Submissions

Author Guidelines

About CMJ

Civil Medical Journal (CMJ) is an open access, peer-reviewed, biannually published, multidisciplinary biomedical journal devoted to Medical Sciences. CMJ is an official publication of the Civil Service Hospital of Nepal.

CMJ abide by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, World Association of Medical Editors for best editorial practice, Council of Science Editors for best editorial practice, Committee on Publication Ethics for practicing good publication ethics.

Focus and  Scope        
CMJ accepts Original Research Papers, Review Articles, Case Reports, Brief Reports, View Points, Short Communication, Medical Education, Clinical Experience and Letter to The Editor containing new insight into any aspect of Medical, Dental and Allied Health Sciences that are neither published nor being considered for publication elsewhere. The journal is particularly interested and welcomes papers in basic and clinical medical sciences, medical education, public health, hospital and healthcare management. Any attempt at dual publication will lead to automatic rejection, may prejudice acceptance of future submissions.

Publication and Decision Time

Time to first decision overall (average) within 7-10 days for initial decision (without review); 60 days (with the review). Those articles which have been submitted six months to a year ago undergo auto-pruning (automatic declining). It happens due to one of the following reasons i) to iii) or due to loss of contact with the authors.

If you find encounter delay and find no update on your CMJ submission account, which could be due to;
i) submission was incomplete or 
ii) submission was without following CMJ format and supplementary documents or 
iii) there is an issue with your submission (e.g. ethical issues or research misconduct or related)

N.B. Please do not contact on personal email, social media or phone number to Editor-in-Chief, Editorial team or CMJ staff related to your submission. All communication must be made via CMJ official email address only. CMJ best editorial practice ensures that it publishes the highest standard articles. 

Rejection

The manuscripts with insufficient originality or insignificant message, serious scientific and technical flaws are rejected. However, we do encourage the author to resubmit after the revision if the research was conducted scientifically. The preliminary rejection of the manuscript is related to; manuscript being out of scope, manuscript not formatted correctly, not following checklist and guidelines accurately, submission below publishable standards, incomplete submission (e.g. lack of ethical approval letter for research article). If it passes through preliminary rejection, it will go through proper peer review. The final rejection could be due to lack of originality, flaws in the methods section, generalizing and exaggerating the finding not supported by aims and objective including the methodology, peer reviewers' comment not properly answered or unanswered, plagiarism, publication misconduct and more. If you follow the CMJ guideline in detail, you can avoid preliminary rejection and minimize the final rejection of your submission.

We truly value your hard work and wish to publish most of the submissions to the CMJ. However, as we stated earlier, we follow the principles of COPE, CSE, WAME, ICJME, DOAJ, OASPA guidelines. Hence, we have to maintain the highest standard of scientific values in our work. Therefore, we urge you to help us to improve science together. We hope that the rejection of your current submission will not deter you to continue submitting your work to the CMJ.

Journal Ethics and Reporting guidelines

A statement of ethical approval must appear in the method section of the manuscript, including the name of the body from which approval has been taken, with a reference number and date of approval where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. For the articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written consent from each patient must be made available if requested by the editorial board. The involvement of scientific (medical) writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding. The CMJ mandates authors to declare any competing financial or other interest in relation to their work. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of the article If an author does not provide competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests.

We closely follow the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements. Any research that involves humans in any stage of the work must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (1964). Manuscripts describing experimental work which carries a risk of harm to human subjects must include a statement that the experiment was conducted with the human subjects’ understanding and consent, as well as a statement that the responsible Ethical Committee has approved the research methodology. In the case of any animal experiments, the authors must provide a full description of any anesthetic or surgical procedure used, as well as evidence that all possible steps were taken to avoid animal suffering at each stage of the experiment. All animal research must follow the ARRIVE guidelines.

