The Journal of Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences University, (JKIMSU), (ISSN 2231-4261) is peer-reviewed, open-access journal published quarterly (January to March, April to June, July to September and October to December) in two formats; printed and online (epub- ahead of print). The main aims of this journal are to publish novel and interesting observations and advance scientific knowledge in all the branches of medicine and allied sciences. The JKIMSU provides an international and interdisciplinary forum for the dissemination of peer-reviewed review articles, original articles, case reports, short communication, letters to the editor and book reviews in the field of all branches of medical sciences. The advisory board and editorial board of JKIMSU includes well known eminent scientists from India and abroad in all the branches of medicine to produce a high-quality scientific journal an impact on researchers and practitioners.

Most of the articles accepted for publication will be based on the work carried out as part of a research project or postgraduate/ doctoral program.     

Contributions are expected to be of a high standard, not only in respect of subject matter and its treatment, but also in the quality of writing. Particular attention to be given in clarity and conciseness of expression.

Submission of a manuscript accompanies certification on the part of the author(s) that the article submitted has not been published, nor is being considered for publication in any other similar journal. Contributions may, however, be considered based on a prior conference presentation.
           
All contributions that are considered by the editors to be within the aim and scope of the journal are subjected to peer review by at least two reviewers. The decision of publication is made by the editorial board as per the direction of the reviewers and the responses to the queries of reviewers from the author(s).

The journal is owned and managed by Krishna Vishwa Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University), Karad (Maharashtra) India.

The scientific information published in the journal is the views of the contributors and not of the Journal of Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences University,  or the editorial board. The JKIMSU or editorial board cannot be held responsible for any wrong scientific information published in the journal. Duplication or reduplication of earlier published in any journal will not be entertained by the JKIMSU. The Editorial Board has the right to determine the style and if necessary, edit and shorten any material accepted for publication. Every effort will be made to notify authors promptly of editorial decisions.“Declaration of authorship” duly signed by all authors and letter to the editor in chief must be accompanied while submissions of manuscript and “copyright transfer form” once again duly signed by all authors if the manuscript is accepted for publication. Articles accepted would be copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author, which has to be returned within three days. Correction received after that period may not be included. Electronic submission by e-mail is preferred or one copy of a manuscript, one set of quality glossy prints or CD should be submitted to the Editor in Chief of JKIMSU.

Journal of Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences University  is a member of Committee on Publication Ethics' [COPE] and following all guidelines of COPE regarding the publication ethics and  no malpractice is observed till date.

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions

1.      Conception and design or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
2.      Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3.      Final approval of the version to be published.

Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must be met. 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 for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content, including the author list and author contribution statements.

The corresponding author is accountable to reached that all authors have agreed to be included in the manuscript, and have approved the manuscript submission to the journal, and for managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors, before and after publication. The corresponding author is also responsible for submitting a competing interests' statement on behalf of all authors of the paper.

In multi-group collaborations study, the senior member of each collaborating group should take responsibility for the contributions to the manuscript and will be responsible for ensuring transparency, reproducibility, retrievable for reanalysis, presentation accurately, foreseeing and minimizing obstacles to the sharing of data, code, and materials.

At the time submission, the corresponding author should take written permission from the authors of any unpublished material cited in the manuscript such as others' data, in press manuscripts, personal communications or work in preparation. The corresponding author also should obviously recognize any material within the manuscript, such as figures, that has been published earlier somewhere else and give written consent from authors of the previous work and/or publishers, as suitable, for the re-use of such material.

The corresponding author is accountable for the accuracy of all content in the manuscript proof, including the names of coauthors, addresses and affiliations after manuscript acceptance.

Order of the author should be based on the relative contribution towards the study and writing the manuscript. Any changes to the author list after submission manuscript to the journal, such as a change in the order of the authors or the deletion or addition of authors, should be approved by every author of the manuscript.  The JKIMSU editors are not responsible to examine or adjudicate authorship disputes before or after publication. If such disagreements cannot be resolved amongst authors, then it should be informed to the related institutional authority.

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently changed the job then the current address may also be stated.

For a study from a single institute, the number of contributors should not exceed six. For a case-report, brief communication, letter to the editor, and review article the number of contributors should not exceed four. A justification should be included if the number of contributors exceeds these limits.

