Author Guidelines

Author Guidelines

• Editorial policy

All manuscripts submitted for publication must be accompanied by the Copyright Transfer Form. Once this form, signed by all the authors, has been submitted, it is understood that neither the manuscript nor the data it contains have been submitted elsewhere or previously published and authors declare the statement of scientific contributions and responsibilities of all authors. The secondary publication can if the article meets criteria of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, at www.icmje.org/ .

Information regarding reviewers will not be revealed. SJMS follows a double-blind peer review system. Changing in the authors adding or deleting, it is the responsibility of the corresponding author after agreeing of editorial office.

The SJMS does not charge any article submission or processing charges but requesting hardcopies fee will due.

All published manuscripts are belonging to the Sudan Journal of Medical Sciences (SJMS) and are prohibited from being published elsewhere without written permission.

• General information

The SJMS focuses on clinical research, case reports, reviews, letter to the editor, short communications and editorials. Accepted manuscripts are requested to be proofread by the corresponding author. Sudanese researchers and researchers throughout the Middle East and Africa can submit a manuscript if it is in the SJMS scope.

Submission through the online manuscript submission system, Authors, reviewers, and editors send and receive all correspondences through this system, at https://knepublishing.com/index.php/SJMS/about/submissions .

• Peer review process

The manuscript is assigned to the Editor-in-Chief, who reviews the manuscript and makes an initial decision based on the manuscript quality and editorial priorities. Manuscripts that pass initial evaluation are sent for peer review process, and the Editor-in-Chief assigns an Associate Editor. The Associate Editor sends the manuscript to two reviewers (internal and/or external reviewers). Manuscripts will be reviewed by experts in the corresponding field of the manuscript. The reviewers must review the manuscript within 30 days. The Associate Editor recommends a decision based on the reviewers’ recommendations and returns the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief makes a final decision based on editorial priorities, manuscript quality, and reviewer recommendations. If there are any conflicting recommendations from reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief can assign a new reviewer. Information reading reviewer will not be revealed, it is double-blinded process. According to the reviewer's opinion accepted manuscript maybe send back to author to adjust some details. The author should upload the revised files with a reply to each item of the reviewer's opinion. The author's revisions should be completed within 10 days after the request. If it is not received by the due date, there may be delay or rejection. The revision period can be extended after submission of a request. The author may request another reviewer opinion, and the editorial board has wright to approve or reject it. The Editorial Board has the full final decision on approval, rejection, and request further corrections if necessary. Statistical editing is also performed if needed by a biostatistician. The Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, biostatistics expert and English language consultant may make minor corrections to accepted manuscripts that do not change the main text of the paper.

• Copyrights

Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the SJMS. On behalf of co-author(s), the corresponding author must complete and submit the journal's copyright transfer agreement which is based on the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. A copy of the form is available online at the SJMS website.

• Open access

SJMS is an open-access journal. Accepted articles are freely available on the journal website, without any charge. Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. To use the tables or figures of SJMS for scholarly, educational purposes, the process of permission request to the publisher of SJMS is not necessary. All the content of the journal is available immediately upon publication.

• Disclosure/acknowledgement

Authors must provide disclosure/acknowledgement of financial or material support, if any was received, for the current study. If the article includes any direct or indirect commercial links or if any institution provided material support to the study, authors must state in the cover letter that they have no relationship with the commercial product, drug, pharmaceutical company, etc. concerned; or specify the type of relationship (consultant, other agreements), if any.

• Manuscript preparation
• The Editorial Policies and General Guidelines for manuscript preparation specified below are based on “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations)” by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2013, archived at http://www.icmje.org/). The format of SJMS complies with “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals”, as published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1979 (the widely accepted “Vancouver style “), as described in the Annals of Internal Medicine(1982,96 [pt 1] 114-29 for guidance. Manuscripts, including tables, references, and figure legends, must be type written, single-spaced, on 8 ½ x 11 inch (21.5x 28 cm) on size A4 paper, with margins of at least one inch (2.5cm). Times New Roman is the preferred font type with font size 12. Pages should be numbered consecutively. The title page should be separate. All numbers should be written in Arabic numerals throughout the manuscripts and Must be written in good English.

Our preferred file format is DOCX or DOC.  The manuscript should follow this sequence: cover letter (a must, a separate file), title page file (should be separate), and manuscript text.  

• Cover letter

You must address the covering letter to the Sudan JMS demonstrating that your work is original, it is importance, not considered for publication elsewhere, transfer copyrights to the journal and it should be signed by all authors). The cover letter should include (1) statements about manuscript type, (2) single-journal submission affirmation, (3) conflict of interest statement, (4) sources of outside funding, (5) equipment (if applicable), (6) approval of language for articles in English and approval of statistical analysis for original research articles.

