, if appropriate). Accession numbers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use. Suggested databases include, but are not limited to:
- ArrayExpress
- BioModels Database
- Database of Interacting Proteins
- DNA Data Bank of Japan [DDBJ]
- EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database
- GenBank
- Gene Expression Omnibus [GEO]
- Protein Data Bank
- UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot
- ClinicalTrials.gov
In addition, as much as possible, please provide accession numbers or identifiers for all entities such as genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc., for which there is an entry in a public database, for example:
- Ensembl
- Entrez Gene
- FlyBase
- InterPro
- Mouse Genome Database (MGD)
- Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM)
Providing accession numbers allows linking to and from established databases and integrates your article with a broader collection of scientific information.
Figures
If the article is accepted for publication, the author will be asked to supply high-resolution, print-ready versions of the figures. Please ensure that the files conform to our Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation when preparing your figures for production. After acceptance, authors will also be asked to provide an attractive image to highlight their paper online. Figures may be published under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows them to be freely used, distributed, and built upon as long as proper attribution is given. Please do not submit any figures that have been previously copyrighted unless you have express written permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CCAL license.
Figure Legends
The aim of the figure legend should be to describe the key messages of the figure, but the figure should also be discussed in the text. An enlarged version of the figure and its full legend will often be viewed in a separate window online, and it should be possible for a reader to understand the figure without switching back and forth between this window and the relevant parts of the text. Each legend should have a concise title of no more than 15 words. The legend itself should be succinct, while still explaining all symbols and abbreviations. Avoid lengthy descriptions of methods.
Tables
All tables should have a concise title. Footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations. Citations should be indicated using the same style as outlined above. Tables occupying more than one printed page should be avoided, if possible. Larger tables can be published as online supporting information. Tables must be cell-based; do not use picture elements, text boxes, tabs, or returns in tables. Please ensure that the files conform to our Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation when preparing your tables for production.
Requirements for figures and tables
When you submit an article; tables and figures must be submitted as separate files
Tables must be in Word.doc format
Line Graphs should be in or tif or eps formats, and resolution of 900-1200 dpi. If you are unsure about this, please send us the graph in Microsoft excel format and we will convert it into eps or tif formats.
Photographs containing no text must be in jpg or tif formats with resolution of 500+ dpi. If you do not have tif or eps, please submit as jpg.
Images which contain a combination of text and picture elements must be jpg or tif or eps formats with resolution of 500-1200 dpi. If you do not have tif or eps, please submit as jpg.
**** Generally, we will NOT accept any images with resolution below 300 dpi. You must submit at least in jpg format, that way we can change it into any other format accordingly.
**** Please note that all images must be big (greater than the intended size) and of high resolution.
For more information regarding the image quality requirements, please visit:National Library of Medicine Please note that we will be strictly enforcing these conditions and files which fail to conform to these requirements will not be considered for publication.
Article Processing Charges (APC) :
International Journal of Clinical Rheumatology is self-financed and does not receive funding from any institution/government. Hence, the Journals operate solely through processing charges we receive from the authors and some academic/corporate sponsors. The handling fee is required to meet its maintenance. Being an Open Access Journal Group, journals do not collect subscription charges from readers that enjoy free online access to the articles. Authors are hence required to pay a fair handling fee for processing their articles. However, there are no submission charges. Authors are required to make payment only after their manuscript has been accepted for publication.
Average Article prorcessing time (APT) is 55 days
Fast Editorial Execution and Review Process (FEE-Review Process):
International Journal of Clinical Rheumatology is participating in the Fast Editorial Execution and Review Process (FEE-Review Process) with an additional prepayment of $99 apart from the regular article processing fee. Fast Editorial Execution and Review Process is a special service for the article that enables it to get a faster response in the pre-review stage from the handling editor as well as a review from the reviewer. An author can get a faster response of pre-review maximum in 3 days since submission, and a review process by the reviewer maximum in 5 days, followed by revision/publication in 2 days. If the article gets notified for revision by the handling editor, then it will take another 5 days for external review by the previous reviewer or alternative reviewer.
Acceptance of manuscripts is driven entirely by handling editorial team considerations and independent peer-review, ensuring the highest standards are maintained no matter the route to regular peer-reviewed publication or a fast editorial review process. The handling editor and the article contributor are responsible for adhering to scientific standards. The article FEE-Review process of $99 will not be refunded even if the article is rejected or withdrawn for publication.
The corresponding author or institution/organization is responsible for making the manuscript FEE-Review Process payment. The additional FEE-Review Process payment covers the fast review processing and quick editorial decisions, and regular article publication covers the preparation in various formats for online publication, securing full-text inclusion in a number of permanent archives like HTML, XML, and PDF, and feeding to different indexing agencies.
Author Withdrawal Policy
From time to time, an author may wish to withdraw a manuscript after submitting it.
Changing one’s mind is an author’s prerogative. And an author is free to withdraw an article at no charge – as long as it is withdrawn within 5 days of its initial submission. After 05 days of submission, 50% of the publication charge will be applicable for withdraw the manuscript.
If you have concerns or questions about it, please contact us for further discussion. We welcome your input.
