JOURNAL OF MEDICAL AND BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES (JMBS)

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AUTHOR GUIDELINES

SCOPE

Journal of Medical and Biomedical Science publishes original, novel, peer-reviewed reports that pertain to medical and allied health sciences; confirmatory reports of previously described phenomena that either contain a novel finding or are of such magnitude to enhance the field; as well as laboratory or basic science investigational studies that are meritorious.

EDITORIAL NOTE

Successful manuscripts will be hypothesis-driven. The hypothesis must be clearly stated at the outset and the manuscript should be geared toward verification of the hypothesis. Priority will be given to hose clinical studies that exemplify the highest level of scientific practice, based upon the evidence-based medicine grading scheme. Novel laboratory investigation will receive high priority as well.

FORMAT OF PAPERS

PLEASE NOTE: Authors submitting a revised manuscript after review must include two versions:

(1) a marked up manuscript that highlights changes made in response to the reviewers' comments and

(2) a 'clean' (non-highlighted) manuscript.

Preparation of Original Articles
1. Cover letter (must include a Conflict of Interest statement)

2. Title page (excluding acknowledgements)
3. Abstract and keywords
4. Introduction
5. Materials (or patients) and methods
6. Results
7. Discussion
8. Acknowledgements
9. Conflict of Interest
10. References
11. Tables
12. Figures

Cover letter

The uploaded covering letter must state the material is original research, has not been previously published and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere while under consideration. The covering etter must also contain a Conflict of Interest statement.

Title page

The title page should bear the title of the paper, the full names of all the authors and their affiliations, together with the name, full postal address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address of the Author to whom correspondence and offprint requests are to be sent. The title should be brief, informative, of 150 characters or less and should not make a statement or conclusion. The running title should consist of not more than 50 letters and spaces. It should be as brief as possible, convey the essential message of the paper and contain no abbreviations.

Abstract and Keywords

The abstract should not exceed 200 words and three to six keywords should be included to aid web searches after publication.

Introduction

The Introduction should assume that the reader is knowledgeable in the field and should therefore be as brief as possible but can include a short historical review where desirable.

Materials/subjects and Methods

This section should contain sufficient detail, so that all experimental procedures can be reproduced, and include references. Methods, however, that have been published in detail elsewhere should not be described in detail. Authors should provide the name of the manufacturer and their location for any specifically named medical equipment and instruments, and all drugs should be identified by their pharmaceutical names, and by their trade name if relevant.

Results and Discussion

The Results section should briefly present the experimental data in text, tables or figures.Tables and figures should not be described extensively in the text, either. The discussion should focus on the interpretation and the significance of the findings with concise objective comments that describe their relation to other work in the area. It should not repeat information in the results.The final paragraph should highlight the main conclusion(s), and provide some indication of the direction future research should take.

Acknowledgements

These should be brief, and should include sources of support including sponsorship(e.g. university, charity, commercial organization) and sources of material (e.g. novel drugs) not available commercially.

 

Conflict of interest

Authors must declare whether or not there is any competing financial interests in relation to the work described. This information must be included at this stage and will be published as part of the paper. Conflict of interest should also be noted on the cover letter and as part of the submission process.

References

Only papers directly related to the article should be cited. Exhaustive lists should be avoided. References to literature in the body of the manuscript are cited by author(s), followed by year. Authors are
cited by their surnames only, e.g., Asamoah-Hassan (1999)or (Asamoah-Hassan,1999) depending on sentence structure.

 Asamoah-Hassan (1999) stated that archival collections present an impartial body of information.

 Archival collections present an impartial body of information (Asamoah-Hassan, 1999).

Distinguish between different papers by the same author(s) by postscript letters (Osei, 1994a, 1994b, 1994c). In the body of the paper, where a paper has more than two authors, give only the name of the first author followed by et al. (see Osei, Okai and Tuah below). Unpublished papers must be referred to only in the text ( e.g. Osei, unpublished or S.A. Osei, personal communication) and should not be listed in the References section. All literature mentioned in the text should be listed in alphabetical and chronological (if same authors have more than one paper cited) order at the end of the paper under References. The year of publication (in brackets) must follow the names of authors who should be listed surname first followed by initials.The use of et al in the references section is not allowed.
Provide the full title of the paper in the original language or in an English translation.

ForJournals, use the proper journal abbreviations; if in doubt, quote the full name of the journal. The name of the journal, volume and pages should be typed in italics. Follow the title with the volume number in Arabic nu-merals and the first and last pages of the citation. Issue numbers are not necessary except for journals where continuous pagination is not used. Only proper nouns in titles of papers and books need to be capitalized; for example: Osei, S.A., Okai, D.B. and Tuah,A.K. (1999). ―Quality protein maize as the sole source of amino acids in the diets of starter pigs: a preliminary study‖. Journal of the University of Science and Technology 19: 1 – 4 For books, the full citation should also include the title, edition number (if more than one), name of publishers, city of publication and country (if city cannot be easily identified by readers): Cryer, P.E., (1976). Diagnostic Endocrinology. Oxford University Press, New York. Where the book is edited, a reference to part of it must be given the normal literature citation but the title of the article is followed by the word In: and then the name of editor, book title, publishers and city of publication: Baker, D.H. (1977), Amino acid nutrition of the chick. In: Draper, H.H. (Editor) Advances in Nutrition Research. Plenum Press,New York.

For references to conference and seminar papers, the citation should include the title of the paper, the theme of the conference/seminar, place where it was held and date (days and month, e.g., 19 – 21 May).

