Submissions
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.Privacy Statement
Patients and Study Participants
Patient’s privacy right should not be violated without informed consent. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication. Patient consent should be written and archived either with the journal, the authors, or both, as dictated by local regulations or laws.
Nonessential identifying details should be omitted. Informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, authors should assure that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning.
Authors and Reviewers
Manuscripts must be reviewed with due respect for authors’ confidentiality. Authors’ rights may be violated by disclosure of the confidential details during review of their manuscript. Reviewers also have rights to confidentiality, which must be respected by the editor. Confidentiality may have to be breached if dishonesty or fraud is alleged but otherwise must be honored.
Editors must not disclose information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, criticism by reviewers, or ultimate fate) to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. This includes requests to use the materials for legal proceedings.
Editors must make clear to their reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and are the private property of the authors. Therefore, reviewers and members of the editorial staff must respect the authors’ rights by not publicly discussing the authors’ work or appropriating their ideas before the manuscript is published. Reviewers must not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files and must be prohibited from sharing it with others, except with the editor’s permission. Reviewers should return or destroy copies of manuscripts after submitting reviews. Editors should not keep copies of rejected manuscripts.
Reviewer comments should not be published or otherwise publicized without permission of the reviewer, author, and editor.
NAJMS reviewers should remain anonymous. The reviewers’ identity must not be revealed to the author or anyone else without the reviewers’ permission.
Sometime NAJMS publish reviewers’ comments with the manuscript which should be adopted with the consent of both the authors and the reviewers. In this circumstance, reviewers’ comments should be sent to other persons reviewing the same manuscript. Reviewers also may be notified of the editor’s decision to accept or reject a manuscript.