JIACAM

Journal of Indian Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health

Guidelines to Authors for Manuscript Submission 

About the Journal

The Journal of Indian Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health (JIACAM) is a quarterly publication of the  Indian Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health (IACAM), whose mission is to publish original manuscripts in all areas of child and adolescent mental health, focusing on public health, clinical epidemiology, basic science and mental health problems. To achieve these aims we publish original scientific studies, review and educational articles, and papers commenting on the clinical, scientific, social, political, and economic factors affecting child and adolescent mental health.

The journal has been selected for indexing in the EMBASE (Exerpta Medica Database). It follows the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (Updated 2005) (http://www.icmje.org). All manuscripts are peer-reviewed by 2 anonymous referees.

JIACAM follows the policy of Open Access to Scientific literature. Authors who publish in JIACAM retain copyright to their work. Submission of a manuscript to an Open Access journal also implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Thus authors may use their own articles for the following purposes without asking our permission (and subject only to acknowledging first publication in the JIACAM and giving a full reference or web link, as appropriate).
 
1. Posting a pdf of their own article on their own personal or institutional website for which no charge for access is made.
 
2. Making a reasonable number of copies for personal or non commercial professional use. This includes the contributor’s own teaching purposes.
 
3. Republishing part or the entire article in a book or other publication edited by the author (except for multiple contributions in the same book or publication, for which permission needs to be sought).
 
4. Using individual figures or tables or extracts of text (up to 250 words) in other publications published by a third party.
 
5. Using the article in a course pack or compilation (whether paper or electronic) in the authors’ institution. This does not apply if a commercial charge is made for the compilation or training programme.

Author Guidelines

The Journal of Indian Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health (JIACAM) is a quarterly publication of the  Indian Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health (IACAM), whose mission is to publish original manuscripts in all areas of child and adolescent mental health. The journal has been selected for indexing in the EMBASE (Exerpta Medica Database). It follows the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (Updated 2005) (http://www.icmje.org). JIACAM follows the policy of Open Access to Scientific literature.

Submission of a manuscript to JIACAM implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript. Any manuscript submitted to the journal must not already have been published in another journal or be under consideration by any other journal, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Manuscripts that are derived from papers presented at conferences can be submitted unless they have been published as part of the conference proceedings in a peer reviewed journal. All opinions stated are exclusively that of the author(s) and need not represent the views of the editors or the publisher.

All manuscripts must meet the requirements for one of the various manuscript categories of the journal.

Original Articles: Original articles are articles reporting research work which has not been published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. The length of the original article should not exceed 5000 words.

Review Articles: Reviews are usually commissioned by the editor. But unsolicited reviews will also be considered. The length of the review article should not exceed 5000 words.

Editorials: Editorials are mostly written by the editors or the editorial advisory board members. But unsolicited editorials on topics of current interest will also be considered. Maximum number of words for editorials will be 1500.

Assessment and Management Guidelines: Such articles would be commissioned by the Indian Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health (IACAM).

Brief Communications: Original, but shorter, manuscripts, with preliminary results or results of immediate relevance will be considered in this section with a word limit of 1000 words (with a maximum of 10 references and no more than one table or one figure). They must be accompanied by a suitable abstract and key words.

Letter to Editor: Scientific letters either with reference to an article published recently in the journal or on a topic of contemporary interest will be considered for publication. Case reports of interesting cases should be submitted as letters. Letters should not exceed 500 words and 5 references.

Book Review: These are critical reviews of recently published books, guiding readers regarding their characteristics and potential utility. They must be brief and be written by experts in the subject, summarizing the work and offering opinions. Reports must open with the complete bibliographic reference for the book and close with the name(s), academic degree(s) and institutional affiliation(s) of the author(s) of the review.

Point of View and Historical Review: Such articles should be limited to less than 1000 words. Number of references should not exceed 10. They must be accompanied by a suitable abstract and key words.

Manuscript Preparation and Submission

All manuscripts are to be submitted online at: www.jiacam.org or by mail to the Editor (Professor Pratap Sharan, Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi - 110029, INDIA) and if that is not possible, then by email to: editor@jiacam.org along with cc to all the authors. All manuscripts should be in Microsoft Word format.

The text of observational, experimental and review articles should usually be divided into sections with the headings -  Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. Long articles may need subheadings within some sections (especially the Results and Discussion sections) to clarify their content. All portions of the manuscript— including the title page, abstract, text, acknowledgments, references, individual tables, and legends—should be double spaced and have generous margins. All pages of the manuscript should be numbered consecutively, beginning with the title page.

Title Page
The title page should carry the following information:
The title of the article.
Authors’ names and institutional affiliations.
The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed.
Disclaimers, if any.
Corresponding authors. The name, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript.
Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these.
Word count: for the text only (excluding abstract, acknowledgments, figure legends, and references).
The number of figures and tables.

