Online submission

Submission should be made through the online submission system at: http://jpc.tums.ac.ir. Upload the manuscript in a format compatible with Microsoft Word (Windows). Upload the cover letter, title page, table(s), and figure(s) as supplementary files in the submission process.

 

Types of articles

The journal provides a medium for publishing Original Articles, Review Articles, Brief Reports, Case Reports, and Letters to the Editor. Please use the related critical appraisal tools to include specific information when reporting the studies. Invited submissions include Editorials, Commentary, Perspectives, Conference Proceedings, Book Reviews, and Focuses.

 

Authorship

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, 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 submitted. 

 

Authorship and artificial intelligence (AI) tools

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. AI tools do not fulfill the criteria for authorship because they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot declare conflicts of interest or manage copyright and licensing agreements. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics. Any AI-assisted copy editing of the human-written manuscript should be declared in the "Acknowledgments".

 

Acknowledgments

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.

 

Conflicts of Interest

All authors must disclose any conflicts of interest they may have with the publication of the manuscript or an institution or product mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

 

Ethics

When reporting studies on human beings, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html). For prospective studies involving human participants, authors are expected to mention about approval of (the regional/ national/ institutional or independent Ethics Committee or Review Board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants, and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary per regional and/ or national guidelines. Ensure the confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants' names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. 
Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the CPCSEA and World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Humans for studies involving human beings). The journal will not consider any ethically unacceptable paper. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the Materials and Methods section.

 

Clinical trials

This journal requires registration of randomized clinical trials in such public trial registries as those of the National Institutes of Health and the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trials. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) has established a requirement that all clinical trials be entered into a public registry before the onset of patient enrollment, as a condition of consideration for publication. The definition of a clinical trial as established by the ICMJE is any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relation between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (for example drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes). Health outcomes include any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic and adverse events. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration. Further information can be found at http://www.icmje.org.

 

FORMATTING INSTRUCTIONS

• COVER LETTER

This letter should be uploaded through the online system as a Word file. In an official letter, the corresponding author should state that:

         1. The title and type of article.

          2. The manuscript has not been and will not be published elsewhere or submitted elsewhere for publication.

          3. To prevent the information on potential conflicts of interest for authors from being overlooked or misplaced, mention this information in the cover letter.

 

         4. Contact information for the corresponding author. The name, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and email of the author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript should be included.

 

• MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

To send electronically, manuscripts should be in Word document (Microsoft Word from version 2003 onwards). Manuscript, well written in English, should follow the style of the agreement detailed in the uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals, a copy of which can be found at www.icmje.org. Please double-check the article for spelling, structure, and format mistakes. As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors who do not adhere to these guidelines.

     - FONTS

To distinguish different parts of the article, use the font Times New Roman size 12 for the body, size 12 bold for subheadings, size 14 for headings, and size 14 bold for the title.

    - UNITS, SYMBOLS, AND ABBREVIATIONS

Internationally accepted units (International System of Units), symbols, and abbreviations must be used. Abbreviations should be used sparingly and must be introduced in parentheses upon first mention. Abbreviations that have meaning only within the context of the specific manuscript should be avoided. DRUG NAMES

Generic drug names must be used in the title and throughout the manuscript text. The proprietary name should be included in parentheses, along with the name of the manufacturer, and city upon first mention in the text.

• TITLE PAGE:

The title page should contain:

1- Article title (concise, but including the main focus of the paper)

2- Name of each author. Order the authors in the sequence that you want them to appear in the final article.

3- Highest academic degree, position title, and/or academic appointment of each author

4- Names of departments and institutions with which each author is affiliated

• Name, address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address of corresponding author;
• A running title or short title (max 100 characters)

 

• ABSTRACT AND KEYWORDS:

It is required for Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Perspectives, and Commentary.

An abstract of 250 words should be provided to state the reason for the study, the main findings, and the conclusions drawn from the observation. Abstract of original articles should be structured under the following headings: Backgrounds, Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusion. No abbreviations or references should be used in this section. A list of 3-6 keywords should be provided according to MeSH terms at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/authors.html.

 

• ARTICLE BODY:

The rest of the article differs according to article type but generally includes the following headings: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and references.

      - BACKGROUND

This should summarize the purpose and the rationale for the study. It should neither review the subject extensively nor should it have data or conclusions of the study. The author (s) should declare the objectives/aims of the study.

      - MATERIALS/PATIENTS AND METHODS

This should include exact method observation or experiment. If an apparatus is used, its manufacturer's name and address should be given in parentheses. If the method is established, give a reference but if the method is new, give enough information so that another author can perform it. If a drug is used, its generic name, dose, and route of administration must be given. Statistical methods must be mentioned and specify any general computer program used. The Info system used should be mentioned clearly.

      - RESULT

It must be presented in the form of text, tables, and illustrations. The contents of the tables should not be repeated in the text. Instead, a reference to the table number may be given. Long articles may need sub-headings within some sections (especially the Results and Discussion parts) to clarify their contents.

      - DISCUSSION

This should emphasize the present findings and the variations or similarities with other work done in the field by other workers. The detailed data should not be repeated in the discussion. Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. It must be mentioned whether the hypothesis mentioned in the article is true, false or no conclusions can be derived.

      - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be covered in the acknowledgment section. It should include persons who provided technical help, writing assistance and a departmental head who only provided general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged.

