INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

'The Pharma Review' is a bi-monthly publication covering all aspects of the noble profession of pharmacy. 'The Pharma Review' invites original contributions from all the Pharma and allied medical and paramedical healthcare professionals from the industry and the academia who are willing to participate in the promotion and upliftment of the pharmacy profession. We invite review/research articles from our readers. Authors are requested to carefully read and understand the following instructions and comply with the style of The Pharma Review before preparing and sending the manuscripts.

Review Articles

Review articles are written by researchers of considerable experience in the field concerned. The author should review the recent trend or advances in that field in the light of his own work. Reviews should be based on assimilation of data from various sources for the purpose of establishing a new concept. The review should be well structured starting with introduction and ending with conclusion. The major portion of above articles should deal with the upto-date developments in the field in the last 3-5 years. Authors are advised to search Medline and other databases on the Internet, apart from collecting information using conventional methods. Other headings and sub-headings depend upon the nature and content of the review. There should not be more than 2 tablets, 2 charts/graphs, or 2 diagrams (in total, not more than 4 of any of them) in the review article. Abstract should not be more than 200 words and total length of article should be in between 2500 to 3000 words. In exceptional cases, more lengthy articles can also be considered. Small articles can be published as viewpoint.

Research Articles

This section invites original research work done in the pharmaceutics, analytical/pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacognosy, pharmacology, development of new concepts/methods or procedures which have a technological advancement or definite advantages over the other established procedures. A uniform pattern mentioned below is to be strictly adhered to avoid rejection. Total length of research articles should be between 1500 to 2000 words. There should not be more than one table, one chart/graph, or one diagram (in total, not more than two of any of the above) in the research articles.

It should be arranged into the following sections:

1) Title page: It should carry the title, author’s names and their affiliations, running title, address for correspondence including e-mail address. The title of the manuscript must be informative, specific and short and should not exceed 50 characters.

2) Abstract and Key words: It must start on a new page carrying the following information: (a) Title (without authors’ names & affiliations), (b) Abstract, (c) Key words. The abstract should not exceed 250 words excluding the title and the key words. The abstract must be concise, clear and informative. New and important aspects must be emphasized. The conclusions and recommendations not found in the text of the article should not be given in the abstract. Also, provide 3-5 keywords which will help readers or indexing agencies in cross-indexing the study. The words found in title need not be given as key words. Use terms from the latest Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus. A more general term may be used if a suitable MeSH term is not available.

3) Introduction: It should start on a new page. This section must introduce the subject and briefly say how the idea for research originated. Give a concise background of the study. Do not review literature extensively but provide the most recent work that has a direct bearing on the subject. Justification for research aims and objectives must be clearly mentioned without any ambiguity. The purpose of the study should be stated at the end.

4) Materials and Methods: This section should deal with the materials used and the methodology - how the work was carried out. The procedure adopted should be described in sufficient detail to allow the experiment to be interpreted and repeated by the readers, if necessary. The number of subjects, the number of groups studied, the study design, sources of drugs with dosage regimen or instruments used, statistical methods and ethical aspects must be mentioned under the section. The methodology - the data collection procedure - must be described in sufficient detail. The details of statistical tests used and the level of significance should be stated. If more than one test is used it is important to indicate which groups and parameters have been subjected to which test.

‘The Pharma Review’ insists on ethical practices in both animal experimentation and clinical studies. Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the CPCSEA (animal) and ICMR guidelines (human). The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the ‘Materials and Methods’ section.

5) Results: The results should be stated concisely without comments. It should be presented in logical sequence in the text with appropriate reference to tables and/or figures. The data given in tables or figures should not be repeated in the text. The same data should not be presented in both tabular and graphic forms. Simple data may be given in the text itself instead of figures or tables. Avoid discussions and conclusions in the results section.

