Submissions

Categories of Articles

Original Articles should normally report original research of relevance to clinical medicine. A manuscript will be considered in the original article category if it is a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) or an Observational Study. RCT should be registered with International RCT Registry (Trial Registration Number mandatory). Moreover, Retrospective Studies with adequate sample size supported by appropriate advance statistical analysis may also be considered in this category.

Authors should clearly state in the manuscript under separate heading the name of the approval committee, highlighting that legal and ethical approvals were obtained prior to initiation of the research work carried out on subject, and that the experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulation. Also, it is mandatory to provide the institutional ethical review board/committee approval/exemption for all research articles, at the time of submission of article. Dissertation/ thesis approval letter from relevant authority is also acceptable.

The original paper should be of about 2000-2500 words excluding abstract and references. It should contain a structured abstract of about 250 words. Three to 10 keywords should be given for an original article as per MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). There should be no more than three tables or illustrations. The data should be supported with 20 to 25 references, which should include local as well as international references. More than 50% of the references should be from last five years from the date of submission.

Clinical Practice Article is a category under which all simple observational case series are entertained. A manuscript will be considered in this category if it is a Descriptive Case Series or a Retrospective Study. The length of such article should be around 1500 - 1600 words with 15 - 20 references. The rest of the format should be that of an original article.

Evidence Based Reports must have at least 10 cases and word count of 1000 - 1200 words with 10 - 12 references and not more than 2 tables or illustrations. It should contain a non-structured abstract of about 150 words.

Short Communications should be of about 1000 - 1200 words, having a non-structured abstract of about 150 words with two tables or illustrations and not more than 6 references.

Systematic Review/ Meta-Analysis should consist of critical overview/ analysis of some relatively narrow topic providing background and the recent development with the reference of original literature. It should incorporate author's original work on the same subject. The length of the review article should be of 2500 to 3000 words. It should have non-structured abstract of 150 words with minimum 3 key words. An author can write a review article only if he/she has written a minimum of three original research articles and some case reports on the same topic.

Letters should normally not exceed 400 words, with not more than 5 references and be signed by all the authors-maximum 3 are allowed. Preference is given to those that take up points made in contributions published recently in the journal. Letters may be published with a response from the author of the article being discussed. Discussions beyond the initial letter and response will not be entertained for publication. Letters to the editor may be sent for peer review if they report a scientific data. Editorials are written upon invitation. Audit Reports, Current Practices, Survey Reports and Short Articles should be written in the format of Clinical Practice Article.

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscript Organization

Most manuscripts should be organized as follows. Instructions for each element appear below.

• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Acknowledgments
• References

Title

Include a full title and a short title for the manuscript.

Abstract

The Abstract comes after the title page in the manuscript file. The abstract text is also entered in a separate field in the submission system. The Abstract should be succinct; it must not exceed 250 words. Authors should mention the techniques used without going into methodological detail and should summarize the most important results. Abstract of an original article should be in structured format with the following subheadings: i. Introduction. ii. Methodology. iii. Results. iv. Conclusion. A minimum of 3 key words as per MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) should be written at the end of abstract.

A non-structured abstract should be written as case specific statement for case reports with a minimum of three key words. Do not include any citations. Avoid specialist abbreviations.

Introduction

This section should include the purpose of the article after giving brief literature review strictly related to objective of the study. The rationale for the study or observation should be summarized. Only strictly pertinent references should be cited and the subject should not be extensively reviewed. It is preferable not to cite more than 10 references in this segment. Pertinent use of reference to augment support from literature is warranted which means, not more than 2 to 3 references be used for an observation. Data, methodology or conclusion from the work being reported should not be presented in this section. It should end with a statement of the study objective.

Methodology

Study design and sampling methods should be mentioned. Obsolete terms such as retrospective studies should not be used. The selection of the observational or experimental subjects (patients or experimental animals, including controls) should be described clearly. The methods and the apparatus used should be identified (with the manufacturer's name and address in parentheses), and procedures be described in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. References to established methods should be given, including statistical methods. References and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well-known should be provided; only new or substantially modified methods should be described in detail, giving reasons for using them, and evaluating their limitations. All drugs and chemicals used should be identified precisely, including generic name (s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.

For statistical analysis, the specific test used should be named, preferably with reference for an uncommon test. Exact p-values and 95% confidence interval (CI) limits must be mentioned instead of only stating greater or less than level of significance. All percentages must be accompanied with actual numbers. SPSS output sheet must be attached with manuscript to clarify results (p-values).

Result

These should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables (Max 3), and illustrations (Max 3). All the data in the tables or illustrations should not be repeated in the text; only important observations should be emphasized or summarized with due statement of demographic details. No opinion should be given in this part of the text. Statistics should be given in an ascending or descending order. The section may be divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading. The section should be written in the past tense.

Discussion

This section should include author's comment on the results, supported with contemporary references, including arguments and analysis of identical work done by other workers. Study limitations should also be mentioned. How do the conclusions affect the existing assumptions and models in the field? How can future research build on these observations?.

Conclusion

Conclusion should be provided under separate heading and highlight new aspects arising from the study. It should be in accordance with the objectives. No recommendations are needed under this heading.

Acknowledgments

Those who contributed to the work but do not meet our authorship criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgments with a description of the contribution.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that anyone named in the Acknowledgments agrees to be name.

Funding

Any company or institution who has financially contributed to the study must be acknowledged.

Conflict of Interest

Any conflict of interest should be declared by all authors. This may include grants or honorarium, credits and promotions, memberships or any personal or professional relationships which may appear to influence the manuscript. Such competing interests are not unethical but should be declared.

References

References must be listed in the Vancouver Style only. Any and all available works can be cited in the reference list. Acceptable sources include:

• Published or accepted manuscripts
• Manuscripts on preprint servers, providing the manuscript has a citable DOI or arXiv URL.

Do not cite the following sources in the reference list:

• Unavailable and unpublished work, including manuscripts that have been submitted but not yet accepted (e.g., “unpublished work,” “data not shown”). Instead, include those data as supplementary material or deposit the data in a publicly available database.
• Personal communications (these should be supported by a letter from the relevant authors but not included in the reference list)
• Submitted research should not rely upon retracted research. You should avoid citing retracted articles unless you need to discuss retracted work to provide historical context for your submitted research. If it is necessary to discuss retracted work, state the article’s retracted status in your article’s text and reference list.

References are listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, cite the reference number in super script. AMRJ uses the numbered citation (citation-sequence) method.

• Original Article: 25.
• Case Report: 10.
• Reviews: 30.