Publication Policy

Following are the objective of publication policy for The Healer Journal

  • To establish a clear and sound framework for the encouragement of publications;
  • To protect the rights of authors, reviewers and editors with respect to the publication of any research;
  • To transfer the copy rights of manuscript to The Healer Journal at the time of submission through transparent and clear policy;
  • To formulate and implement research ethics policies so that uniform criteria for ethical reviews can be practiced;
  • To protect the rights of research participants and ensure their safety, privacy, confidentiality and consent during research;
  • To formulate and implement blind peer-review quality criteria and external blind peer-review process for publication;
  • To establish a policy regarding conflict of interests and disclosure of funding sources for research and publication;
  • To establish a policy of selection of editorial team members, their editorial freedom, continuous monitoring and terms of accountability for a defined period;

 

Ethics and consent

This Policy is applicable to all ethical permissions and approvals for publications in the course of research work or study at the Institute or with Institute Support or work outside the Institute intended for publication. The research work must be submitted to the research journal for publication. Ethics approval for research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. In case of device or any material indicated in text, a declaration by author/s should be submitted that no financial benefit has been taken from manufacturer/importer of that product by any author. In case of experimental interventions, permission from ethical committee of the hospital should be taken beforehand. All interventional studies submitted for publication should carry Institutional Ethical & Research Committee approval letter.

 

Consent for publication

For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants, written informed consent for the publication of these must be obtained from the participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.

 

Publication of Clinical Trial

This Policy follows International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) criteria. ICMJE defines a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between an intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g., phase 1 trials), would be exempted.

 

Availability of data and materials

This Policy is applicable to all research materials and data in the course of work or study at the Institute with Institute Support or submitted to the research journal of the Institute. Submission of a manuscript to The Healer Journal implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant’s confidentiality. The authors are encouraged to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible. The Healer Journal requires that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI).

 

Standards of reporting

This Policy is applicable to the checklists submitted to the research journal of the Institute. The Healer Journal advocates complete and transparent reporting of physiotherapy and rehabilitation research according to the standards, including:

 

 

Conflict of interests

This Policy states that The Healer Journal requires authors to declare conflict of interests in relation to their work. All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘conflict of interests’ section at the end of the manuscript and also in letter of Authorship listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial) duly signed by all authors.

 

Authorship

This Policy states that The Healer Journal requires letter of Authorship duly signed by corresponding author, authors and co-authors as compulsory requirement for publication. Authorship confers credit and has important academic, social, and financial implications. Authorship also implies responsibility and accountability for published work. The Healer Journal requires information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in a submitted research study as authorship does not communicate what contributions qualified an individual to be an author. The letter of Authorship for The Healer Journal is based on the following criteria. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged.

 

  • 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.

 

Types of Manuscripts and subsections

This Policy is uniformly applicable to all manuscripts including Editorial, Original Research Article, case reports, case series, short communications, clinical practice articles, systematic reviews, critical reviews, Medical Humanities and letters to Editor. Between 3 to 10 key words should be given for all the category of manuscripts under the abstracts as per mesh [medical subject heading]. This policy includes all subsections including Editorial, Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Sciences. The Healer Journal has adopted ICMJE criteria for types of manuscripts in subsections. The material submitted for publication may be in the form of an Original research (Randomized controlled trial - RCT, Meta-analysis of RCT, Quasi experimental study, Case Control study, Cohort study, Observational Study with statistical support etc.), a Review Article, Commentary, a Case Report, Recent Advances, New techniques, Debates, Adverse Drug Reports, Current Practices, Clinical Practice Article, Short Article, KAP (Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices) study, An Audit Report, Evidence Based Report, Short Communication or a Letter to the Editor. Ideas and Innovations can be reported as changes made by the authors to an existing technique or development of a new technique or instrument. Original articles should normally report original research of relevance to clinical medicine. The original paper should be of about 2500-3000 words excluding abstract and references. It should contain a structured abstract of about 250 words. Three to 10 keywords should be given for an original article as per MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). There should be no more than three tables or illustrations. The data should be supported with 20 to 25 references, which should include local up to 10 years as well as international references up to 5 years. Most of the references should be from last five years from the date of submission. Short communications should be of about 1000 - 2200 words, having a structured abstract of about 250 words with two tables or illustrations and not more than 20 references.

