Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine (IJCCM) will not henceforth accept descriptive retrospective studies about COVID-19, unless they full-fill some knowledge gaps and adds something new to the current knowledge about the disease, vaccination and therapy.
General Instructions for Submissions
All Authors interested in publishing their research work in Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine (IJCCM) will need to submit their manuscripts for publication through a web-based manuscript tracking system in use by Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine. The authors can submit new manuscript; revise their existing manuscripts, upload other required documents. They can track the status of their manuscripts, which are already submitted. This system helps the editorial office to help communicate with the associate editors, reviewers and thus manage the peer review process. The same system is used for communication with authors. Please go to https://www.ijccm.org, register yourself (if first time user) to submit the manuscripts.
Authors should note:
Authors should note that there are no processing charges for publication of an article in the journal.
Plagiarism is the unethical practice of using words or ideas (either planned or accidental) of another author/researcher or your own previous works without proper acknowledgment. The journal checks for plagiarism using professionally available software. Strict action, including retraction of the article and blacklisting authors indulging in this from publishing in the journal will be taken. Further action may be taken as deemed appropriate by the Editorial board and the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine shall be taken.
The authors hold the copyright of all the editorial content published in this journal from now. All material can be used in part and full for non-commercial output after providing appropriate attribution to the original content of the journal and a link to the licence (CC-BY-NC 4.0). It is mandatory for authors to submit the manuscript along with Commercial Rights Transfer Form.
All open access articles published in IJCCM are distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC 4.0 license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, for non-commercial purposes, provided the original work is properly cited. Under Creative Commons, authors retain copyright in their articles.
The Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine accepts manuscripts about research conducted in adult and infants.
When any manuscript is submitted to the IJCCM, it is with the understanding that it has not been submitted elsewhere for consideration for publication, or has not been previously published in any form, except in conferences and meetings.
The type of articles accepted by the journal are as follows:
Editorials are by invitation only. We also prefer review articles submitted after invitation from the editorial board.
Manuscripts must conform to journals Instructions for Authors and the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals,” (see www.icmje.org).
From 1st January 2021 onwards it is mandatory for all prospective studies to be registered with either Clinical Trials Registry of India (CTRI) or an equivalent registry. Please include the CTRI no. at the end of abstract, in brackets ().
Manuscripts submitted without CTRI no. will not be accepted for review.
The manuscripts should be written in grammatically correct English (USA) and typed double spaced, left justified, using word processors such as Microsoft Word or Notes (for Mac users), in Times new font size 12. The paragraphs should be separated by left indent.
The manuscript should be prepared in separate parts as follows:
This should have the title of the manuscript, name, qualifications and designations of all authors. Please do not include any information in the title, which may identify the institute at which the work has been done. Choose a concise and informative title which uses terms which can be readily indexed; it should not be longer than 10-15 words. Avoid choosing a title in the form of a question.
The journal prefers to restrict the number of authors to 7, however this is not binding, and this number may be exceeded in certain types of articles such as original research, guidelines, and position statements of the society. The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria: (see www.icmje.org)
The title page should clearly mention the role played by each author in the research.
The name, address, e-mail and contact details (mobile or landline no.), designation and Institutional affiliation/s. ORCID ID of all authors is mandatory.
Unless the author information is complete the manuscript will not be accepted for review.
The title page should be uploaded with the addition Not for review in the file name, for example name the title page as “Title page-ECMO for ARDS (not for review). A brief running title and 5-10 keywords (preferable searchable in MESH) should be included in the title page. Please do not include name, region, or anything else in the heading which may identify the institute may be identified where the research work was carried out.
Submission: Please ensure that you mention the author names, affiliations and city and country correctly. No change will be permitted after the article has been accepted for publication.
Resubmission: Please check that you have mentioned the author names, affiliations and city and country correctly. No change will be permitted after the article has been accepted for publication.
Author Name Ordering: Please ensure that you enter the author names in correct order. No change will be permitted after article has been accepted provisionally for publication.
Declare financial support (if any) and conflict of interest (if any) on the title page. If there are none, write none declared. Acknowledgment of individuals who directly helped in the carrying out the study should also be included here. Please include word count (for abstract), for the manuscript (with references), the manuscript (without references), no. of figures, no. of tables also on the title page. If the authors have used any material such as tables or figures from other published works, the responsibility of obtaining the requisite permissions lies with authors.
A structured abstract should accompany all research articles, brief communications, commentary / viewpoint, case reports and review articles. It is not necessary to write an abstract for letters to editor.
