Policy Document

POLICY DOCUMENT

JOURNAL OF SHALAMAR MEDICAL & DENTAL COLLEGE (JSHMDC)

FREQUENCY OF PUBLICATION:
JSHMDC is published biannually.
1st issue – in June
2nd issue – in December

SUBMISSION, PROCESSING AND PUBLICATION CHARGES:

Journal of Shalamar Medical & Dental College (JSHMDC) is an OPEN ACCESS journal published in print and online form. There are no article submission, processing, and publication charges.

PEER REVIEW POLICY:

Initial Assessment:

The manuscript is immediately acknowledged, and initial screening is done for its suitability according to journal guidelines, originality, and similarity index. If the manuscript is found satisfactory, it is sent to two external reviewers.

Peer Review & Manuscript Processing:
JSHMDC is a Peer-reviewed journal. Double-anonymous peer review policy is followed. After an initial assessment, the manuscript is sent to two reviewers after blinding for authors' names and affiliations, and three weeks is given for review. A reminder is sent if the reviewer doesn’t submit the review in 3 weeks. If the reviewer doesn’t respond within one week after the reminder, the manuscript is sent to 3rd reviewer for review.

On receipt of comments, the reviewer's comments are communicated to the author. The author will be given two weeks to incorporate the reviewers’ comments in the manuscript. The first reminder will be given to the author at three weeks if the author does not comply with the timelines. The second reminder will be given in 4th week. The article will be declined if no response is received after two reminders. If the revised article is received, it is checked for incorporating suggested changes. If the changes are not incorporated, and there are major revisions, the manuscript is sent for 2^nd round of the review process following the same timelines. A period of 3-5 months is set to finalize the process, and if approved, a letter of acceptance is issued to the author.

Each reviewer will be asked to evaluate not more than two manuscripts for each issue of this Bi-annual journal. The authors can suggest reviewers themselves with affiliation and contact details of the reviewers in a cover letter, but it is up to the editor to accept it. We prefer reviewers of our own journal’s database.

Reviewers must ensure that:
• each manuscript is critically assessed for the originality, importance, and quality of research work.
• the study's title and objectives are in line with the conclusion.
• the rationale of the study is mentioned.
• study design, duration & place where the study was conducted, inclusion & exclusion criteria, methodology, and statistical analysis are mentioned.
• presentation of the result is supported by tables and figures
• new findings have been discussed and compared with previous data.
• conclusion, strengths, limitations of the study, and future recommendations are mentioned.
• source of funding is declared, if any.
• acknowledgments are mentioned if any.
Reviewers should declare any conflict of interest to the editor and must complete the review within a specified period (usually four weeks). Reviewers should fill out the review Form, even if the comments are added in the manuscript.

The reviewer's comments are communicated to the author upon receipt. The author will be given two weeks to incorporate the reviewers’ comments in the revised manuscript. The revised version of the article is checked for incorporation of suggested changes. A period of 2-4 months is set to finalize the process, and if approved, a letter of acceptance is issued to the author.
Due to the blind peer review policy, details of the reviewers are not shared publicly. However, the details can be provided to national and international indexing agencies (e.g., HEC Pakistan, PMC, Scopus, DOAJ etc.) on demand.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST / GRANT SUPPORT AND FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE POLICY

All the authors have to disclose any conflict of interest and financial and personal relationships with other people, companies or organizations that may inappropriately influence (bias) their work.
Financial conflicts include, but are not limited to employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patents or patent applications, and travel grants; all within three years of beginning the submitted work.
If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should declare in the Conflict of Interest Declaration form available on the website during manuscript submission.
Authors of study having some grant from some organization must sign a statement that they had full access to all the data in the study and take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data collected and the accuracy of the data analysis. This statement should be submitted along with the manuscript.
The reviewers are also bound to declare any type of conflicts with the work they are requested to review.
The journal publishes conflicts of interest/ grant support and financial disclosure along with published manuscripts.
Authors should fill out the conflict-of-interest declaration and author agreement form available on the website.

