Submissions

Author Guidelines

Compulsory Documents:

1-Article Text

2-Cover Letter: Sample

3-Letter of Undertaking: Sample

4-Ethical Approval 

Competing interests statement for the authors:

Authors must declare that she/ he has no meaningful competing, personal professional or business interests that could have an effect on the carried out work and its presentation explained/expressed in this manuscript. Likewise, they may also explain likely competing financial, personal, professional or business interests.

General Manuscript Formatting:

‘British English’ Must be used for Manuscript and try to use that language which would be simple for the readers. Use the full form of an abbreviation initially in the text before using the abbreviated form. For proper nouns you can use Capitalization otherwise avoid it or where it is grammatically required.

Simple Sentences should be properly written instead of giving brackets within a sentence. For example, the study participants (men of age group 30-60 years) were here in rehabilitation center for the cardiac endurance training. The right way is ‘The study participants included men of age group 30-60 years and they were here in rehabilitation center for the cardiac endurance training. Do not start a sentence with a number.

The article should be formatted accordingly on MS Word:

• Font Type: Times New Roman
• Font Size: 14 for article title, 12 for article text
• Line spacing should be set at 1.5 throughout the text
• Alignment: Justified throughout
• Page numbers should be added left bottom
• Header: No
• Left & right margin: 1 inch

Generally, article must be under the following headings with these guidelines:

Title: 

It must be brief and contain no abbreviations. DON’T capitalize each word!

Structured Abstract: 

This section should be clear, concise and accurate summary not more than 250-300 words, containing no abbreviations and citation. It should describe the objective/s, study design, place and duration of the study, methods, results, conclusions and keywords that should contain Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms – not more than six. Choose important and relevant keywords.  The abstract should be brief and focus the main objectives and results/conclusions of the research work; it should give the reader a clear idea of what has been achieved.

Introduction: 

This section should briefly state what was studied and why, including its relationship to previous work in the field especially previous 10 years’ international literature.

Methodology:

It should contain the place of the study, patient population and the methodology of the study in detail – techniques, procedures/investigations clearly explained. Statistical methods/data collection and sample size calculation method should also be clearly explained at the end of this section.

Results:

This section includes the results of your study only. No comparison should be done in this section with other studies. This should include tables, graphs, figures etc. at the end of the result section. Do not repeat all the data of the tables or illustrations in the text.

Emphasize or summarise important observations.

Frequencies and percentages both should be mentioned, example, there were 18 (2%) men.

Exact p values should be reported with 3 decimals. e.g [ 0.000 or 0.052 or 0.123 ]

Mean should be with standard deviations with 2 decimals. E.g [ 23.34 + 0.12 ]

Medians should be with inter-quartile range in brackets. e.g [ 23 (1) or 12.2 (0.1) ]

Tables: Tables should be cited in parenthesis after the punctuation mark e.g. (Table1). The tables should be redesigned on MS Word don’t use any other output automatic generated tables. Keep the design simple and clear. The title/Caption should be Top of the table and it should be short and explanatory. Data should be placed clearly and concisely to enable the reader to comprehend easily. Font Time new Roman, size 12. Present decimal figures up to 2 decimals only. e.g. 0.03 is correct instead of 0.02561

Figures: Figures should be cited in parenthesis after the punctuation mark e.g. (Figure1). The Figures should be redesigned on MS Excel don’t use any other software automatic generated Figures.

Blurred or unclear photographs and figures will not be accepted. Images and figures may be sent in the form of JPG, PNG. Images of MRI and CT scans that may reveal patients’ identity (like name and date) should not be mentioned. The title/caption should be bottom of the Figure and it should be short and explanatory.

Discussion: 

It includes the comparison of results with other studies, and specifically in the light of relevant literature. Highlight the unique and key features of your research and put your results in the context of the totality of the significant proof. Do not repeat the details of data or other information that has already been given in other parts of the manuscript, such as in the introduction or results section of the draft. Recommendation and Limitation; Must be at the end of the discussion Heading.

Conclusion: 

It may be included to briefly summarize the net result of your study. Must match your objectives.

Contributor statement:

All authors should declare their contribution to the research and the preparation of the publication.

Who is an Author
The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

• 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.
  Other contributors to the article, who do not fit into these four criteria should be just acknowledged.

Acknowledgement: Acknowledge those authors & institutional administrative support who did not qualify for authorship (defined in journal policy and recommended by ICMJE). Acknowledge anyone who has provided intellectual writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, data entry and proofreading.

References:

The references should be listed as they appear in the text. It should contain the name of the authors, title of the article, source with its volume, number, year of publication and the page numbers. All references should be enlisted in Vancouver style.

It would be ideal that a reference cited in the manuscript referred to the content is present in the reference section and it should be given in full. It is not allowed to include the references of personal communication, and article submitted and unpublished. The work cited in manuscript have a unique number placed in brackets, these numbers are always in the order of citation. If the same work again needs to be cited in the same article, the author should assign the same number again. There are number of softwares available that can help in preparing references like Zotero and Endnote etc. The reference style recommended is set up on National Information Standards Organization Bibliographic References as modified by National Library of Medicine (NLM) for its databases. Details are given in “Citing Medicine”.

