Guide for Authors

Author Guidelines


Aim and Scope:

Trends in Pharmaceutical Sciences (TiPS) is the official peer reviewed journal of the School of Pharmacy- Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, publishing original research in pharmaceutical fields (biotechnology, clinical pharmacy, medicinal chemistry, nanotechnology, pharmaceutics, pharmacognosy, pharmacology, toxicology, traditional pharmacy, and related subjects) and scheduled to appear quarterly. The journal accepts original research articles, review articles, short communications, letter to the editors, and case reports.

 

Editorial Independency:

The TiPS benefits from editorial freedom. Our editorial policy is consistent with the principles of editorial independence presented by WAME.

 

Submission Process:

Manuscripts should be sent through the on-line submission system

TheTiPS is freely available for readers and researchers and apart from articles processed under our fast track system, we have no submission, publication or processing fee.

Since this journal does not have article processing charges and publication fees, the authors are asked to transfer the copyright of accepted manuscripts and also publishing right to the Journal.

 

Peer Review Process:

The articles are primarily evaluated by our statisticians and internal screeners who check the articles for any methodological flaws, format, and their compliance with the journal’s instructions. Then a submission code will be allocated and all the future contacts should be based on this code. Through a double-blind review, the articles will be reviewed by at least two external (peer) reviewers. Their comments will be passed to the authors and their responses to the comments along with the reviewers’ comments will then be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief, 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 Editor-in-Chief will decide which articles should be published.

 

Ethical Considerations:

The 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)

The research that involves human beings (or animals) must adhere to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

(http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html)

 

•     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.

 

•     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.

5-Suggesting a minimum of four reviewers is mandatory during submission, three of which should have other affiliations than the authors.

 

• 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. Authors are preferably asked to fill the uniform disclosure form available through:

(http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf)

 

• Plagiarism:

The authors are not allowed to utilize verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere.

 

• 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.

• Open Access Policy: 

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

• Retraction Policy:

The TiPS 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 Authorship Responsibilities: 

Your article will not be published unless you 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 TIPS Assignment Form should be signed and dated by all authors and sent along with the manuscript.

Paper Preparations:

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.

Language and Style: Contributions should be in either American or British English language.

- The text must be clear and concise, conforming to accepted standards of English style and usage.

- Non-native English speakers may be advised to seek professional help with the language.

- All materials should be typed in double line spacing numbered pages.

- Abbreviations should be standard and used just in necessary cases, after complete explanations in the first usage.

- 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.

Title Page of the article should include:

1) the title of the article

2) full names of all authors

3) complete affiliations of all authors

4) running title (short form of the main title presented on the top of pages)

5) complete mailing address, telephone/fax numbers, and email address of the corresponding author.

This page is unnumbered.

 

Abstract should be structured for original articles to Describe the main objective(s) of the study, Explain how the study was done, without methodological details, Summarize the most important results and their significance, provide as a single paragraph. It should not exceed 250 words altogether.

Preferably, abbreviations should not be mentioned in the abstract. Number this page as page 1.

Keywords are used for indexing purposes; each article should provide 3 to 6 keywords selected from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).

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

For original articles the text should be divided into main sections, such as the following: introduction, materials and methods, results and/or, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgements, references, figure legends, tables and figures.

Materials and method 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. Repeating the details of standard techniques is best avoided. The software used for statistical analysis and description of the actual method should be mentioned.

- 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.

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.

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.

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

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 as Acknowledgments.

References should be complied numerically 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. For the references credited to more than 6 authors please provide the name of all authors.

A DOI number should be added after each reference as follows:    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.Sc.2010.00372.

For various references please refer to “the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers”.

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/)

Listed below are sample references.

 

Journal Article:

1. Gaydess A, Duysen E, Li Y, Gilman V, Kabanov A, Lockridge O, et al. Visualization of exogenous delivery of nanoformulated butyrylcholinesterase to the central nervous system. Chem Biol Interact. 2010;187:295-8.

(if available) doi: 10.1016/j.cbi.2010.01.005. PubMed PMID: 20060815; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2998607.

2. Javan S, Tabesh M. Action of carbon dioxide on pulmonary vasoconstriction. J Appl Physiol. In press 2005.

Complete Book:

3. Guyton AC: Textbook of Medical Physiology. 8th ed. Philadelphia, PA, Saunders, 1996.

Chapter in Book:

4. Young VR. The role of skeletal muscle in the regulation of protein metabolism. In Munro HN, editor: Mammalian protein metabolism. Vol 4. San Diego; Academic; 1970. p. 585-674.

Tables and illustrations must be cited in order which they appear in the text; using Arabic numerals. Tables should be simple and should not duplicate information in the text of the paper.

Figures should be provided only if they improve the article. For radiographic films, scans, and other diagnostic images, as well as pictures of pathology specimens or photomicrographs, send the high resolution figures in jpeg, psd or bitmap format. Color photographs, if found to improve the article, would be published at no extra-charge at the print version of the journal. Type or print out legends for illustrations on a separate page, and explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.

Chemical structures should provided in ChemDraw software.

Magnifications should be indicated by means of a ruled line on the photograph where appropriate.

- Legends for figures should be typed separately after references section in the manuscript.

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

 For further information please contact the Editorial Office

Tel: +98 71 32424128 Ext: 297

Fax: +98 71 32424128 EXT: 204

Email: tips@sums.ac.ir

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