Author Guidelines

Authors Guidelines

We invite authors to submit their articles for publication. The guidelines are given to endorse smooth submission, review, and publication processes. Content should be unique, original and the presentation must be of potential interest to the readers.
Articles may be submitted for publication that describe original research, short communication, case report, comments, Commentary, review article, letters to editor and special reports. All articles must be submitted through online after the registration in the Scopemed.
Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The principal/corresponding author must submit a undertaking along with the manuscript on behalf of all co-authors. (Please refer to the undertaking form). The author(s) will confirm that the manuscript (or any part thereof) has not previously been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere. In addition, any illustration, structure or table that has been published elsewhere must be informed.
Hard copy submissions are not accepted. Format of your manuscript and keep simple and clear. Do not try to “design” the document. Supporting document i.e. undertaking/Conflict of interest can be download/seen from the website. 

Editorial Policy

The Journal of Riphah college of Rehabilitation Science is a peer-reviewed, open access, nonprofit multidisciplinary journal which encourages and invites researchers to submit review/research manuscripts in all fields of rehabilitation sciences, including physical therapy, speech and language pathology, pain management, orthotics and prostatic,  sports physical therapy and all areas of Allied Health Sciences.

Aims and Scope:

1. Encourage all professionals to exchange their research, opinions and ideas in the all fields of rehabilitation and other similar sub-specialties.
2. JRCRS provides a platform for the readers regarding transfer of knowledge.
3. In JRCRS domain, the journal covers a range of unique research, reviews, commentary, case reports in all areas of Rehabilitation.
4. The journal facilitates communication between physical therapists and related specialists around the world by providing an integrated and balanced vision of basic clinical research in rehabilitation

Competing interests statement for the authors:

Authors must declare that she/ he has no meaningful competing, personal professional or business interests that could have an effect on the carried out work and its presentation explained / expressed in this manuscript. Likewise, they may also explain likely competing financial, personal, professional or business interests.

Manuscript formatting: 

All the submitted manuscripts will first be checked to ensure they are in the required format and comply with the journal’s instructions.
Define abbreviations at their first appearance and do not use at all in the title or abstract. Use generic names of drugs. Number reference by their first appearance in the text and cite them by that subscripted number.

The original article must be under the following heads:

Title: It must be brief and contain no abbreviations.
Structured Abstract: This section should clear concise and accurate summary not more than 250-300 words, containing no abbreviations, citation and should describe the Objective, Study Design, Place and Duration of the study, methods, results, conclusions and keywords that should contain Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) not more than six. Choose important and relevant keywords.  The abstract should briefly and focus the main objectives and results/conclusions of the research work; it should give the reader a clear idea of what has been achieved.
Introduction: This section should briefly state what was studied and why, including its relationship to previous work in the field especially previous 10 years international literature.
Materials and Methods: It should contain the place of the study, patient population and the methodology of the study in detail technique, procedure / investigation clearly explained. Statistical methods/Data Collection and sample size calculation method should be clearly explained at the end of this section.
Results: This section includes the results of your study only. No comparison should be done in this section with other studies. This should include tables, graphs, figures etc. Repetition of data must be avoided and should be well explained. Blurred or unclear photographs and figures will not accept. Tables should be cited in parenthesis after the punctuation mark e.g. (Table1). Images and Figures may be sent in the form of JPG, PNG. Images of MRI and CT scans that patient identity like name and date should not be mentioned.
Discussion: It includes the comparison of results with other studies, and specifically in the light of relevant literature.
Highlight the unique and key features of your research and put your results in the context of the totality of the significant proof. Do not repeat in detail like data or other information given in other parts of the manuscript, such as in the Introduction or the results section.
Conclusion: It may be included to briefly summarize the net result of your study.

Contributor statement:

All authors should declare their contribution to the research and the preparation of the publication.

Who is an Author
The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
  Other contributors to the article, who do not fit into these four criteria should be just acknowledged.

Acknowledgement: Acknowledged those authors & institutional administrative support who did not qualify for authorship (define in journal policy and recommended by ICMJE). Acknowledge anyone who provided intellectual writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, data entry and proofreading. 

References:

The references should be listed as they appear in the text. It should contain the name of the authors, title of the article, source with its volume, number, year of publication and the page numbers. All references should be enlisted in vancouver style. The following web addresses can be logged on for various sources that can be used for reference/ citation purposes.

https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/vancouver/introduction

It would be ideal that a reference cited in the manuscript referred to the content is present in the reference section and it should be given in full. It is not allowed to include the reference personal communication and article submitted and unpublished. Apart of work cited in manuscript have a unique number placed in brackets, these numbers are always in the order of citation. If the same work is again need to cite in the same article then author should assign the same number. Numbers of software’s are available that can help in preparing references like Zotero and Endnote etc. The reference style recommended is set up on National Information Standards Organization Bibliographic References as modified by National Library of Medicine (NLM) for its databases. Details are given in "Citing Medicine": (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/). 

The in-text references system used is citation-sequence. Each citation is designated by a number enclosed in parenthesis. The citations should be numbered and ordered in the Reference list following the sequences in which they first appear within the text. The general order for the citation sequence reference system is; name of author(s), full title of cited article, name of journal in which article appeared (do not use periods with abbreviated words), publication year, journal volume, issue number, finally first and the last number of page. Name of journal should be abbreviated according to the PubMed Journals Database (NLM, NIH).