CMJ encourages all the authors to maximize the transparency and reproducibility of their research by using appropriate reporting guidelines while preparing their manuscripts. Our reviewers and editors are also encouraged to use them during the article processing and peer-review processes as well.  We particularly encourage the use of the following guidelines:

• CONSORT guidelines for Randomized Controlled Trials
• TREND guidelines for non-randomized trials
• PRISMA guidelines for systematic review and meta-analyses
• CARE guidelines for case reports
• STROBE guidelines for observational studies
• STREGA guidelines for genetic association studies
• SRQR guidelines for qualitative studies
• STARD guidelines for diagnostic accuracy studies
• ARRIVE guidelines for animal experiments

Article Processing Fees

CMJ does NOT charge authors article submission fees and it does NOT charge article processing fees.

Authorship
CMJ adheres to the policy published and regularly updated by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

All authors should meet all four following criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

1. Substantial contributions to the conception, design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or critical revision for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. 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.
5. The individuals who had contributed to the study but do not meet all the above four criteria of authorship should be acknowledged in acknowledgement section.

The corresponding author of the article has to confirm all individuals listed as authors meet the appropriate authorship criteria, that no-one who qualifies for authorship has been omitted from the list, that written authorization has been received from all co-authors, that contributors and all funding sources (for authors and contributors) have been properly acknowledged and that authors and contributors have approved the acknowledgement of their contribution.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have seen, approved and are fully conversant with the contents of the manuscript. All authors are responsible for the accuracy of the manuscript, including all statistical calculations.

Editorial

This is written in each issue by the editor or members of editorial board and is not open for external authors unless invited.

It is submitted by an editorial board or invited piece on most pertinent issues on Health in Nepal or in the world.  It undergoes fast-track peer review process reviewed.

Original Article

CMJ accept researches conducted in the field of basic and clinical medical sciences, forensic science, medical education, public health, hospital and healthcare management, allied health sciences and research and publication ethics, with the maximum length of 2500-3500 world (excluding abstract of 300 words).

Randomized controlled trials, interventional studied, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, cost effectiveness analyses, case-control series and surveys with high response rate.

It undergoes rigorous peer review process. Please expect lots of communication from the CMJ.
Case Reports and Case Series   
Up to 1000 words (excluding references up to 10 and abstract up to 150 words) Photographs (maximum 3).

This section includes report of a case with literature review that includes, an unexpected association between diseases or symptoms, an unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient, findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect, unique or rare feature of a disease, unique therapeutic approaches, approaches to a case report, challenging case , describe changes in one or more patients with chronic conditions over an extended time period, report on two or more patients with similar characteristics who received different interventions and had different outcomes, atypical management of patients with common problems, atypical patient presentations, apply theory to patient or client management, report on an administrative or academic experience.

Review Article

Review Article: Systemic critical assessments of literature and data sources. Up to 4000 words (excluding references 50-100 and abstract 300 words). It undergoes rigorous peer review process. 

Review articles are which summaries the current state of understanding on a topic and analyses or discuss research previously published by others, rather than reporting new experimental results. They are very thorough literature reviews that identify historical and current trends in the research, important scholars in the field, foundational articles, major discoveries, gaps in the research (areas for further exploration), and current debates or controversies.  

Short Communication

Maximum 2000 words (excluding references of maximum 30 and abstract of maximum 300 words).

These are research article, which doesn’t fit exactly into research article but findings, are interesting, e.g. pilot study. It undergoes peer review process.  These are short, peer-reviewed articles focusing on a high-quality, hypothesis-driven, self-contained piece of original research and/or the proposal of a new theory or concept based on existing research. They should not be preliminary reports or contain purely incremental data and should be of significance and broad interest to the field of medical sciences.

Medical Education

CMJ accepts perspective on undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing medical education. All issues of current interest, including teaching methods, curriculum reform, the training of medical teachers, the selection of entrants and assessment techniques, curriculum development, evaluations of performance, assessment of training needs and evidence-based medicine are accepted, with word limit up to 1500 words excluding abstract of 150 words. It undergoes peer review process. 

Viewpoint

These articles are personal views and allow you to express your own point of view on any issues relevant to health. The article in this section is based on issues related to health sciences to raise the voice, awareness, new ideas, thought to provoke concepts, and personal expert opinion to improve the health.

maximum 800 words excluding reference up to 5-8

Letter to The Editor

This should be short, decisive observation. They should not be preliminary observations that need a later paper for validation (maximum 500 words and 5 references).

