Follow the links in the table below to quickly navigate to relevant author information.

The following constitute the Guidance for Authors & Contributors who wish to make Submission of Manuscripts to African Journal of Fetomaternal Medicine (AJFMED)

Originality: Papers should describe the original work of the authors that has not been previously published in a refereed journal, not being currently under consideration for publication in another refereed journal. Journalgurus does not encourage, or sanction duplicate or concurrent submissions of a paper to more than one peer-reviewed journal. Any copying of text, figures, data, or results of other authors without giving credit is considered as plagiarism and a breach of professional ethics. Such papers will be rejected and authors sanctioned.

Permissions to Reproduce Previously Published Material: Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Rights and Permissions: Prior to submission, authors should obtain all (ethical) clearances, authorizations, and licenses needed for submission and publication. Upon acceptance, authors are required to transfer copyright to journalgurus or, in the case of open access papers published under a Creative Commons CC BY license, complete a license authorizing journalgurus to publish the paper.

Redundant Or Duplicate Publication: AJFMED only accepts manuscripts that are original, not been published in its current form or a substantially similar form (in print or electronically, including on a web site), that it have not been accepted for publication elsewhere, and are not under consideration by another publication. The ICMJE has provided details of what is and what is not duplicate or redundant publication. If you are in doubt (particularly in the case of material that you have posted on a web site), we ask you to proceed with your submission but to include a copy of the relevant previously published work or work under consideration by other journals. Authors must draw attention to any published work that concerns the same patients or subjects as the present paper in a covering letter with their article.Papers should not report work that the author has already published in another refereed journal; this is self-plagiarism which is an ethical violation. Such papers will be rejected and authors sanctioned.

Previously Rejected Papers
If a new version of a previously rejected paper by AJFMED is being submitted for reconsideration, here must be a cover letter indicating the title, and brief description of the changes that have been made to warrant a new submission, since copies of rejected manuscripts are retained in the journal's editorial system. 

It is the AJFMED’s policy that after a reject decision, resubmission of a revised manuscript will normally only be accepted after three months have elapsed since the decision date. This policy is intended to ensure that adequate time is available between the reject decision and resubmission to address the major changes and rewrite that are normally required to address the concerns leading to a reject decision.

Rejection by Another Journal: If the paper has been rejected by another journal, and it is decided that submission to AJFMED would be more appropriate, you are urged to take into account any comments or suggestions for improvement from your previous submission. Our reviewers will usually find the faults identified by previous reviewers. TOP

Submissions to AJFMED based on reports that have been submitted to or published in a conference proceedings should adhere to the following guidelines:

Conflicts of Interest: Authors must state clearly all possible conflicts of interest in the manuscript, including financial, consultant, institutional and other relationships that might lead to bias or a conflict of interest. If there is no conflict of interest, this should also be explicitly stated as none declared. All sources of funding should be acknowledged in the manuscript.

Copyrights: Authors are admonished to read and comply with publisher’s (journalgurus) copyright and submission policies. Authors wishing to submit papers that were presented at or published in a conference proceedings sponsored by organizations are responsible for adhering to the copyright policies related to that presentation or publication and are expected to disclose the prior presentation or publication history of the submission.

Disclosure: If a manuscript (or portion of a manuscript) was previously published in a conference proceedings or is under consideration for publication in a conference proceedings, this information must be disclosed when the manuscript is initially submitted to an SPIE journal. Authors should also reference or acknowledge the prior proceedings paper within the submitted journal article. TOP

Adherence to International Guidelines on Adequate Data Reporting: In line with JournalGurus’ policy, AJFMED adheres strictly to the guidelines on adequate data reporting that were established by The Enhancing the Quality and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) network (http://www.equator-network.org/home/)

AJFMED’s Guidelines for Ethical Publishing: Authors are expected to read and abide by the Journalgurus Guidelines for Ethical Publishing. AJFMed is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and as such, expects authors to comply with the highest ethical standards when conducting research, submitting papers and throughout the peer-review process, as required by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). For further details, authors should consult the following article: International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” New Engl J Med 1997, 336:309–315. The complete document appears at http://www.icmje.org.
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All authors must confirm that they have read and approved the paper. Second, we ask all authors to confirm that they have met the criteria for authorship as established by the ICMJE, believe that the paper represents honest work, and are able to verify the validity of the results reported.

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. Authorship credit should be based only on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2 and 3 must all be met. Acquisition of funding, the collection of data or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship.

