Walawalkar International Medical Journal is annual peer-reviewed, open access journal.
The journal will cover technical and clinical studies related to health, ethical and social issues in field of all medical disciplines, including alternative medicine interest and implications will be given preference.
A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to Walawalkar International Medical Journal alone and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding for final review.
Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in Walawalkar International Medical Journal are sent to two or more expert reviewers. During submission, authors can provide names of two or three qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but this is not mandatory. However, the selection of these reviewers is at the sole discretion of the editor. The journal follows a double-blind reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. Every manuscript is also assigned to a member of the editorial team, based on his comments a final decision is taken on the manuscript. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/ rejection/ amendments in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed whenever required, the author is requested to provide a point by point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process continues till editors are satisfied with the manuscript.
Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. Authors are expected to return the corrected proofs within three days. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The whole process final decision and sending and receiving proofs is completed online.
Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:
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, contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of author’s is to be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without contributors consent. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope and number of institutions authors should provide a justification, if the number of authors exceeds these limits.
Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript editing and manuscript review. Authors' contributions will be printed along with the article. One or more author should take responsibility for the integrity inception to published article and should be designated as 'guarantor'.
All authors must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned important to the outcome of the study presented.
The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Instructions to Authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction the manuscript should be submitted in the form of two separate files:
[1] Title Page/First Page File/covering letter:
This file should provide
[2] Blinded Article file
The main text of the article, beginning from Abstract till References (including tables) should be in this file. The file must not contain names or initials or the institution at which the study was done or acknowledgements. Page headers/running title can include the title but not the authors' compliance with the Journal's blinding policy will be returned to the corresponding author. Use rtf/doc files. Do not zip the files. Limit the file size to 1 file. If file size is large, graphs can be submitted as images separately without incorporating them in the article file to reduce the size of the file.
[3] Images
Submit good quality color images. Each image should be less than 2 MB in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual (keep up to 1600 x 1200 pixels or 5-6 inches). Images can be submitted as jpeg files. Do not zip the files. Legends for the figures/images should be included
Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals" developed by the International Editors (October 2008). The uniform requirements and specific requirement of Walawalkar International Medical Journal are summarized below. Before contributors are requested to check for the latest instructions available.
Walawalkar International Medical Journal accepts manuscripts written in American English.
It is the responsibility of authors/ contributors to obtain permissions for reproducing any copyrighted material. A copy of the permission obtained must be attached.
These include randomized controlled trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, cost effectiveness analyses, with high response rate. The text of original articles amounting to up to 3000 words (excluding Abstract, references and Tables) should be divided into Key-words, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, References, Tables and Figure legends.
Materials and Methods: It should include and describe the following aspects:
Ethics: When reporting studies on human beings, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_involving human participants, authors are expected to mention about approval of (regional/ national/ institutional or independent Ethics Committee or consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial.
Ensure confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants’ names, initials or hospital numbers, especially reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution’s or a national research council’s guide for, or any national law on the care and use Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. Animal experiments should be as humane as possible and the details of anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance by the CPCSEA and World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Humans for studies involving beings, respectively). The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission should be included in the ‘Materials and Methods’ section.
Selection and Description of Participants: Describe your selection of the observational or experimental participants (patients or laboratory animals, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population.
Technical information: Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer's parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references to established methods, including statistical references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known; describe new or substantially modified methods, give their limitations. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.
Whenever possible quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence losses to observation (such as, dropouts from a clinical trial). When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used instead of uses of technical terms in statistics, such as 'random' (which implies a randomizing device), 'normal', 'significant', 'correlations', and 'sample'. Specify the computer software used. Use upper italics (P 0.048). For all P values include the exact value and not less than 0.05 or 0.001. variables, proportions in categorical variables and relative risks including odds ratios and hazard ratios should be accompanied by their confidence intervals.
Present your results in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations, giving the main or most important findings first. Do not repeat in illustrations; emphasize or summarize only important observations. Extra- or supplementary materials and technical detail can be placed in an appendix so as to not interrupt the flow of the text; alternatively, it can be published only in the electronic version of the journal. When data are summarized in the Results section, give numeric results not only as derivatives (for example, percentages) but also as the absolute numbers calculated, and specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables.
Include summary of key findings (primary outcome measures, secondary outcome measures, results as they relate to a prior hypothesis); (study question, study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation); Interpretation and implications in the context of the totality of evidence (is there not, could one be reasonably done here and now?, what this study adds to the available evidence, effects on patient care and health policy, possible this study; and Future research directions (for this particular research collaboration, underlying mechanisms, clinical research).
Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction or the Results section. In particular, contributors should avoid making statements unless their manuscript includes economic data and analyses. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. New hypotheses they should be clearly labeled as such. About 30 references can be included. These articles generally should not have more than six authors.
It is expected that these articles would be written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field. the contributor(s) in the field of review should accompany the manuscript.
The prescribed word count is up to 3000 words excluding tables, references and abstract. The manuscript may have about 90 references. The manuscript Abstract (250 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles would depend upon the topic reviewed. Authors submitting review describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.
The journal expects the contributors to give post-publication updates on the subject of review. The update should be brief, covering the advances in the article and should be sent as a letter to editor, as and when major development occurs in the field.
New, interesting and rare cases can be reported. They should be unique, describing a great diagnostic or therapeutic challenge and providing a learning clinical significance or implications will be given priority. These communications could be of up to 1000 words (excluding Abstract and references) and Abstract (unstructured), Key-words, Introduction, Case report, Discussion, Reference, Tables and Legends in that order.
The manuscript could be of up to 1000 words (excluding references and abstract) and could be supported with up to 10 references. Case Reports could Letter to the Editor:
These should be short and decisive observations. They should preferably be related to articles previously published in the Journal or views expressed preliminary observations that need a later paper for validation. The letter could have up to 500 words and 5 references. It could be generally authored Other: Editorial, Guest Editorial, Commentary and Opinion are solicited by the editorial board.
References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). Identify references in numerals in superscript with square bracket after the punctuation marks. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. Use the style of the examples below, which are based on the formats used by the NLM journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Use complete name of the journal for non-indexed journals. Avoid using from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source. The commonly cited types of references are shown here, for other types of references such as newspaper items please refer to ICMJE Guidelines (http://http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).
Articles in Journals
Roddy P, Goiri J, Flevaud L, Palma PP, Morote S, Lima N. et al., Field Evaluation of a Rapid Immunochromatographic Assay for Detection of Trypanosoma Blood. J. Clin. Microbiol.2008; 46: 2022-2027.
Books and Other Monographs
Journal article on the Internet: Parija SC, Khairnar K. Detection of excretory Entamoeba histolytica DNA in the urine, and detection of E. histolytica DNA abscess pus for the diagnosis of amoebic liver abscess .BMC Microbiology 2007, 7:41.doi:10.1186/1471-2180-7-41. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-Tables
Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information the patient (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients' names from figures written informed consent from the patients. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the article and copy of the consent should letter.
The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, to point clarification at the beginning in the revised file itself. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article.
The Walawalkar International Medical Journal is an open access journal hence all articles are freely available on the journal website http://www.wimjournal from the date of publication. The published material of Walawalkar International Medical Journal may be accessed without any permission from Publisher/Editor-in-chief / Executive editor of Walawalkar International Medical Journal.
Covering letter