Aim and Scope

Sadra Medical Sciences Journal, the official journal of the Student Research Committee of Shiraz University, is an international peer review biomedical publication with Scientific research rate, which is published as a quarterly. The aim of this Journal is to provide a scientific medium of communication for researchers throughout the globe. Sadra Medical Sciences Journal tries to improve the knowledge of medical sciences and health care by publishing researches and articles. The Journal welcomes original clinical articles as well as basic science research experiences mainly on prevalent diseases in the region and the analysis of various regional problems.

Articles with Persian and English abstracts and Persian text are presented in the journal. Articles related to medical sciences written in one of the following forms will be published in this journal:

  1. Original Article
  2. Review Article
  3. Short Communication
  4. Letter to Editor
  5. Case Report

 

Journal Publication Policy on Charging Author/Authors

This journal has reviewed and evaluated all the submitted articles by paying the fee since 01/01/1401. The corresponding author of each article, after submitting it to the journal website, must pay the "Initial evaluation fee" and, if desired, "Quick evaluation fee", and send the deposit slip and the code received when submitting the article to the email address sadra.med.journal@gmail.com as soon as possible. It should be noted that the payment of the "Acceptance fee" depends on the acceptance of the article by the referees and editorial team of the journal after going through the review process, and the payment of this amount at the very beginning does not oblige the journal to accept the article. It should be noted that if the "Initial evaluation fee" receipt is not received, after ten days from the time of submission, that article code will be archived by the journal.

 

The received fee is as follows:

Initial evaluation fee: Three hundred thousand Tomans, which is necessary for the initial review of all articles, and if the article passes this stage, it will be referred to a specialized referee. The time required for arbitration is usually between one and two months.

Quick evaluation fee (optional): One million five hundred thousand Tomans, articles which pay this amount are prioritized by the journal for initial review and judging. It should be noted that these authors will receive the results of their articles in less than a month.

Acceptance fee: Two million two hundred thousand Tomans, if the article is accepted by the journal after the refereeing process, the authors must pay this amount to receive the acceptance letter and be on the way to publication.

In order to deposit funds, an account number "5769580989" of Mohammad Hadi Imanieh (Journal’s Manager) and Amirreza Dehghanian (Journal’s Editor) as its holders with Card number "6104-3389-8962-3927" and Shaba account number "IR410120000000005769580989" have been created in Mellat bank.

Please do not forget to send the image of the deposit slip along with the article submission code to the email address: sadra.med.journal@gmail.com so that the review process of the article can be started as soon as possible. 

 

The corresponding author of each article while submitting it, must provide a letter to the editor, pointing the title of the article, the names of the authors, and mentioning that the article has not been previously published in other journals or elsewhere, and that all authors are aware of the submission and publication of the article, and after signing it by all the authors of the article, he/she must scan the file in the attachment and send the article.

 

Editorial Independency

The Sadra Medical Sciences Journal benefits from editorial freedom. Our editorial policy is consistent with the principles of editorial independence presented by WAME.

http://wame.org/editorial-independence

 

Submission Process

Manuscripts should be sent through the on-line submission system: http://smsj.sums.ac.ir/contacts?action=loginForm

 

Peer Review Process

The articles are primarily evaluated by the editor. Then our statisticians and internal screeners check the articles for any methodological flaws, format, and their compliance with the journal’s instructions.

A submission code will be allocated to the article while submitting it to the journal’s website and all the future contacts should be based on this code.

Through a -single anonymized review, the articles will be reviewed by at least two external (peer) reviewers.

Their comments will be passed to the corresponding author and his/her responses to the comments along with the reviewers’ comments will then be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief, the Deputy Editor, and a final reviewer who can be a member of the Editorial Board.

The final review process will be discussed in regular editorial board sessions and on the basis of the comments, and the journal’s scope, the Editors-in-Chief will decide which articles should be published.

If the articles are finalized, they will be published in the journal in order of preparation date.

