The Journal of Sulaimani Medical College (JSMC) welcomes high-quality original research and scholarly contributions in medicine and health sciences. Authors should read these guidelines carefully before submission and ensure that their manuscript meets the journal's scientific, ethical, reporting, formatting, and submission requirements.
Before preparing a manuscript, authors should confirm that the subject, study design, and principal message are appropriate for the JSMC Mission, Aims and Scope.
The corresponding author should confirm that:
Original Articles report primary clinical, epidemiological, laboratory, public-health, educational, qualitative, mixed-methods, or health-services research.
They should normally follow an IMRaD structure: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion and include a structured abstract of no more than 250 words.
Systematic reviews should describe the research question, eligibility criteria, information sources, search strategy, study selection, risk-of-bias assessment, and synthesis methods.
Authors should follow PRISMA reporting guidance. Protocol registration, such as in PROSPERO or another appropriate registry, is strongly encouraged.
Narrative reviews should provide a balanced and critical synthesis of the relevant literature. Authors should distinguish evidence from opinion and discuss important uncertainty or conflicting evidence.
Case reports and case series should present clinically important or educational observations that provide a meaningful lesson.
Authors should follow CARE guidance where applicable and provide appropriate clinical information, including diagnostic reasoning, management, outcomes, and learning points.
Written consent for publication is required whenever the patient could reasonably be identified.
Brief Reports present focused scientific findings that are complete but do not require the full length of an Original Article.
A shorter format does not reduce requirements for ethical approval, reporting quality, statistical transparency, or reproducibility.
Editorials provide concise expert interpretation of current scientific, clinical, educational, or health-policy issues relevant to JSMC.
Editorials are generally invited or discussed with the editorial office before submission.
Letters may comment on recently published JSMC articles or address focused scholarly issues. They should be concise, evidence-based, and respectful.
Perspectives present a reasoned viewpoint on emerging clinical, scientific, educational, or health-policy issues. Arguments should be supported by appropriate evidence and relevant uncertainty should be acknowledged.
JSMC requires authors to report research sufficiently for editors, reviewers, and readers to understand what was planned, what was done, what was found, and how conclusions were reached.
Authors should use the appropriate reporting guideline from the EQUATOR Network and provide the relevant checklist or flow diagram when applicable.
Examples include:
Reporting guidelines should support complete reporting and should not be treated merely as a checklist exercise.
A complete submission should normally include:
Patient consent forms should not normally be uploaded routinely because they contain sensitive personal information.
Unless otherwise specified for a particular article type, manuscripts should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents using:
Authors should use either British or American English consistently.
Define uncommon abbreviations at first use in the abstract and main text.
Use SI units wherever possible. Drug names should generally be given by their generic names.
The manuscript should be concise but sufficiently detailed to permit scientific evaluation and, where appropriate, replication.
The title page should include:
Author names and affiliations should be entered consistently across the manuscript, submission system, and ORCID records.
Because JSMC uses double-anonymous peer review, the main manuscript should not contain:
Necessary self-citations should remain scientifically accurate and should normally be written in a neutral manner.
The title should be specific, informative, and understandable without unnecessary abbreviations.
Where useful, the title should identify the population, principal exposure or intervention, outcome, or study design.
Avoid promotional language and unsupported claims of novelty.
Original research should include a structured abstract of up to 250 words using:
The abstract should state the purpose, study design, setting, principal participant characteristics, major methods, main quantitative findings, and a conclusion supported by the evidence.
Where appropriate, report effect estimates with confidence intervals or other measures of uncertainty rather than relying only on P values.
Clinical trial abstracts should include the trial registration identifier.
Provide 3–6 keywords.
Use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) or another recognised controlled vocabulary where appropriate.
The Introduction should provide the necessary background, identify the relevant evidence gap, and state the study objective or hypothesis clearly.
Avoid an unnecessarily long literature review and do not present study results or conclusions in the Introduction.
The Methods section should describe how and why the study was conducted in sufficient detail for scientific evaluation and, where appropriate, replication.