 

Clinical case reports must be of academic and educational value and provide relevance of the disease being reported as unusual. Brief or negative research findings may appear in this section. The word count of case report should be 800 words with a minimum of 3 key words. It should have a non-structured abstract of about 100 - 150 words (case specific) with maximum of 5 - 6 references. Not more than 2 figures shall be accepted. Systematic Review article should consist of critical overview/analysis of some relatively narrow topic providing background and the recent development with the reference of original literature. It should incorporate author's original work on the same subject. The length of the systematic review should be of 3000 to 5000 words with minimum of 40 and maximum of 60 references

The length of the review article should be of 2500 to 3000 words with minimum of 40 and maximum of 60 references. It should have non-structured abstract of 150 words with minimum 3 key words. Letters should normally not exceed 400 words, with not more than 5 references and be signed by all the authors-maximum 3 are allowed. Preference is given to those that take up points made in contributions published recently in the journal. Letters may be published with a response from the author of the article being discussed. Discussions beyond the initial letter and response will not be entertained for publication. Letters to the editor may be sent for peer review if they report a scientific data.

 

Publication policy for special issues

The Healer Journal requires specific publication standards and scientific merit for publications. Scientific merit of a journal's content is based on validity, importance, originality of research submitted to The Healer Journal, and contribution to the coverage of the field. The Healer Journal requires following steps for publication;

 

Manuscript received by the editor, then checking plagiarism through “Turnitin”, after acceptability limit of plagiarism according to similarity report, manuscript forwarded to in-house editors, statistician, bibliographers and section reviewers, then final review by the blind peer-reviewers including internal reviewers and external reviewers, explicit process of external peer reviews, based on the review reports by the peer reviewers, the manuscripts are either approved or rejected or returned to authors for improvement/ revision. All approved are accepted for publication in The Healer Journal.           

 

To enable effective tracking of the key resources used to produce the scientific findings reported in the biomedical literature, authors are expected to include a full description of all resources with enough information to allow them to be uniquely identified. The Healer Journal encourages authors to use unique Digital Object Identifier (ODI) within their manuscript to identify their model organisms, antibodies, or tools. Few important points are as below:

 

  • The title of the article. Concise titles are easier to read than long, convoluted ones. Authors should include all information in the title that will make electronic retrieval of the article both sensitive and specific.
  • Authors’ names and Title of the Program. The names and other relevant information should be on title page only to ensure blind peer review of research article. The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed.
  • Disclaimers, if any.
  • Name, designation, place and contact of Corresponding authors. The name, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript.
  • The name and address of the Supervisor / Co-Supervisor (s), if thesis based article
  • An abstract (requirements for length and structured format vary by type of manuscript) should follow the title page. The abstract should provide the objective, methods, results, conclusions, and key words. These will assist indexers in cross-indexing the article and may be published with the abstract. Terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus should be used. 
  • Introduction provides a context or background for the study (i.e., the nature of the problem and its significance). State the specific purpose or research objective of, or hypothesis tested by, the study or observation; the research objective is often more sharply focused when stated as a question. Both the main and secondary objectives should be made clear, and any pre-specified subgroup analyses should be described. Give only strictly pertinent references and do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported.
  • Patients and Methods section should include only information that was available at the time of the study. Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer’s name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods; provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known; describe new or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations.
  • When data are summarized in the Results section, the numeric results should be provided as the absolute numbers from which the derivatives were calculated, and should specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. The tables and figures should be used to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support.
  • The discussion emphasizes the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. Link the conclusions with the goals of the study but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not adequately supported by the data. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. State new hypotheses when warranted.
  • References should be in Vancouver’s style and numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in parentheses. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Consult the list of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE, published annually as a separate publication by the National Library of Medicine. The international references should be cited within five years and local within 10 years in manuscript.
  • Illustrations (Figures) should be either professionally drawn or photo-graphed, or submitted as photographic quality digital prints. In addition to requiring a version of the figures suitable for printing, the Healer Journal requires electronic files of figures in a format (e.g., JPEG or GIF) that will produce high quality images (30 dpi) in the online version of the journal; authors should review the images before submission for quality.
  • Letters, numbers, and symbols on Figures should therefore be clear and even throughout, and of sufficient size that when reduced for publication each item will still be legible. Figures should be made as self-explanatory as possible, since many will be used directly in slide presentations. Titles and detailed explanations belong in the legends, however, not on the illustrations themselves.
  • If photographs of people are used, either the subjects must not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use the photograph. When-ever possible permission for publication should be obtained. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text. Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background.
  • Legends for Illustrations (Figures) should be type or print out legends for illustrations using double spacing, starting on a separate page, with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations. When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend.
  • Measurements of length, height, weight, and volume should be reported in metric units (meter, kilogram, or liter) or their decimal multiples. Temperatures should be in degrees Celsius. Blood pressures should be in millimeters of mercury, unless other units are specifically required.

 

Citations

This Policy is applicable to all publications in the course of work or study using citations submitted to the research journal of the Institute. Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Editorial, Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature in Vancouver’s style. Excessive self-citation is discouraged and should not exceed 20%.