Submissions

Original Article

JNMA accept researches conducted in the field of basic and clinical medical sciences, medical education, public health, hospital and healthcare management, allied health sciences and research and publication ethics. It undergoes a rigorous peer-review process. Please expect lots of communication from the JNMA.
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using appropriate reporting guideline), 5. A copy of the ethical approval letter, 6. Checklist of a reporting guideline, 7. Blinded copy of manuscript.

Required Guidelines and Checklist

JNMA requires the use of an appropriate reporting guideline when writing any health research manuscript.

You must submit a completed checklist for the relevant guideline (and flow diagram if applicable) alongside your manuscript, indicating the manuscript page on which each checklist item is found. Editable checklists for reporting guidelines can be found here or on the EQUATOR Network site, which also gives general information on how to choose the correct guideline and why guidelines are important. Using a checklist helps to ensure you have used a guideline correctly.

At the minimum, your article must report the content addressed by each item of the identified checklist or state that the item was not considered in the study and, if relevant, the reason why not (for example, if you did not use blinding, your article should explain this). Meeting these basic reporting requirements will greatly improve the value of your manuscript, may facilitate/enhance the peer review process, and may enhance its chances for eventual publication.

Checklists are not simply an administrative hurdle. We ask you to complete a checklist because this helps you to check that you have included all of the important information in your article and because it helps our editors and reviewer to complete the same check. If the checklist indicates an item that you have not addressed in your manuscript, please either explain in the manuscript text why this information is not relevant to your study or add the relevant information.

Authors must check the EQUATOR Network, CONSORT and STROBE sites for any reporting guidelines that apply to your study design and ensure they include any required supporting information recommended by the relevant guidelines. Documentation (checklist) for specific studies should be uploaded as supporting information during manuscript submission. 

Guidelines for Specific Study Types
Some common study types and the appropriate guidelines are listed below. If you cannot find an appropriate guideline here, search the full EQUATOR database and talk to our editor.

You may need to use more than one guideline, depending on your research. For example, if you randomly assigned human participants to one of two interventions, then conducted unstructured interviews with each participant, you will need to use CONSORT, COREQ, and TIDIER together. To make sure you collect all of the relevant guidelines, check each major heading, even if you have already found a relevant guideline under a previous major heading.

If you are reporting a protocol
- Use the SPIRIT guideline for the protocol of a clinical trial
- Use the PRISMA-P guideline for the protocol of a systematic review

If you are reporting a review of a section of the existing literature
- Use the ENTREQ guideline for a review of studies that use descriptive data, such as unstructured interviews (qualitative data)
- Use the MOOSE guideline for a review of observational studies
- Use the PRISMA guideline for any other kind of systematic review or meta-analysis

If you are reporting on animal research
- Use the ARRIVE guideline for research on animals in a lab
- Use the REFLECT guideline for research on livestock

If you are reporting descriptive data (either alone or alongside quantitative data)
- Use the COREQ guideline for reporting unstructured interviews and focus groups
- Use the CARE guideline for reporting one case study or a series of case studies, (SCARE for surgical case report)
- Use the SRQR guideline for any other descriptive data (qualitative research)

If you are reporting research into diagnosis
- Use the STARD guideline if you compared the accuracy of a diagnostic test with an established reference standard test
- Use the REMARK guideline if you evaluated the prognostic value of a biomarker
-Use the TRIPOD guideline if you developed, validated, or updated a prognostic or diagnostic prediction modelling tool.

If you are reporting research into an intervention or treatment on people
- Use the TIDIER guideline to fully describe your intervention
- Use the CHEERS guideline for an economic evaluation of the interventions

If you are reporting research into an intervention, treatment, exposure, or protective factor on people
- Use the CARE guideline for reporting one case study or a series of case studies, (SCARE for surgical case report)
- Use the CONSORT guideline or one of its extensions:
         If you selected your participants before they received the intervention/exposure/etc. under study, AND
         You controlled which intervention/exposure/etc. they each received, AND
         You used a random allocation method to decide which intervention/exposure/etc. they each received.
         ie: a randomised controlled trial

Use the STROBE guideline or one of its extensions:
- If you selected your participants after they received the intervention/exposure/etc. under study, OR
- You selected your participants before they received the intervention/exposure/etc. under study AND you did not control which intervention/exposure/etc. they received (they decided/their doctor decided/life just happened)
  ie: an observational study (cross-sectional, case-control, cohort)

Use the TREND guideline:
- If you selected your participants before they received the intervention/exposure/etc. under study, AND
- If CARE , CONSORT, and STROBE are not applicable to your research AND
- You used a non-random way to decide which intervention/exposure/etc. your participants received, such as which hospital they went to or what their clinical symptoms were.
  ie: a non-randomised trial

Clinical Trials
JNMA follows the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of a clinical trial:
"a clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. Clinical trials may also be referred to as interventional trials. Interventions include but are not restricted to drugs, cells and other biological products, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, etc."

