Editorial Policies
Editorial Policies are displayed on various pages of the journal, especially on "About the Journal" and "Submission page". This page intends for a detailed description of editorial policies.
1. Editorial Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery upholds the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which can be accessed at http://www.icmje.org. Our main objective is to publish high-quality peer-reviewed research in the field of Neonatal Surgery. As a developing specialty, we believe that quality research in this discipline can enhance neonatal surgical outcomes. We welcome submissions from authors of all genders, countries, races, ethnicities, and religions from anywhere in the world. The editorial board is committed to eliminating all forms of discrimination.
2. Open Access Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery provides free and open access to its published content for authors and readers worldwide. The journal believes that open access to research promotes greater knowledge exchange globally. All published scholarly articles, in any category, are available for download and distribution. You can access every manuscript published since the beginning of the Journal of Neonatal Surgery without a subscription on their website.
3. Peer Review Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery is a publication that undergoes a rigorous double-blind peer-review process. This means that both the authors and reviewers remain anonymous to each other during the review process to ensure impartiality and add credibility. All submissions, including Systematic Review/Metaanalysis, Original Articles, Narrative Review, Case Series, Case Reports, Short Communication, and Athena's Pages, are reviewed by a minimum of two reviewers. In case of conflicting reviews, a third reviewer may be added to resolve the issue. Case Letters and Clinical Images are reviewed by at least one peer reviewer, while Editorial, Letters to the Editor, Erratum, and Book Reviews are internally reviewed. The editorial team also follows the double-blind review principle and may review manuscripts.
4. Digital Archiving Policy
This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. This is done through an automated process using the PKP PLN plugin utilized in the Open Journal System.
5. Public Identifier Policy
The journal publishes unique DOIs (Digital Object Identification) using the Crossref DOI service, for every published manuscript irrespective of the category. Also, every manuscript is given a unique publisher ID for internal identification of the manuscript. The publisher ID consists of the journal's initials and the manuscript number.
6. Copyright Policy
In the Journal of Neonatal Surgery, authors hold the copyright to their published manuscripts. The manuscript's landing page and Fulltext files contain a statement of copyright ownership. However, authors must grant the right of first publication to the Journal of Neonatal Surgery at the time of manuscript submission. Duplicate submissions, manuscripts already published, or underprocessing of other journals will not be accepted. These aspects must be declared in the cover letter submitted with the manuscript. A submission checklist is presented to authors that includes a statement on these requirements, and authors must agree to them before proceeding with the manuscript submission.
7. Licensing Policy
Journal uses Creative Commons License (CC-By) (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/) which allows the re-use of the content for educational purposes by acknowledging the author and journal. According to this license, you are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially
Under these terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
8. Disclaimer
The authors of the manuscripts published in the Journal of Neonatal Surgery are responsible for the originality and integrity of their research. However, the journal cannot be held responsible for any harm or adverse event that may occur as a result of using the information presented in the journal. Therefore, it is recommended that the information from the journal should be considered alongside other reliable sources. Scientific information is constantly evolving and research findings that are valid today may not remain relevant in the future.
9. Conflict of Interest Declaration
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery has a strict policy that requires authors and reviewers to disclose any conflicts of interest they may have. If there are no conflicts of interest, a statement reading "None declared" will be included in the manuscript. Conflict of interest declarations are required on both the Title page and the ICMJE conflict of interest declaration form. Reviewers are not permitted to evaluate a manuscript until a conflict of interest has been disclosed. Any manuscripts submitted by members of the editorial board are handled separately by other editors, and the editor in question is not involved in the decision-making or review process. In addition, any conflicts of interest related to editorial board membership will be disclosed in a statement published with the manuscript.
10. Source of Support Declaration
Authors are required to disclose any support or funding received during the submission of their manuscript. This statement will be published along with the manuscript. The authors must include the statement on funding sources in both the Title page and the ICMJE conflict of interest form, which are to be submitted with the manuscript. If there is no funding or support involved, the statement "Source of Support: Nil" will be published. However, if funding is involved, the authors must provide a detailed description of the funding source, fund, and its utilization to the editorial office.
11. Consent to Publication
Authors submitting to the Journal of Neonatal Surgery are required to provide a statement on informed consent if their manuscript includes a clinical figure. To record the consent of the patient's legal caretakers, a "Consent Form" can be downloaded from the Submission page. However, due to the ongoing pandemic, many patients are unable to visit hospitals. In such cases, authors must take verbal consent to publish the clinical material and provide a statement on it when submitting the manuscript. If possible, electronic signatures of the legal caretakers should be obtained on the consent form. Institutional or departmental consent forms are also acceptable. For manuscripts containing clinical photographs of more than one patient, authors must obtain individual consent for each patient and ensure that the patient's identity is not revealed. If the patient's face is visible in the photograph, their eyes must be covered to hide their identity. If the full face needs to be shown without covering the eyes, explicit permission must be obtained with a reason provided.
