Copyright Statement:

Submitted manuscripts must represent original research not previously published nor being considered for publication elsewhere. The editors combat plagiarism, double publication, and scientific misconduct with the software CrossCheck powered by iThenticate. Your manuscript may be subject to an investigation and retraction if plagiarism is suspected.

If you plan to reproduce text, tables, or figures from a published source, you must first obtain written permission from the copyright holder (usually the publisher). This is required even if the material is from your own published work. For material never published before and given to you by another person, you must obtain permission from that person. Serious delays to publication can be incurred if permissions are not obtained.

As the author, it is your responsibility to obtain all permissions, pay any permission fees, furnish copies of permissions to the journal with your manuscript, and include a credit line at the end of the figure caption, beneath the table, or in a text footnote.

Once an article has been accepted by MMJ journal, the author(s) will be asked to transfer the copyright of the article to the publisher. This is to ensure the widest possible spread of the published scientific material under general copyright laws. Through this, the journal don’t allow authors to hold the copyright or to retain publishing right. All requests to reproduce or make available any material from the journal either in whole or in part, in digital, print, or any other format including translation must be requested from the journal office.

Disclosures:

It is required that a list of disclosures from every named author is submitted alongside the manuscript. In it, each author should identify any financial or non-financial conflicts relevant to the article. If no conflicts exist, please state so in this section. The journal will only accept the ICMJE Disclosure Form.

Types of conflicts include: Consulting, Royalties, Research Support, Institutional Support, Ownership, Stock/Options, Speakers Bureau, and Fellowship Support. Any commercial entity whose products are described, reviewed, evaluated, or compared in the manuscript, except for those disclosed in the Acknowledgments section, are potential conflicts.

All authors must fill out the ICMJE Disclosure Form and submit it with their manuscript. This form can be downloaded at http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/. Each form must be uploaded as separate files.

Statement of Ethics:

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and their institutes. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer and the publisher.

This journal adheres to the ethical standards described by the Committee on Publication Ethics and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Authors are expected to adhere to these standards. All manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human, or human tissue or animal participants must; Include formal review and approval, or formal review and waiver (exemption), by an appropriate institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee is required, as well as any necessary HIPAA consent, and should be described in the Methods section with the full name of the reviewing entity, Include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate, All clinical trials must be registered in a public trials registry. Denote the registry and registry number.

Conflict of Interest:

MMJ requires all authors to declare any conflict of interest in relation to their work. Authors are required to disclose all sources of institutional, private and corporate financial support for their study. If no funding has been available other than that of the author's institution, this should be specified upon submission. Donors of materials (for free or at a discount from current rates) should be named in the source of funding and their location included.

Authors are also required to disclose any other potential conflict of interest. These include financial interests (for example patent, ownership, stock ownership, consultancies, speaker's fee) or provision of study materials by their manufacturer for free or at a discount from current rates. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any conflict of interest and will be excluded from the peer review process if a conflict of interest exists.

Human and Animal Rights:

The journal encourages authors submitting manuscripts reporting from a clinical trial to register the trials registries and bear a clinical trial registration number and name of the trial. Authors must state that the protocol for the research project has been approved by a suitably constituted Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken and that it conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.

Any experiments involving animals must be demonstrated to be ethically acceptable and where relevant conform to national guidelines for animal usage in research.

If there is suspicion that the work has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, Editors may reject the manuscript, and/or contact the author(s)’ ethics committee. On rare occasions, if the Editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.

Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT statement (Moher D, Schulz KF, Altman DG: The CONSORT Statement: Revised Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Reports of Parallel-Group Randomized Trials. Ann Intern Med. 2001; 134:657-662, also available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice.

Informed Consent:

All investigations on human subjects must include a statement that the subject gave informed consent. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects from being recognized or an eye bar should be used. If any identifying information is included in any part of the manuscript, you must obtain written informed consent from the patient and submit a copy of the document to the ESJ Editorial Office.

Attached below is a sample patient permission form/statement of consent.