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 considers the manuscript prepared under the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) available at http://www.icmje.org. The main aim of the journal is to publish peer-reviewed quality research in the field of Neonatal Surgery. Neonatal Surgery is an evolving specialty and quality research in this discipline will improve neonatal surgical outcomes. Submissions are invited from every part of the globe irrespective of gender, country, race, ethnicity, or religion of the authors. The editorial board does not believe in such discriminations.
2. Open Access Policy
This Journal of Neonatal Surgery is fully an Open-Access resource for the authors and the readers. The journal provides immediate open access to all of its published content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Full-texts of the published scholarly articles, in any category, are freely available to download and disperse. Every manuscript published since the inception of the Journal of Neonatal Surgery can be accessed without any subscription, on the journal website.
3. Peer Review Policy
Journal of Neonatal Surgery is a peer-reviewed journal. It follows a double-blind peer-review process i.e. the authors and the reviewers are kept unidentified during the review process. This will remove bias in the review process and add authenticity to it. Systematic Review/Metaanlysis, Original Article, Narrative Review, Case Series, Case Report, Short Clinical Report, Short Communication, and Athena's Pages, etc. are reviewed by at least two reviewers. In case of conflict in the review, a third review can be performed to resolve the conflicting reviews. Case Letter, and Clinical Image, are reviewed by at least one peer reviewer. Editorial, Letter to Editor, Erratum, and Book Review, etc. are internally reviewed. The editorial team members can also peer review the manuscripts following the double-blind review principle.
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 PKP PLN plugin utilized in Open Journal System.
5. Public Identifier Policy
The journal publishes unique DOIs (Digital Object Identification) using 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 journal initials and the manuscript number.
6. Copyright Policy
Authors are the copyright holder of their published manuscripts at the Journal of Neonatal Surgery. A statement of copyright ownership is published on every manuscript's landing page and with the Fulltext files. Authors, however, grant the right of first publication to the Journal of Neonatal Surgery and have to agree on it, at the time of submission of the manuscript. No duplicate submissions, or manuscripts already published, or underprocessing of other journals will be entertained. The authors have to declare these aspects in the cover letter submitted with the manuscript. A statement on the same is presented as a submission checklist to the authors, and have to agree on it before proceeding to the submission of the manuscript.
7. Licensing Policy
Journal uses Creative Commons License (CC-By) (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/) which allows re-use of the content for educational purposes by acknowledging 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 manuscripts published in the Journal of Neonatal Surgery are based on the work of the authors who are guarantors of the originality and integrity of the research. The journal disclaims any harm or adverse event that may occur by using the information presented in the journal. Therefore, it is advised that the current literature must be considered along with other reliable sources before using the information presented in the Journal of Neonatal Surgery. We believe that scientific information is ever-changing and research finding valid today, may not remain relevant in the future.
9. Conflict of Interest Declaration
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery has a policy that Authors and Reviewers must declare a conflict of interest. In case of no conflict of interest, a statement as “None declared” is published with the manuscript. The authors must declare a conflict of interest both on the Title page and ICMJE conflict of the interest declaration form. The reviewers cannot review a manuscript until a conflict of interest is declared. The manuscripts submitted by the editorial board members are handled separately by other editors, and the concerned editor is not involved in the decision-making or the review process. A conflict of interest statement regarding membership of the editorial board is published with the manuscript.
10. Source of Support Declaration
The authors must declare a source of support or funding at the time of submission of the manuscript. The statement on the source of support is published with every manuscript. The authors are required to submit the statement on funding sources on both the Title page and ICMJE conflict of interest form. These files must be submitted with the manuscript. In case of no funding/source involved, a statement of “Source of Support: Nil” is published. In case of involvement of funding, a detailed description of the funding source, fund, and utilization of the fund must be submitted to the editorial office.