The journal will not be responsible for claims between authors and authors with other references. 

According to the order in the article, the corresponding author is responsible for mentioning the names of the authors of the article, and all the minor and general rights of the article published in the journal are reserved for the author(s).

The journal is free to reject or accept articles and it also reserves the right of scientific and literary edit and summarize the articles for itself. The proof version will be sent to the corresponding author before publication.

The submitted article will not be returned.

 

 Ethical Considerations

The publication of any article in the journal is subject to ethical standards. Sadra Medical Sciences Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in confronting any ethical misbehavior. The Journal also follows the guidelines mentioned in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org/#privacy).

•     Human & Animal Rights Statement

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board). When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare.

•     Informed consent

All patients and participants of the research should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects of the drugs and intervention. Written informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians is necessary for any such studies. The Journal reserves the right to request the related documents, and the authors should be prepared to provide documentation when requested by editors.

 •     Authorship

Based on the newly released Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, by the ICMJE, “an Author” is generally considered to be someone who meets the following conditions 1, 2, 3, and 4.

1- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3- Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4- 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.

•     Conflict of Interest

We request all the authors to inform us about any kinds of “Conflict of Interest” (such as financial, personal, political, or academic) that would potentially affect their judgment. They are also asked to include the name of the group or institution in which the study was conducted or sponsored in an agreement. Authors are preferably asked to fill the uniform disclosure form available through: (http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf)

General institutional support for an author's time on the work should be distinguished from direct overall funding of the work. An appropriate funding statement might be: “This study was funded by A; Dr. F's time on the work was supported by B.”

 

 •     Plagiarism

The authors are not allowed to utilize verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere. COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in cases in which plagiarism is detected. 

It is not acceptable to republish or resend all or part of an article previously published or submitted to the journal.

The authors of an article claim that the scientific and literary content of the article results from their own scientific activity. Using the opinions or statements of others as the results of an original study is contrary to scientific ethics and is considered a serious violation called plagiarism. Apart from the full citation of the sources used, the text of the article should not create the suspicion that all or part of it has been copied from other printed and unpublished articles.

 

 •     Copyright

If a manuscript contains any previous published image or text, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders. The author is required to obtain and submit the written original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscripts.

The full responsibility for the sources and content published from a moral and legal point of view will be to the author(s).

All the responsibility for any published material, including the accuracy and validity of all its contents, including the content related to ethics in research, is to the author(s).

 

Retraction Policy

The Sadra Medical Sciences Journal uses the COPE flowchart for retraction of a published article (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) to determine whether a published article should be retracted.

 

Assignment of Copyright and Authorship Responsibilities

Your article will not be published unless a Copyright Assignment Form has been signed and received by Sadra Medical Sciences Journal. You hereby warrant that “This article is an original work, has not been published before and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form”.

The copyright of articles are transferred to the journal. The copyright transfer covers the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, microform, electronic form (offline, online) or any other reproductions of similar nature.

 

Paper Preparations

It is requested from all authors who would like their articles to be published in Sadra Medical Sciences Journal to note all the following points when setting and writing their articles.

1- Cover letter should contain a statement that you will not resubmit your article to another journal until the reviewing process will be completed. Also please indicate whether the authors have published or submitted any related papers from the same study.

According to ICMJE recommendations, at submission, the authors should disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology should describe, in both the cover letter and the submitted work in the appropriate section if applicable, how they used it. For example, if AI was used for writing assistance, describe this in the acknowledgment section. If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, authors should describe this use in the methods. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work. Authors should carefully review and edit the result because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors should not list AI and AI assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. Authors should be able to assert that there is no plagiarism in their paper, including in text and images produced by the AI. Humans must ensure there is appropriate attribution of all quoted material, including full citations.