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA POLICY

The corresponding author must provide a final list of authors with their current affiliations, contact numbers and e-mail addresses on the authorship form available on the website at the time of submission, ensuring the correct sequence of the names of authors, which will not be considered for any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of authors after final submission of the manuscript.

Authors should meet all four criteria’s for authorship as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a study. Authorship credit should be based on:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION ETHICS POLICY

JSHMDC promotes research integrity and adherence to the core values of research and follows the core practices of COPE

JSHMDC publishes responsible and ethical research. The journal expects its contributors to adhere to international and national guidelines for the safety and protection of the research participants. All research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must be in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/79(4)373.pdf) and ICMJE Recommendations on Protection of Research Participants, and Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) guidelines (https://cioms.ch/).
All research work involving human subjects, human material, human data, or animals submitted for publication must be approved by an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB).
It is mandatory to submit an IRB approval letter with all articles as per ethical standards set by ICMJE.
A statement detailing the name of the IRB and the reference number, where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research.
All experimental and interventional studies must be accompanied by an approval letter from IRB.
All Randomized Trials must be according to CONSORT guidelines.
All Clinical Trials must be registered at clincaltrials.gov
Review articles must contain information regarding databases for literature search and the period for selection of articles.
Systematic reviews should be according to PRISMA guidelines.
Observational studies should be according to STROBE guidelines.
Qualitative research should be according to SRQR guidelines
If a study has been granted an exemption from ethics review, this should also be detailed in the manuscript, and an exemption letter signed by the IRB Chair must be submitted with the manuscript. The Editor may contact the IRB for further information on exceptional cases.
The Editor reserves the right to reject a manuscript if the editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.
Retrospective ethics approval from IRB, in cases when a study has not been granted IRB approval before commencing, is usually not obtainable, and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. The decision to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor's discretion.
If the author wishes to publish a paper from his/her FCPS dissertation, besides synopsis approval from RTMC/CPSP, IRB approval is also mandatory.
If tables, illustrations or photographs that have already been published are included, a letter of permission for re-publication should be obtained from the author(s) of that research article and the editor of the journal where it was previously published.
Patient information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication.
Written consent to reproduce photographs and investigation reports (images of reports or other radiological images like X-Ray, MRI scans etc.) of patients should be sent with the manuscript.
Authors must declare the time and place of the study.
In the case of Retrospective Studies, Informed consent is not required. However, they must submit an IRB approval letter with the manuscript.
JSHMDC also publishes research conducted on animals. Authors should follow the national and international guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals in research. Authors can take guidance on animal research ethics from WMA statement on animal use in biomedical research , and the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare.
An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a study. All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship criteria as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
All articles submitted to KMUJ are screened through Turnitin software for similarity index.
JSHMDC follows the standard definition and description of plagiarism. It follows the COPE, ICMJE, & Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan policies regarding plagiarism.
JSHMDC follows COPE guidelines. Any SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT before or after publication will be dealt with as per COPE guidelines. Publication misconduct is handled by asking the corresponding author for an explanation within two weeks. If the corresponding author provides an acceptable explanation, the editorial board recommends starting the review process for the submitted manuscript. In case the manuscript has been published and a journal editor receives a critique to an article previously published in the journal. If the corresponding author provides an acceptable explanation, the article will be revised, and a corrected copy will be uploaded on the website. If there is no response in two weeks' time or if there is an unsatisfactory explanation, the editorial board will decide the fate of the article and authors, including:
o REJECTION of the manuscript,
o RETRACTION of already published article
A RETRACTION notice will also be on the journal’s website. The authors will be blacklisted from further publication in the JSHMDC for two years or permanently, depending upon the nature of the misconduct. The institutional head, HEC, PMC, and other editorial associations may also be informed of this misconduct.
The authors will retain the copyrights of their submitted manuscripts for all purposes. The readers may “Share and reorganize the material in any medium or format” and “transform and build upon the material”. The readers must give appropriate credit to the source of the material and indicate if changes were made to the material. Readers may not use the material for commercial purposes. The readers may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
If the author wishes to withdraw the manuscript during its processing, an official email needs to be sent to the editor for withdrawal. No manuscript is considered “withdrawn” without an official email sent to the editor. A manuscript cannot be withdrawn after its acceptance by the journal.
Authors must sign a declaration of conflict of interest before publication.
Other Resources:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT CRITERIA POLICY