Include, where applicable:
Describe statistical methods sufficiently to allow assessment of their appropriateness.
Where applicable, report:
Avoid interpreting findings solely according to P values. Statistical significance should be distinguished from clinical or practical importance.
If AI or machine-learning technology was used as part of the research methodology, authors should describe the tool or model, version where relevant, data inputs, preprocessing, training and validation procedures, human oversight, performance measures, and limitations.
Results should follow a logical sequence based on the study objectives and outcomes.
Report both positive and negative findings relevant to the research question.
Avoid selective reporting of favourable outcomes or subgroups.
Do not repeat all information from tables and figures in the text.
Exploratory analyses should be clearly identified as exploratory.
The Discussion should:
Avoid unsupported causal claims and distinguish statistical significance from clinical importance.
The conclusion should directly answer the research question and remain proportionate to the findings.
Do not introduce new data or unsupported recommendations.
Tables should complement rather than unnecessarily duplicate the text.
Data reproduced or adapted from another source must be appropriately attributed, and permission should be obtained where required.
Figures should be scientifically necessary, clear, legible, and suitable for publication.
Preferred formats include TIFF, PNG, JPEG, or SVG, as appropriate.
Photographic and mixed images should generally be at least 300 dpi at final publication size.
Scientific images must accurately represent the underlying data.
Authors must not selectively enhance, erase, move, duplicate, or introduce features in a way that could alter scientific interpretation.
Original, unprocessed image files should be retained and provided to the journal when legitimately requested.
Clinical images must be appropriately de-identified, and written consent for publication is required whenever a patient could reasonably be identified.
Supplementary material may include additional methods, tables, figures, datasets, protocols, appendices, checklists, or other material supporting the manuscript.
Supplementary files should be clearly named and referenced in the manuscript.
They are subject to the same ethical and scientific standards as the main article.
JSMC uses a modified Vancouver numeric reference style.
References should be numbered consecutively according to their first appearance in the text and cited using Arabic numerals in square brackets, for example:
[1], [2,3], or [4–6].
Authors should:
Authors are responsible for the accuracy and relevance of all references.
Manuscripts should include the following declarations where applicable:
Authors should identify the approving ethics committee or institutional review board and provide the approval number or reference where available.
If formal ethical review was not required, the manuscript should explain the basis for exemption or waiver.
For case reports, photographs, videos, pedigrees, or other material that could identify an individual, authors should confirm that appropriate written consent for publication was obtained.
Consent documents should normally be retained securely by the authors or their institution and provided to the journal only when requested.
JSMC follows ICMJE principles for authorship.
Each author should have made a substantial intellectual contribution, participated in drafting or critical revision, approved the final version, and agreed to be accountable for the work.
CRediT roles may be used to describe individual contributions.
Authors must disclose financial and non-financial relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the work.
If no competing interests exist, authors should state this explicitly.
All financial and material support should be disclosed, including grant numbers where available.
Authors should describe the funder's role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and decision to submit.
JSMC requires prospective registration of interventional clinical trials in a publicly accessible registry that meets WHO/ICMJE expectations.
Registration should occur before enrolment of the first participant.
The registry name and registration number should be included in the Abstract and Methods.
Material deviations from the registered protocol, including changes to primary outcomes or analysis plans, should be explained.
Research articles should include a Data Availability Statement explaining whether the underlying data are:
Where data are deposited in a repository, authors should provide the repository name and persistent identifier where available.
Data sharing must comply with participant consent, ethics approval, privacy requirements, institutional agreements, and applicable law.
AI tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and accountability required of authorship.
Human authors remain fully responsible for all submitted content.
Substantive use of generative AI, large language models, chatbots, AI agents, code assistants, or image-generation systems should be disclosed at submission and in the manuscript where appropriate.
Authors must verify AI-generated information, references, calculations, quotations, and other content.
Confidential patient information, unpublished manuscripts, peer-review material, or other sensitive information must not be entered into public AI systems without appropriate permission and confidentiality safeguards.
