Author Guidelines

General Guidelines

APSP J Case Rep entertains interesting Case Reports, contributing to medical knowledge regarding Paediatric Surgery and its allied disciplines. It must be original and not submitted to any other journal. The cases may address unexpected or unusual presentations of a disease, new associations or variations in disease processes, management of new and emerging conditions, an unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient, observations that through light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease etc.

Preparation of a manuscript should follow the guidelines of ICMJE for preparation of manuscripts. All the manuscripts should be preferably prepared on MS word or similar softwares. PDF submissions will not be processed.

Manuscript Preparation

The case reports can be submitted with word count of up to 2000 words and references up to 20. The references should not be older than past 10 years. Abstract should be structured with three headings such as Background, Case report, and Conclusion. In this type of manuscript, up to five figures/tables or 1-2 multimedia files can be submitted.  Case reports must be submitted in the following format: 

• Title page (Should be submitted separately) [Download template DOCX, PDF] 
• Abstract (strcutured with up to 200 words) and Keywords (3-5) 
• Introduction (It should state background and reason of reporting the case) 
• Case report (It should provide detailed account on the case being reported)
• Discussion (Discuss about the index case in the light of available recent literature)
• Conclusion
• Competing interests and source of funding
• Authors' contributions (Declare that all the authors are fullfilling ICMJE authorship criteria)
• Informed consent (Consent form should be uploaded separately) 
• Acknowledgements
• References (Latest references in Vancouver style)
• Figure legends.

Letter to the Editor or Case Letter does not require abstract and keywords.  A total of 500-600 words and 5-6 recent references with 1-2 clinical figures are allowed. The text should be written in 3-4 paragraphs without any heading for main manuscript and starting with "Dear Sir". Rest of components should be same as for case reports. The journal will not accept submission in the category from 2019 onward. 

Clinical Image includes description or demonstration of an important clinical finding/sign in the form of one or two clinical figures with a brief description. A total of less than 500 words with less than 5 references and 1-2 clinical figures are allowed. The main manuscript text should be written in 2-3 paragraphs. Rest of components should be same as for case reports. The journal will not accept submission in the category from 2019 onward.

Editorial manuscripts are only invited or submitted by the editors. Authors can contact editor in chief if want to submit this kind of manuscript. 

Consent

This section is compulsory. It should provide a statement to confirm that the patient has given informed consent for the case report to be published. The consent form submission along with manuscript is mandatory. No submission will be processed until this information is provided and consent form is uploaded.

Competing interest and Source of funding

Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'. Authors also need to submit Source of Support. If a manuscript is submitted from an editorial team member, it is handled by other editors and the concerned editor is not involved in decision making of the manuscript.

Authors' contribution

In order to give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. At present, the journal is not publishing this information with the manuscript, however, it is mandatory to submit this information. An  "author" is  generally considered to  be  someone who  has  made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2)  have been involved in  drafting the manuscript or  revising it  critically for  important intellectual content; and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship. Same applies for mere conception of idea only while rest of the work is done by others. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support and suggested a topic.

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Please also include their source(s) of funding. Please also acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study. Authors may also like to acknowledge (anonymously) the patient on whom the case report is based.

The role of a medical writer must be included in the acknowledgements section, including their source(s) of funding. Authors   should   obtain   permission   to   acknowledge   from   all   those   mentioned   in   the Acknowledgements. Please list the source(s) of  funding for  the study, for  each author, and for  the manuscript preparation in the acknowledgements section. Authors must describe the role of the funding body, if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

References

Referring a citation or reference in the text should be according to the journal requirement. Example; Appendicitis is rarely diagnosed in neonates. [1,2]  All references must be numbered consecutively, in brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text. Reference citations should not appear in titles, abstract and headings.

Only articles 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. Notes/footnotes are not allowed. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Citations in the reference list should contain all named authors, regardless of how many there are. The examples are given below.

Article within a journal: Koonin EV, Altschul SF, Bork P. BRCA1 protein products: functional motifs. Nat Genet 1996;13:266-7.