Contributors who do not meet all the four criteria for authorship, but helped in the study, may be listed in the acknowledgment section. Examples include, but are not limited by the following:

Individuals who supervised the research group
• Individuals who provided administrative support
• Colleagues who helped in designing the study
• Individuals who helped in reviewing the manuscript
• Individuals who provided laboratory assistance

PLAGIARISM POLICY:

Plagiarism is the "stealing or misusing scholarly property and the significant copying of someone else’s work." Plagiarism is when large portions of the text have been copied and pasted without proper and unequivocal acknowledgment/attribution.

JSHMDC follows COPE guidelines. Any SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT will be dealt with as per COPE guidelines.

All the submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism through Turnitin's software, following the criteria/guidelines defined by Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, ICMJE, and COPE.

The similarity index should be less than 19%. If the similarity index is more than 50% it is rejected. If the similarity index is 19% or more than 19%, but less than 50% the manuscript is not processed further until revised by the author. If a plagiarized manuscript is submitted multiple times, it is rejected from further processing.

Publication misconduct is dealt by asking the corresponding author for an explanation within two weeks. If an acceptable explanation is provided by the author(s), the editorial board recommends appropriate changes, after which the review process for the submitted manuscript may commence. In no response in two weeks' time or if there is an unsatisfactory explanation, the editorial board will decide regarding the fate of the article and authors, including:
o REJECTION of the manuscript,
o RETRACTION of already published article
A RETRACTION notice will also be on the journal’s website. The authors will be blacklisted from further publication in the JSHMDC for two years or permanently, depending upon the nature of the misconduct. The institutional head, HEC, PMC, and other editorial associations may also be informed of this misconduct.

EDITORIAL POLICY:

The paper submitted to JSHMDC, should not have been published in any other journal or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (except publication in the form of an abstract in the proceedings of the conference).
- Authorship criteria will be according to the ICMJE guidelines.
- A submitted article will be processed through double-blind peer review by subject experts.
- Articles with the highest ethical standards concerning plagiarism will be considered for publication.
- JSHMDC will accept manuscripts prepared in accordance with ICMJE guidelines.
- Publication misconduct will be dealt with according to COPE guidelines.
- The journal also encourages the submission of papers with negative results.
- The author can publish only one article in an issue as 1^st
- The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have approved publication.
- Any change in the authorship (such as the addition or deletion of an author or change in the sequence of the author list after submitting an article will not be entertained.
- The undertaking will be obtained from the author to prevent duplicate publication.
- Complete archives will be maintained on the JSHMDC website in the archive section.
- Submission of the article doesn’t guarantee the publication of the article.
- Self -institutional authorship will not exceed 1/5th of the total articles.
- Articles of editorial board members will not be published.

EDITORIAL/ADVISORY BOARD SELECTION POLICY:

JSHMDC will follow the recommendations of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) policies in selection of members of editorial and Advisory board of the Journal.

