Publishing Standards and Guidelines:

Research Summit accepts manuscripts prepared according to the guidelines/ standards of "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to the Biomedical Journals" as approved by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, published in the British Medical Journal 1991; 302:334-41 (available at: http://www.icmje.org).  

Research Summit Policies for Authors 

Before submitting/ article preparation, it is very important for an author to get through the policies of the Research Summit. The policies are available on the website: (Link) or as a PDF of the policy statement. 

ORCID Registration:

It is mandatory for every author to get registered with ORCID.

Submission of manuscripts:

All the manuscripts should be submitted to Research Summit exclusively through the online submission system (OJS) available at www.researchsummit.org by the corresponding author. Research summit accepts manuscripts for consideration on the understanding that manuscripts have not been published, submitted, or under review elsewhere. Duplicate or multiple submissions of a manuscript are unethical. The authors resubmitting a rejected manuscript should inform the editor at the time of submission of the manuscript.  The authors may contact on the email address editors.researchsummit@gamial.com if they face any problem during the process of submission of the manuscript. 

The manuscript must be submitted by the Corresponding Author.

The manuscript must be accompanied by forms, which can be downloaded from the website. The forms must be returned after signatures of all authors to the Office of Research Summit or via email id editors.researchsummit@gamial.com. 

It is also necessary to provide the author’s certification and the Ethical Committee Certificate. No article will be entertained without an Ethical Committee Certificate. 

Stepwise Editorial Process:

After an electronic submission, the editors of Research Summit will review a manuscript for relevance and suitability for further processing. The editors may reject the manuscript if it is not within the scope of the journal. The editors may also ask authors to make necessary amendments at this stage. The manuscripts accepted for further processing will be checked for plagiarism regarding the similarity index. If the Similarity index is <= 19%, the benefit of doubt may be given to authors, but if the Similarity Index is > 19%, the manuscript will be sent back to the author for review and resubmit. This process may take 2 - 4 weeks. In the next step, the manuscript will be sent to two reviewers of the concerned specialty for assessing technical aspects. The comments of the reviewer will be conveyed to the authors. At this stage, the authors may be asked to make necessary amendments to the manuscript as suggested by reviewers. This process may take 4 – 6 weeks. The amendments made by the authors will be submitted to the reviewer till the reviewer is satisfied. The editors will again review the manuscript and will approve for publication if no changes are required. The manuscript will be put on the forthcoming priority list, which will be decided by the editors. The authors, with their genuine reasons, may seek fast tracking of the manuscript. An additional processing fee will have to be deposited by authors for the fast track. The usual time for processing in the fast track is 04 – 06 weeks.  The fast-track processing is wholly at the discretion of the Chief Editor.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

1)    General instructions:

a)    Manuscript must be prepared and written in British English.

b)    Typography: Manuscript should be typed on Microsoft Word with A4-size paper, white background, and leaving normal margins (size 2.54cm on each border). It should be typed with 1.5 line spacing. Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks and using font size 12. The headings should be bold with a font size of 14. All the pages should be numbered. 

c)    Title Page: Every manuscript should be covered with a title page with the following information:

i)      Title of the article

ii)     List the full names of all authors, their affiliation, institutional addresses, and email addresses, the name and address of the corresponding author, with email, fax, and phone number. The journal will contact the corresponding author only. The sequence of authors once signed by the authors will not be changed. 

iii)   Conflict of interest or any funding information. (Specimen of Title Page)

d)    Undertaking/ Certificate: An undertaking / certificate signed by all authors is mandatory. The undertaking/ certificate must include the statement that:

i)      Research work is original, exclusively submitted to JMERC, and is not previously published somewhere else. (Specimen)

ii)     Editors of JMERC hold the right to suggest changes, hold, reject, or retract the publication at any stage. 

iii)   Author transfers the ownership of the published material to JMERC. It should also include a copyright disclosure transferring ownership of the published material to JMERC. (Specimen)

e)    Ethical permission letter: Copy of ethical permission letter from the institutional review board or head where the research was conducted. 

f)     Author’s contribution form: An author’s contribution form (available on www.) is required and signed by all authors. Explain the role of each author in the study next to the title page.

