1. Editorial Process

A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to JRS alone at that point of time and it has not been published anywhere or simultaneously submitted/accepted for publication elsewhere. One of the authors should be authorized to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript.

All manuscripts submitted are duly acknowledged. The submitted manuscripts are first checked for plagiarism using Google and then reviewed for suitability for publication in JRS. Manuscripts with high plagiarism, insufficient originality, major scientific or technical flaws and/or lack of a significant message are rejected at this stage along with manuscripts that are unlikely to be of interest to JRS readers. Suitable manuscripts are then subjected to a comprehensive review by the Editorial Team and/or an internal reviewer to check their adherence to reporting guidelines and robustness in rationale and methodology. If deemed necessary, manuscripts may be sent back to authors for making amendments. In such cases, only manuscripts in which satisfactory changes are made would be considered for further stages.

Manuscripts are then sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the manuscript. The Journal follows a double-blind peer review process. The Editor-in-Chief, based on the comments and recommendations of reviewers, takes a final decision on the manuscript. The comments and suggestions (i.e., acceptance/rejection/revision) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If a manuscript requires revision, the author(s) is requested to provide a point-by-point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated until reviewers and editors are satisfied with the response.

Editorial Board Members are also excluded from all publication processes and decisions of manuscripts in which they are authors or may have actual or potential competing interest.

Manuscripts accepted for publication undergo substantial editing, as required, in addition to copyediting for grammar, punctuation, print style and format. All proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within the recommended timeframe. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The entire process from submission of the manuscript to final decision and the subsequent sending and receiving proofs is completed online through the website

To achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the Journal publishes articles online as ‘Ahead of Print’.

  1. Policy against Plagiarism

The Journal follows strict anti-plagiarism policy and defines plagiarism as duplicate publication of the author’s own work, in whole or in part without proper citation, or mispresenting other’s ideas, words, and other creative expression as one’s own. All manuscripts submitted to JRS undergo plagiarism check with the commercially available software Google. Only in cases of minor duplication or similarity with previous published work, the authors may be provided an opportunity to rectify the same; in all other cases, the manuscript is desk rejected along with the plagiarism report (please also see the Scientific Misconduct section for additional details).

 

  1. Clinical Trial Registry

 

JRS prefers clinical trials to be registered with a clinical trial registry that allows unhindered and free online access to public. Some of the accepted trial registers are as follows: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/; http://ctri.nic.in/Clinicaltrials/login.phphttp://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/index.asp. This is applicable to clinical trials that have begun enrolment of subjects in or after June 2008. From January 2021, the Journal would only consider submissions of clinical trials that have been registered, including those that commenced enrolment of subjects prior to June 2008 but retrospectively registered with a clinical trial registry that meets the Journal’s preference.

 

  1. Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:

 

  1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
  2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
  3. Final approval of the version to be published. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors.

 

Please note that although the Journal does not specify a maximum number of authors, if requested, the authors should provide a justification if the number of authors exceed 6 for original articles, 4 for case reports and short communications/brief reports and 2 for letters to editor.

 

  1. Contribution Details

Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. One or more author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work from inception to publication and should be designated as the ‘guarantor’.

 

  1. Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests: Link

All authors of articles must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript. If the articles are authored by the editorial board, the conflict of interest must be clearly stated.