      - TABLES

All tables must be included at the end of the manuscript.  Tables in the Word file should be separated by page break (each table on a separate page).  Each Table should have borders with normal style without any colored row or column.  The style of the table should be simple.  Each cell contains only one paragraph or one line.

      - FIGURES

Scanned graphs from other resources will not be accepted for publication. Authors should declare in the cover letter that all figures of their manuscripts are original, otherwise, the original source of figures should be mentioned and the reprint form must be uploaded in the attachments.

 All Figures should be in the form of encapsulated postscript (.eps), PowerPoint (.ppt), portable document format (.pdf), Photoshop (.psd), TIF (.tiff), PNG (png) or JPG (.jpg). The raw data of the charts should be uploaded in Microsoft Excel format (MS Office from 2003 onward).

 Please scan all images in at least 300 dpi. Most consumer scanners scan in sRGB by default. However, if you are using a high-end scanner then Adobe RGB is recommended for optimum color depth. Color space should be in RGB.

 Image quality specification for Line art (an image composed of lines and text which does not contain tonal or shaded areas) has a resolution of 900 dpi, halftone (a continuous tone photograph which contains no text) with 300 dpi and a combination of both should have 500 dpi of resolution.  We will NOT accept any images with resolution below 300 dpi.

• REFERENCES: 

This journal accepts references according to a style based on Vancouver's style (with some minor changes). Vancouver, a numbered style, follows the rules established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. All references, including those related primarily to figures and tables, must appear in the text and be cited consecutively. Identify References in text, tables, and figure legends by Arabic numerals in parentheses.

Journal names should be abbreviated as they appear in PubMed. For those not appearing in PubMed commonly-used abbreviation should be stated. Referenced articles that are cited as "In press" must include the title of the journal that has accepted the paper.

Cite authors in the same way for all types of resources (articles, websites, videos, etc.). List up to the first 6 authors/editors, and use “et al.” for any additional authors.

       - Standard Format for Journal Articles:

Author Surname Initials. Title of article. Title of journal (abbreviated). Date of Publication (year; Volume Number(Issue Number): Page Numbers.

Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002: 25;347(4):284-7.

For more detailed examples of how to cite journal articles in print, journal articles from a website, or journal articles from an online database please see Vancouver Citation Style Guide (https://library.vcc.ca/media/vcc-library/content-assets/documents/VancouverStyleGuide.pdf).

      - Standard Format for Books:

Author Surname Initials. Title: subtitle. Edition (if not the first). Place of publication: Publisher; Year.

Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.

For more detailed examples of how to cite an organization as an author, books with no author/editor, government documents, chapters in a book, or E-books please see Vancouver Citation Style Guide (https://library.vcc.ca/media/vcc-library/content-assets/documents/VancouverStyleGuide.pdf). 

      - Conference Proceedings:

Editors name, editors. Conference title; date of conference; place of conference. Place of publication: publisher; date of publication

Harnden P, Joffe JK, Jones WG, editors. Germ cell tumors V. Proceedings of the 5th Germ Cell Tumour Conference; 2001 Sep 13-15; Leeds, UK. New York: Springer; 2002. 

      - Conference paper:

Authors of paper. Title of paper. In: editors proceeding, editors. Conference title; conference date; place of conference. Place of publication: publisher; date of publication.  Page numbers.

Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza's computational effort statistic for genetic programming. In: Foster JA, Lutton E, Miller J, Ryan C, Tettamanzi AG, editors. Genetic programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3-5; Kinsdale, Ireland. Berlin: Springer; 2002. p. 182-91.

      - Standard Format for Websites:

Author Surname Initials (if available). Title of Website [Internet]. Place of publication: Publisher; Date of First Publication [Date of last update; cited date]. Available from: URL
Royal College of General Practitioners. The Primary Health Care Team. RCGP website 2003 [cited 2004 Sep 22]; Available from: URL:  http://www.rcgp.org.uk/information/publications/information/PDFInfo/21_OCT_03.pdf.

For more detailed examples of how to cite a website with an author, a website without an author, a part/article within a website, a blog, an entry/article within a blog, image on the internet please see Vancouver Citation Style Guide (https://library.vcc.ca/media/vcc-library/content- assets/documents/VancouverStyleGuide.pdf).

 

ChatGPT and other Artificial Intelligence (AI)

If you have the instructor's permission to use AI, cite it like software. Note: Explain in your Methods or Literature Review section how you used ChatGPT and include your query and transcript as an appendix (APA Style Blog). 5 Vancouver Community College Library Based on the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.) Updated May 2023. Last major revision: March 2020. Paraphrase In 1918, some British women over the age of 30 were able to vote (OpenAI, 2023). Quote Women’s roles “underwent significant changes during the World War I era” (OpenAI, 2023).

 

REVIEW PROCESS

A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to JPC alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in JPC are sent to two or more expert reviewers. All articles undergo an external peer-review process which normally lasts at least between 2-3 months. The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other's identity. Every manuscript is also assigned to a member of the editorial team, who based on the comments from the reviewers makes a final decision on the manuscript. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/rejection/ amendments in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point-by-point response to reviewers' comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.

 

PROOFS

Proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. Galley proofs should be returned within 48 hours from receipt with a clear indication of any changes. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness, and correctness of the text, tables, and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as the inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. We may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.