Submissions

Author Guidelines

The Editorial Process 
NMJ follows the principles of COPE, CSE, WAME, ICJME, DOAJ, OASPA guidelines. The submitted manuscripts are duly acknowledged and initially reviewed for possible publication by the Editors with the understanding that they are being submitted only to the NMJ, have not been published, simultaneously submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere.

Rejection: The manuscripts with insufficient originality or insignificant message, serious scientific and technical flaws are rejected. However, we do encourage the author to resubmit after the revision if the research was conducted scientifically. The preliminary rejection of the manuscript is related to; manuscript being out of scope, manuscript not formatted correctly, not following checklist and guidelines accurately, submission below publishable standards, incomplete submission (e.g. lack of ethical approval letter for research article). If it passes through preliminary rejection, it will go through proper peer review. The final rejection could be due to lack of originality, flaws in the METHODS section, generalizing and exaggerating the finding not supported by aims and objective including the methodology, peer reviewers' comment not properly answered or unanswered, plagiarism, publication misconduct and more. If you follow the NMJ guideline in detail, you can avoid preliminary rejection and minimize the final rejection of your submission.

We truly value your hard work and wish to publish most of the submissions to the NMJ. However, as we stated earlier, we follow the principles of COPE, CSE, WAME, ICJME, DOAJ, OASPA guidelines. Hence, we have to maintain the highest standard of scientific values in our work. Therefore, we urge you to help us to improve science together. We hope that the rejection of your current submission will not deter you to continue submitting your work to the NMJ.

Publication and Decision Time: Time to first decision overall (average) within 7-10 days for initial decision (without review); 60 days (with the review). Those articles which have been submitted six months to a year ago undergo auto-pruning (automatic declining). It happens due to one of the following reasons i) to iii) or due to loss of contact with the authors.

If you find encounter delay and find no update on your NMJ submission account, which could be due to;
i) submission was incomplete or 
ii) submission was without following NMJ format and supplementary documents or 
iii) there is an issue with your submission (e.g. ethical issues or research misconduct or related)

Because of any of the above issues or any other reasons, if you do not receive any information or update about your submission within 2-4 weeks, please contact NMJ as soon as possible. We will make sure that your voice is heard and addressed appropriately.

N.B. Please do not contact on personal email, social media or phone number to Editor-in-Chief, Editorial team or NMJ staff related to your submission. All communication must be made via NMJ official email address only. NMJ best editorial practice ensures that it publishes the highest standard articles. 

The Peer Review Process
The manuscripts are then sent to two expert peer reviewers blinded to the contributor’s identity and vice versa for meticulous review, inputs and comments. The final decision on whether to accept or reject the article are taken by the Editor-in-Chief based on editorial board and peer reviewers. The contributors are informed about the rejection/acceptance of the manuscript with the peer reviewer’s comments. Accepted articles have to be resubmitted after making the necessary changes or clarifying questions made during the peer review process.
The accepted articles are edited for grammatical, punctuation, print style and format errors and page proofs and are sent to the corresponding author who should return them within three days. Non-response to galley proof may result in the delay of publication or even rejection of the article.

Reporting Guidelines
The guidelines listed below should be followed where appropriate. Please use these guidelines to structure your article. Completed applicable checklists, structured abstracts and flow diagrams should be uploaded with your submission; these will be published alongside the final version of your paper.

• ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments)
• CARE (for case report)
• CONSORT Statement (for reporting of randomised controlled trials: please use the appropriate extension to the CONSORT statement, including the extension for writing abstracts)
• TREND (`for nonrandomized evaluations of behavioural and public health interventions)
• COREQ (for reporting qualitative research - interviews and focus groups)
• STARD (for reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies)
• STROBE (for reporting of observational studies in epidemiology)
• PRISMA (for reporting of systematic reviews)
• PRISMA-P (for reporting of systematic review and meta-analysis protocols)
• MOOSE (for reporting of meta-analyses of observational studies)
• TREND Quasi-experimental / non-randomized evaluations
• SPIRIT (for reporting protocols for RCTs)
• STREGA (for reporting of gene-disease association studies)
• CHEERS (for reporting of health economic evaluations)

The Equator Network (Enhancing the Quality and Transparency Of health Research) provides a comprehensive list of reporting guidelines.

Focus and Scope 
NMJ invites original research papers, review articles, case reports, medical education, viewpoints letter to the editor containing new insight into any aspect of Medical & Health Science that are not published or not being considered for publication elsewhere. The journal is particularly interested and welcomes papers in basic and clinical medical sciences, medical education, public health, hospital and healthcare management, research and publication ethics, too.

EDITORIAL
It is submitted by an editorial board or invited piece on most pertinent issues on Health in Nepal or in the world.  It undergoes fast-track peer review process reviewed, 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
NMJ accept researches conducted in the field of basic and clinical medical sciences, forensic science, medical education, public health, hospital and healthcare management, allied health sciences and research and publication ethics, with the maximum length of 2500-3500 world (excluding abstract of 250 words). It undergoes rigorous peer review process. Please expect lots of communication from the NMJ.