All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgements section. TOP

AJFMED aligns with Journalgurus policy and therefore that of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and refers to the ICMJE advice on Corrections, Retractions and “Expressions of Concern” as well as on Overlapping Publications.

Journalgurus defines plagiarism as the reuse of someone else's prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicit attribution of the original author and source. Unauthorized use of another researcher’s unpublished data or findings without permission is considered to be a form of plagiarism even if the source is attributed. AJFMED aligns with Journalgurus and considers plagiarism in any form, at any level, to be unacceptable and a serious breach of professional conduct. AJFMED uses tools such as Crossref Similarity Check, Grammarly, etc., for plagiarism screening service to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. TOP

It is the policy of AJFMED that, for studies conducted on human participants, you must state clearly that you obtained written informed consent from the study participants; please also look at the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. Similarly, for experiments involving animals you must state the care of animal and licensing guidelines under which the study was performed and report these in accordance with the ARRIVE (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) statement. If ethics clearance was not necessary, or if there was any deviation from these standard ethical requests, please state why it was not required. Please note that the editors may ask you to provide evidence of ethical approval. If you have approval from a National Drug Agency (or similar) please state this and provide details, this can be particularly useful when discussing the use of unlicensed drugs.

Patient Consent: The protection of a patient’s right to privacy is a must. Ensure to collect and keep copies of patients’ consent forms on which patients or other subjects of your experiments clearly grant permission for the publication of photographs or other material that might identify them. If the consent form for your research did not specifically include this, please obtain it or remove the identifying material. A statement to the effect that such consent had been obtained must be included in the ‘Methods’ section of your paper. If necessary, the individual journal Editor(s) may request a copy of any consent forms. TOP

 

Manuscripts should be submitted in English, and the presentation should be as succinct as comprehension will permit. Manuscripts are reviewed and refereed. Those accepted for publication are edited for conformance to the journal's style.

How to Write a Good Scientific Paper by Chris Mack is a useful guide on writing for a peer-reviewed journal. Click on the image below to download a copy of the book

For peer review, manuscripts should be submitted with the figures/tables and their captions incorporated into the same file as the manuscript text. However, upon first revision or acceptance, authors will be asked to submit individual figure files and a properly formatted manuscript for use in production. The total combined limit for submission files is ~100 MB.

AJFMED typically allows only one round of major revision. Authors should carefully address all reviewer comments when submitting a revised manuscript. Claims of "new" or "novel" work or of being the "first" to report on a topic should be avoided unless they can be fully substantiated. TOP

AJFMED accepts the following types of manuscripts for publications

• Editorial
• Meta-Analysis
• Review Article
• Original Article
• Case Reports
• Opinion
• Referee Commentary
• Invited Review
• Correspondence
• Conference Presentation in Supplementary Issues

Original Articles, Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: These should be structured as follows: Title (See details below), Keywords (3-8), Abstract (should not exceed 300 words and must be structured into Objectives, Methods, Results, Conclusions), Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Implications for Clinical Practice, Acknowledgements and References. The word limit is 2500 (excluding title, keywords, abstract, legends and references). No more than 70 references can be included, except with special permission. Although there is no limit to the number of tables, images, graphics and flow charts, the editorial team reserves the right to limit the number of tables, graphics and images.

Case Reports: These should be structured into a Title, Keywords (3-8), flowing single paragraph Abstract (no subheadings, 150 words), Background, Case Report/s, Discussion, Implications for Clinical Practice, Acknowledgements and References. The word limit is 1200 words (not including the title, keywords, abstract and references). No more than 30 References can be cited. Although there is no limit to the number of tables, images, graphics and flow charts, the editorial team reserves the right to limit the number of tables, graphics and images.

Correspondence: This includes readers' response to published work in the journal or a scientific breakthrough. These should be sent as a free flowing paragraphed document. The word limit is 500. Only three images may be included and a maximum of 5 references.

Editorials, Opinions, Referee Commentaries and Invited Reviews: These are open-structured and open to author discretion. The word limit is 2000. References should be limited to 60. The limit on the number of images and graphics rests with the Editorial Team. TOP

Title: The title of your paper should be descriptive and concise.

• Acronyms should be spelled out.
• Titles should not begin with the articles A, An, or The.
• Avoid use of the words "new" or "novel" in the title.

Authors and Affiliations: Provide full author names, including given name and family name. These names will be used in official databases and indexes. Initials are not allowed for the given name. Provide full affiliations, including institution, department, street address, city, postal code, and country. An email address should be provided for the corresponding author, and this person should be noted with a footnote.

