Author Guidelines

Registration with Journal of Addiction Psychiatry

It is mandatory for the corresponding author to register with the USG journals electronic manuscript tracking system before submitting an article. All articles should be prepared according below mentioned instructions and submitted with the following files: Cover letter, manuscript, figures and tables including legends, supplementary files (if any).

The cover letter should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal and specify the type of article, title of the manuscript, summarize why it should be published and its value addition to the scientific literature.

In addition, the authors must state that the work is original and has not been published and is not submitted for publication anywhere else.

Manuscript Structure and Specifications

USG accommodates a wide range of manuscript structures and considers manuscripts of any length with no restrictions for the number of words, figures, or the length of the supporting information.

All manuscripts should be typed in a single column, double-spaced, and include line numbers and page numbers in order to facilitate the review process.

Generally for original research articles, the manuscript file should include the following sections, in the below-mentioned order: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results & Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Figure Legends, Table Legends and Supplementary files, if any. Figures and Tables must be submitted as separate files while submitting online through the editorial manager.

Authors may submit their manuscript files in Word (as .doc or .docx), LaTeX (as .pdf), or RTF format.

Units used in the manuscript must be in accordance with the International System of Units and standardized recommended nomenclature should be used as appropriate. Chemical compounds and biomolecules should be referred to using systematic nomenclature, preferably using the recommendations by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry(IUPAC).

For the manuscripts dealing with the microbial strains and cultures, the public culture collections (ATCC, ECACC, NCTC, NCIMB, MTCC, etc) deposition number should be provided. The PubChem compound identifier (CID) number from the NCBI PubChem Compound database should be provided, if chemical compounds are used for the research. The list of the chemical compounds (with PubChem CID) and the microbial strains (deposition number) should be listed below the keywords section.

Standard abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and defined upon first use in the text whereas non-standard abbreviations should be avoided unless they appear at least four times in the text. Authors must include the list of non-standard abbreviations at the end, immediately before the acknowledgments section of their manuscript. Equations should be inserted in an editable format from the equation editor (MathType is highly recommended).

Title

Manuscript file should contain the full article title and a short running title. The full title (maximum of 25 words) should be specific, concise and be a statement of the main finding or conclusion presented in the manuscript that can help the reader to decide whether they should read the text or not. Abbreviations should be avoided within the title. The running title should be a maximum of 6 words in length and should state the theme of the paper.

Authors and Affiliations

All author’s full names should be listed together with their respective affiliations which include the associated lab and/or department, university, or organization, city (pin or zip or postcodes), state, country along with the phone numbers and email ids.

Abstract

The abstract should:

  • Render the concept and significance of the work
  • Describe the main/primary objective of the study
  • Briefly outline how the study was done
  • Notify the important results/findings
  • Should not exceed 250 words in length.

Graphical Abstract (Optional)

Authors should summarize the contents of the article in a pictorial form that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical abstracts (Illustration / Figure) should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system.

Keywords

Five to ten keywords representing the main content of the article should be given.

Introduction

The introduction should illustrate the research objective addressing the problem and help the readers to understand the purpose and significance of the study. This section should include a brief review of the literature search to justify the importance of the study. Also, the section should end with a brief statement of what is being reported in the article.

Material and Methods

The methods section should include the design of the study, methods and protocols, materials used (type of participants, if any), analytical procedures used and other information to allow other interested researchers to be able to reproduce your study.

For studies involving human or animal subjects, a statement detailing IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) /IRB (Institutional Review Board) and/or related ethical approval and consent should be included in the methods section. For further details of the journal editorial policies and ethical guidelines please refer to JAP Editorial Policies.

Results and Discussion

The results and discussion may be combined into a single section or presented separately. Results section should include the interpretations and/or extrapolations of the readings/results of the analytical procedures with statistical approach, where appropriate. Discussion should help understand the problem and how the outcome of this study advances the current system.

Together, this section should describe the results of the experiments and interpretation with the previous related studies discussing the hypothesis presented as the basis of the study and provides a succinct explanation of the implications of the findings.