Book Review
This section is invited by the editorial board. 
Peer Review Process

The Executive Editor, together with the editorial board will ensure following peer review policy:

1. Double-blind: The manuscript will be blinded when sending out for review. The author is anonymous to the reviewer and the reviewer is anonymous to the author as well.
2. One-stage review: The reviewer is involved in the initial review of the manuscript only, i.e. not involved in evaluating the revisions made by the author based on the reviewer’s comments. Rather, the Chief Editor carries the manuscript forward following the initial review.
3. In rare, controversial and special circumstances; Two-stage review: Those papers that require revision as suggested by the reviewer will be sent back to that same reviewer for him/her to evaluate the manuscript once again after revised re-submission from the author.          
   The author has to submit their manuscript according to CMJ section policy.

• All submitted article will undergo international peer review with blinding for two peer reviewers, simultaneously. If the decision conflicts between two, it will be sent to third peer reviewer.
• The typical review will take minimum 4-6 weeks which includes 2 weeks for peer review and remaining weeks for peer review handling process. However, this may take little longer due to unseen workloads.
• When the article is received from peer reviewer there will be one of the following outcomes and the decision choices include:

1. Accept Submission: The submission will be accepted without revisions.
2. Revisions Required: The submission will be accepted after minor changes have been made according to the reviewer's comment.
3. Resubmit for Review: The submission needs to be re-worked, but with significant changes, may be accepted. It will require a second round of review, however.
4. Resubmit elsewhere: When the submission does not meet the focus and scope of CMJ.
5. Decline Submission: The submission will not be published in the journal.

All comments received from the reviewers will be passed on to the authors within 4-6 weeks after getting back from the reviewers. Regardless of whether or not the submission is accepted for publication, it is essential that appropriate feedback is provided to the contributors.
CMJ respect the views, opinion, comments and decision of the reviewer. However, the right for acceptance and rejection of the manuscript is reserved with the Chief Editor, on the basis of maintaining the integrity of the science, following the guideline of ICJME, WAME, CSE, COPE.
The editors will be responsible for directing the manuscripts to the appropriate reviewers who have the knowledge and/or expertise in the requisite fields.  Each manuscript will be accepted (sometimes on a conditional basis pending suggested changes) or declined based on the reviewers' comments, and other factors by Chief Editor's decisions. In the case of a controversial groundbreaking article that could have a far-reaching impact on the field, further reviews may be sought. The decision ultimately rests with the chief editor.

Peer Reviewers will be provided with Review Guidelines, once they accept to review the submission. CMJ will rate reviewers on a five-point quality scale after each review. 

Manuscript Submission Guidelines

The CMJ abide by:

1. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals
2. World Association of Medical Editors for best editorial practice
3. Council of Science Editors for best editorial practice
4. Committee on Publication Ethics for practicing good publication ethics

Submission Documents 

Please submit all the following documents while submitting your new manuscript to CMJ
1. Forwarding letter
2. Authorship
3. Declaration
4. Manuscript
5. Ethical Approval letter*

*This is for research article only. Ethical approval letter should be taken before starting the research. Any research without ethically approved by recognized ethical review board is of no value. The Ethical Review Board of Nepal Health Research Council is the apex body for looking after the ethics in research in Nepal. 

However, ERB has established institutions review committee in most of the medical college, tertiary care centre hospitals and research centre throughout the country. If you do not belong to such IRC centres, please contact ERB, NHRC for ethical approval of your research. For international author - please provide ethical approval letter from your institutional ethical committee or national body responsible for ethics in research. 

Any submission without above documents and manuscript not in CMJ format will be rejected outright. Therefore, to avoid such errors and rejection, please submit your article with all supplementary and required files along with the use of appropriate template given below.

Templates
The majority of the submitted manuscript lack proper formatting, on the top of that heading and subheading, is not correctly written. Therefore, we encourage you to use appropriate template for your manuscript.       
1. Original Article Template        
2. Case Report Template              
3. Review Article Template         
5. Viewpoint Template  
6. Letter to the Editor Template

Added Documents       
Please go through CMJ checklist and reference preparing a document for your manuscript. However, we use CITING MEDICINE for citation. Incorrect reference and erroneous citation will invalid your paper at CMJ

References

All references should be in Vancouver Reference Style author–number system after a full stop.¹ Only articles, datasets, and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data, and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text and referred to as "unpublished observations" or "personal communications" giving the names of the involved researchers. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited colleagues is the responsibility of the author.