Abstract: The abstract should be a summary of the paper and not an introduction (200 words maximum). Because the abstract may be used in abstracting journals, it should be self-contained (i.e., no numerical references) and substantive in nature, presenting concisely the objectives, methodology used, results obtained, and their significance. Abstracts should not make claims of novelty, as publication implies novelty.

Plain-Language Summary: The online submission form has an optional field to include a short plain-language summary of your research (200 words maximum) and its potential applications. (This item should not be included in the actual manuscript file; you will be asked to add it on the submission form.) Nonspecialist readers should be able to understand the language used and the significance of the work. The summary should provide an accurate description of the importance of the research without overstating the potential impact of the paper. This research summary may be used by the journal for promotion of significant work.

Subject terms or keywords: Keywords are required. Please provide 3-6 keywords related to your paper.

Text: Type manuscript single-spaced, in a single column, using a readable font size (for example, 12-point type). Page numbers and line numbers must be included.
Note the following style points:

• Journal style does not permit use of bold and italic font for emphasis; these styles should be reserved for formatting math
• Words should be spelled using American English.
• Spell out all abbreviations and acronyms at first use.
• Metric units should be used unless to do so is not feasible or would result in a serious loss of clarity.
• Footnotes are not allowed.

Biographies: Biographies of authors are published with each paper. Manuscripts should include a brief professional biography not to exceed 75 words.

Appendices: Any figures, tables, or equations in Appendices should continue the numbering sequence established in the body of the paper. Appendices may not be composed of only tables and figures; they must also include explanatory text and captions.

Acknowledgments/Funding Sources: Use this section to identify people who have aided the authors in accomplishing the work presented and to acknowledge sources of funding. Include grant numbers and the full name of the funding body. Funding information will be deposited to FundRef.

References: The purpose of a reference is to make the source easy for the reader to locate. To this end, each reference should provide as much information as is available. The basic elements of a reference include author names (including first initials), article/chapter title, journal or book title, volume number, issue number, page range, and year of publication. References are professionally copyedited on accepted manuscripts to conform to journal style, and authors do not need to spend a lot of time adapting references to the journal's reference format, so long as all of the required information is present.
References to published literature should be listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered consecutively in the order of their citation in the text. In-text citations can use superscript or bracketed reference numbers. Private communications or unpublished reports should be treated as references. For references with three or fewer authors, list all authors. For references with four or more authors, list the first author only followed by "et al." TOP

General Figure Guidelines: Figures must be submitted via the online submission system in EPS, TIFF, PNG, or PDF format. We do accept application files, i.e., Corel Draw, Microsoft Word, etc. Number all figures in the order that they appear in the text. All figure parts/panels must be labeled (a), (b), etc. Submit high-resolution figures. The quality of the published figure is only as good as the original file—it cannot be improved by the typesetter.

Figure Permissions: If the figure is derived from a previously published image, the author must obtain permission from the original copyright holder, who may be the publisher and/or the author. Once permission is granted, the figure caption should include the line "Reproduced with permission, courtesy of [copyright owner]," or the publisher's required copyright statement. Many permissions can be obtained via the Copyright Clearance Center

Figure Requirements
File types: EPS, TIFF, PNG, PDF, or PS
Dimensions: Figures will be reduced to a maximum width of 3 and 5/16 in. for two-column layout, and a maximum width of 6 and 3/4 in. for single-column layout.
Background: Avoid graphs with shaded, transparent, or grid backgrounds. The background should be white.
Colored lines: All line art should be distinguishable in grayscale. If colored lines are used, please add symbols or dot-dash textures to distinguish lines in all graphs.
Line weight: Ensure that line weights will be 0.5 points or greater in the final published size. Light-colored lines do not show up when printed in grayscale.
Alpha channel: No
Compression: LZW with .tiff files
Resolution: 300-600 pixels per inch (ppi). Enlarge to 150% to check for jagged or blurry lines, indicating low resolution
Layers: Flattened, no layers
Color mode: RGB or CMYK
Text: No smaller than 8 pt. Use a clear and readable font such as Times, Arial, or Symbol.
Captions: Do not include an image file. Captions should be listed separately within the manuscript and contain descriptions of all labeled figure parts (a), (b), etc.
File size: Should not exceed 2-3 MB per figure
Multipart figures: All parts should be included in one file, on one page. For example, if Figure 1 contains three parts (a, b, c), then all of the labeled parts should be combined in a single file for Figure 1.TOP