The detailed guidelines and advice about How to submit a paper to a scientific journal is given on the following link:
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And How to write a scientific paper is given on the following link:
https://www.scidev.net/global/publishing/practical-guide/how-do-i-write-a-scientific-paper-.html

The authors should ensure the research the manuscript is clear and well written in English since the majority of authors whose first language is not English often find difficult in writing manuscript in good English language. Therefore, it is better to ask a colleague whose native language is English to review the research manuscript before submission to a journal.  

The editors of the JKIMSU strive to give authors with an outstandingly efficient, fair and thoughtful submission, peer-review and publishing experience. 

• Original articles: Randomized controlled trials, intervention studied, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rate. Up to 3000 words excluding about 30 references and abstract.
• Review articles (including for Ethics forum, Education forum, E-Medicine, etc.): Systemic critical assessments of literature and data sources. Up to 4000 words excluding about 90 references and abstract. For review articles, include the method (literature search) in the abstract as well as in the introduction section. Usually, review articles are invited by the Editor-in-chief from people of eminence with vast personal experience in the field.
• Case reports: new/interesting/very rare cases can be reported. Cases with clinical significance or implications will be given priority. However, mere reporting of a rare case is not encouraged and may not be considered. Up to 1000 words excluding references and abstract and up to 10 references.
• Brief communication: Study with clinical interest or unusual presentation of a disease can be sent. Up to 1500 words and 15 references.
• Announcements of conferences, meetings, courses and other items likely to be of interest to the readers should be submitted with the name and address of the person from whom additional information can be obtained.
• Editorial, Guest Editorial, Review Article, Commentary, Expert’s Comments, and Symposia articles are solicited by the editorial

Authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could influence or bias the work. Although an author may not feel there are conflicts, disclosure of relationships and interests affords a more transparent process, leading to an accurate and objective assessment of the work. Awareness of real or perceived conflicts of interests is a perspective to which the readers are entitled and is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation for consultancy work is inappropriate.
Examples of potential conflicts of interests that are directly or indirectly related to the research may include but are not limited to the following:

• Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number)

1. Honoraria for speaking at symposia

• Financial support for attending symposia and educational programs
  Employment or consultation
  
•  Support from a project sponsor
• Position on advisory board or board of directors or another type of management relationships
  
• Multiple affiliations
  
• Financial relationships, for example, equity ownership or investment interest
• Intellectual property rights (e.g. patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights)
• Holdings of spouse and/or children that may have a financial interest in the work

In addition, interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to this research, or professional interests or personal beliefs that may influence your research.

The corresponding author collects the conflict of interest disclosure forms from all authors. In author collaborations where formal agreements for representation allow it, it is sufficient for the corresponding author to sign the disclosure form on behalf of all authors.

The corresponding author will include a summary statement on the title page that is separate from their manuscript, that reflects what is recorded in the potential conflict of interest disclosure form(s).

See below examples of disclosures:

Funding: This study was funded by X (grant number X).

Conflict of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stock in Company Y. Author C is a member of committee Z.

If no conflict exists, the authors should state:
Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Plagiarism is unacknowledged copying or an attempt to misattribute original authorship, whether of ideas, text, or results. It can include, "stealing or misuse of intellectual property and the considerable unattributed textual copying of another's work". In plagiarism, large important texts have been cut-and-pasted without suitable acknowledgment.
When extensive exactly reuse of text from published data, the author should make sure to give suitable acknowledgment and citation to the other works. The reuse of parts of text from an author's previous research publication is called as self-plagiarism, for this also suitable acknowledgment and citation is essential to avoid creating an ambiguous perception of a unique contribution for the reader.

Duplicate publication occurs when an author reuses considerable parts of his or her own published work without providing suitable references. This can result in publishing an indistinguishable paper in many journals, to only adding a small amount of new data to an earlier published paper.

The digital images submitted along with a manuscript must be minimally processed.  A certain degree of image processing is acceptable for publication. However, the final image should properly represent the original data and conform to community standards.

Editors may request the unprocessed data files to assist in manuscript evaluation during the peer review process and if the author is unable to provide these data then, we may need to stop the peer review process until we received the raw data.  We may also request raw data even after the publication of the research manuscript if any issues that may occur with published papers. Therefore, we request you to kindly preserve the unprocessed data and metadata files after even after publication of the research paper.

Authors should also take care to avoid misrepresentation during data acquirement.  Kindly give all details regarding image gaining tools and image processing software packages used and document key image-gathering settings and processing manipulations in the Material and Methods section of the manuscript.

