Author Guidelines

Author guidelines

CURIOUS- Journal of rehabilitation and clinical research is a bi-annually open access journal publishing under the Sehat Medical Complex- Center of Excellence in Clinical Research, University of Lahore. The journal encourages submissions that are pertinent to the study or practice of physiotherapy, and other allied health and rehabilitation sciences.

Article Types:

• Audit
• Case Report
• Case Series
• Comments on Published Article
• Innovation
• Letter to the Editor
• Meta-Analysis
• Narrative Review
• Original Article
• Research Article
• Short Communication
• Short Report
• Special Communication
• Systematic Reviews

Rights and ethics in publication

The Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' ethical guidelines (http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html) are followed. Authors are expected to follow these guidelines.

Human Studies

The Materials and Methods section of articles concerning research involving human subjects must contain a statement that the study was approved by the institutional review board and that informed consent, as well as any relevant HIPAA consent, was acquired from each patient. When reporting on studies involving human subjects, it is important to guarantee that (a) all patients gave their essential and informed permission and (b) the study protocol complied with the 1975 Helsinki Declaration as evidenced by prior approval by the relevant institutional review committee. Not by initials, but by number, identify the patients. A public trials registry is required for the registration of clinical trials. Indicate the registry's name and number. Articles produced by a specific institution require the necessary authority's approval.

Informed consent

Ethics committee approval and informed consent are required for studies involving patients or volunteers, and this information needs to be included in the article. If an author desires to incorporate case information, other personal information, or photos of patients or other people in publication, the necessary consents, permissions, and releases must be obtained. Although copies should not be sent to the journal, written consents must be kept by the author. The author is not required to submit copies of the consents or proof that such consents have been received unless specifically requested by the journal in unusual situations (for instance, if a legal concern occurs).

Conflict of Interest

All authors should declare conflict of interest if any. Conflict of interest may include grants or honorarium, memberships, data ownership rights, ownership of study location etc. Conflict of interest should be clearly stated in attached statement form before references. In case if there is no conflict of interest, “none to declare” should be mentioned.

Submission declaration and verification

When an article is submitted, it implies that the work it describes has never been published before (aside from an abstract, a published lecture, or an academic thesis) that it is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere; that it has received the tacit or explicit approval of the responsible authorities where the work was done; and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere

CURIOUS would review all submitted manuscripts for originality. We will use Turnitin services for similarity check and those exceeding limit of ≥17% similarity would be returned for further correction.

Authorship

Before submitting their article, writers are obliged to carefully evaluate the list of authors and the order in which they should be listed. They should also include the final author list at the time of the initial submission. Before the article has been accepted, author names in the authorship list should only be added, deleted, or rearranged with the journal editor's permission. The corresponding author must send the following to the Editor in order to propose such a change: (a) the justification for the author list change, and (b) formal confirmation (email, letter) from all authors indicating their agreement with the inclusion, removal, or reorganization. This includes authorization from the author who is being added or removed in the case of author addition or removal.

Open Access:

This is an open-access journal: all articles will be free for everyone to read and download.

Submission of Article:

Step-by-step instructions are provided by our online submission system when you enter your article's details and submit your files. Your article files are converted by the system into a single PDF file that is utilized for peer review. Your post will need to be typeset before it can be published, thus editable files, such Word or LaTeX, are necessary. Email is used for all correspondence, including requests for modification and notifications of the Editor's decision.

Peer Review:

• After receiving manuscripts, CURIOUS performs an initial desk review. All those manuscripts are likely to be rejected, if found any ethical breach, conflict of interest, poor writing etc.
• Next step after initial scrutiny is peer review process, that would be single blind process and manuscripts would be sent to external peer reviewers.
• Papers that are judged appropriate are subsequently normally sent to at least two independent, experienced reviewers who will evaluate the paper's scientific merit. The Editor is in charge of making the final determination regarding whether or not an article will be accepted.
• External peer review would also be applicable to articles by editorial board members.
• Editors are not involved in choices on papers that they have authored, have had authored by relatives, friends, or coworkers, or that are about goods or services in which the editor has an interest. All journal procedures apply to such submissions, and peer review is carried out independently of the appropriate editor and their research organizations
• If editor in chief, author an article, that would not need to be peer reviewed.

Before submission- Formatting Guidelines:

Organization of the manuscript:

Manuscripts that don't meet these requirements will be sent back to the author(s) for the necessary formatting changes before evaluation. Include the writers' names only on the title page since the reviewers aren't allowed to know who they are. For blinding purposes, send the manuscript as two different files: one with the title page and the other without the author names.

All text should be double-spaced with 2.5-cm margins, including the references list, tables, and figure legends. Each line in the margin should be numbered using continuous numbering. Title page, abstract, body of the text, references, figure legends, tables, and figures should all be in the correct order.