When authors submit a manuscript, they must agree to the following terms. Firstly, they confirm that they have obtained informed consent from patients, parents, or caretakers for the publication of any clinical material related to the patient. The Consent Form must also be submitted along with the manuscript. Secondly, the authors must ensure that they have obtained permission from the relevant authorities for any copyrighted material used in the manuscript.
When using copyrighted material, a statement must be included as a caption indicating that permission has been obtained. This permission document can be submitted as supplementary material during the submission process.
If the manuscript includes clinical figures and the authors have obtained consent, the following statement will be published alongside the full text of the manuscript: "The author(s) have obtained informed written consent for the publication of clinical photographs/material (if any used), from the legal guardian of the patient. Every effort has been made to conceal the identity of the patient, but we cannot guarantee complete anonymity."
If no clinical figures are used in the manuscript, the following statement will be published: "No clinical figures are used in this manuscript."
12. Authorship Declaration
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery adheres to the publication policies outlined by ICMJE. According to the ICMJE authorship criteria, a contribution is considered authorship if the following conditions are met:
- Significant contributions are made to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
- The work is drafted or revised critically for important intellectual content.
- The final version of the work is approved for publication.
- The author agrees to be responsible for all aspects of the work, ensuring that any questions regarding the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Acquisition of funding, data collection, or general supervision of the research group alone is not enough to justify authorship. The same applies to the mere conception of an idea, without any further contribution to the work.
It is important to give credit to each author of a paper by specifying their contributions to the manuscript on the "Authorship Declaration form" available on the submission page of the journal's website. If any contributors do not meet the criteria for authorship, they should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of such contributors include those who provided technical help, writing assistance, or general support and suggested a topic. The journal will publish an Author Contributions Statement with every manuscript, declaring that the author(s) fulfilled the authorship criteria devised by ICMJE and approved the final version.
13. Language of Publication
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery is published in English, preferably in the US version. Authors can submit their manuscripts in either US or UK English, but the manuscript should not contain both accents of English. A single accent must be used throughout the manuscript for consistency.
14. Editorial Membership Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery expresses its gratitude towards the Editorial Board members for their unwavering support of the journal. The editorial board comprises the Editor in Chief Emeritus, the current Editor in Chief, the Executive Editor/Managing Editor, and the Editorial Consultants. The Assistant Editor role is considered a trainee position for future Editors. The Journal has initiated a process to recruit Assistant Editors by inviting applications with CVs for the trainee editor position. This will prepare young consultants to become future Editors of the Journal and will be a valuable contribution to the pediatric surgery community. The Assistant Editors will gain hands-on experience in managing the Open Journal System and its various workflow processes such as editorial review, peer review management, copyediting, and article publication.
15. Article Metrics
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery website currently displays PDF view counts for each published manuscript, but not XML full-text view counts. The authors can request a full abstract view report. Unfortunately, the metrics from before the website upgrade in July 2020 are not included in the new counts due to the manual upgrade process. However, users can download metrics by clicking a link. We are working to add the missing XML full-text view counts to the landing pages soon. Download previous metrics.
16. Article Full Text
The Neonatal Surgery journal publishes full-text manuscripts in PDF format and will now also publish an HTML or XML version starting in 2020.
17. Plagiarism Screening Policy
Starting from the year 2020, The Journal of Neonatal Surgery will be using Turnitin to screen manuscripts before publication. Before that, Plagiarisma software was used for this purpose. The journal strongly discourages plagiarism, which is akin to stealing someone's intellectual property. If any plagiarism is detected, the authors will be notified and asked to clarify their point and remove the plagiarized content. In such cases, the editors will follow the guidelines provided by COPE to ensure proper rectification of the matter. The manuscript should have a similarity score of less than 17%. Any manuscript with a similarity score above 30% will not be processed further.
18. Publications Ethics and Malpractice Statement
These guidelines are based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and EL-MED-Pub Publishers guidelines for publication ethics.
Authors’ responsibilities:
Authors need to provide an accurate and objective account of their intellectual work in their papers. Pertinent details should be included, supported by references, particularly from recent literature, to enable others to replicate the work. It is considered unethical to make fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements. Additionally, authors should not publish the same research in multiple journals or primary publications. It is the responsibility of authors to ensure that their work is entirely original. If authors use the work or words of others, they must be appropriately cited or quoted.
Proper acknowledgment of influential publications is required for reported work.
As an author, it is your responsibility to certify that your manuscript has not been published elsewhere, submitted to any other journal, or is currently under review for publication elsewhere. Our journal has a checklist that includes this statement, and without agreeing to it, you cannot submit your manuscript to us.
You should list all those who have made significant contributions as co-authors and acknowledge those who have participated in certain substantive aspects. The instructions to the authors contain the statement regarding authorship criteria.
The corresponding author must ensure that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the article and have agreed to its submission to the journal for publication.
It is essential to notify the editors of any conflicts of interest and sources of funding. Also, the authors should agree to the double-blind peer review policy of the journal.
If there are significant errors or inaccuracies in the published work, the authors must inform the Journal editor promptly for the retraction or correction of the manuscript.
Finally, authors must understand what plagiarism means and its different types. We have a policy to subject the paper to a plagiarism check before sending it for review. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. When a required statement is verbatim, it should be given in double quotes with a proper reference.