• Title Page

The title page must be separate and contains: (A) Title of the article. (B) Correct names of each authors, Each author’s official academic and/or clinical title, Email of each authors, And Name, and address of the institution(s). (C) Name and address of author to whom correspondence should be sent and his phone number. (D) Any disclaimers (An example of a disclaimer is an author's statement that the views expressed in the submitted article are his or her own and not an official position of the institution or funder). (E) Clinical trial registration number, if applicable (f) Each author contributions should be stated: 1- Study concept and design or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data. 2- Drafting the article or Revising it critically for important intellectual content. 3- Final Approval of the version to be published. 4- Agreement to be Accountable for Accuracy and Integrity of all aspects of the work.

The manuscript text should be a single word file containing all materials in a file including abstract and keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, references, tables, and figures, other submission elements). Each section’s title should begin on a new page. Abbreviation of terminology should be avoided as much as possible. When they are used, full expression of the abbreviations following the abbreviated word in parentheses should be given at the first use. Common abbreviations, however, may be used, such as DNA. Abbreviation can be used if it is listed as a MeSH subject heading (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh). Authors should conform to the most recent edition of the American Medical Association Manual of Style.

• Abstract

An abstract of no more than 250 words. It should contain 4 subsections: Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.

• Key words: 5-10 words.
• Introduction
• Material and methods

Authors should describe the objective of the study and hypothesis appropriately in methodology section. The primary/secondary endpoints are predetermined sensibly according to the objective of the study.

• Results

In results, Describe the statistical tests used in the study with enough detail so that readers can get the same results if the original data are available. The name and version of the statistical package should be provided. The characteristics of measured variables should determine the use of a parametric or nonparametric statistical method. For an analysis of a continuous variable, the normality of data should be examined. The “P” value defined as the limit of significance along with appropriate indicators of measurement error and uncertainty (confidence interval, etc.) should be specified. Statistical terminology (random, significant, correlation, etc.) should not be used in non-statistical contexts. Designate the name and result of the method to test normality. When analyzing a categorical variable, if the number of events and sample is small, exact test or asymptotic method with appropriate adjustments should be used. The standard chi-squared test or difference-in-proportions test may be performed only when the sample size and number of events are sufficiently large. A prior sample size calculation should be described in detail5. Sample size calculation must aim at preventing false negative results pertaining to the primary, instead of secondary, endpoint. Usually, the mean difference and standard deviation (SD) are typical parameters in estimating the effect size. The power must be equal to or greater than 80 percent. In the case of multiple comparisons, an adjusted level of significance is acceptable.

• Discussion

The conclusion should be included in the discussion section.

• Declarations section
• Acknowledgements:

Contributors who didn’t meet criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged.

• Ethics approval:

For human or animal research, a consent to participate or consent for publication in case reports and Ethical Committee Approval of Affiliation that study run with their permission are required and should be uploaded.

• Competing interests:

Authors should specify that there is nothing to disclosed or they are disclosing 1- any funding that may interfere with study. 2- any relationship or activity that interferes with the study. Click here for more details.

• Availability of data and material:
• Abbreviations and Symbols:

Use only standard abbreviations; use of nonstandard abbreviations can be confusing to readers. Avoid abbreviations in the title of the manuscript. The spelled-out abbreviation followed by the abbreviation in parenthesis should be used on first mention unless the abbreviation is a standard unit of measurement.

• References

References are to be listed, double-spaced, in consecutive numerical order according to the order of citation in the manuscript. Once a reference is cited, all subsequent citations should be to the original number. All references must be cited in the text or tables and appear as superscript number between two squaire brackets. Unpublished data and personal communications will not be accepted as references. References (Vancouver style) to journal articles should include, in this order: (1) authors. (2) title. (3) journal name (as abbreviated in Index Medicus). (4) year. (5) volume and issue number, and (6) inclusive page numbers. References to books should include (1) authors (2) chapter title (if any), (3) editor's names (if any), (4) title of book. (5) City of publication, (6) publisher and (7) year. Volume and edition numbers and specific page numbers should be included when appropriate. The authors are responsible for their correct textual citation.  Use of citation managers is encouraged.