Title Page:

• Title: clear and precise. Systems for retrieving information frequently employ titles. When possible, stay away from acronyms and formulas.
• Names and connections of the authors: There shouldn't be more than six authors on a manuscript. Justification is required for a higher number. If there is any doubt about the family name (such as a duplicate name), please make it explicit. Place the affiliation addresses of the authors (where the work was completed) below the names. After the author's name and before the relevant address, place a lowercase superscript letter to indicate all affiliations. Include each affiliation's complete postal address, along with the name of the nation and, if available, the author's email address.
• Academic Degrees of Authors: Include the highest academic degrees earned by the authors, both in full and in abbreviated form (maximum two).
• Composing Author: Clearly state who will be in charge of correspondence throughout the refereeing, publication, and post-publication processes. Make sure to provide phone numbers, together with the country and area code, in addition to the full postal address and the email address. The associated author is responsible for updating the contact information.
• Permanent or current address: A "current address" (or "permanent address") may be included in a footnote next to an author's name if they have relocated since the work detailed in the article was completed or if they were visiting at the time. The primary affiliation address must be the location where the author actually completed the work. For these footnotes, superscript Arabic numbers are utilized.
• The running head: Give the running head on the title page a brief title that is no more than 45 characters, including spaces.
• Words or phrases: List up to five important words in alphabetical order on the title page. Avoid using generic phrases, plural nouns, and complex concepts while using American spelling (avoid, for example, "and", "of"). Use acronyms sparingly; only those that are well-known in the industry may be acceptable. These terms will be indexed using these keywords

Abstract:

Word count limit for structured abstract should be 250 words.

The abstract must not contain footnotes, statistical findings, or references. On a separate page, type the abstract. Structured abstract should include following five sections:

• Objective
• Methods
• Results
• Conclusions
• Clinical relevance

Introduction:

Include the study's background, justification, the issues or hypotheses raised, and innovation in three to four paragraphs. Each of the queries or hypotheses have to be significant enough to be included in the abstract.

Materials and Methodology:

Give enough information so that a different researcher can duplicate the work. Methods that have been previously published should be summarized and referenced. Use quote marks and include the source if you are directly quoting from a previously published procedure. It is also necessary to indicate any adjustments made to current techniques. The statistical approach that was utilized to examine the data should be specifically highlighted in the description of the statistical procedures. The most effective approach meets the study question/hypothesis given in the Introduction and fits the data gathered.

Results:

Present the results in maximum of 3 tables and figures. Results should be precise and contain statistical answer to hypothesis or research question.

Tables:

Tables should be numbered in the order they appear in the text. Table footnotes should be placed below the table's body and should be marked with a superscript sign rather than text. Avoid vertical restrictions. Use tables sparingly, and make sure that the information they include does not repeat findings that have already been covered in the article. tabular data with two spaces. A different page should be used for each table. Send in long tables and expanded data to be published in the online journal as supplemental information.

Figures:

The order of the figures in the text and their numbers must match. Any person who appears in a photo should either have their written consent to be recognized included, or their identity should be obscured.

Discussion:

Briefly explain the rationale and the questions in which you should investigate the main constraints and contrast the study's findings with earlier research. Include one paragraph for each hypothesis or inquiry. Compare the present findings to those that have already been published. The Journal does not normally have a Conclusion section because it is usually duplicated in the abstract.

References:

For publications in the Journal, Vancouver style is required. Minimum of 25 references should be mentioned. References must be cited in the same sequential numerical order that they were first mentioned in the text, with the reference number appearing in superscript. References found in tables and figures must be numbered consecutively with references found in the text. All references must be accurate, and the author is responsible for checking them against. References should be double-spaced on pages that are not part of the text, and they should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they are cited. Avoid using automatic list numbering or endnote systems since they are lost when the text is transformed into the format required for publishing. IN case of citing software, unlink the reference list from the text for the submission file.

Units and Abbreviations:

The use of acronyms in the text is not generally encouraged in this journal. However, phrases like 95% confidence interval (CI), standard deviation (SD), order of magnitude (OR), risk ratio (RR), and other such frequently used terms don't need to be defined when they are first used. These terms typically appear within parenthesis. The journal only employs acronyms and units that have been accepted.

Acknowledgments:

Do not add acknowledgements as a footnote to the title or anywhere else on the title page. Instead, group them together in a distinct section before the references at the end of the article. Please include the people who assisted with the research here (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.)

Authorship Criteria:

According to ICMJE guidelines, the following factors should be used to determine authorship:

1. Significant contributions to data collection, analysis, and interpretation, or idea and design.
2. Composing the article or critically editing it for key intellectual substance.
3. Final approval of the published version.
4. Anyone who satisfies the aforementioned three requirements is qualified to be listed as an author on the manuscript.
5. One of the writers must grant the article's final clearance and serve as the article's data accuracy guarantor.

Article Processing Charges Fee:

There are NO processing fees.

Article Publishing Charges/Fee:

There are NO publication fees.

Submission Check list:

The list below will be helpful when reviewing an article one more time before submitting it to the journal for review. For more information on any item, kindly refer to this Guide for Authors.

Make sure the following things are there:

• The corresponding author has been identified and provided with contact information as follows:
  • Full postal address; email address
• All required files have been submitted and include the following:
  • All figure captions, all tables, and keywords (including title, description, footnotes)
• Additional considerations
• All references included in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa. The manuscript has been "spell-checked" and "grammar-checked." The references are all in the proper format for this journal.
• The use of copyrighted content from other sources has been authorized. (including the Internet)

After Submission:

Submission of Revised articles:

The authors of submissions that have been amended and resubmitted are required to systematically address each and every criticism made during the original review and to include their comments in a table with a precise description of where each modification was made.

After Acceptance:

If we don't have an e-mail address for the associated author, paper proofs will be delivered by mail instead. Alternatively, we'll include a link in the email so the authors can download the files themselves. We respectfully request writers to submit their proof modifications to us within two days in order to facilitate a quick publication process for the paper.