g)    Format of abstracts: The abstract should be brief, factual, concise, and emphasize important aspects of your research. The total length of the abstract should be according to the suggested word count. For original articles, the word count of an abstract should be 250 words and should be comprised of four paragraphs under the following headings: Objective, Methodology, Results, and Conclusions. The word count of abstracts for case reports, short communications, mini-reviews, clinical notes, letters to the editor, and narrative reviews should be up to 150 words and should be non-structured. 

h)    Format of manuscript: All manuscripts should be prepared according to the types and requirements of the manuscript (given above). The manuscript must be original without any plagiarized content. The following are the highlights of the headings included in manuscripts: 

i)      Introduction: The introduction should be relevant and clear. It should not contain any part of the study conducted. The rationale of the study must be explained in the last paragraph.

ii)     Material and Methods: It should include study design, sample size, name of the institution (where the study was conducted), study duration, method of sampling, statement of ethical review, apparatus used in the study, operational definition, data collection, and data analysis procedure.

iii)   Results: These must be explained in a sequential manner and may include figures, tables, or descriptions. Tables and illustrations should be included within the same sheet and in line with the text. Each illustration must have a legend. Tables and figures must be numbered separately. The minimum resolution requirement of photographs is 3.2 megapixels in JPEG format. The resolution of scanned photographs should be 300 or more dpi. The maximum number of tables and figures for original articles and case reports should be 6, and for short communications, it should be 2. 

iv)   Discussion: It may include the interpretation of results by authors, including critics, reasoning, or comments. The results of the previously published work may be compared here in this segment. Limitations or strengths of the study should be included in this segment.

v)    Conclusion: A brief conclusion should be given by the authors according to the objectives of the study. Recommendations should be avoided. 

vi)   References: All the references should be written in Vancouver Style only. The references should be listed at the end of the manuscript in the sequence mentioned in the manuscript. If a reference contains more than 6 authors, et al should be written after mentioning the first 6 authors. The references should be written in Vancouver style as per "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in medical journals, updated in December 2015. Available at: http://icmje.org/recommendations/". Each reference should include the following information: author’s name with initials, the full title of the article, name of the journal, publication year, volume number of the journal, and the first & last page numbers. The page numbers should be written as 120-126. If available, a DOI of reference should be included. Fifty percent of all references should be within the last 5 years. The examples of references are as follows: 

(1)  Reference from the original article: Hall RR. The healing of tissue by C02 laser. British Journal of Surgery: 1971; 58:222-225.

(2)  Reference from books: Talaro KP, Talaro A. Foundations in Microbiology: Basic principles. Boston: McGraw-Hill; 2002

(3)  Reference from the website (Other than the original article): Lewis A. How Microbes May Influence Our Behavior. The scientist: exploring life, inspiring innovation; 2017 Sep 1 [cited 2017 Sep 19]. Available from:  http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50146/title/How-Microbes-May-Influence-Our-Behavior/

vii)  Acknowledgment: All those contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria, Head/ Chair of department for general support, and providers of technical or writing assistance should be mentioned in the acknowledgement. Any financial or material support may also be acknowledged. 

viii) Disclosure/Conflict of Interest or Source of funding: If there is no conflict of interest or funding source, it should be clearly stated. Summary of Word count limit and references:

	Word Count		Number of References
	Abstract	Manuscript
Original article	250	2000 – 2500	25
Review articles	250	2500 – 3000	25 – 35
Systematic review article/ meta-analysis	250	2500 – 3000	25 – 35
Case report	100	800 – 1000	5
Letter to the Editor	0	100	5
Editorial	0	800 – 1000	8 – 20
CME/ Practice guidelines	150	800 – 1000	8 – 20
Evidence-based reports/ case series	150	1000 - 1200	10 – 12
How do I do it?	100	800 – 1000	5 – 20

 

SAMPLE OF THE DOCUMENTS

            The samples of supporting documents are given below. Authors can modify them according to their needs. 