• Tables

Each table should be typed single-spaced, including all headings. Verify tabular statistics to make sure they really and match data cited in the text. Put in fallowing result section. Tables capture information concisely and display it efficiently; they also provide information at any desired level of detail and precision. Including data in tables rather than text frequently makes it possible to reduce the length of the text. Number tables consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a title for each. Titles in tables should be short but self-explanatory, containing information that allows readers to understand the table's content without having to go back to the text. Be sure that each table is cited in the text. Give each column a short or an abbreviated heading. Authors should place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Explain all nonstandard abbreviations in footnotes and use symbols to explain information if needed. If you use data from another published or unpublished source, obtain permission and acknowledge that source fully. Additional tables containing backup data too extensive to publish in print may be appropriate for publication in the electronic version of the journal, deposited with an archival service, or made available to readers directly by the authors. An appropriate statement should be added to the text to inform readers that this additional information is available and where it is located.

• Figures

Captions for the figures must be typed, single-spaced, and must not appear on the figures.  For X-ray films, scans, and other diagnostic images, as well as pictures of pathology specimens or photomicrographs, send high-resolution photographic image files. Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background. Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been cited in the text. If a figure has been published previously, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce it. Permission is required irrespective of authorship or publisher except for documents in the public domain. In the manuscript, legends for illustrations should be labelled with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations. When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend. 

Types of manuscript and guidelines

• Systemic review

Systematic reviews, as the name implies, typically involve a detailed and comprehensive plan and search strategy derived a priori, with the goal of reducing bias by identifying, appraising, and synthesizing all relevant studies on a particular topic. Systematic Reviews should address a specific question or issue that is relevant for clinical practice and provide an evidence-based, balanced, patient-oriented review on a focused topic.

PRISMA statement of preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, The PRISMA Group. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement. PLoS Med 2009; 6(7): e1000097.) (http://www.prisma-statement.org/ ).

MOOSE guidelines for meta-analysis and systemic reviews of observational studies (Stroup DF, Berlin JA, Morton SC, et al. Meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology: a proposal for reporting Meta-analysis of observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) group. JAMA 2000; 283: 2008-12).

• Clinical Trial

SJMS follows the CONSORT statement for randomized controlled trials (Moher D, Schultz KF, Altman D, for the CONSORT Group. The CONSORT statement revised recommendations for improving the quality of reports of parallel group randomized trials. JAMA 2001; 285: 1987-91) (http://www.consort-statement.org/)

• Original Research article

Research articles should report on original primary research. Sudan JMS encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible.

STARD checklist for the reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy (Bossuyt PM, Reitsma JB, Bruns DE, Gatsonis CA, Glasziou PP, Irwig LM, et al., for the STARD Group. Towards complete and accurate reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy: the STARD initiative. Ann Intern Med 2003;138:40-4.) (http://www.stard-statement.org/);

STROBE statement, a checklist of items that should be included in reports of observational studies (http://www.strobe-statement.org/)

STROBE statement, a checklist of items that should be included in reports of observational studies (http://www.strobe-statement.org/)

• Case report

Please ensure that all patient data has been de-identified and that you obtained the necessary approval, if necessary, from an ethics commission or an institutional review board. The following guideline based on CARE guidance.

• Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor may be submitted to ask questions or offer further contributions in response to work that has been published in the Journal. Letters do not include an abstract. The text for letters to the editor should not exceed a total 1,200 words. It includes references (not to exceed 15), figures (not more than 2) and tables (not to exceed 2). Subdivisions of sections are encouraged to help orient the reader but should be general, such as “The Study” and “Conclusions”. Letters to the editor are generally updates on recent infectious disease trends and research, but may also respond to recent articles published in SJMS.

- Short communications or commentaries.

Short communications or commentaries are related to current developments in medical field and their scientific and social aspects. It includes abstract, references (not to exceed 25), figures (not more than 2) and tables (not to exceed 2). The text for short communication or commentaries should not exceed a total 2,000 words. Subdivisions of sections are encouraged to help orient the reader.

- Book review

A book review is a description, critical analysis, and/or evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of a book

What should a good book review include?

The book's title and author. A brief summary of the plot that doesn't give away too much. Comments on the book's strengths and weaknesses. The reviewer's personal response to the Standard length is 4-5 typed pages (approximately 1000-1250 words). book with specific examples to support praise or criticism.

- Brief Report

Brief reports are similar to original research in that they follow the same rigor, format and guidelines, but are designed for small-scale research or research that is in early stages of development. ... Brief reports are much shorter than manuscripts associated with a more advanced, larger-scale research project.

How do you write a brief report?

For a brief research report, you will probably include the following stages:

1. Short summary. This summarizes the main points of the research. ...
2. General background. This puts the research in the wider context by giving brief details of the subject and the state of present research.
3. Purpose
4. Procedure
5. Results
6. Conclusions