Authors should disclose any use of AI chatbots or tools in research and manuscript preparation, detailing the extent of AI involvement.
Reviewers’ Responsibilities:
Peer review is crucial for improving the quality of a manuscript and helps editors in making editorial decisions. However, reviewers must adhere to certain guidelines to ensure publication ethics are followed.
Reviewers must maintain confidentiality of all information provided for review. They should not use the authors' research or report to reproduce the same or similar research, as it is considered unethical. Reviews should be conducted objectively without any personal criticism of the author. Reviewers should provide a fair assessment of the manuscript's originality, usefulness to the scientific community, and any relevant published work that has been missed or ignored by the authors. If a reviewer has personal knowledge of a duplicate publication or submission, they should notify the editor.
Reviewers should avoid reviewing manuscripts that conflict with their interests or are unrelated to their area of expertise. They should also avoid reviewing manuscripts if they are not in a condition to review them at that time. The reviewers should disclose any assistance received from colleagues or AI tools when reviewing.
Editors’ Responsibilities:
Editors have complete responsibility and authority to accept or reject an article based on its content and overall quality. When editing a manuscript, editors should aim to improve it based on the authors’ perspective and readers’ expectations. They must guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record by publishing errata pages or making corrections when necessary.
To evaluate a manuscript, editors should focus on its intellectual content and decide based on its importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the publication's scope. They should not consider the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. Editors should not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone except the corresponding author, reviewers, editorial board, and publisher.
Editors should have a clear understanding of research funding sources and must not disclose the identity of reviewers. Moreover, editors must ensure that all research material they publish complies with international ethical guidelines.
Editors should act according to COPE’s guidelines if they suspect misconduct in a published or unpublished manuscript and attempt to resolve the problem.
19. Content Deposit Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery allows authors to freely self-archive and share their accepted and published manuscripts on any website, repository, or social media group without any restrictions. The information can be seen on Sherpa Romeo, https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/22916.
20. Journal History
Dr. Muhammad Bilal Mirza conceived the idea of an electronic journal dedicated to Neonatal Surgery back in 2012 and suggested the name "Journal of Neonatal Surgery". Upon sharing the idea with Prof. Yogesh Kumar Sarin, they both decided to start the journal. The need for such a journal was great, particularly in the context of poor outcomes of Neonatal Surgery in developing countries. Journal of Neonatal Surgery was the first-ever journal on Neonatal Surgery and emerged as a need of the hour.
Professor Afzal Sheikh was appointed as the first Editor in Chief. On his retirement, Prof. Yogesh Kumar Sarin took charge as Chief Editor. From the Year 2020, Dr. Muhammad Bilal Mirza took charge as Editor in Chief.
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery was initially started as a static HTML website and the first three issues of the first volume were published on the static website. These issues can be accessed below.
- Journal of Neonatal Surgery Volume 1 Issue 1
- Journal of Neonatal Surgery Volume 1 Issue 2
- Journal of Neonatal Surgery Volume 1 Issue 3
The management of the Journal of Neonatal Surgery decided to use the Open Journal System and thus the 4th issue of the Journal of Neonatal Surgery was published through the OJS platform. In the meantime, the IT staff of the Journal of Neonatal Surgery who can run the Open Journal System and are well versed in publishing online models and can develop PMC/JATS XML started EL-MED-Pub publishers. The main aim was to provide facilities for online journal publications within Pakistan.
The Journal also got archived in PubMed Central (PMC) till September 2017. Unfortunately, due to some publication quality-related issues, we were derecognized from the PMC. All the issues archived in PMC can be accessed at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/2728/. The Journal has now started again with a new vision and full spirit to publish quality scientific publications and we hope we will again be archived on PMC. We are planning to apply for PMC in Dec 2020.
Before the year 2020, the Journal of Neonatal Surgery was publishing 4 issues/year (quarterly). Now from the year 2020 onward, the Journal will be published as an Issue-free model. Every year one volume will be published and as the manuscripts will be accepted and finalized, will be published online. We believe this is a true electronic publishing model for electronic-only journals. This will avoid undue publication delays.
As per the record of Google Scholar (30-11-2023) the Journal of Neonatal Surgery has received a total of >3000 citations with an h-index of 25, and an i10-index of 101.
The journal and its management/editorial board pay tribute to our authors, reviewers, and readers who have continuously supported us since its inception.
21. Article Processing/Publishing Charges
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery does not charge authors for article submission/processing/publishing fees.
22. Advertising Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery has a fair advertising policy. The editorial team will be consulted before publishing any ads, ensuring that only relevant ones are selected. Ads promoting hate, pornography, tobacco, or other inappropriate materials will not be published as they are not suitable for the overall community. During the process of ad selection, we will adhere to principles of conflict of interest.
23. AI tools/Chatbot policy
The editorial board of the Journal of Neonatal Surgery fully endorsed the WAME recommendations on the use of chatbots or other AI tools. Please see the policy. The authors have to declare clearly in the manuscript if chatbots or other AI tools are used in the research or its drafting.
