Ethical Considerations in Research and Publication
Authors are required to provide a declaration of approval from the ‘Research Ethics Committee’ and explicitly state any ‘Conflict of Interest’ either within the manuscript or in an attached document.
Manuscript Review and Processing
Upon receipt of a manuscript, an acknowledgment is promptly issued. The manuscript is initially evaluated by the editors and subsequently sent for peer review after the processing fee has been received. For information on the processing/publication charges of North J Med Sci, please click here. The reviewers’ feedback is then communicated to the corresponding author. Once the authors have made the necessary corrections/amendments, an acceptance letter is issued for the approved article, which is then queued for printing. Prior to online publication of the manuscript, the “Final Proof” is sent to the corresponding email address for approval.
Fees for Processing/Publication
The comprehensive policy on publication processing charges can be found here. These charges may be subject to change over time, depending on the cost of publication. The processing fee is due upon submission of the research manuscript. Instructions for the submission of the publication fee will be sent to authors via email once the manuscript has been approved. Authors are expected to submit the publication fee in the form of a Bank draft/Online Transaction, once the manuscript has been accepted for publication. No manuscript will proceed to publication until the “Publication Fee” has been received.
Clinical Trials Registration
As per the ICJME, a clinical trial is defined as “any research project that prospectively assigns individuals or a group of individuals to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes refer to any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events.”
The Northern Journal of Medical Sciences Abbottabad will only consider publishing results from randomized controlled trials that have been conducted in accordance with the ICJME guidelines. Unregistered clinical trials or those that have recruited participants before registration will NOT be published in the North J Med Sci. Furthermore, clinical trials without an Ethical Review Board’s provision will NOT be published.
Ethical Approval for Research
Authors must declare that their experiments involving human subjects were conducted in compliance with the highest ethical standards as outlined in the Helsinki Declaration. It is important to note that the use of any information that could identify human subjects is strictly forbidden. Similarly, experiment reports should indicate the institutional or national standards followed during the experiments. Manuscripts submitted to the North J Med Sci should be accompanied by approval from the ethics committee/ethical review board of the institution where the study was conducted. In cases where no ethical approval was required for the study, a statement explaining the situation, countersigned by the department head, should be submitted to the North J Med Sci.
Manuscript Withdrawal Procedure
In the event that authors wish to retract a manuscript that has already been submitted to the journal, they must communicate this in writing, ideally with all authors signing a withdrawal statement before it is sent to the journal. The editorial board will then notify the corresponding author(s) about the manuscript’s withdrawal. It is important for potential authors to understand that a formal statement from the editorial board approving the withdrawal request is required. Without this, a manuscript cannot be considered withdrawn. Submitting manuscripts to other journals after they have been submitted to North J Med Sci will be deemed as misconduct and will be addressed accordingly.
Patient Consent: Written and Informed
All patients have a right to privacy that must be respected. However, if circumstances necessitate, informed consent should be obtained from the patients. The most recent version of the Helsinki Declaration can serve as a valuable reference for ethical standards involving informed consent. North J Med Sci adheres to the guidelines provided by the ICMJE concerning patient rights. All identifiable information, including but not limited to initials, names, or hospital record numbers, should be excluded from the written or photographic material unless its inclusion can be justified and/or the patient or the patient’s parents/guardians have consented to the inclusion in writing. If there is any uncertainty about maintaining anonymity, informed consent should be obtained from the patients.
If it is necessary to include an identifiable person in the manuscript, informed consent should be obtained after showing the manuscript to the patient. The patient should be made aware that the published material will be available both online and in print. While The Northern Journal of Medical Sciences Abbottabad typically does not require submission of such consent forms at the time of submission, they may be requested during the manuscript’s processing. A statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from the study participants before their inclusion in the study should be added to the manuscript, usually in the methods section.