Conflict of Interest Notification Page
Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. It should be included on a separate page or pages immediately following the title page. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'. Authors should describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the report for publication.

Authors' contributions

In order to give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet all conditions (1, 2, and 3). Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship. One or more authors should serve as “guarantors,” i.e. persons who take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article.

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Authors should obtain written permission for this from all those mentioned in the acknowledgements. Please list the source(s) of funding for the study, for each author, and for the manuscript preparation in the acknowledgements section.

Abstract and Key Words

Observational and experimental manuscripts and reviews should be accompanied by a structured (Background, Aims, Methods, Results, Conclusions) abstract of 250 words. Other manuscripts should have unstructured abstracts of about a 100 words.

Following the abstract, the authors should also provide 3 to 5 key words or short phrases that capture the main topics of the article. Terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus should be used.

Introduction

Provide 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.

Methods

Describe the source population and the selection criteria for study participants. Identify the methods, apparatus, and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Authors submitting review manuscripts should describe the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. Describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Specify the computer software used.

Results

Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or illustrations. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Where scientifically appropriate, analyses of the data by variables such as age and sex should be included.

Discussion

Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. For experimental studies it is useful to begin the discussion by summarizing briefly the main findings, then explore possible mechanisms or explanations for these findings. Compare and contrast the results with other relevant studies, state the limitations of the study, and explore the implications of the findings for future research and for clinical practice.

References

References should follow the Vancouver Style, in accordance with the examples shown below. References should be 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. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Personal communications should be cited when absolutely necessary (in the text) but should not be included in the list of references. In the reference section, list all authors' names when there are six or fewer; when there are seven or more, list the first six and add et al.

Article within a journal

1. Koonin EV, Altschul SF, Bork P: BRCA1 protein products: functional motifs. Nat Genet 1996, 13:266-267.

Article within a journal supplement

2. Orengo CA, Bray JE, Hubbard T, LoConte L, Sillitoe I: Analysis and assessment of ab initio three-dimensional prediction, secondary structure, and contacts prediction. Proteins 1999, Suppl 3:149-170.

In press article

3. Kharitonov SA, Barnes PJ: Clinical aspects of exhaled nitric oxide. Eur Respir J, in press.

Published abstract

4. Zvaifler NJ, Burger JA, Marinova-Mutafchieva L, Taylor P, Maini RN: Mesenchymal cells, stromal derived factor-1 and rheumatoid arthritis [abstract]. Arthritis Rheum 1999, 42:s250.

Article within conference proceedings

5. Jones X: Zeolites and synthetic mechanisms. In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Edited by Smith Y. Stoneham: Butterworth-Heinemann; 1996:16-27.

Book chapter, or article within a book

6. Schnepf E: From prey via endosymbiont to plastids: comparative studies in dinoflagellates. In Origins of Plastids. Volume 2. 2nd edition. Edited by Lewin RA. New York: Chapman and Hall; 1993:53-76.

Whole issue of journal

7. Ponder B, Johnston S, Chodosh L (Eds): Innovative oncology. In Breast Cancer Res 1998, 10:1-72.

Whole conference proceedings

8. Smith Y (Ed): Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Stoneham: Butterworth-Heinemann; 1996.

Complete book

9. Margulis L: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1970.

Monograph or book in a series

10. Hunninghake GW, Gadek JE: The alveolar macrophage. In Cultured Human Cells and Tissues. Edited by Harris TJR. New York: Academic Press; 1995:54-56. [Stoner G (Series Editor): Methods and Perspectives in Cell Biology, vol 1.]

Book with institutional author

11. Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification: Annual Report. London; 1999.

PhD thesis

12. Kohavi R: Wrappers for performance enhancement and oblivious decision graphs. PhD thesis. Stanford University, Computer Science Department; 1995.

Link / URL

13. Morse SS. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet] 1995 Jan-Mar [cited 1996 Jun 5];1(1). Available from: URL: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/eid.htm

Other types of references should follow the guidelines set forth in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (Vancouver group) statement, available at www.icmje.or, October 2005.

Tables

Type or print each table with double spacing on a separate sheet of paper. Number tables consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each. Do not use internal horizontal or vertical lines. Authors should place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Explain in footnotes all nonstandard abbreviations. Be sure that each table is cited in the text.

Illustrations (Figures)

Figures should be submitted as photographic quality digital prints in electronic files of figures in a format (e.g., JPEG or GIF) that will produce high quality images in the web version of the journal. Figures should be made as self-explanatory as possible. 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. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text. 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.

Sending the Manuscript to the Journal

The manuscripts should be accompanied by a covering letter, which contains the following information:
A statement that all authors have read the manuscript and have contributed to the work.
A statement that the material submitted has not been published elsewhere, nor is it under consideration for publication elsewhere.
The telephone numbers, fax and email addresses of the authors should be provided.
The name and contact details of the corresponding author should be mentioned.