6) Discussion: This section should deal with the interpretation, rather than recapitulation of results. It is important to discuss the new and significant observations in the light of previous work. Discuss also the weaknesses or pitfalls in the study. New hypotheses or recommendations can be put forth. Avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by the data. Repetition of information given under Introduction and Results should be avoided. Conclusions must be drawn considering the strengths and weaknesses of the study. They must be conveyed in the last paragraph under Discussion. Make sure conclusions drawn should tally with the objectives stated under Introduction. The discussion must be well thought out and properly phrased. It should discuss methods and results of the study and any variations from recommended norms, reasons for such deviations and its effects on the outcome of the study, etc. The conclusions must be substantiated by the observation reported. Repetition of results in discussion must be avoided.

7) Acknowledgements: At the end of the text please add (a) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a Departmental Chair, (b) acknowledgements of technical help, and (c) acknowledgements of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support and relationships that may pose a conflict of interest.

8) References: It should begin on a new page. The number of references should normally be restricted to a maximum of 25 for a full paper. Majority of them should preferably be of articles published in the last 5-10 years. Avoid citing abstracts as references. Papers which have been submitted and accepted but not yet published may be included in the list of references with the name of the journal and indicated as “In press”. The “unpublished observations” and “personal communications” may not be used as references but may be inserted (in parentheses) in the text. References are to be cited in the text by superscribed number and should be in the order in which they appear. The references must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents. The list of references should be typed double spaced following the Vancouver style. The Journal will now follow uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to Bio-Medical journals (New England Journal Medicine 1997; 336: 309–15) which are international standards designed to provide authors with a single format that can be followed in preparing a manuscript.

Examples are given below:

Articles in Journals

Standard journal article

Vega KJ, Pina I, Kreysk B. Heart transplantation is associated with an increased risk for pancreatobiliary disease. An Intern Med 1996 (June) 1: 124–11: 980–3.

More than six authors list the first six authors followed by et al

Parkin DM, Clayton D, Black RJ, Masuver E, Friedl HP, Ivanov E, et al. Childhood leukaemia in Europe after Chernobyl: 5 year follow up. Br. J Cancer 1996; 73: 1006–12.

From text book

Phillips SI, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh H, Brenner BM, editors. Hypertension : Pathophysiology, diagnosis and management. 2nd ed. New York: Raven Press, p. 465–78.

Organization as author

The Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. Clinical exercise stress testing. Safety and performance guidelines. Med J Aust 1996; 164: 282-4.

No author given

Cancer in South Africa [editorial]. S Afr Med J 1994; 84:15.

Volume with supplement

Shen HM, Zhang QF. Risk assess-ment of nickel carcinogenicity and occupational lung cancer. Environ Health Perspect 1994; 102 Suppl 1:275-82.

Issue with supplement

Payne DK, Sullivan MD, Massie MJ. Women's psychological reactions to breast cancer. Semin Oncol 1996; 23(1 Suppl 2):89-97.

Volume with part

Ozben T, Nacitarhan S, Tuncer N. Plasma and urine sialic acid in non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus. Ann Clin Biochem 1995;32(Pt 3):303-6.

Issue with part

Poole GH, Mills SM. One hundred consecutive cases of flap lacerations of the leg in ageing patients. N Z Med J 1994;107(986 Pt 1):377-8.

Chapter in a book

Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, editors. Hyperten-sion: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management. 2nd ed. New York: Raven Press; 1995. p. 465-78.

Conference paper

Bengtsson S, Solheim BG. Enforce-ment of data protection, privacy and security in medical informatics. In: Lun KC, Degoulet P, Piemme TE, Rienhoff O, editors. MEDINFO 92. Procee-dings of the 7th World Congress on Medical Infor-matics; 1992 Sep 6-10; Geneva, Switzerland. Amsterdam: North-Holland; 1992. p. 1561-5.

Dissertation

Kaplan SJ. Post-hospital home health care: the elderly's access and utilization [dissertation]. St. Louis (MO): Washington Univ.; 1995.

Patent

Larsen CE, Trip R, Johnson CR, in-ventors; Novoste Corporation, assignee. Methods for procedures re-lated to the electrophysiology of the heart. US patent 5,529,067. 1995 Jun 25.

Dictionary and similar references

Stedman's medical dictionary. 26th ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins; 1995. Apraxia; p. 119-20.

In press

Leshner AI. Molecular mechanisms of cocaine addiction. N Engl J Med. In press 1996.