The abstract for research articles should be divided into 4 sections: Background, Patients and Methods, Results, and Conclusions. It is not necessary to write the details of the statistical analysis in abstract.
Avoid using abbreviations in the abstracts. If at all used, they should be expanded there itself.
The abstract for systematic reviews and meta analysis should be divided into the following sections: Objectives, Data Sources, Study Selection, Data Extraction, Data Synthesis, and Conclusions.
a. Original Research Articles
| Heading | Content | |
|---|---|---|
| Highlights | 50 words | |
| Introduction | Background information, What is known? Why study was done – Aim of study | |
| Materials and Methods | IEC approval/waiver, Who were the participants i.e. inclusion and exclusion criteria, whether there were vulnerable subjects (such as children, pregnant women, and adults with mental disabilities or diseases that affect decision-making assignment of interventions, if yes how their interests were safeguarded), (randomization methods, concealment of allocation to control or intervention groups), and method of blinding, Primary and Secondary outcomes, pre-hoc subgroups, etc. Statistical details: what tests were carried out (software used) | |
| Results | Demography, Benefit or Harm, other incidental findings, use tables or figures to support, Avoid duplication of content | |
| Discussion | Salient findings, whether similar / different to previous studies/ Why? Support with literature Avoid duplicating results in toto | |
| Conclusion | ONLY include what you found, do not include speculation, future directions | |
| References | Vancouver style, 6 authors, followed by et al | |
| Highlights | What new information does this add to the field | |
| Word count: Abstract 250 words, Main text: Max 3000 words (excluding tables and references), References: 25-35 | ||
b. Brief Communications
| Heading | Content | |
|---|---|---|
| Highlights | 50 words | |
| Introduction | Background information, What is known? Why study was done – Aim of study | |
| Materials and Methods |
IEC approval/waiver, Who were the participants i.e. inclusion and exclusion criteria, whether there were vulnerable subjects (such as children, pregnant women, and adults with mental disabilities or diseases that affect decision-making assignment of interventions, if yes how their interests were safeguarded), (randomization methods, concealment of allocation to control or intervention groups), and method of blinding, Primary and Secondary outcomes, pre-hoc subgroups, etc. Statistical details: what tests were carried out (software used) |
|
| Results | Demography, Benefit or Harm, other incidental findings, use tables or figures to support, Avoid duplication of content | |
| Discussion | Salient findings, whether similar / different to previous studies/ Why? Support with literature Avoid duplicating results in toto | |
| Conclusion | ONLY include what you found, do not include speculation, future directions | |
| References | Vancouver style, 6 authors, followed by et al | |
| Highlights | What new information does this add to the field | |
| Word count: Abstract 200 words, Main text: 1500 - Max 2000 words (excluding tables and references), References: 15-20 | ||
c. Metanalysis/Systematic Reviews
| Heading | Content | |
|---|---|---|
| Highlights | 50 words | |
| Introduction | Background information, What is known? Why MA/Review was done – What question was asked | |
| Data retrieval |
How literature search was done, who did it, who analysed it |
|
| Review Results |
What were the findings Which type of studies were included? Was there heterogeneity in the studies? How was it checked? |
|
| Discussion | What were the findings? Were they significant? How to the compare with the previous studies? What is the clinical significance | |
| Conclusion | ONLY include what you found, do not include speculation, future directions | |
| References | Vancouver style, 6 authors, followed by et al | |
| Highlights | What does this add new to the field | |
| Word count: Abstract 250 words, Main text: Max 4000 words (excluding tables and references), References: maximum 50 | ||
Commentary / Viewpoint/ Perspectives
Authors are welcome to submit a commentary, viewpoint, or Perspectives on topics of relevance and importance to adult and paediatric critical care.
Highlights: 50 words, abstract 200 words, Main manuscript 1500-1800 words, Max 12-15 references, 2-3 tables and 2-3 figures.
d. Case Report
| Introduction | Background information, What is known? What is new in the case? Why it is important that readers should know about the case? | |
| Case Description | Presentation, treatment given, outcome, if multiple similar cases, include a table, if imaging was unusual include maximum 1 or 2 images | |
| Conclusion |
ONLY include what the teaching point is, do not speculate, future direction if a study will help in deciding future case management |
|
| Highlights |
What is new in the case |
|
| Word count: Abstract 150 words, Case & Discussion 1000 words, References: max 12-15 references | ||
e. Clinical Technique
| Highlights | 50 words |
| Introduction | Background information, What is known? What is new in the technique? |
| Technique | Describe the technique |
| Discussion | What is new in the case |
| Conclusion | Place of new technique in the current clinical practice, future directions |
| Highlights | What is novel about the technique? |
| Word count: Maximum 1250 words | |
f. Letter to editor
A letter should be short and have specific and interesting findings in a case or an observational study. It can also be an observation or point of view related to articles previously published in the Journal. Word count 500-600 words, max 5 references, No tables or images or figures unless absolutely vital to convey the message.