Article within a journal supplement: Orengo CA, Bray JE, Hubbard T, LoConte L, Sillitoe I. Analysis and assessment of ab initio three-dimensional prediction, secondary structure, and contacts prediction. Proteins 1999, 43(Suppl 3):149-70.

In press article: Kharitonov SA, Barnes PJ. Clinical aspects of exhaled nitric oxide. Eur Respir J, in press.

Published abstract: Zvaifler NJ, Burger JA, Marinova-Mutafchieva L, Taylor P, Maini RN. Mesenchymal cells, stromal derived factor-1 and rheumatoid arthritis [abstract]. Arthritis Rheum 1999, 42: 250.

Article within conference proceedings: Jones X. Zeolites and synthetic mechanisms. In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Edited by Smith Y. Stoneham: Butterworth- Heinemann; 1996:16-27.

Book chapter, or article within a book: Schnepf E. From prey via endosymbiont to plastids: comparative studies in dinoflagellates. In: Origins of Plastids. Volume 2. 2nd edition. Edited by Lewin RA. New York: Chapman and Hall; 1993:53-76.

Whole issue of journal: Ponder B, Johnston S, Chodosh L (Eds). Innovative oncology. In Breast Cancer Res 1998, 10:1-72.

Whole conference proceedings: Smith Y (Ed). Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Stoneham: Butterworth-Heinemann; 1996.

Complete book: Margulis L. Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1970.

Monograph or book in a series: Hunninghake GW, Gadek JE. The alveolar macrophage. In Cultured Human Cells and Tissues. Edited by Harris TJR. New York: Academic Press; 1995:54-56. [Stoner G (Series Editor): Methods and Perspectives in Cell Biology, vol 1.]

Book with institutional author: Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification: Annual Report. London; 1999.

PhD thesis: Kohavi R. Wrappers for performance enhancement and oblivious decision graphs. PhD thesis. Stanford University, Computer Science Department; 1995.

 Online journal article: Saha S. Live workshops: A time to rethink. J Indian Assoc Pediatr Surg [serial online] 2018 [cited 2018 Jun 18];23:55-6. Available from: http://www.jiaps.com/text.asp?2018/23/2/55/228894

Figures

These must be of high resolution in Tiff/JPEG format. Pictures / figures should be provided as separate files during submission and should not be included in the main text of the submitted manuscript. Authors should make every effort to preserve the anonymity of the patient be removing or concealing any identifiable features. Please take extra care with images of the head and face, ensuring that only the relevant features are shown.

The caption should be included in the main manuscript text file immediately following the references, rather than being a part of the figure file. 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). Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.

Typography

We only accept manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture. It is essential that submitted manuscripts have a high standard of written English. Manuscripts with grammatical errors may not be peer-reviewed. Authors are advised to write clearly and simply. 

• Please use double line spacing.
• Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks.
• Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines.
• Capitalize only the first word, and proper nouns, in the title.
• All pages should be numbered.
• SI Units should be used throughout.

Covering letter

Authors should indicate in covering letter how the case report adds to the medical literature. Submissions that do not include this information will be returned to authors. Any conflict of interest must be disclosed. The covering letter must be signed by all the authors. Authorship shall be given to only those who have contributed significantly to the manuscript. Any legal implication thus will be the responsibility of all. The order of authorship once submitted shall not be changed. The number of authors once identified, will not be changed thereafter.

Ethical considerations

Authors should seek consent to publish the information from the patients or their guardians prior to submission. The covering letter must contain a statement that an informed consent was taken and consent form will be submitted with manuscript. Plagiarism is strongly condemned. An effort must be done to write the sentences in one’s own words and use inverted commas judiciously with appropriate references.

Duplicate submission, salami slicing, gift and ghost authorship etc., all fall into category of publication misconduct and shall be addressed on case to case basis that may include retraction of article with appropriate clarification on the website as well as reporting to the head of the institutes and monitoring and licensing bodies.

(Most of the material is produced from the following link with appropriate changes. http://jmedicalcasereports.com/info/instructions/)