Follow the styles shown in the examples below.

Journal Article:

1- author:     

Khalil B. Observation on the food and feeding habits of Cynoglossus bilineatus (family: Cynoglossidae) from Karachi coast, Pakistan. Rads J Biol Res Appl Sci. 2012; 3(1):1-6.

2-5 authors:  

Naqvi II, Kanwal G, Shafi A. Teaching undergraduates students through connectivity: part 3. Rads J Biol Res Appl Sci. 2012;3(2):18-20.

>6 authors:

Wasti AZ, Haider S, Rashid S, Fatima N, Ashiq A, Iqbal S, et al. The biochemical profile of chronic kidney disease patients. Rads J Biol Res Appl Sci. 2013;4(1):5-10.

Entire Book:

Talaro KP, Talaro A. Foundations in microbiology: basic principles. Boston: McGraw-Hill; 2002.

Article or Chapter in a Book:

Forman MS, Valsamakis A. Specimen collection, transport, and processing: virology. In: Versalovic J, Carroll KC, Jorgensen JH, Funke G, Landry ML, Warnock DW, editors. Manual of clinical microbiology, 10th ed. Washington, DC: ASM Press; 2011. p. 1276-88.

Website:

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/

Case Reports: Studies of more than 5 patients is considered as original study. If the number of patients is 4 or less it is considered as case report.

Review Article may be on any subject reviewing the literature in its past, present and future aspects.

Editorial may be on any topic and it may or may not be related to a scientific research.
Experimental Work includes the work done in laboratory or on cadavers or animals.

Cover letter:

The manuscript should be accompanied by a covering letter signed by the corresponding author.

Potential Reviewer:

The names of three potential reviewers must be provided with the manuscript. Suggested reviewers must be experts in the field and should not have relevant competing interests (e.g. working with the authors, family members, or based at the same institution).

Peer Review Policy:

The Journal of Riphah College of Rehabilitation Science uses "double blind" peer review where by both reviewers and authors remain anonymous throughout the process. Submitted manuscripts are screened by the editors to check the scope, suitability and formatting. Rejected manuscripts will be sent back to the authors. Potentially suitable manuscripts are then sent to potential reviewers who are asked to respond within two weeks and then given 2-3 weeks to review. If reviewers fail to respond within the given time, they may be replaced with alternates to keep the review process moving along. Should the referees' reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed, a further expert opinion will be sought.

Ethical Approval of Research:

In case of original/research articles, author’s contribution could only be considered with the mandatory requirement of the certificate duly signed and stamped from IRC/Ethical Review Board (ERB).

Disclosure of conflicts of interest:

All manuscripts, case studies, reviews, short reviews, and letters to the editor submitted to the journal must be accompanied by a conflict of interest form which can be downloaded from the journal website. The form should be filled in by the principal author and signed by all coauthors. All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with any people or organizations that might be affected by the submitted work or could influence its interpretation. Any temporary, permanent or part-time employment, or consultancy must be declared. Direct or indirect resources or funds provided for the research or publication by organizations must be disclosed. Authors must also declare any non-financial conflicts of interest.

Misconduct by authors:

Journal of Riphah College of Rehabilitation Science is equipped with Turnitin (text matching / anti-plagiarism software provided by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan). This is used to check for plagiarism and redundancy in submitted manuscripts. All submitted manuscripts are first checked for similarity index on Turnitin. Manuscripts with similarity index above 19 % will be automatically rejected and sent back to the authors.

Copyright Transfer Agreement: Authors/ contributors who contribute in the journal will read, agree and sign the copyright transfer agreement declaring that the work is original or novel, not under consideration by another journal, and has not been published before.  

Plagiarism detection: Submissions will be analyzed by the Editor for their scientific quality, originality and content verification. Text similarity will be checked by the Content verification mode in Turnitin. Content acceptance will be based on the similarity index that must be less than 19% and from a single source it should be less than 5%.

Note: The authors are requested not check plagiarism themselves from unauthorized softwares of plagiarism detection.
Manuscript extracted by an author from his/her M.Phil. Or Ph.D. thesis must have to declare the “title of the thesis”, “Supervisor name”, Department and University name, “year of submission” on the original later paid and submit during the submission process. 
Self-Plagiarism

Publications effectively publish accepted manuscripts for self-plagiarism prior to publication. Self-plagiarism is not a tolerated practice. Manuscripts containing high-levels of self-plagiarism  will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief for originality. Authors found to have self-plagiarized will be asked to rewrite selected portions of their accepted manuscripts and or to quote exactly and cite the original source.
Journal management team will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors' institutions or funders if necessary. If proof of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract/withdraw the publication. The editors of JRCRS consider such distributing publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to continue in such cases with a zero-tolerance policy.

Page proofs: Page proofs of the accepted manuscripts will be sent to the authors (principal and co-authors) for checking and approval.

Checklist for authors 
____Title page, including full name, academic degrees, and institutional affiliation and position of each author, and author to whom correspondence and reprint requests are to be sent, including address, business and home phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail address
____Structured Abstract 
____Article proper, including references and figure legends
____Figures, in TIF or EPS format
____Tables
____Copyright release statement, signed by all authors
____Photographic consent statement(s)
____Conflict of interest statement
____Permissions to reproduce previously published material

Statements and opinions expressed in the articles herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the editor(s) or publisher, and the editor(s) and publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such material.