            Sample Title Page

Sample Undertaking/ Certificate 

Sample Author’s contribution form 

TYPES AND REQUIREMENTS OF MANUSCRIPTS:

            Research Summit accepts the following types of manuscripts:

1)    Original Article:

a)    A manuscript describing original research work based on a randomized controlled trial or observational study will be considered an original article.

b)     It should consist of 2000-2500 words (excluding abstract and reference).

c)    It should include 20 – 25 references (50% of references should not be more than 5 years old from the date of submission).

d) A maximum of 4 figures or tables is allowed. 

e)    It is also mandatory to provide an approval or exemption letter from the ethical review committee of the institution at the time of submission of the manuscript. 

f)     Necessarily, should be written under the following headings: abstract (250 words) and 10 key words as per MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. 

2)    Review Article:

a)    A manuscript describing a critical overview or analysis of any specific topic with support of literature will be considered as a review article. 

b)    The work of only those authors will be considered who have some previous research work (at least 3 research articles on the same topic).

c)    It should consist of 2500 -3000 words (excluding abstract and references)

d)    It may contain 3 tables and 3 figures.

e)    It may contain 25 – 35 references.

f)     Necessarily, should be written under the following headings: abstract (unstructured with 200 words) and 5 key words as per MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. 

2)    Meta-analysis:

a)     It should comprise a statistical analysis of the combined results of numerous scientific studies addressing the same research question.

b)    Meta-analysis is a quantitative and epidemiological study design that should critically analyze the results of previous scientific research, mostly randomized controlled trials.

c)    It should consist of 2500 -3000 words (excluding abstract and references)

d)    It may contain 3 tables and 3 figures.

e)    It may contain 25 – 35 references.

f)     Necessarily, should be written under the following headings: abstract (unstructured with 200 words) and 5 key words as per MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. 

3)    Systematic review article:

a)    It should consist of a well-defined research question and should provide a detailed review of a specific topic based on the existing literature.

b)    It should include the collection and analysis of data from all the relevant research in support of the research question being asked.

c)    The text should be 2500-3000 words. It should have a structured abstract with a minimum of three keywords and 25 – 35 references.

3)    Case Report:

a)    A manuscript describing an unusual, unique, or rare case of educational importance will be considered as a case report. 

b)    It should include 800 to 1000 words, excluding the abstract and reference 

c)    It can have two figures

d)    It should be written in the following headings: abstract (unstructured with 100 words), introduction, case, discussion, and reference. 

e) The number of references should be 5.  

4)    Letter to Editor:

a)    A letter to the editor may be written as a response to a previous publication in the same or another journal in the form of a question, comment, or criticism if it is in the interest of the community or readers. Scientific data of interest to the medical community may also be addressed in this area. 

b)    It should be a maximum of 500 words.

c)    It may contain only 2 figures or tables. 

d) The total number of references should not be more than 5.

5)    Editorial:

a)    An editorial is a short essay on some interesting topic by the editor or someone invited by the editor on a topic enclosed in the journal. It also consists of critiques or concise reviews of original articles published in the same issue. 

b)    It may contain 8 – 20 references.

c)    Editorial should not be more than 1000 words (excluding abstract and references)

6)    CME articles or Practice Guidelines:

a)    An essay of up to 1000-1500 words may be written in order to educate the readers about a CME or Clinical Practice Guidelines

b)    It may contain a maximum of 3 figures or tables. 

c)    Only 8-20 references are allowed.

7) Evidence-Based Reports/ Case Series:

a)    It review of at least 10 cases may be written, encompassing the findings of authors about less common problems.

b)    It includes a word count of 1000 - 1200 words (except abstract and references).

c)    Only 10 - 12 references are allowed.

d)    A structured abstract of 150 words should be included.

e)    It should not contain more than 2 figures or tables.

8)    How do I do it? / Innovative techniques:

a)    A manuscript with technical notes on new techniques or how I do it will be entertained in this section. 

b)    It should contain an abstract of 100 words.

c)    Maximum 5-10 references are allowed.

d)    It should be written under the following headings: abstract, introduction, technique, discussion, conclusion, and references.

e)    The word count should be 800 – 1000. 

REVIEW OF RESEARCH SUMMIT POLICIES FOR AUTHORS

Before submission of a manuscript, the author must go through the Research Summit Policy Document and agree.