Policies

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

SUBMISSION, PROCESSING AND PUBLICATION CHARGES:

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 or more external reviewers.

PEER REVIEW:
JSHMDC is a peer-reviewed journal. A double-blind peer-review policy is followed. After an initial assessment, the manuscript is sent to two reviewers, and 3 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, then the manuscript is sent to 3rd reviewer. 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 data base.

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.
• 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.

MANUSCRIPT PROCESSING:

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 or more external reviewers. Three weeks are 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, then the manuscript is sent to 3rd reviewer. The authors can suggest reviewers themselves with their affiliation and contact details of the reviewers in a cover letter, but it is up to the editor to accept it.

On receipt of comments, the reviewer's comments are communicated to the author. The author will be given 2 weeks to incorporate the reviewers’ comments in the revised 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) from the corresponding author. If the revised article is received then it is checked for incorporation of suggested changes. A period of 2-4 months is set to finalize the process, and if approved, letter of acceptance is issued to the author.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST DECLARATION AND AUTHOR AGREEMENT FORM:

Authors should fill out the conflict-of-interest declaration and author agreement form on the website.

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA:

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.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT CRITERIA:

Contributors who do not meet all the four criteria for authorship, but helped in the study, may be listed in the acknowledgement 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

PRIVACY POLICY:

Journal’s website is owned and operated by Shalamar Medical and Dental College, Lahore. 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 and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION ETHICS POLICY:

  1. All research work involving human subjects, human material, human data, or experimental animals submitted for publication must be approved by an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB).
  2. All articles are required to have IRB letter in accordance with ethical standards.
  3. All research involving human subjects, human material or human data must be in accordance with Declaration of Helsinki tps://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/79(4)373.pdf) and Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) guidelines (https://cioms.ch/). A statement detailing the name of the IRB and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research.
  4. All experimental and interventional studies must be accompanied by approval letter from IRB.
  5. All RCTs must be in accordance with CONSORT guidelines.
  6. All clinical trials must be registered at clincaltrials.gov
  7. All Observational studies should be in accordance with STROBE guidelines.
  8. If a study has been granted exemption from ethics review, this should also be detailed in the manuscript and exemption letter signed by IRB Chair must be submitted with the manuscript. The Editor may contact the IRB for further information on special cases.
  9. 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.
  10. Retrospective ethics approval from IRB, in cases when a study has not been granted IRB approval prior to commencing, is usually not obtainable and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor's discretion.
  11. If tables, illustrations, or photographs, which have already been published, are included, a letter of permission for re-publication should be obtained from author(s) of that research article as well as the editor of the journal where it was previously published.
  12. Written consent to reproduce photographs, investigation reports (images of reports or other radiological images like X Ray, MRI scans etc.) of patients, should be sent with the manuscript.
  13. Authors must declare time and place of the study.
  14. COPE guidelines are followed by JSHMDC. Any scientific misconduct will be dealt with as per COPE guidelines. Misconduct is dealt by asking the corresponding author an explanation. If there is unsatisfactory response, the manuscript is rejected from publication and retracted if already published. Retraction notice will be in print and on the journal’s website as well. The authors will be blacklisted. The institutional head, HEC, PMC, and other editorial associations may also be informed of this misconduct.
  15. As the journal reserves the copyrights of the submitted articles, 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 to the editor for withdrawal. No manuscript is considered “withdrawn” without official email sent to the editor. A manuscript cannot be withdrawn after its acceptance by the journal.
  16. A declaration of conflict of interest must be signed by authors before publication.
  17. Other Resources for guidance:

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.  All the submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism through Turnitin's software, following the criteria/guidelines defined by HEC & IJCME. The similarity index should be less than 19%. If the similarity index is 19% or more than 19%, 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.

DATA SHARING POLICY:

Authors may be requested to deposit their SPSS/EXCEL data sheets if required.

APPEALS & COMPLAINTS:

  • 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 or Section Editor will consider authors’ argument, the reviewer reports and decides whether, the decision to reject should stand. The complainant is informed of the decision with an explanation if appropriate.
  • 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. Please approach the publishing contact given on the journal page, if complaint is related to delayed process of publishing.
  • Any Complaint about publication ethics (e.g., researcher's author's, or reviewer's conduct) will be addressed by the Editor-in-Chief or Editor handling the manuscript following the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. The Editor-in-Chief or Handling Editor decides on a course of action and provides feedback to the complainant.

COMPLAINT PROCESS:

  • 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 Editor to the Chief Editor. 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.

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.

PUBLICATION MISCONDUCT & RETRACTION OF ARTICLE:

Any scientific misconduct will be dealt with as per COPE guidelines. Publication misconduct is dealt by asking the corresponding author an explanation. If there is no/unsatisfactory response, the manuscript is rejected from publication and retracted if already published. Retraction notice will be in print and on the journal’s website. The authors will be blacklisted. The institutional head, HEC, PMC, and other editorial associations may also be informed of this misconduct.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

All the articles published by this journal are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. 

The authors of articles published with JSHMDC retain the copyrights of their submitted manuscripts for all purposes and have granted to any third party the right to use, reproduce or disseminate their articles.

COPYRIGHT POLICY:

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

The authors will retain the copyrights of their submitted manuscripts for all purposes. The readers may “Share-copy 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 purpose. The readers may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.