2- Title Page of the article is unnumbered and should include the following points:

1)     Title of the article;

2)     Authors’ names, scientific degrees and affiliations (both in Persian and English languages);

3)     Orchid ID for the first and corresponding author of the article;

4)     Name of the institution where the work was done;

5)     Running title (short form of the main title for presenting on the top of pages);

6)     Complete mailing address, telephone/fax numbers, and email address of the corresponding author.

3- Abstract should be structured and include the following points:

1)     The abstract of article should be prepared in Persian and English.

2)     The number of each of Persian and English abstract words should not exceed 250 words.

3)     Preferably, abbreviations should not be mentioned in the abstract.

4)     All articles must have both Persian and English abstracts.

5)     Persian abstract of research articles including مقدمه, روش‌هایافته‌ها  and نتیجه‌گیری.

6)     English abstract of research articles containing Introduction, Methods, Results and Conclusion.

7)     For review articles, the abstract does not need to be structured; it is sufficient that the abstract of this type of article contains a summary of the article.

4- Keywords are used for indexing purposes. Each article should provide four to six keywords selected from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/

5- Introduction should provide a context or background and specifies the purpose or research objective of the study or observation.

6- Methods must indicate clearly the steps taken to acquire the information. Be sure that it includes only information that was available at the time the plan or protocol for the study was written. It should be detailed (including: controls, inclusion and exclusion criteria, etc) and may be separated into subsections (Selection and Description of Participants, Data Collection and Measurements, and Statistics). Repeating the details of standard techniques is best avoided.

For reports of randomized controlled trials, authors should refer to the CONSORT statement (http://www.consort-statement .org/). These studies also require an IRCT number. All randomized clinical trials should be registered in any international RCT registration centers approved by the WHO. For research conducted in Iran, it is advised to register at IRCT (www.irct.ir). After receiving the desired number, enter it at the end of the article in Acknowledgment.

Reporting guidelines such as STROBE, STARD, and PRISMA would help you to produce high quality research and to provide all required information and evidence for related methodology. EQUATOR Network website would help you in using these guidelines.

The software used for statistical analysis and description of the actual method should be mentioned in this part.

Authors who used AI technology to conduct the study should describe its use in the methods section in sufficient detail to enable replication of the approach. including the tool used, version, and prompts where applicable.

7- Results should be presented in chronological sequence in the text, table, and illustration. Organize the results according to their importance. They should result from your own study.

8- Tables, diagrams and illustrations must be cited in order which they appear in the text; using Arabic numerals.

1)     Tables should be simple and should not duplicate information in the text of the paper.

2)     Tables should have a title at the top, and if needed, the subtitles should be listed below the tables.

3)     Figures should be provided only if they improve the article.

4)     For radiographic films, scans, and other diagnostic images, as well as pictures of pathology specimens or photomicrographs, send the high resolution figures in jpeg or bitmap format.

5)     Type legends for illustrations on a separate page, and explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.

6)     The number of tables, diagrams, and figures should be appropriate with the article size (one item per four pages). Avoid listing tables and diagrams that contain full information and data in the text of the article.

7)     Data should not be presented in both table and diagram formats.

9- Discussion should emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow them. Possible mechanisms or explanations for these findings should be explored. The limitations of the study and the implications of the findings for future research or clinical practice should be explored, too.

10- Conclusion should state the final result that the author(s) has (have) reached. The results of other studies should not be stated in this section.

11- Acknowledgments  from any technical help, general, financial, and material support or contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, can be cited at the end of the text in this section.

Regarding the human studies that have been approved by the ethics committee, it is necessary to write the name of the ethics committee that approved the plan in this section, and they should be praised and thanked by mentioning the letter number of the approval of the ethics committee and the name of the intended ethics committee. Moreover, the utilization of AI for writing assistance should be reported in the acknowledgment section.

12- References should be complied numerically in order of reference in the text of the article, according to the order of citation in the text in the Vancouver style. The numbers of references should not preferably exceed 40 for original articles, 15 for brief, and 8 for case reports.