We request authors not to submit unsolicited narrative reviews as IJCCM publishes reviews by invitation only, that too from authors who have published original work in their respective fields.
* Highlights for all types of manuscripts (see above)
Should contain a maximum of 50 words or 2–3 sentences. These will be placed in a box on the first page of the article.
Tables should be prepared with the help of Table Function in the Microsoft Word rather than the usage of columns of tabbed information. Citations of all the tables should be present in the main text maintaining the correct numerical order (ascending order). A legend is to accompany all tables and call outs are to be placed in the body of the text to indicate where the table is to be located in the article.
Photographs must be in color, in focus, free of distracting artifacts, and consistent in exposure. Place any required labels or arrows on images prior to uploading. Images must be at least 960 by 640 pixels (proportional height) in size when in landscape orientation with a resolution of at least 640 pixels per inch. Graphs should be approximately 500 pixels wide so that all labeling can be read with data points clearly visible. Substantially, larger images must be avoided to prevent file transmission and electronic manuscript processing errors. Radiographs, drawings, and graphs can be in black and white but color images are preferred.
File names for images must be clearly labeled according to the order in which they appear in the manuscript (Fig. 1, Fig. 2 and Figs 1 and 2 or Figs 1-5 and so on in brackets and in running sentence, it should be spelt out as Figure 1). Only TIFF, PSD, PNG, and JPEG file formats can be used for the submission of Figures. The images must be saved as a JPEG file before uploading during the submission process.
It is strongly recommended that all manuscripts submitted to IJCCM should quote a minimum of 2 references from Indian Journals from the field of Critical Care, so that the readers have an Indian perspective. In continuation, this may be waived off, unless it is completely a novel idea, which has never been published in any Indian journal or IJCCM before.
References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript after the punctuation marks. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. No references should be used in abstract and Conclusion. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Avoid references from non-indexed journals or studies yet to be published. Information from studies accepted for publication should be included ONLY in the text with (in press) in parentheses. Do not use abstracts as references. The references should be as follows:
Name(s) of authors. Title of the article. Journal Name. Year; Volume no. (issue no): pageXX-xx. DOI.
Use of DOI is encouraged. Remove the month, but keep the issue no in brackets. See below:
a. Standard journal article (for up to six authors):
Mandoki JJ, Casa-Tirao B, Molina-Guarneros JA, Jiménez-Orozco FA, García-Mondragón MJ, Maldonado-Espinoza A. Pulsatile diastolic increase and systolic decrease in arterial blood pressure: their mechanism of production and physiological role. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2013 Aug; 112(3):55-7. doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2013.05.002.
b. Standard journal article (for more than six authors):
List the first three contributors followed by et al.
D'Cruz AK, Vaish R, Kapre N, et al; Head and Neck Disease Management Group. Elective versus Therapeutic Neck Dissection in Node-Negative Oral Cancer. N Engl J Med. 2015; 373(6):521-9. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1506007.
c. Article in a journal supplement:
Sukumar CA, Shanbhag V, Shastry AB. Paraquat: The Poison Potion. Indian J Crit Care Med. 2019; 23(Suppl 4):S263-S266. doi: 10.5005/jp-journals-10071-23306.
Goehr L (2007). The Historical Approach. In The Imaginary Museum Of Musical Works, 1st edn., p. 5. Oxford University Press, New York.
Even for resubmission submit your revision using our online system only, and do not e-mail it to the editor, it not possible to process it when you send it to the editor off-line. Your resubmission should be accompanied by a cover letter and a point-by-point response to the attached comments in the template provided at the IJCCM website. Before you resubmit your paper, please carefully proofread the manuscript to minimize typographical, grammatical, and bibliographical errors. In addition, check to make sure that all abbreviations are defined.
Please mark all changes with use of "track changes"; do not use any other method to highlight changes made to the manuscript. Use of any method other than track changes will delay publication of your article in case of subsequent acceptance of your article. In the File Upload section of the submission template, please designate the marked file as "Main Document." Please also save a "clean" copy of the marked file, with all of your changes accepted. Please upload that clean copy as the second file immediately after the marked copy, and please designate the clean copy "Supplementary File Not for Review."
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