Citation in the Text of the Manuscript

All the references used in any manuscript should be cited in the text according to the followed patterns

1. Citing one author: If you want to cite single research work in your manuscript, you may write the citation number in superscript in this way;

Recent research¹ indicates that the number of duplicate papers being published is increasing. 

2. Citing more than one piece of work at the same time: If you want to cite several pieces of work in the same sentence, you will need to include the citation number for each piece of work. A hyphen should be used to link numbers that are inclusive, and a comma used where numbers are not consecutive. The following is an example where works 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, and 15 have been cited in the same place in the text. For example:

Several studies^6–9,13,15 have examined the effect of congestion charging in urban areas.  

3. Citing the author’s name in your text:You can use the author’s name in your text, but you must insert the citation number as well. For example:

As emphasized by Watkins² careers of diabetes sufferers ‘require perseverance and an understanding of humanity’. 

4. Citing more than one author’s name in your text: If a work has more than one author and you want to cite author names in your text, use ‘et al.’ after the first author. For example:

Simons et al. ³ state that the principle of effective stress is ‘imperfectly known and understood by many practicing engineers. 

5. Citing works by the same author written in the same year: If you cite a new work that has the same author and was written in the same year as an earlier citation, each work will have a different number. For example:

Communication of science in the media has increasingly come under focus, particularly where reporting of facts and research is inaccurate. ^4,5 

6. Citing from works with no obvious author: If you need to cite a piece of work that does not have an obvious author, you should use what is called a ‘corporate’ author. For example, many online works will not have individually named authors, and in many cases, the author will be an organization or company. Using the Vancouver style, you don’t have to include the author in your citation in the text of your work, but you still need to include an author in the full reference at the end of your work. For example:

The Department of Health ⁶ advocates a national strategy for creating a framework to drive improvements in dementia services. OR

A national strategy is creating a framework to drive improvements in dementia services.⁶ If you are unable to find either a named or corporate author, you should use ‘Anon’ as the author name. 

7. Citing from chapters written by different authors:Some books may contain chapters written by different authors. When citing work from such a book, the author who wrote the chapter should be cited, not the editor of the book.
8. Secondary referencing: Secondary references are when an author refers to another author’s work and the primary source is not available. When citing such work, the author of the primary source and the author of the work it was cited in should be used. For example:

According to Colluzzi and Pappagallo as cited by Holding et al.⁷ most patients given opiates do not become addicted to such drugs. 

9. Citing a direct quotation: If a direct quote from a book, article, etc., is used you must:

Use single quotation marks: (double quotation marks are usually used for quoting direct speech)

State the page number: For example:

Simons et al.³ state that the principle of effective stress is ‘imperfectly known and understood by many practicing clinical medicine. 

10. Citing an image/illustration/table/diagram/photograph/figure/picture:

You should provide an in-text citation for any images, illustrations, photographs, diagrams, tables, figures or pictures that you reproduce in your work, and provide a full reference as with any other type of work. They should be treated as direct quotes in that the author(s) should be acknowledged and page numbers shown; both in your text where the diagram is discussed or introduced, and in the caption, you write for it. The example of in-text citation is;

Table 2 illustrates a checklist of information for common sources (8: p.22). or ‘Geological map of the easternmost region of São Nicolau’ (9: p.532).

Figure
Only relevant figures or pictures (not more than 5) of the manuscript should be used. The legends should be included in the main manuscript text. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals (i.e., Figure 1, 2, 3 etc.); short title of figure (maximum 15 words). The figure number should be followed by semi-colon. All figures/images should be cited in text in consecutive numerical order. Please note that it is the sole responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables. For Example: Figure 1: Age-wise distribution of diseases

Table
Each table should be numbered at the top and cited in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e., Table 1, 2, 3, etc.). The table number should be followed by a semi-colon. The title of the tables should be concise and summarize the whole table and should be no longer than 15 words. All tables should be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.           
For Example Table 1: Age-wise distribution of diseases