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  • Instructions for authors

WebmedCentral publishes articles in virtually every biomedical discipline. You can publish a manuscript on our website if you are either the sole author of the manuscript, or in case of multi author work, have permission from all the co-authors to do so. You may publish an article on WebmedCentral  even if you are not one of the authors as long as authors have transferred the article copyrights to you. In publishing an article on WebmedCentral, you must not violate any copyrights or other third party rights. If you are not one of the authors, we would like to see the copyright transfer form stating that authors have transferred the article copyrights to you.  You would be required to upload this form during article submission.

Manuscript Submission:

The article can only be submitted online. We are unable to process manuscripts submitted to us through post. This is necessary to keep our operational costs low. We have however just launched a premium paid service for busy authors. Please contact us if you are having difficulties submitting an article on WebmedCentral and we will try to help you. Authors are advised to read our Information for Authors section and also read “about us”,  “our peer review policy”, “our copyright policy”, “our privacy policy”, “our advertising policy”, “terms and conditions” and “disclaimers” before submitting any article on this website.  The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have seen the final draft of the manuscript and approved it.

Criteria for Authorship:

WebmedCentral strongly discourages both honorary and ghost authorships. We believe that only those who have contributed significantly to the article should claim authorship. At the same time all contributions must be acknowledged suitably. We fully endorse the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) criteria for authorship which state that authorship credit should only be based on substantial contribution to (a)conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to (b)drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on (c)final approval of the version to be published. Conditions (a), (b) and (c) must all be met. Participation only in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship, but it is good scientific practice to acknowledge other form of contributions appropriately. It is the responsibility of the submitting author to ensure that all the authors meet the criteria of authorship. It is also the responsibility of the authors collectively to make sure that no such author meeting all the above criteria has been denied authorship. All other contributions must be appropriately acknowledged.

Patient confidentiality:

If there is a chance that a patient may be identified from a case report, illustration, or paper, authors must submit a written consent form duly signed by the patient or a legal guardian (where it is not possible to obtain patient’s signature because of physical disability, minor patient, critical illness or death). Please scan and upload this form while submitting your article. We will want a consent form even if a picture has been taken using black bands across the eyes.

WebmedCentral does not own responsibility if the authors fail to obtain relevant consents before publishing their manuscripts on our website. We presume that all the authors have composed manuscripts in line with our policies and instructions for authors. It is solely the responsibility of the authors to make sure that consents are obtained from patients or their legal guardian as and when necessary. WebmedCentral will perform random checks on the manuscript for compliance with our instructions and guidelines. Manuscripts not meeting our standards and guidelines would be removed from our website. We may also bar any such author(s) from publishing on WebmedCentral in future and share this information with others in biomedical publishing. 
 
Failure to obtain consent will mean that personal information about a patient cannot be published on WebmedCentral except in the rare situation of immense public health importance. Such manuscripts would be published solely on the discretion of WebmedCentral. Authors, while submitting their manuscripts must make it absolutely clear that they have not been able to obtain the consent stating also the reasons for the failure. Authors must also explain why they still believe that it is in general public interest that manuscript still be published on WebmedCentral. We are constantly reviewing our policies on these issues.

Ethical considerations:

WebmedCentral insists that authors seek approval from relevant ethical committees before conducting human investigations and animal experiments. Such ethical issues must be clearly mentioned in the manuscript with details of approval. If any such work comes to knowledge of WebmedCentral, where appropriate ethical standards have not been met, we will remove such work from our website. We advise our authors to make themselves aware about  World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. WebmedCentral insists that authors follow these principles in conduct of scientific research.

Illustrations (Pictures, Tables, Diagrams and Figures):

For the sake of convenience, we do not differentiate between pictures, figures, tables, diagrams etc and they are collectively referred to as Illustrations. Authors must scan and save all individual illustrations as separate picture files (jpeg, tiff, png, bmp etc) on their computer. Files must be named appropriately (For example Illustration1, Illustration2, Illustration3).

It is possible that the illustration may not be displayed online or shown in our pdf version in the best possible magnification required for viewing. It is hence strongly recommended that you submit all illustrations separately as one or more additional files. You may choose to compile all illustrations in an MS Word and submit it as an additional file.  However you must appropriately identify the illustration in your manuscript while referring to them. For example you could refer to Illustration 1, Illustration 2 etc. Illustrations additional file should be named as “Illustration Additional File” and the original illustration numbers must be retained in this file too.  Please refer to section on Additional files for further details in this regard.