Submission to JSMC is not automatically precluded by posting a manuscript on a recognised preprint server.
Authors should disclose any preprint in the cover letter and manuscript and provide its DOI or persistent identifier.
Conference abstracts, posters, and oral presentations are generally not considered prior full publication, but substantial overlap should be disclosed.
After publication, authors should update the preprint record with the DOI and link to the Version of Record where the platform permits.
The cover letter should include:
The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that online metadata accurately matches the manuscript, including:
A request for revision is not a guarantee of acceptance.
Revised submissions should include:
When authors disagree with a reviewer recommendation, they should provide a concise scientific justification.
Major changes to methods, analyses, outcomes, authorship, or interpretation should be disclosed.
Revised manuscripts may be returned to the original reviewers or evaluated by additional experts.
Accepted manuscripts enter production for copyediting, typesetting, metadata preparation, and final quality checks.
The corresponding author will normally receive proofs and should check:
Proofs are not intended for major rewriting or introduction of new analyses.
After publication, the article becomes the Version of Record and receives a permanent DOI.
Material errors identified after publication will be handled according to JSMC's post-publication correction and retraction policies.
Authors should prepare manuscripts, tables, figures, and supplementary materials to be accessible to a broad readership.
Use clear figure legends, adequate contrast, and descriptive explanations where appropriate.
Authors should use respectful and precise language when describing participants and communities.
For discoverability, authors should use:
Before submission, authors should confirm that:
JSMC provides manuscript-related forms and templates through the journal website where applicable.
The Forms and Templates section should contain only current documents.
Available forms may include:
Authors should use the current versions of all required forms and templates.
Before submitting your manuscript to the Journal of Sulaimani Medical College (JSMC), please confirm that all of the following requirements have been met:
By submitting a manuscript to the Journal of Sulaimani Medical College (JSMC), authors confirm that:
Submission cannot be completed until the corresponding author confirms agreement with these terms on behalf of all authors.
At the Journal of Sulaimani Medical College (JSMC), we are committed to protecting the privacy and security of our users, including authors, reviewers, editors, and readers. This Privacy Statement explains how we collect, use, store, and share personal data through our website and editorial processes.
We collect personal information during:
This data may include:
Personal data is used only for legitimate journal and publishing purposes, including:
JSMC does not sell or otherwise disclose personal information for commercial purposes.
Personal data may be shared only where necessary for legitimate journal operations, including:
Personal data shared externally will be limited to what is necessary for the relevant purpose and, where applicable, handled in accordance with appropriate confidentiality and security requirements.
Personal data associated with manuscript submissions, peer review, and editorial correspondence is treated as confidential and is accessible only to authorized individuals who require access for legitimate journal activities.
JSMC takes reasonable administrative and technical measures to protect personal data against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, loss, or misuse.
Personal data is retained for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this statement, maintain the scholarly and administrative record of the journal, and comply with applicable legal and ethical obligations.
The JSMC website may use cookies and similar technologies that are necessary for website functionality, security, and user experience.
The website may also use analytics tools to collect aggregated or otherwise non-identifiable information about website usage, where such tools are implemented.
Users may manage or restrict cookies through their browser settings. Disabling certain cookies may affect the functionality of some website features.
Subject to applicable laws and institutional procedures, users may have the right to:
Requests concerning personal data should be directed to:
Journal of Sulaimani Medical College (JSMC)
Email: [email protected]
Manuscripts submitted to JSMC and information exchanged during the peer-review process are treated as confidential.
Information about submitted manuscripts, including unpublished data, findings, and reviewer comments, is not disclosed to individuals outside the editorial and peer-review process except where disclosure is necessary for legitimate editorial, ethical, legal, or research-integrity purposes.
Reviewers and editors are expected to maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts and related information in accordance with JSMC's peer-review and publication-ethics policies.
This Privacy Statement may be updated periodically to reflect changes in the journal's practices, publishing systems, institutional requirements, or applicable legal and regulatory obligations.
Any significant changes will be published on the JSMC website, together with the date of the latest update.