Submissions

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Author Guidelines

SLJM accepts submissions from all fields of Medicine, and from basic science to clinical practice. Acceptable items include:

Original research papers
Systematic reviews and meta analyses
Reviews
Brief reports and letters to the editor
Case reports
Perspectives
Audits

Material received should not have been published previously except in abstract form. The editors reserve the right to amend writing style and edit text where necessary, as well as determine priority and time of publication.

Article Processing Fees
SLJM currently does not charge an article submission fee or an article processing fee.

Journal Sections

Guidelines for journal sections can be downloaded from here as a table (Table 1.) (please use 'open in new tab' option to download the table) .

Preparation of Manuscript

The manuscript should be written with double spacing on A4 size paper. All pages should be numbered. The text should be in Times New Roman font size 12.

Articles should be divided into the following sections, each of which should begin on a separate page:

Title Page
Abstract
Body text
Acknowledgements
References
Tables
Figures and figure legends

The Title Page

should give the full title (no abbreviations should be used in the title),
running head (short version of the title with a maximum of 5 words),
names of authors with qualifications, posts held during the study, department(s) and institution(s) where the work was carried out,
the name and full address (including telephone number and email address) of the author for correspondence.
ORCID iD of at least the corresponding author should be included (Please register at https://orcid.org/)

In addition the SLJM requires statements on,

Author contributions
ex. ABC conducted the experiments/ data collection, analysis and drafted the manuscript. EFR was involved in the initial conception of the study and planning of experiments. GHI provided statistical support and revised the final manuscript. TKD was involved in the planning of the study and edited the manuscript etc.
Acknowledgements
Conflict of Interests
Sources of funding
Statement on ethical clearance obtained and method/s of consent for participation in all studies dealing with human subjects/ material (Consent for participation only in Case reports)

Statement on Data availability as a supplemental file/ on request from corresponding author / not available

The Abstract
Should not exceed the word limit and should be structured according to the instructions provided for each article type (see table 1 .)(please use 'open in new tab' option to download the table) . Abbreviations and acronyms are to be avoided. However, if they are used, they are to be spelled out in full form at the first instance of use.

Body text

Text should be structured for each manuscript as directed in table 1, (please use 'open in new tab' option to download the table) depending on type of submission. Drugs should be given their generic names and abbreviations should be spelt out when first used in the text. Scientific measurements should be given in SI units. Statistical methods should be specified in the Methods section. Any abbreviations or acronyms used in the abstract must be spelled out in full form in the first instance they are used in the body of text as well.

Tables and figures should be referred to in the order of appearance in the text in Arabic numerals within parentheses, e.g. (Fig. 1). Figures should be used only when data cannot be expressed clearly in any other form. In the first submission, figures and tables should be included in the Microsoft Word file (Please see below).

Tables and Figures

Tables

Cite tables in ascending numeric order upon first appearance in the manuscript file.
Place each table in your manuscript file directly after the paragraph in which it is first cited (read order). Do not submit your tables in separate files.
Tables require a label and brief descriptive title to be placed above the table (e.g., “Table 1. Title”) Place legends, footnotes, and other text below the table.
Tables must be editable, cell-based objects.
We cannot typeset tables that are graphic objects. Use the table tool in your text editing software to create tables. If necessary, create tables in Excel and insert them into the manuscript. Do not insert text boxes or graphics within your tables.

Figures

Cite Figures in ascending numeric order upon first appearance in the manuscript file.
Insert all figures and pictures at the end of the main manuscript. Include figure legends as a separate list in the same document.
Figure legend should include:
Label and a brief descriptive title (e.g.,Figure 2. Title) in Bold text.
Description of the figure that will enable a reader to understand the figure without reference to the text. Describe each part of a multipart figure (ex Panel (A), (B) etc).
Once the review process is complete and the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors will be asked to submit high quality figures as separate files for publishing purposes. Submit the figure files as (.tif, .jpeg, .pdf) files in the ‘Supplementary files’ section.

Acknowledgrments
Those who contributed to the work but do not meet our authorship criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgments with a description of their contribution. Authors are responsible for ensuring that anyone named in the Acknowledgments agrees to be named.

References

References should be in the PloS style, and numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals within square brackets, in the order in which they appear in the text. Authors are encouraged to use a referencing software (free software like Mendeley is available online. https://www.mendeley.com
Sample reference style as required by the SLJM can be downloaded here as a table. (Table 2). ( please use 'open in new tab' option to download the table)
Using abstracts as references should be avoided. ‘Unpublished data’ and ‘personal communications’ should not be used as references but may be mentioned as such in the text within parentheses.

Submission Preparation Checklist

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 that do not adhere to these guidelines.

Cover letter stating that:
The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
All authors have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper and satisfy the authorship guidelines.
Any financial interests, direct or indirect, that might affect the conduct or reporting of the work they have submitted have been declared.
Any work previously uploaded in pre peer review data repositories is declared.
Title page containing:
Title
Running title
Author list and affiliations including ORCID ID of at least corresponding author
Author Contributions
Acknowledgements
Conflicts of interest
Financial support
Statement on ethical clearance and consent for participation
Statement on Data availability
Abstract
Body text including
Introduction
Materials and methods
Results, discussion and conclusion
References
Supporting information - authors may submit supporting information as appendixes, tables or figures. Name the files with the prefix ‘S’ and number consecutively in Arabic numerals.
Figures and figure legends- at the end of the body of the main text as well as supplementary files
The submission file is in Microsoft Word (97- 2003 or later format) document file format.
Tables and figures are all cited in the text. Tables are included within the text document, while figure files are uploaded as supplementary files.(.jpeg, .tiff .pdf files are accepted).
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which are found in About the Journal.

Copyright Notice

The authors grant the Sri Lanka Journal of Medicine a license to publish the article and to identify itself as the original publisher.

From June 2017, all articles in Sri Lanka Journal of Medicine are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY-4.0)

This license permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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