Tables should be simple to read and authors must not duplicate the information in the text. Colour photographs are preferred for obvious reasons. Authors are also encouraged to use colours in illustrations to make them attractive and user-friendly. Please check for correct orientation before saving the files. Please make sure that you include explanations of symbols and shading within the figure. The figures and tables must be properly labelled including the actual numbers as opposed to percentages. Efforts should be made to include all the numerical data on the figures in an easily comprehensible way. If any of the tables or figures submitted has been published elsewhere, written consent for republication should be obtained from the copyright holder (usually the publisher). Such consent form can then be scanned, saved, and uploaded as an additional file.

References:

WebmedCentral accepts any of the commonly followed referencing styles. Please however follow a consistent theme across your article.

Electronic citations:

You may know of other websites that will be of interest to people reading your article. If you know the web addresses (URLs) of those sites, please include them in the relevant places in the text of your article.

Source of funding and competing interests:

Please declare the information regarding source of funding and competing interests during article submission. A competing interest exists when your professional judgement may be influenced by any other interest in the publication of an article/video/review/comment on our portal. This other interest may be financial gains, share holding in a company that manufactures the drug or device under study, grants, professional rivalry or personal beliefs. Essentially it arises when authors have an interest that may influence, with or without their knowledge, their interpretation and presentation of scientific material. We believe that our authors/reviewers/commentators/WebmedCentral editors should make these interests clear before posting any content on this portal.

Our role:

Most of our publication process is automated and author driven. Authors are in full control of their manuscript. After an article is submitted, authors would be sent an email to indicate that the article has been received by us. The article then needs to be approved by WebmedCentral before being published. We aim to publish most articles within 48 hours of submission. 

Article Categories:

Please click here for a list of article categories in which we accept articles.

Subject Categories:

Please click here for a list of subject categories in which we accept articles.

Preparation of manuscripts:

Please refer to our checklist for submission for the list of things you would need to submit an article on WebmedCentral

We allow our authors the flexibility of submitting additional files if they have any. For example, you may have separate data files, questionnaire files or other files that you might want to make available for the readers. Please name them appropriately (like Additional File 1, Additional File 2 etc.) and cite them in the text of the article when referred to. You are encouraged to submit illustrations as additional files too.

You would be asked to select an article category (like case report, review article etc.) and a subject category (allergy, immunology, surgery etc.) for your article.

You would be asked to enter key words for your article (up to ten).

Peer review policy:

You will be asked to identify a minimum of five referees from the WebmedCentral Editorial board. You can choose appropriate referees by visiting their profile or using a key word search appropriate to the research being submitted. However, you may invite more to generate a wider debate around your work. If you would like to invite more reviewers or if you have not found suitable editors from amongst our team, please recommend other specialist reviewers. Please ensure that these reviewers have experience in the subject of your manuscript.  Further, these reviewers should not be in the same institution as yourself or have been co-authors with any of the authors of your manuscript within the last three years. Any referees suggestions not from our editorial board will be randomly checked to ensure they meet the above criteria. Our peer review process is entirely transparent with all reviews being freely available on our portal for the readers. You may choose to respond to the reviews using the author’s comment section.

We ask referees for a detailed review. This is published alongside your article. We also ask our referees to select one of three statuses to judge the scientific value of the submitted article: Suitable for indexing (similar to ‘suitable for publication’ or minor revisions in the traditional pre- publication peer reviewed model), Suitable for indexing with major revisions’ (similar to suitable for publication with major revisions in the traditional model) or Not suitable for indexing (similar to ‘reject’ in the traditional model).

Articles that have attracted satisfactory ratings (‘suitable for indexing’) from two reviewers automatically move to ‘WebmedCentral Peer Reviewed’   category.  We hope that these articles will be indexed by appropriate bodies in near future. We strongly encourage you to submit revised versions of articles with additional information to satisfy queries raised.

Abstract:

Though there is no word limit for composing abstracts, most abstracts can give readers a brief summary of the article in about 250 words. Most abstracts are structured under the following four subheadings - Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions.

Abbreviations:

The use of abbreviations must be minimised. All the abbreviations must be expanded on their first use and a list provided at the end of the article under the appropriate heading.

Equations:

Please upload equations as illustrations. You may choose to copy all equations in a word file (.doc or .docx) and allocate numbers in the order of appearance. They would need to be referenced in the manuscript. Please note that the equations would appear at the end of the manuscript.

Style:

We advise authors to write in a clear, direct, and active style. The only purpose of scientific communication is to exchange information effectively and that should be done in plain and simple English as much as possible. Please avoid using long and complicated sentences. We do not impose restrictions regarding use of British or American English as long as authors consistently follow one style throughout their manuscript.

