Submissions

Author Guidelines

The Journal of Medical Association of Thailand (J Med Assoc Thai) strongly recommends to the authors of the manuscript to observe and follow the code on good publication practice produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the uniform requirements for manuscript and potential conflicts of interest reporting produced by ICMJE and the EQUATOR network resource centre for good research reporting.

Manuscript Preparation: The manuscript, on data file must be submitted, including all illustrations, legends, and references. The submission file is in Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format. All must be typed single-spaced; uses a 12-point font, Times New Roman; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end. Margins must be at least 1 inch. Metric measurements are to be used throughout the text and illustrative materials. Generic names for drugs are to be used. Brand names may be included in parentheses.

Title: The title must be short, specific, and clear. The title page should be typed on a separate sheet and include the full name, highest degree, and academic affiliations/institution of all authors, and the addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and fax numbers of the first and corresponding authors.

Abstracts: Abstracts, both in English and Thai, which must include a concise statement in not more than 300 words (in English) of what was aimed, what was done, what was found, and what was concluded. For Original Articles, with four labeled paragraphs of Objective, Materials and Methods, Results, and Conclusion. If there is no Thai author in the article, Thai abstract is not required.

Illustrations and Tables: Use only illustrations that clarify and augment the text. Resubmit the illustrations. High resolution (300-600 dpi) are requested in PDF, TIFF, JPEG (use only the maximum quality compression setting), or Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx) format. All lettering must be legible after reduction to column size. Each table should be typed double-spaced on a separate sheet, and should supplement rather than duplicate the text. They should be numbered consecutively as mentioned in the text and each must have a heading. There is a limit of five figures and five tables per article. Color illustrations will be published at the author’s expense. Supplementary tables or Appendixes will not be published in the article.

References: References should be listed in consecutive order as they are cited in the text, not alphabetically. Once a reference is cited, all subsequent citations should be running in queue to the original number. All references must be cited in the text or tables. Unpublished data and personal communication are not accepted. Use the form of references and the titles of journals abbreviated, according to the style used in Index Medicus (the Vancouver system). If there are more than six authors, the first six authors are listed followed by “et al.”. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.

Manuscript Acceptance: Manuscripts are received with the understanding that they are not under simultaneous consideration by another publication. Accepted manuscripts become the property of the Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand and must not be published in other journal.

Policy on Transparent Reporting of Health Research
To promote the transparent reporting of health research, the Journal of Medical Association of Thailand strongly recommends to the authors to observe and follow

• The code on good publication practice produced by COPE
• The uniform requirements for manuscript and potential conflict of interest reporting produced by ICMJE
• The uniform requirements for good research reporting by the EQUATOR network resource centre

The report of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) should use the checklist and flow diagram as described in CONSORT statement 2010 as the minimum set of recommendations for reporting the RCT. The checklist items include the 25 items and pertain to the content of the Title, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Other information. It is freely available to download in MS Word or PDF. CONSORT 2010 explanation and elaboration document can be found in BMJ and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. For details on further use, see the CONSORT Website.

Similarly, we recommend to use the checklists for other types of studies such as systematic reviews (PRISMA); meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE); diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD); cohort, case control, cross-sectional studies (STROBE); or qualitative studies (COREQ or RATS) when writing report using these studies. For case report, use the checklists of the CARE guidelines. The authors can consult the EQUATOR network website for further information on the available reporting guidelines for health research. Though the implementation of this policy is rather new to Thai authors, the J Med Assoc Thai will strongly request potential authors to follow these guidelines.

In summary, the checklist for each study design: Randomised trials (CONSORT); Observational studies (Cohort, Case-control, Cross-sectional study) (STROBE); Systematic reviews (PRISMA); Case reports (CARE); Qualitative research (SRQR, COREQ); Diagnostic/prognostic studies (STARD); Prediction Model (TRIPOD); Quality improvement studies (SQUIRE); Economic evaluations (CHEERS); Clinical practice guidelines (AGREE, RIGHT).

Clinical Trial Registration Policy
The J Med Assoc Thai encourages potential Thai investigators who will conduct clinical trials and plan to publish their study results in J Med Assoc Thai, to register the clinical trials with an official trial registration organization before any participants of the trial are recruited. If you are not aware of any existing trial registration organizations or would like to seek for high quality clinical trial registers, please visit WHO Clinical Trial Search Portal. For more information on the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. Alternatively, you may register the trial with the Thai Clinical Trials Registration (TCTR). Now, the editor office starts to request for the registration document or number from the first or corresponding authors of the manuscript submitted to J Med Assoc Thai from August 2010. The authors should automatically show the registration document or number within or accompanying the submitted manuscript if this is available.

Research Ethics Review Committee (ERC or EC) Form
The first or corresponding author must submit one copy of the EC permission to research form with the signature for endorsement of its originality and accuracy.

Report of Potential Conflicts of Interest
All authors must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Use the latest reporting form from the ICMJE.

Declaration of Interest
I¹ hereby, on behalf of all authors of the submitted manuscript, certify the above declaration and documents that will be attached or submitted, are all true, original and accurate including authors’ contribution to the submitted manuscript.

¹ The first or corresponding author of the submitted manuscript acts on behalf of all authors.

Plagiarism and Duplicate Publication
Plagiarized or duplicate manuscript/article will be rejected or retracted with penalty.

Retracting Articles
Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this best practice is adopted for article retraction by JMAT:

• A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
• In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
• The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
• The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
• The HTML version of the document is removed.