Editorial board is headed by medical personnel with doctorate degree / FCPS and with quality research publications.
Chief Editor is a doctorate and has good number of research publications in national and international journal with impact factor and has editorship experience.
Highly qualified editorial members from various disciplines and capabilities have been selected by editor in chief.
Editorial members have strong research background.
50% the editorial / advisory board members are national and 50% are international
To ensure the smooth functioning of the journal, the Editors are responsible for conducting the Editorial Board meetings regularly.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY:

Journal of Shalamr Medical & Dental College (JSHMDC) is an OPEN ACCESS journal published in print and online form. All papers published by JSHMDC are immediately available FREELY without any charges to all users. The work published in the journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License

DATA SHARING POLICY:

Authors are encouraged to deposit data of paper submitted in any public repository and share the information or link under this heading " Data Sharing Information" at the end of the submitted manuscript. Authors can be asked to deposit their SPSS/EXCEL data sheets when required.

APPEALS & COMPLAINTS POLICY:

APPEAL POLICY:

Authors whose articles have been rejected by JSHMDC have the right to send a letter of appeal to the editor-in-chief giving detailed explanations. The Editor-in-Chief will refer the appeal to the Section Editor to give recommendations for decision in the light of the Core Practices of COPE, COPE Guidelines and Policies of WAME. Section Editor will consider authors’ argument, the reviewer reports to investigate the case and formulate the report. Report is forwarded to Editor in chief, who then decides whether, the decision to reject should stand. The complainant is informed of the decision with an explanation if appropriate.

COMPLAINT POLICY:

The authors, reviewers, or any other person may submit a formal complaint through the journal's official email (jsmdc@sihs.org.pk) regarding any publication misconduct on the part of the author, reviewer or Editorial board. The case will be referred for investigation to the Editorial Board of the journal to give recommendations to the Chief Editor for decision in the light of COPE Guidelines. If the complainant remains dissatisfied with the handling of their complaint, he or she can submit the complaint to the COPE.

Complaints about failure of processes such as long delays in handling papers in first instance will be handled by the Editor-in-Chief(s) responsible for the journal and/or the Section Editor who handled the paper.

WITHDRAWAL POLICY:

It is highly unethical to submit the same manuscript to multiple journals at the same time. If the author wishes to withdraw the manuscript during its processing, an official email needs to be sent the editor-in-chief for withdrawal. No manuscript is considered “withdrawn” without an official email sent to the editor. A manuscript cannot be withdrawn after its acceptance by the journal.

SELF-ARCHIVING/REPOSITORY POLICY:

Authors are permitted to deposit all versions of their paper submitted to JSHMDC in an institutional or subject repository:
1. Preprint
2. Author’s Accepted Manuscript
3. Published Version/ Version of Record

No embargo is applied.

DIGITAL ARCHIVING POLICY:

JSHMDC supports digital archiving to ensure the security and accessibility of the data. It maintains archives through PKP Presentation Network.

ADVERTISEMENT POLICIES:

We do not courage advertisement in the scholarly scientific medical journal hence we do not accept any kind of advertisement.

PRIVACY POLICY:

Shalamar Medical and Dental College, Lahore, Pakistan, owns and operates the journal's website. JSHMDC is committed to ensuring trust and privacy with respect to the personal information collected from the authors and reviewers and follows ICMJE guidelines. The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal. They will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

COPYRIGHT POLICY:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The AUTHORS retain the copyrights of their submitted manuscripts for all purposes. AUTHORS retains the rights of free downloading/unlimited e-print of full text and sharing/ disseminating the article without any restriction using Google Scholar, Academia.edu, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Twitter, and any other professional or academic networking sites.

READER RIGHTS: JSHMDC offers free rights to all readers of all the articles immediately upon publication.

The readers are allowed to copy, download, read, distribute, and print the full texts of the articles published in JSHMDC or use published articles for any non-commercial, lawful purpose without asking prior permission from the publisher. The readers must give appropriate credit to the source of the material. Readers may not use the material for commercial purposes.

The work published by the Journal of Shalamar Medical & Dental College is licensed and distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Prof. Dr. Adeela Shahid Prof. Dr. Zahid Bashir

Editor In Chief JSHMDC Principal & patron In Chief JSHMDC

Shalamar Medical & Dental College Lahore Shalamar Medical & Dental College Lahore