9) Tables: Each table must be self-explanatory and presented in such a way that they are easily understandable without referring to the text. It should be typed with double spacing and numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Provide a short descriptive caption above each table with foot notes and/or explanations underneath. The number of observations, subjects and the units of numerical figures must be given. It is also important to mention whether the given values are mean, median, mean ± SD or mean ± SEM. All significant results must be indicated using asterisks, rows and columns properly aligned. Appropriate positions for the tables within the text may be indicated. The tables should be serially numbered, should be accompanied with a short self explanatory caption, Mean ± SD or Mean ± SEM given, statistical significance of groups indicated by asterisks or other markers, P values given, if any.

10) Figures: Each figure must be numbered and a short descriptive caption must be provided. All
significant results should be indicated using asterisks.

Authors must be careful when they reproduce text, tables or illustrations from other sources. Plagiarism will be viewed seriously.

Authors should note that:

copying verbatim text, tables or illustrations from any source (journal article, book, monographs, thesis, Internet/any electronic media or any other published or unpublished material) and passing it as ones own is considered plagiarism whether or not a reference to the copied portion is given.
listing the source of copied material under 'References' does not absolve the authors of plagiarism.
if a few lines of text are to be reproduced from any source, 'the author' and 'the source' must be clearly indicated in the text. The reproduced lines must be in italics and given within quotes. If it is a paragraph it must be slightly indented also. To reproduce large portions of text, permission from the copyright owner(s) must be obtained and submitted to the IJP.

General Instructions

1. Contributions should be made keeping in view the current trends in the pharmaceutical industry and the work should have relevance in the

current day.

2. Contributions should be neatly typed in double space in A4 size paper leaving appropriate margins. The manuscript should be in MS word format on a fresh floppy / CD bearing proper label. Incomplete or improperly prepared manuscripts will be returned to the author(s) without editorial review. The figures may be embedded in the Word file or submitted as separate files and should be created using MS-Excel. If any other software is used the graphic files may be converted to *.pcx, *.tiff, *.jpg format. It is desirable that these details are mentioned in the covering letter. The diskette must be clearly labelled. The label must contain the title of the manuscript and the corresponding author’s name, affiliations, title and address.

3. Headings should be in capital letters and sub-headings should be italic.

4. The editor reserves rights to edit, elaborate, or reduce the content submitted by the contributors.

5. Any article accepted for publication/published in the TPR will be the copyright of the journal. The journal has the right to publish the accepted articles in any media (print, electronic or any other) any number of times. The authors should agree to transfer copyright and sign a declaration to this effect.

6. All contributions should be marked to "The Editor" and sent to the above address.

7. The manuscript must be submitted with a statement, signed by all the authors, regarding the
originality, authorship and transfer of copyright as per the format given in Annexure I.

8.   Manuscripts for publication will be considered on their individual merits. All manuscripts will be
      subjected to peer review. Comments with the editorial board’s decision will be forwarded to the
      contributor for further action.

9. The authors should revise the manuscript immediately after receipt of the comments from the
      Editorial Board. A note mentioning the changes incorporated in the revised text as per referee’s
      comments (point by point) should be sent. The revised manuscript has to be submitted in
      duplicate along with the annotated original paper within 3 months; else the manuscript will be
      considered withdrawn by the authors. Calling for revision does not guarantee acceptance. Those
      revised manuscripts which undergo major revision are likely to be sent again to referees for
      evaluation.

AUTHORSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Anyone who makes significant intellectual/experimental contribution must only be given authorship.
Every author must be involved in planning, implementation and analysis of the research study and its presentation in the form of the manuscript. In case some clarification is sought, they should be able to reply to the queries.
Authors should be ready to take public responsibility for the content of the paper.
All the authors in a manuscript are responsible for the technical information communicated. For this reason it is necessary that all authors must read and approve the final version of the manuscript before signing the consent and declaration form.

The Pharma Review - The Umbrella Magazine of the Pharma industry is an ideal platform provided to the members of the pharmaceutical industry to express their views and exchange ideas to help in the upliftment of the pharmacy profession.