References should be made to published articles rather than to abstracts whenever possible. References should be written in English. To write Persian references in English, if the original source has the English translation for the title of the article, the name of the journal or book on the back cover of the book or article or in the English abstract, it is better to use that English translation. If the English translation for the Persian reference is not mentioned in the original source itself, it is necessary to translate "the title of the article, the name of the journal as well as the name of the authors" into English and at the end that reference, it should be written (In Persian).

For the references credited to more than 6 authors please provide the name of the first six authors and represent the rest authors by the phrase “et al.”

For information on Vancouver resource writing style please refer to “the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers”. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/)

Here are some examples of Vancouver-style reference writing:

Journal Article:

Chen MC, Liu HE, Chiou AF. The effect of a simple exercise programme on quality of life of older adults. Journal of Internal Medicine. 2012; 49(5): 265-273. 

Complete Book:

Lapitan MC, Libby P, Auerbach AD, Braunwald E. Braunwald's Heart Disease: a text book of cardiovascular medicine. 3rd ed. New York: Philadelphia, PA. Elsevier & Saunders; 2005.  p. 120. 

Chapter in Book:

Fukushima S, Massolini G. management of health. In: Carter C, Peel JR, editors. Clinical guideline for the evaluation of chronic insomnia. 5nd ed. London: Academic Press; 2012. p. 145-158.

13- Supplementary Materials such as movie clips, questionnaires, etc will be published on the online version of the journal.

 

Important points about writing an article:

The text of the original articles includes: Persian and English Abstracts, Keywords, Introduction (containing, purpose and review of scientific sources), Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion, Acknowledgment and list of References.

The text of the review articles includes: Persian and English Abstracts, Keywords, Introduction (containing the objectives and context of the study), Review methods and Data sources, Discussion and Conclusion, Acknowledgment and list of References.

The text of the case reports includes: Persian and English Abstracts, Keywords, Introduction, Case description, Discussion and Conclusion, and list of References.

It should be noted that the ethical points observed in the research should be fully explained. Failure to mention moral considerations indicates that they are not observed.

 

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.

1)     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).

2)     The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.

3)     Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.

4)     The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

5)     The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in the main page of the Journal.

6)     If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

7)     The assignment has been signed and dated by all authors and submitted along with the article (you can download the assingment for from the "Forms" section in the Navigation Bar).

 

Language and Style

Since Persian is the main and official language of the journal, the observance of Persian rules and grammar and the expressiveness of the sentences are very important. It is better that Persian words be used as much as possible to express scientific content and terms, and English words should be avoided in cases where the Persian equivalent is acceptable and meaningful. In cases where it is necessary to write names in the text of the article, write the word or name in Persian and enter its English equivalent in parentheses. If in the text, the word or phrase has a Persian and English abbreviation equivalent, the full phrase should be mentioned along with the abbreviated equivalent inside the parentheses in the first use, and then the abbreviated equivalent should be mentioned.

 

The English version of abstract must be clear and concise, conforming to accepted standards of English style and usage. Non-native English authors are advised to seek professional help with writing in English.

Persian abstract and the text of the article should be written in B-Nasanin and English abstract should be written in Times New Romance font, all with 12 size. Write the text of the article in MS-Word 2013 software environment and send it to the following address http://smsj.sums.ac.ir/contacts through the article submission section. All materials should be typed in double line spacing numbered pages. It is better to have a maximum of 15 pages of typed article.

The editorial office reserves the right to edit the submitted manuscripts in order to comply with the journal’s style. In any case, the authors are responsible for the published material.

 

Correction of Errata

The journal will publish an erratum when a factual error in a published item has been documented.

 

Privacy Statement

The names, phone numbers and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

 

Sadra Medical Sciences Journal is free and researchers have access to the journal's articles.

For further information please contact the Editorial Office:

Tel: +98 71 32122970

Fax: +98 7132122970

Email: sadra.med.journal@gmail.com

          smsj@sums.ac.ir

Website: http://smsj.sums.ac.ir/