If the images are collected at different times or from different places should not be combined into a single image, in such cases the borders should be clearly demarcated in the figure and the explanation should be given in the legend.
Touch-up tools use, like cloning and healing tools in Photoshop, or any feature that intentionally obscures manipulations are unacceptable.

All types of articles submitted to JKIMSU journals are peer-reviewed. We are sending a research manuscript and standard manuscript peer- review format to two peer-reviewers and requesting them to submit their reports within 15 days after sending the manuscript for review.

All the submitted research manuscripts are read by the editorial staff, and only those manuscripts, which fulfill our editorial criteria are sent for formal review to save the time of authors and peer-reviewers. Those research manuscripts scientifically inadequate, inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review.
Selected research manuscripts are sent ideally for two reviewers; however, sometimes it may send to statistics or particular technique personnel for special advice is needed. The editors then take a final decision based on the following reviewers' advice:

• Accept, with or without editorial revisions
• Request the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached
• Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission
  
• Reject, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems

Reviewers can recommend above mentioned action, however, they should keep in mind that the other reviewers of a particular manuscript may have dissimilar technical expertise and/or views, and the editors may have to make a decision based on contradictory suggestions. The accurate reviewers’ reports, gives the idea to editors for selection or rejection of the research manuscript.

Editorial try to assess the strength of the advice suggested by each reviewer and by the authors, and we may also consider other information not available to either party. Our main focus is to our readers and to the scientific community, and in deciding how best to serve them.

We may go back to reviewers for the additional suggestion, mainly in cases where they differ with each other, or where the authors believe they have been misunderstood on points of fact. Therefore, we ask that reviewers supposed to be enthusiastic to give follow-up guidance as requested. We know that the reviewers are usually reluctant to be drawn into prolonged disputes; therefore, we try our level best to keep the discussion to the minimum we judge essential to give a fair hearing for the authors.

Selection of reviewer is important to the publication process and we select the reviewers mainly on their expertise, reputation, specific suggestions and our earlier experience of a reviewer's uniqueness. We select referees who are fast, cautious and give the reasoning for their views, whether strongly serious or merciful.

Before sending manuscripts to review, we ensure the potential of reviewers. Reviewers should not be disclosed or misuse the confidential information of the manuscript. We have subject-wise reviewers database, also we request authors to suggest the possible reviewers  

JKIMSU journal is dedicated to quick editorial decisions and publication. The efficient editorial process is an important service to our authors and to the scientific community. We give 15 days' time to reviewers for submission of reviewers report. if the reviewer is agreed to review the manuscript. 

We do not disclose the referees' names to authors or authors' names to referees' unless a referee happily signs their comments to the authors. Throughout the review process and even after the review process, we keep referees name anonymous. 

The peer-review process is a vital part of the publication process, which improves the quality of manuscripts in all aspects. It provides an independent assessment of the importance and technical accuracy of the results described.  Reviewers report conveyed to authors with the editors' suggestions normally results in manuscripts being refined so that their arrangement and judgment is more readily apparent to readers. We are always grateful to all the reviewers for sparing their valuable time to review the manuscript and providing their expert opinion.

It is the duty of journals to manage an effective review system. Peer review is intended to select precisely suitable research of significant interest. Referees are likely to recognize flaws, advice improvements, and judge innovation. Referees desire for only the innovative manuscript should be published and the author wishes for quick publication of their fresh ideas. Therefore, it is the job of the editors to manage both authors and referees.

The main principle of publication is that others suppose to be reproduced and construct upon the authors' published data. Therefore, the authors are necessary to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols quickly accessible to readers. Any limitations on the accessibility of information should be disclosed to the editors at the time of manuscript submission.
After manuscript publication, readers who come across denial by the authors to fulfill with these policies must contact the editor in chief of the journal. If editors are not capable to resolve a complaint, then this the matter may refer to the authors' funding institution and/or publish an official statement, stating that readers have been not capable to obtain essential resources to duplicate the findings. 

Original research manuscript related supporting data should be made available to editors and peer reviewers at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript and author must include a data availability statement. Data availability statements should be given at the end of the material and methods section, under the heading "Data Availability". 

For the studies involving animals, the corresponding author should confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. The manuscript must include a statement identifying the institutional animal ethics committee approving the experiments, including any applicable details. Sex and other characteristics of animals that may influence results must be explained. Details of housing and husbandry should be given where they are likely to influence experimental results. 

For research involving human research participants, authors should recognize the institutional ethics committee approving the research, and include this statement in the material and methods section, also mention the informed consent was obtained from all participants.