Citation

Cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses. For e.g.,
Subject area covers many disciplines (Victor, 1981).
This assumption of theory was approved by John and Daniel (1996).
This technique was effectively proved and has been widely reported (Peter, 1991; Goodmann et al., 1995; Black and Smith, 2008; Mandal et al., 2012).

Conclusion

This section should clearly summarize the main conclusions of the research giving clear explanation of their importance and emphasizing on potential future directions.

List of Abbreviations

Authors should provide a list of abbreviations used in the text, and they should be defined in the text at first use.

Conflict of Interest Statement

JAP follows the recommendations by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors stating that all financial, commercial or other relationships that might be perceived by the academic community as representing a potential conflict of interest must be disclosed. If no such relationship exists, authors will be asked to declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any interests mentioned. For more details, see  JAP Editorial policies.

Author Contributions Statement

Authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript that specifies the contribution of every author.

Example:
KB conceived the experiment(s), RB and MG conducted the experiment(s), RG and KB analysed the results. All authors reviewed and approved the manuscript.

Acknowledgments

This is a section to acknowledge persons (specific colleagues, institutions, or agencies) who have made substantial contributions to the design, implementation, acquisition of the data, analysis and interpretation of results and / or who was involved in drafting or revising the manuscript, but who do not fulfill the criteria to be included as an author. A statement about the source (s) of funding including grant numbers should be included, if appropriate.

References

All citations in the text, figures or tables must be in the reference list and vice-versa. References must be listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, citations should be indicated by the reference number in square brackets. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Only published or accepted manuscripts should be included in the reference list.  For accepted but unpublished works, use “in press” instead of page numbers. Any inclusion of verbatim text must be contained in quotation marks and the source be clearly cited.
Examples of the JAP reference style

Journal Article

Badgaiyan RD. 2012. Manipulation of the extrastriate frontal loop can resolve visual disability in blindsight patients. Med Hypotheses 79(6): 767-769.

Badgaiyan RD, Fischman AJ, Alpert NM. 2003. Striatal dopamine release during unrewarded motor task in human volunteers. Neuroreport 14(11): 1421-1424.

In press article

Badgaiyan RD, Weise S, Wack D, Vidal Melo M. 2014. Attenuation of regional cerebral blood flow during memory processing after coronary artery bypass surgery. Anesth Analg (In Press).

Article within conference proceedings

Badgaiyan RD. 2014. Single Scan Dynamic Molecular Imaging: An Emerging Neuroimaging Technique. First Conference on Neuroscience and Neurobiology Research, Singapore.

Complete book

Mauro Giacca. 2010. Gene Therapy. Springer Milan, Italy

Article or book chapter within a book

Badgaiyan RD. 2014. Imaging Dopamine Neurotransmission in Live Human Brain. In: Progress in Brain Research: Dopamine (Vol 211), Eds: Diana M, Chiara GD, Spano P. Elsevier. 211: pp 167-184.

Link / URL

The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do]

Clinical trial registration record

Mendelow AD. 2006. Surgical Trial in Lobar Intracerebral Haemorrhage. Current Controlled Trials. doi: 10.1186/ISRCTN22153967

Report of International Science Meets / Initiatives

World Health Organization Global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness. An informal consultation. WHO/PBL/97. 61. Geneva: WHO, 1997.

Figure and Table Legends

Figures and Tables files (including legends) must be submitted as separate files, not embedded in manuscript text. Legends should be included in the manuscript file and should be placed at the end of the manuscript. Legends are required to have a short title of 18 words or less and should describe the message of the figure or table. Legends should be preceded by the appropriate label, for example “Figure 1” or “Table 1”. Figure panels are referred to by bold capital letters in brackets: (A), (B), (C), (D), etc.

Tables: Tables should be created in Word, Excel or LaTeX and have a concise title. They must be primarily cell-based and editable. Graphics or colored fonts are not acceptable, instead bold or italic can be used to emphasize. Tables should be self-explanatory and include units in the column/row headings. For tables with analytical data, the reliability of the data in terms of number of replications with standard error should be given.