Tables should be built in Word, Excel (embedded in Word). They should not contain graphics. Tables containing images must be numbered as figures. Colored fonts will not appear in the typeset version, so bold and italic should be used for emphasis instead. Explain use of bold or italic in the caption or table footnote. Do not use shading. Very large tables may be vertically oriented, or they may span multiple typeset pages. A caption must be included with the table. TOP

Research articles, letters, and reviews may include video files. Acceptable file formats, including MOV, MPG, and MP4, are playable using standard media players, such as VLC or Windows Media Player. Standard media players should be used to check file properties and image/sound quality prior to submission. Because the speed of internet connection varies, a recommended maximum size for each video file is approximately 12 MB.
The video should be mentioned according to the following numbering convention: Video 1, Video 2, etc. If videos are included as part of an existing figure, they should be described and identified within the figure caption. The media file type and size should be included in parentheses at the end of the caption; e.g., (MPEG, 2.5 MB). For example: Fig. 1 Confocal microscopic images of red blood cells in (a) an isotonic buffer (Video 1) and (b) a hypertonic buffer (Video 2) in three different viewing projections (Video 1, MPEG, 3.1 MB; Video 2, MPEG, 4.2 MB).
Authors are encouraged to provide a representative still image for any stand-alone video. This image should be treated as a figure, numbered in sequence, and submitted in one of the accepted figure file formats. A caption describing the content of the video file is required, similar to a typical figure caption. For example: Fig. 4 Photodynamic therapy response of the targeted region (MP4, 5 MB). TOP

Authors may reference large datasets hosted on external websites (such as an official data center/archive or a university repository) by including a link to the site in the manuscript. TOP

 

AJFMED generally does not accept or publish supplementary materials. However, certain types of supplementary material may be considered for publication (e.g., as part of an appendix or associated with a table or figure in the primary text), if it will benefit the reader's understanding of the work. TOP

All submissions are screened to ensure they meet basic standards of manuscript presentation and are also processed through Crossref Similarity Check. Manuscripts are then evaluated by the editor-in-chief (EiC) and/or a designated editorial board member (EBM) to ensure they meet the journal's rigorous scientific standards and are eligible for peer review. Manuscripts that meet these criteria are single-blind reviewed by at least two referees selected by the EBM based on their expertise in the topic. The referees provide detailed comments and recommendations to help the EBM arrive at the appropriate editorial decision. Revised manuscripts are evaluated by the EBM and are sent back to the original referees in the case of major revisions. The EiC has the ultimate authority to accept or reject a submission.
Authors may appeal to the EBM or EiC to reconsider a rejection decision if they believe that the reviewers have seriously misjudged the manuscript. All appeals will be given careful consideration. The EBM and/or EiC will determine if further consideration is merited or if the original decision should stand.
Submissions from editors or members of the editorial board are handled by an editorial board member who is not connected with the manuscript to ensure that such submissions receive an objective and unbiased evaluation. Information about the review process for such submissions is redacted from the view of any editors or editorial board members who are authors of the paper within the journal's online submission and review system. TOP

 

Interested in submitting to this journal? We recommend that you review the About the Journal page for the journal's section policies. Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process.

 

AJFMED may levy mandatory page charges (After Acceptance). This policy will be determined from time-to-time. TOP

AJFMed offers open access publication at fees that are kept low in recognition of the fact that many authors have limited funding available to cover publication expenses. Open access papers are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. TOP

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Interested in submitting to this journal? We recommend that you review the About the Journal page for the journal's section policies. Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process. TOP

Authors are required to include a separate cover letter with their submission explaining the significance and novelty of the work, the problem that is being addressed, and why the manuscript belongs in this journal. TOP

Papers may be published under traditional Journalgurus’ copyright and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Authors who choose to pay the open access fee will retain copyright and the publisher (Journalgurus) will license these articles under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.. Authors who do not pay the open access fee will have their papers published under special charged levy terms. TOP

Accepted papers are immediately sent into production, where they are professionally copyedited and typeset in XML. It usually takes 10-12 days after acceptance to generate the first proof. The corresponding author will be notified by email when the proof is ready to review. Changes should be kept to a minimum. Additions or subtractions of large portions of text may require re-review, and numerous changes may incur article processing charges. TOP

Here are some ways you can publicize your new article:

• Share your article on social media.
• Write an article summary to share with your institution’s communications.
• Update your online CV and website to include a complete citation to the article.
• Inform your institution that it has been published so that it may be added to any lists of publications they maintain and disseminate. TOP