11. Consent to Publication
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery has made it compulsory for authors to provide a statement on informed consent if their manuscript contains a clinical figure. A “Consent Form”, available to download on the Submission page, is developed for recording consent of patient’s legal caretakers. We understand in the Corona pandemic, many patients are unable to visit the Hospitals, in this special circumstance the authors must take verbal consent to publish the clinical material and a statement on the same should be provided to the editorial office at the time of submission of the manuscript. Where possible, electronic signatures of the legal caretakers of the patient can be taken on the consent form. The Journal of Neonatal Surgery also allows submissions if consent is taken on institutional or departmental consent forms. If a manuscript contains clinical photographs of more than one patient, the consent must be taken individually for every patient. In any case, the identity of the patient must not be revealed. If the face is being shown, the eyes must be covered to hide the identity of the patient. Special consent will be required with explicit mention of permission to show the face if it is necessary to show the full-face without covering the eyes. The authors should provide a reason for the same.
At the time of submission of the manuscript, the authors are required to agree to these terms,
- By submitting the manuscript, the authors agree that they have taken informed consent from patients/Parents/Caretakers for publication of clinical material belonging to the patient. The Consent Form must be submitted along with the manuscript.
- By submitting the manuscript, the authors also confirm that they have taken permission of copyrighted material from concerned authorities if it is used in the manuscript.
A statement must be written as a caption on the permission of copyrighted material. The permission document should be submitted as supplementary material during the submission process.
In case the clinical figures are used in the manuscript and authors have declared taking the consent, the journal will publish this statement with the full text of the manuscript, “Author(s) declared taking informed written consent for the publication of clinical photographs/material (if any used), from the legal guardian of the patient with an understanding that every effort will be made to conceal the identity of the patient, however it cannot be guaranteed”. The journal will publish the following statement with a manuscript in case no clinical figure is used in the manuscript, “no clinical figure is used in this manuscript”.
12. Authorship Declaration
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery follows and endorses the publication policies devised by ICMJE. The journal considers a contribution as authorship if as per ICMJE authorship criteria,
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship. The same applies to the mere conception of idea only while the rest of the work is done by others.
To give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified on the “Authorship declaration form” available on the submission page of the journal website.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support and suggested a topic.
The journal will publish Author contributions statement with every manuscript as “Author(s) declared to fulfill authorship criteria as devised by ICMJE and approved the final version”.
13. Language of Publication
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery is published in the English language, preferably US English. The authors can submit manuscripts in either the US or UK English. A manuscript should not be the mix of both accents of English and a single accent must be used throughout the manuscript.
14. Editorial Membership Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery is quite grateful to the Editorial Board members for their continuous support for the journal. The editorial board is comprised of Editor in Chief Emeritus, Editor in Chief Current, Executive Editor/Managing Editor, and Editorial Consultants. Assistant Editor is considered as a post of trainee editors. The Journal has started a process to procure assistant editors by inviting applications with CVs as a trainee editor. This will prepare young consultants as future editors of the Journal. This will be a contribution of the Journal of Neonatal Surgery to the pediatric surgery fraternity. The assistant editors will get hands-on experience in managing Open Journal System and its various workflow processes such as editorial review, managing peer review, copyediting, the publication of the article, etc.
15. Article Metrics
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery displays article metrics on the landing page of each published manuscripts. At present only PDF views being displayed. The authors can request a full abstract view report as well. Unfortunately, XML full-text view counts are not being displayed at present, but we will soon solve this problem as well. As the Journal is recently upgraded to a newer version of OJS and somehow the upgrade has to be done manually by shifting every issue to the newer version, the metrics of before upgrade (before July 2020) are not added to the new counts. Users however can download metrics by clicking the Download previous metrics.
16. Article Full Text
The journal of Neonatal Surgery publishes the full text of manuscripts in PDF format. From the Year 2020 onward, the journal will also publish an XML or HTML version of the full text as well.
17. Plagiarism Screening Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery will use Turnitin for the screening of manuscripts before publication from the year 2020 onward. Before that, the manuscripts were being screened with Plagiarisma software. Plagiarism is just like theft of some one’s intellectual property. This is highly discouraged in the journal. On finding plagiarism, authors would be informed to clarify their point and act to remove the same. For rectification of such matters, the editors would act according to the COPE guidelines.