Figures: Figures should be of high-resolution files submitted in TIFF (or JPEG) or EPS (or PDF). Photos (both B/W and color) should be at least 300 dpi and line drawings 600 dpi. For certain scenarios such as need to print high-quality graphics, authors may be requested to submit higher resolution graphics.

Mark Image

Authors are recommended to submit a “mark image” that can be used to represent their article online in the journal homepage, table of contents, etc. Mark images should be single, high resolution, eye-catching image and ideally a cropped / full portion of image taken from the figures or raw images submitted as supporting information of the article. If no striking image is submitted, a figure from the paper will be designed as the mark image. Please do not submit any figures or photos that have been previously copyrighted unless you have explicit written permission from the copyright holder to publish.

Synopsis

For original full-length research articles and review articles, a synopsis are required which reflect in the content to represent their article online in the journal homepage, table of contents, etc. The content should specify the significance and emphasize the highlights of the research findings relative to the prior published studies or reports.

Supplementary Material

The data which is not of primary importance or cannot be included in the article because of its large size (array data, excel files, large size raw images etc.) or the current format (such as movies, raw data traces, power point presentations, etc.) can be uploaded as supplementary material during the submission procedure. The Supplementary Material can be uploaded as Figures (.FIG) and 3D imaging data (NIfTI), Data Sheet (word, excel, csv, fasta, pdf or zip files), Presentation (power point, pdf or zip files), Audio (mp3, wav or wma) or Movie (avi, divx, flv, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg or wmv).

Authors should include all the necessary ethical guidelines and other guidelines for specific research areas in the manuscript accordingly.

Manuscript Publication Process: Overview

Initial Screening
  • On submission all manuscripts are screened to determine their potential suitability for journal/peer-review, both in terms of content and quality. It includes plagiarism scanning and other ethical, legal, and quality assessments.
Peer Review Process
  • If manuscripts pass this initial screening, the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) then assigns the manuscript to one of the editorial board member on the basis of their expertise and overall workload. Manuscripts that are suitable for peer review are then reviewed by a minimum of two external peer reviewers (Suggested by EIC or Handling Editor).
  • When both reviews have been returned, the journal editorial team examines the reviewers’ information and the manuscript again and makes a note to the EIC/Handling Editor. The EIC/Handling Editor examines the reviews, the reviewers’ scorecard information and the manuscript, and then makes a final judgment.
  • The EIC/Handling Editor is responsible for the final decision to accept or reject a manuscript, based on the reviewers’ comments and specific recommendations for the revisions.
  • For papers accepted subject to changes the revised submission (comprising a revised manuscript with all changes indicated and a point-by-point response to the peer review report/rebuttal to review) is assessed by the EIC/Handling Editor and either accepted for publication or returned to the author for further changes.
Post-Acceptance
  • Before typesetting commences our manuscript editors revise each manuscript for English language and grammar, page layout, text formatting, headings, image placement, and reference citations as per the journal style guidelines provided in the manuscript structure and specifications section.
  • The paper is subject to several stages of editing, proofreading and quality control by journal staff before and after typesetting.
  • All authors are asked to revise the uncorrected proofs (typeset) until the paper is ready for publication. Before publication all authors are asked to provide signed declaration and copyright transfer form of their paper.
  • After publication each paper is published through social media channels and Journals email newsletter, TOCs alerts.

Guidelines for Other article types

Review articles

Articles that provide systematic, critical and constructive analyses of previously published material in a specific field, help in identifying research gaps and summarize the current understanding in the specific research field would be considered as review articles. The manuscript structure remains the same as mentioned for original full length research articles except that there would be a “review” / “body” instead of “results and discussion” section. The materials and methods section should contains for example the information about: selection criteria of studies, source of data/databases, search strategies, number of studies screened and included, statistical methods, softwares used, etc. The main content of the review article should focus on analyses of previously published methodological approaches, models tested, studies/theories that agree or disagree with each other etc. The text must be organized in chronological order and if applicable write each ideas/topics from different geographical location in separate paragraphs. It is important that the authors organize the different pieces on information logically justifying the objective of the review. The conclusions should answer the research questions mentioned in the introduction and gives a message that integrates the points discussed in the review which recommend new research areas.