CASE REPORTS
This section includes report of a case with literature review that includes, an unexpected association between diseases or symptoms, an unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient, findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect, unique or rare feature of a disease, unique therapeutic approaches, approaches to a case report, a patient whose diagnosis was difficult to make, describe changes in one or more patients with chronic conditions over an extended time period, report on two or more patients with similar characteristics who received different interventions and had different outcomes, atypical management of patients with common problems, atypical patient presentations, apply theory to patient or client management, report on an administrative or academic experience. Please use CARE Case Report Checklist while preparing your case report.
Case report provides an opportunity for the scientist to work further therefore, we are interested in advance medical science and spawn research; describe rare, perplexing, or novel diagnostic features of a disease state; report therapeutic challenges, controversies, or dilemmas; describe a new approach to treatment and patient care, teach humanistic lessons to the health care professional; review a unique job description of a health care professional that improves patient care; report new medical errors or medication errors; discover a device malfunction that results in patient harm; describe drug adverse effects and patient toxicity; life-threatening adverse events; dangerous and predictable adverse effects that are poorly appreciated and rarely recognized; a therapeutic failure or a lack of therapeutic efficacy; use of life-saving techniques not previously documented; uncover barriers to patient adherence; discover an interaction between a drug and a laboratory test that yields a false-positive or false-negative result; effect of drugs in pregnancy and lactation; use of technology to improve patient outcomes. It undergoes peer review process.

 Please download Case Report Consent Form, get a written consent and put the original on the patient chart and provide a copy of it during your submission. 

REVIEW ARTICLE
Review articles are which summaries the current state of understanding on a topic and analyses or discuss research previously published by others, rather than reporting new experimental results.
They are very thorough literature reviews that identify historical and current trends in the research, important scholars in the field, foundational articles, major discoveries, gaps in the research (areas for further exploration), and current debates or controversies.  It has to be about 3000 words without counting abstract (200 words) and references (>50 and usually <100). It undergoes rigorous peer review process. 

MEDICAL EDUCATION
NMJ accept perspective on undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing medical education. All issues of current interest, including teaching methods, curriculum reform, the training of medical teachers, the selection of entrants and assessment techniques, curriculum development, evaluations of performance, assessment of training needs and evidence-based medicine are accepted, with word limit up to 1500 words excluding abstract of 150 words. It undergoes peer review process. 

SHORT COMMUNICATION
These are research article, which doesn’t fit exactly into research article but findings, are interesting, e.g. pilot study. It undergoes peer review process.

VIEWPOINT
The article in this section is based on issues related to health sciences to raise the voice, awareness, new ideas, thought to provoke concepts, and personal expert opinion to improve the health.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR 
The section includes a reaction and issue relating to WJHS, be it a comment relating a recent article, an elaboration of an important discovery, or simply a thought-provoking commentary of fewer than 1000 words without an abstract.

BOOK REVIEW
This section is invited by the editorial board. 

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
 Nepal Medical Journal will be an internationally peer reviewed, a general medical journal of Nepal Police Hospital.
The NMJ abide by:
1. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals
2. World Association of Medical Editors for best editorial practice
3. Council of Science Editors for best editorial practice
3. Committee on Publication Ethics for practicing good publication ethics

SUBMISSION DOCUMENTS 
Please submit all the following documents while submitting your new manuscript to NMJ
1. Forwarding letter
2. Authorship
3. Declaration
4. Manuscript
5. Ethical Approval letter*
*This is for research article only. Ethical approval letter should be taken before starting the research. Any research without ethically approved by recognized ethical review board is of no value. The Ethical Review Board of Nepal Health Research Council is the apex body for looking after the ethics in research in Nepal. 
However, ERB has established institutions review committee in most of the medical college, tertiary care centre hospitals and research centre throughout the country. If you do not belong to such IRC centres, please contact ERB, NHRC for ethical approval of your research. For international author - please provide ethical approval letter from your institutional ethical committee or national body responsible for ethics in research. 
Any submission without above documents and manuscript not in NMJ format will be rejected outright. Therefore to avoid such errors and rejection, please submit your article with all supplementary and required files along with the use of appropriate template given below.

TEMPLATES
The majority of the submitted manuscript lack proper formatting, on the top of that heading and subheading, is not correctly written. Therefore, we encourage you to use appropriate template for your manuscript.
1. Original Article Template
2. Case Report Template
3. Review Article Template
4. Medical Education Template
5. Viewpoint Template
6. Letter to the Editor Template

Added Documents
Please go through NMJ checklist and reference preparing a document for your manuscript. However, we use CITING MEDICINE for citation. Incorrect reference and erroneous citation will invalid your paper at NMJ
1. NMJ Checklist (must read)

MUST HAVE INFORMATION 
To minimize the rejection (or return for revision) of your article please do the followings: 

1. All the documents have to be submitted at once (as listed above).
2. Please use the template for your respective manuscript to avoid error in the heading and subheadings.
3. Please address all the point described in the NMJ checklist, references and manuscript preparation guidelines etc.
4. Please do not submit the article that we do not publish (check author guideline for a different type of article we accept).
5. If you have difficulty working on the computer or not good at it particularly Microsoft word document, please seek a professional help to prepare your manuscript according to our need.
6. Email is the preferred methods of communication, therefore, please check your email once a day after you submit an article to NMJ. We will inform you about the status of your article through our system to the email you at your mail ID which you have provided. We may also contact you anytime for immediate information to speed up the review process. 
7. Please do not contact editorial member's personal telephone numbers but NMJ office. If you have more queries, please contact us anytime. Help us to help you by providing required information as listed on this page.

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. 
submission Preparation Checklist:

1. 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).
2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
4. The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; 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.
5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
7. Supplementary Files: Please also submit supplementary files along with your manuscript and also go through NMJ Checklist (must read):
8. NMJ Templates: Please prepare your manuscript in NMJ templates as listed above.