Scientific measurements should be given in SI units, except for blood pressure, which may be expressed in mm Hg. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their work, including all statistical calculations and drug doses. Drugs should normally be referred to by their generic names to avoid confusion. When quoting specific materials, equipment and proprietary drug names the name and address of the manufacturer must be given in parentheses. It is also common practice to spell out numbers less than 10.

WebmedCentral does not impose unnecessary restrictions on authors. Our authors are free to present the information in a way they think it would be easiest for the reader to comprehend.

Statistics:

We advise our authors to seek appropriate professional statistical advice at an early stage in the conduct of a research and make sure that all the data analysis is done using sound statistical practices. It is not possible for biomedical researchers to have a thorough grasp of what is clearly a very difficult stream of science and we advise all our authors to run their final manuscript past a qualified statistician to weed out discrepancies and inaccuracies. It is good scientific practice to detail the statistical methods and techniques used in the manuscript for the benefit of individual reader. Please provide the original data in additional files where necessary. This would further enable readers to judge your manuscript accordingly. And it would help reviewers in future to analyse the data presented in your study.

Guidelines to conduct your study:

1. For reporting randomized controlled trials authors are advised to consult CONSORT guidelines. Please submit the CONSORT checklist as an additional file and the flowchart as an illustration with the manuscript.
2. The Research protocol can also be submitted on our website separately. However please make sure that you choose the article category properly and that Research Protocols are clearly identified. 
3. If you are submitting a systematic review please follow the PRISMA (formerly QUORUM) guidelines.
4. Please follow STARD guidelines for studies on diagnostic accuracy.

Role of professional medical writers in peer-reviewed publications:

WebmedCentral appreciates that some authors may want to use the services of professional medical writers. However bearing in mind our completely transparent approach towards biomedical publishing, it must be made clear to the authors and the medical writer in question must be suitably acknowledged in the appropriate section of the manuscript. And the payments to these authors should be elaborated in our appropriate section regarding funding and sources of funding identified.  Medical writers have professional responsibilities to ensure that the papers they write are scientifically valid and are written in accordance with generally accepted ethical standards. Medical writers must naturally have access to all relevant data while writing papers. It is however the responsibility of the authors to check the manuscript for complete accuracy and make absolutely sure that it says exactly what they intended to say.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is the use of others’ published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, ethics committee applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format (print or electronic). Plagiarism is a serious scientific misconduct.

Scientific misconduct:

If you have any concerns regarding the scientific content of any article or the conduct of the authors published on WebmedCentral, please contact us immediately. We are aware that some authors would try to misuse this wonderful completely transparent biomedical publishing service to promote their personal motives and WebmedCentral  strongly opposes such practices. In such cases, we will initially write to authors for clarification and may ask them to provide us with additional data. If we are not satisfied with the authors’ response, the article will be removed from WebmedCentral. The decision of WebmedCentral shall be final and binding on authors in such cases. We may also report such authors on our website and share the information with others in the field of biomedical publishing.

Reporting clinical trials conducted by pharmaceutical companies:

Please ensure that clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies follow the guidelines on good publication practice. These guidelines aim to ensure that such trials are published in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines cover companies’ responsibility to endeavour to publish results of all studies, companies’ relations with investigators, measures to prevent redundant or premature publication, methods to improve trial identification and the role of professional medical writers.

Corrections and revisions:

We have no post submission article editing mechanisms to weed out grammatical and other errors. It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure the manuscript for complete accuracy before submitting it on our website. We can make minor changes from the admin section, on the authors' request. The authors can, however, submit revised versions of the article. We allow any numbers of revised articles to be published on our website.  The revised versions can be linked to the previous version by providing the unique WMC article number at resubmission. It is hoped that basic information would be entered correctly the first time.

Responding to reviewers:

Authors are encouraged to respond to the reviews or comments. This can be done by posting a comment in response. Please use "post a comment" for this functionality. Alternatively, for major changes, the authors can submit revised versions of the manuscript. The purpose of revised version is primarily to answer and accommodate the concerns and reviews made on the article on WebmedCentral and elsewhere.   Our readers would always have access to the previous versions of the article.  

Withdrawing articles:

Articles once published cannot be withdrawn by the authors. If the authors want to alter something in their original submission, they would have to submit revised version of the paper.

WebmedCentral, however reserves the right to unpublish papers that are fraudulent, have been plagiarised, are clear examples of scientific misconduct or do not comply with our guidelines.