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:
The authors should present an accurate account of the intellectual work along with an objective discussion to describe the significance. The paper should contain pertinent details with support from references, especially from recent literature to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. The authors should not publish manuscripts presenting the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given like publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.
Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or submitted in some other journal or accepted/ under a review of some other journal at the time of submission. We have a checklist including this statement. Without agreeing with this statement no author can submit their manuscript to our journal.
All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors and those who have participated in certain substantive aspects should be acknowledged. The statement regarding authorship criteria is listed in instruction to the authors.
The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the article and have agreed to its submission to the Journal for its publication.
The authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest and source of funding. The authors should also agree to the double-blind peer review policy of the journal.
In case of significant error or inaccuracy of the published work, the authors promptly notify the Journal editor for retraction or correction of the manuscript.
Finally, authors should know about what plagiarism means and what are the types of plagiarism. We have the policy to subject the paper to a plagiarism check before sending the paper to review. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Wherever a required a statement verbatim it should be given in double-quotes with a proper reference.
Reviewers’ Responsibilities:
Peer review is imperative to optimize the standard of the manuscript and also assists in the editorial decision. However, the reviewers should also follow certain guidelines to help implement publication ethics guidelines.
Reviewers should keep all information, provided for review, confidential. The reviewer should not use the authors' report or research for reproducing the same or similar research as it is considered the unethical practice as the review is a privileged responsibility. Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. The reviewers should do justice to the review and comment on originality, usefulness to the scientific fraternity, and any relevant published work missed or ignored by authors to cite properly. The reviewer should also notify the editor if there is personal knowledge of a duplication publication or submission.
Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest, or not related to their area of interest or experience, or they are not in a condition to review at that time.
Editors’ Responsibilities:
Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article based on the content and overall quality. Editors should improve the paper based on the authors’ perspective to publish and the readers’ expectations when editing to improve the manuscript. Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
Editors should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content and base their decisions solely one the papers' importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to publication's scope and should not decide on a race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. The editors should not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, editorial board, and the publisher.
Editors should have a clear picture of research funding sources. Editors should not disclose the identity of reviewers. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to international ethical guidelines. The editors should avoid any conflict of interest with authors, reviewers, or any third part of interest. Editors should ask editors to review the manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest.
Editors should act according to COPE’s guidelines if they suspect misconduct in a published or unpublished manuscript and attempts to resolve the problem.
19. Content Deposit Policy
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery allows authors’ self-archiving of the manuscript. The accepted manuscripts and published manuscripts in any form can be posted to any website, repository, social media group, institutional repository, or share with anyone without any restriction. The information can be seen on Sherpa Romeo, https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/22916.
20. Journal History
The idea of an electronic journal dedicated to Neonatal Surgery was conceived by Dr. Muhammad Bilal Mirza in 2012 and he also suggested the name of the journal “Journal of Neonatal Surgery”. He shared this idea with Prof. Yogesh Kumar Sarin and both decided to start the journal. There was a great need for this journal. Journal of Neonatal Surgery is the First Journal on Neonatal Surgery. In a special context to the poor outcomes of Neonatal Surgery in a developing country, this journal was a need of time.
Professor Afzal Sheikh was appointed as the first Editor in Chief. On his retirement, Prof. Yogesh Kumar Sarin took the charge as Chief Editor. Now from the Year 2020, Dr. Muhammad Bilal Mirza took the 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 as under.
- 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 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 well versed with 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 on 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 record of Google Scholar (31-7-2020) the Journal of Neonatal Surgery has received a total of 1459 citations with h-index of 16, and i10-index of 39.
The journal and its management/editorial board pay tribute to our authors, reviewers, and readers who are continuously supporting since its inception.
21. Article Processing/Publishing Charges
The Journal of Neonatal Surgery does not charge authors for article submission/processing/publishing fees.