Registering Clinical Trials
All clinical trials submitted to JNMA must be entered in a publicly accessible registry approved by the WHO or ICMJE. See the list of approved registries.
JNMA consider prospective trial registration (that is, registration before participant enrollment has begun) to be best publication practice, as recommended by the ICMJE. Clinical trials that began to enrol participants before ICMJE recommendations took effect on July 1, 2005. We follow ICMJE that the trial submitted to JNMA has to be registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment and must contain a data sharing statement.

Case Reports

This section includes report of a case with literature review that includes, an unexpected association between diseases or symptoms, an unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient, findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect, unique or rare feature of a disease, unique therapeutic approaches, approaches to a case report, a patient whose diagnosis was difficult to make, describe changes in one or more patients with chronic conditions over an extended time period, report on two or more patients with similar characteristics who received different interventions and had different outcomes, atypical management of patients with common problems, atypical patient presentations, apply theory to patient or client management, report on an administrative or academic experience. Please use the CARE Case Report Checklist while preparing your case report taking an account of CARE Flow Diagram.
Case report provides an opportunity for the scientist to work further therefore, we are interested in advance medical science and spawn research; describe rare, perplexing, or novel diagnostic features of a disease state; report therapeutic challenges, controversies, or dilemmas; describe a new approach to treatment and patient care, teach humanistic lessons to the health care professionals; review a unique job description of a health care professional that improves patient care; report new medical errors or medication errors; discover a device malfunction that results in patient harm; describe drug adverse effects and patient toxicity; life-threatening adverse events; dangerous and predictable adverse effects that are poorly appreciated and rarely recognized; a therapeutic failure or a lack of therapeutic efficacy; use of life-saving techniques not previously documented; uncover barriers to patient adherence; discover an interaction between a drug and a laboratory test that yields a false-positive or false-negative result; effect of drugs in pregnancy and lactation; use of technology to improve patient outcomes. It undergoes a peer-review process. Please download the Case Report Consent Form, get written consent and put the original on the patient chart and provide a copy of it during your submission.
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using CARE or SCARE reporting guideline), 5. A copy case report consent form, 6. CARE Checklist.

Student JNMA

This section focuses on the articles written by medical, dental and health students. Students are welcomed to submit their perspectives, voice and experiences related to communicate with policymakers, health planners and academicians. 
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using authors' guideline)

Review Article

Review article summarises the current state of understanding on a topic and analyses or discusses research previously published by others on the subject matter, rather than reporting new experimental results and which does not fit into the category of a systematic review. They are thorough literature reviews that identify historical and current trends in the topic, gaps in the research (areas for further exploration), and current debates or controversies.  It has to be about 3000 words without counting abstract (200 words) and references (>50 and usually <100). It undergoes a rigorous peer-review process. 
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using authors' guideline)

Medical Education

JNMA accept perspective on undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing medical education. All issues of current interest, including teaching methods, curriculum reform, the training of medical teachers, the selection of entrants and assessment techniques, curriculum development, evaluations of performance, assessment of training needs and evidence-based medicine are accepted, with word limit up to 1500 words excluding abstract of 150 words. It undergoes the peer review process.
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using authors' guideline)

Short Communication

These are research article which doesn't fit exactly into a research article but findings are interesting, e.g. pilot study. It undergoes the peer review process.
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using authors' guideline)

Letter to the Editor

The section includes a reaction and issue relating to JNMA, be it a comment relating a recent article, an elaboration of an important discovery, or simply a thought-provoking commentary of fewer than 1000 words without an abstract.
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using authors' guideline)

Viewpoint

The article in this section is based on issues related to health sciences to raise the voice, awareness, new ideas, thought to provoke concepts, and personal expert opinion to improve the health.
Required Submission Documents: 1. Forwarding Letter, 2. Authorship, 3. Declaration, 4. Manuscript (in JNMA template using authors' guideline)