Clinical studies reports

Reports of the clinical investigations and / or observations should begin with an organized abstract that explain the purpose, study design, methods including selection procedure, primary outcome of the study and conclusion with their clinical relevance. After that the manuscript should follow the standard format: introduction describing the study principle, design and objectives; materials & methods used and types of analysis, presentation of results with discussion on safety and adverse events explaining the risk/benefit assessment and conclusions.

In studies involving animals, a statement describing the care of animals and details of IACUC ethical approval should be included in the manuscript. In studies involving experimental investigations, a declarative sentence stating that informed consent was obtained from the participants and the study was reviewed by the respective federal or appropriate ethics committee / gene therapy advisory committee or IRB or that no IRB approval was required, must be included in the manuscript.

Case reports

Case report should begin with well-defined expressive abstract followed by the sections: introduction, case report(s), discussion and references. Author should state the potential impact of the case report to the medical scientific community in the abstract.

Clinical Trial Registration

In order for clinical trial results to be considered for publication in our journal (which adhere to ICMJE standards), all clinical trials that start recruiting patients or volunteers must be registered with a public registry before the enrolment of the first subject. This ensures that everyone can find key information about every clinical trial whose principal aim is to shape medical decision-making.The ICMJE accepts registration of clinical trials in the following registries:

In addition to the above registries, starting in June 2007 the ICMJE will also accept registration in any of the primary registries that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Portal (see http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/index.html).

Letters to Editors

Letters to editors are generally, articles written in reference to the article (s) previously published in the journal. The article should comment or make suggestions to the work published previously and help in enhancing knowledge and to find way towards future research needs.

The journal also publishes invited editorials, short communications, case studies, monographs, etc.

Manuscript Rejection

JAP reserves the right to reject the manuscripts publication that do not meet the technical or ethical standards (COPE) according to the editorial policies and retract publications if any breach and/or misconduct of ethical standards, dispute of interests comes to light during post-publication peer review process.

It is the sole responsibility of the authors to make sure that their research article does not include any plagiarized content and/or breach the ethical guidelines and the publishers are not responsible for any such scientific misconduct. USG vows to strictly adhere to all the policies and guidelines related to scientific publishing (as mentioned in the Publishing Policies and Guidelines section) and if any misconduct is detected at any time during the publication process, USG has the right to retract an article or publish erratum under the advice of the Editor-in-Chief.

Manuscript Withdrawal

Withdrawing a manuscript after the review process / during the production process / after the release of galley proof, wastes valuable resources and a tremendous amount of effort made in processing by the editor, reviewers and other editorial staff.  To evade the withdrawal of articles and to encourage generous submissions, JAP declares a withdrawal policy of charging 97USD to the authors as a withdrawal fee (incurred on man hours, processing tools and software’s used).

Additional Publishing Requirements

Chemical Structures

Chemical structures should be prepared using ChemDraw or other drawing programs and should select settings as close as possible according to the following given below:
However, JAP believes that lack of funds should not be a barrier to open access publication and will consider discount or waiver to the APC on a case-by-case basis.

Drawing settings: chain angle – 120 degrees; bond spacing – 18% of width; bond length – 14.4 pt; bold width – 2.0 pt; line width – 0.6 pt; margin width – 1.6 pt; hash spacing – 2.5 pt.

Text settings: Atom labels and captions font – Arial or Helvetica; size – 10 pt.

Color Image Moden

Images must be submitted in the color mode RGB.

Direct Links

The databases for which we can provide direct links in the manuscript are: GenBank at the NCBI.((GenBank), EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL), Protein Data Bank (PDB), Protein Information Resource (PIR), Swiss-Prot Protein Database (Swiss-Prot) and DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ).

The Accession Numbers of any nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided, in square brackets and include the corresponding database name (for example, [GenBank: JN872327]).