LATIN WORDS AND PHRASES

Latin words used to identify biological structures or entities are always italicised; similarly phrases like et al., in situ, in vivo, versus, per se. On the other hand, commonly used abbreviations such as etc., viz and e.g. do not require italicisation.

Tables

These should be labelled sequentially and cited within the text. Each table should be presented on its own page, numbered and titled. Reference to table footnotes should be made by means of Arabic numerals. Tables should not duplicate the content of the text. They should consist of at least two columns; columns should always have headings. Authors should ensure that the data in the tables are consistent with those cited in the relevant places in the text, totals add up correctly, and percentages have been calculated correctly. Unlike figures or images, tables may be embedded into the word processing software if necessary.

Figures

Figures and images should be labelled sequentially, numbered and cited in the text. Figure legends should be brief,specific and appear on a separate manuscript page after the References section. Refer to (and cite) figures specifically in the text of the paper. Figures should not be embedded withinthe tex t. If a table or figure has been published before, the authors must obtain written permission to reproduce the material in both print and electronic formats from the copyright owner and submit it with the manuscript. This follows for quotes, illustrations and other materials taken from previously published works not in the public domain.

The original source should be cited in the figure caption or table footnote. The use of threedimensional histograms is strongly discouraged when the addition of the third dimension gives no extra information.

Scale markers should be used in the image for electron micrographs, and indicate the type of stain used.

General

 Do not make rules thinner than 1pt (0.36 mm)
 Use a coarse hatching pattern rather than shading for tints in graphs
 Colour should be distinct when being used as an identifying tool
 Spaces, not commas should be used to sepa rate thousands
 Abbreviations should be preceded by the words they stand for in the first instance of use
 Use SI units throughout
 Text should be double spaced with a wide margin
 At first mention of a manufacturer, the town (and state if USA) and country should be provided

NUMBERS

As a rule, numerals are not used to start sentences; words are preferred. In addition, words should be used for all numbers less than 10 and numerals for those greater than 10. In the situation where a sequence of numbers is given with some less and others more than 10, the use of numerals for all is advised. If a number is followed immediately by a unit of measurement use the numeral, e.g., 200 g. 30 cm.

Correspondence with the journal

One author is designated the contact author for matters arising from the published paper (materials requests, technical comments and so on). It is this author's responsibility to inform all coauthors of matters arising and to ensure such matters are dealt with promptly.After acceptance for publication, proofs are e-mailed to this corresponding author who should circulate the proof to all coauthors and coordinate corrections among them.

Plagiarism and fabrication

Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else's work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. Minor plagiarism without dishonest intent is relatively frequent, for example, when an author reuses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper.

If plagiarism is found, the journal will contact the author's institute and funding agencies. The paper containing the plagiarism will be marked on each page of the PDF and depending on the extent of the plagiarism, the paper may also be formally retracted.

BIOETHICS

Human and other animal experiments For primary research manuscripts reporting experiments on live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates, the corresponding author must confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. The manuscript must include in the Supplementary Information (methods) section (or, if brief, within of the print/online article at an appropriate place), a statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments, including any relevant details regarding animal welfare, patient anonymity, drug side effects and informed consent.

For experiments involving human subjects, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments, and include with their submission a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Biosecurity policy

The Editor may seek advice about submitted papers not only from technical reviewers but also on any aspect of a paper that raises concerns. These may include, for example,ethical issues or issues of data or materials access. Very occasionally, concerns may also relate to the implications to society of publishing a paper including threats to security. In such circumstances, advice will usually be sought simultaneously with the technical peer-review process. As in all publishing decisions, the ultimate decision whether to publish is the responsibility of the editor of the journal concerned.

PEER-REVIEW POLICY

All contributions that are selected for peer-review are sent to at least one, but usually two or more, independent reviewers.To save time for authors and peer-reviewers, only those papers that seem most likely to meet our editorial criteria are sent for formal review. Those papers judged by the editors to be of insufficient general interest or otherwise inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review. The editors then make a decision based on the reviewers' advice, from among several possibilities:

Accept, with or without editorial revisions. Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached.Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission.Reject outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems.

Anonymity

We do not release reviewers' identities to authors, except when reviewers specifically ask to be identified. Unless they feel strongly, however, we prefer that reviewers should remain anonymous throughout the review process and beyond. We ask reviewers not to identify themselves to authors without the editor's knowledge. If they wish to reveal their identities while the manuscript is under consideration, this should be done via the editor, or if this is not practicable, we ask authors to inform the editor as soon as possible after the reviewer has revealed his or her identity to the author. We deplore any attempt by authors to confront reviewers or determine their identities.

Our own policy is to neither confirm nor deny any speculation about reviewers' identities, and we encourage reviewers to adopt a similar policy.

Selecting peer reviewers

Reviewer selection is critical to the publication process, and we base our choice on many factors, including expertise, reputation, and specific recommendations.

Submission

Manuscripts,preferably in English, should be submitted in triplicate to the Editorial Board, Journal of Medical and Biomedical Science UDS, Tamale, Ghana or send as an attachment to jmbseditor@yahoo.com. Manuscripts must be typed double-spaced on one side of A 4 paper with wide margins on either side of the paper. Double spacing applied to text as well as tables, references and figure legends. It is recommended that prospective authors use numbered paper. Papers that fail to meet the Journal of Medical and Biomedical Science style and form, will be rejected outright.