Each citation is designated by a number enclosed in parenthesis. The citations should be numbered and ordered in the Reference list following the sequences in which they first appear within the text. The general order for the citation sequence reference system is; name of author(s), full title of cited article, name of journal in which article appeared (do not use periods with abbreviated words), publication year, journal volume, issue number, finally first and the last number of page. Name of journal should be abbreviated according to the PubMed Journals Database (NLM, NIH).

Follow the styles shown in the examples below.

Journal Article:

1- author:

Khalil B. Observation on the food and feeding habits of Cynoglossus bilineatus (family: Cynoglossidae) from Karachi coast, Pakistan. Rads J Biol Res Appl Sci. 2012; 3(1):1-6.

2-5 authors:

Naqvi II, Kanwal G, Shafi A. Teaching undergraduates students through connectivity: part 3. Rads J Biol Res Appl Sci. 2012;3(2):18-20.

> 6 authors:

Wasti AZ, Haider S, Rashid S, Fatima N, Ashiq A, Iqbal S, et al. The biochemical profile of chronic kidney disease patients. Rads J Biol Res Appl Sci. 2013;4(1):5-10.

Entire Book:

Talaro KP, Talaro A. Foundations in microbiology: basic principles. Boston: McGraw-Hill; 2002.

Article or Chapter in a Book:

Forman MS, Valsamakis A. Specimen collection, transport, and processing: virology. In: Versalovic J, Carroll KC, Jorgensen JH, Funke G, Landry ML, Warnock DW, editors. Manual of clinical microbiology, 10th ed. Washington, DC: ASM Press; 2011. p. 1276-88.

Website:

Lewis A. How Microbes May Influence Our Behavior. The scientist: exploring life, inspiring innovation; 2017 Sep 1 [cited 2017 Sep 19]. Available from:  http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50146/title/How-Microbes-May-Influence-Our-Behavior/

Potential Reviewer:

The names of three potential reviewers must be provided with the manuscript. Suggested reviewers must be experts in the field and should not have relevant competing interests (e.g. working with the authors, family members, or based at the same institution).

Peer Review Policy:

The Journal of Riphah College of Rehabilitation Science uses “double blind” peer review whereby both reviewers and authors remain anonymous throughout the process. Submitted manuscripts are screened by the editors to check the scope, suitability and formatting. Rejected manuscripts will be sent back to the authors. Potentially suitable manuscripts are then sent to potential reviewers who are asked to respond within two weeks and then given 2-3 weeks to review. If reviewers fail to respond within the given time, they may be replaced with alternates to keep the review process moving along. Should the referees’ reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed, a further expert opinion will be sought.

Ethical Approval of Research:

In case of original/research articles, author’s contribution could only be considered with the mandatory requirement of the certificate duly signed and stamped from IRC/Ethical Review Board (ERB).

Disclosure of conflicts of interest:

All manuscripts, case studies, reviews, short reviews, and letters to the editor submitted to the journal must be accompanied by a ‘conflict of interest form’ which can be downloaded from the journal website. The form should be filled in by the principal author and signed by all coauthors. All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with any people or organizations that might be affected by the submitted work or could influence its interpretation. Any temporary, permanent or part-time employment or consultancy must be declared. Direct or indirect resources or funds provided for the research or publication by organizations must be disclosed. Authors must also declare any non-financial conflicts of interest.

Misconduct by authors:

Journal of Riphah College of Rehabilitation Sciences is equipped with Turnitin (text matching/anti-plagiarism software provided by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan). This is used to check the plagiarism and redundancy in the submitted manuscripts. All submitted manuscripts are checked for similarity index on Turnitin and manuscripts with similarity index above 19 % will be automatically rejected and sent back to the authors.

Copyright Transfer Agreement: Authors/contributors who contribute in the manuscript will read, agree and sign the copyright transfer agreement declaring that the work is original or novel, not under consideration by another journal, and has not been published before.

Plagiarism detection: Submissions will be analyzed by the Editor for their scientific quality, originality and content verification. Text similarity will be checked by the Content verification mode in Turnitin. Content acceptance will be based on the similarity index that must be less than 19% and from a single source it should be less than 5%.

Note: The authors are requested not check plagiarism themselves from unauthorized softwares of plagiarism detection.

Manuscript extracted by an author from his/her M.Phil. Or Ph.D. thesis must have to declare the title of the thesis, supervisor name, department and university name, and year of submission on the original letter pad and submit during the submission process.

Self-Plagiarism

Self-plagiarism is not a tolerated practice. Manuscripts containing high-levels of self-plagiarism will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief for originality. Authors found to have self-plagiarized content will be asked to rewrite the selected portions of their accepted manuscripts and/or to quote the exact content and cite the original source. Journal management team will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors’ institutions or funders if necessary. If proof of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract/withdraw the publication. The editors of JRCRS consider such distributing, publishing, and ethical issues very seriously, and are well trained and committed to continue such cases with a zero-tolerance policy.

Page proofs:

Page proofs of the accepted manuscripts will be sent to the authors (principal and co-authors) for checking and approval.

Note: Statements and opinions expressed in the articles herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the editor(s) or publisher, and the editor(s) and publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such material.