Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology

Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site https://peerreview.sagepub.com/occ  to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology will be reviewed.

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal

1. Open Access

2. Article Processing Charge (APC)

3. What do we publish?

3.1 Aims & Scope
3.2 Article types
3.3 Writing your paper

4. Editorial policies

4.1 Peer review policy
4.2 Authorship
4.3 Acknowledgements
4.4 Funding
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
4.7 Clinical trials
4.8 Reporting guidelines
4.9 Research data

5. Publishing policies

5.1 Publication ethics
5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
5.3 Author archiving

6. Preparing your manuscript

6.1 Formatting
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
6.3 Supplemental material
6.4 Reference style

7. Submitting your manuscript

7.1 ORCID
7.2 Information required for completing your submission
7.3 Permissions

8. On acceptance and publication

8.1 Sage Production
8.2 Online First publication
8.3 Access to your published article
8.4 Promoting your article

9. Further information

1. Open Access

Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity.

For general information on open access at Sage, please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.

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2. Article processing charge (APC)
There are no publication fees to publish in Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology.

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3. What do we publish?

3.1 Aims & Scope
Before submitting your manuscript to Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology , please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

3.2 Article types
The Journal welcomes Original research articles, Review articles on various topics, Case reports ECG and Electrophysiology (EP) Corner, Imaging Corner, Journal Scan, Letters to the Editor etc.

A few points to be kept in mind while preparing your article:

1. Provide an abstract of 150-200 words with 4-5 keywords.

2. The word limit for Original articles and Review articles is 3000 words.

3. The Original article can be supported by upto 35 references. A maximum of 6 authors can be included in this section. The word limit for review articles can be up to 3500 words excluding references and abstract.

4. Case reports: They can be organized into the following sections.

• Abstract: Maximum of 150 words
• Key-words: Maximum of five key-words
• Introduction, diagnosis and treatment plan, treatment progress, treatment outcome and discussion.
• Records taken at pre-treatment and post-treatment are required.
• One-year post-treatment is desirable.
• Interim records can be used to illustrate specific appliances/treatment effects and case progress if necessary.
• At every stage, records should be high-quality and in-focus and should include:
• Study model photos in above can be added if desired.

5. Short communications:
• Clinical innovations, technique tips and techno transfers should be short and restricted to 750 words. They can be authored by a maximum of three contributors and can be supported by upto five references.

6. Letter to the Editor:
• These should be short and decisive observations preferably in relation to articles published in the journal. It can have a word count of upto 500 words and can be supported by upto 5 references. They can be authored by a maximum of three authors.

7. Electrophysiology (EP)Corner
• Authors can submit ECG or EP based cases.It can include as maximum of 4 Figures which can be ECG,IntraCardiac electograms,Fluoroscopy or 3D mapping images. In addition a short write up about the case can be included.

8.Imaging Corner
• Authors can submit any interesting case based on imaging. It can include a maximum of 4 images and a short write up regarding the case. The images can be Echo, TEE, CT or MRI Images, PET-Scan Images.

3.3 Writing your paper
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

3.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online

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4. Editorial policies

4.1 Peer review policy
Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties.

The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

4.2 Authorship
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

1. Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
2. Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
3. Approved the version to be published,
4. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.

Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.

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4.3 Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

4.3.1 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

4.4 Funding
Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology  requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology  to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here

4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants

4.7 Clinical trials
Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

4.8 Reporting guidelines
The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives

4.9 Research data

The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
• cite this data in your research

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5. Publishing Policies

5.1 Publication ethics
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway

5.1.1 Plagiarism
Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology  and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

5.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement

Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are made available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, at the author’s request.

5.3 Author archiving
For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.

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6. Preparing your manuscript for submission

6.1 Formatting
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. A LaTex template is available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

A few points to be kept in mind while preparing your article:

1. Provide an abstract of 150-200 words with 4-5 keywords.
2. Number tables in Arabic numerals, consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief caption for each.
3. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text.
4. Article title/headings in title case.
5. References cited in superscript in the text without bracket.
6. Avoid abbreviations in abstracts, at the beginning of sentences, and as definitions in headings.
7. Use US spellings (z variant).
8. Use double quotes throughout and single quote within double quote only.
9. The journal follows endnotes instead of footnotes.

6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online and in the print issue. There is no charge for reproducing figures in colour in the printed version.

6.3 Supplemental material
This Journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files

6.4 Reference style
Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology adheres to the AMA Manual of Style. View the guide here to ensure your manuscript conforms to this style.

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7. Submitting your manuscript
Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology is hosted on Sage Track Sage, a web based online submission and peer review system. Visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/occ to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the Journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.

7.1 ORCID
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this Journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

7.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

7.3 Permissions
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway

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8. On acceptance and publication

8.1 Sage Production
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. 

8.2 Online First publication
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.

8.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.

8.4 Promoting your article
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

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9. Further information
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology editorial office as follows:

The Editor, Indian Journal of Clinical Cardiology
B.Hygriv Rao,
KIMS Hospitals
Minister Road, Hyderabad
India
Emails: hygriv@hotmail.com