Author Guidelines

Authors’ Guidelines

Journal of Nepal Dental Association (JNDA) is the official publication of the Nepal Dental Association (NDA). JNDA was first published in September of 1998. Since then it has evolved to biannual, peer-reviewed, indexed, and open access status.

JNDA publishes articles under the following types/categories/sections:

Editorial
Guest Editorial (invited only)
Research (Original) Article
Review Article
Case Report/ Case Series (with Literature Review)
Short Communication
View Point
Dental Education
Student JNDA
Letter to the Editor
NDA News/ Activities
Interview
Commentaries
Miscellaneous

For the publication purpose in JNDA following submissions are essential:

Cover letter with a declaration of any conflict of interest and stating that the submission has not been submitted to any other journal or publishing house besides JNDA as well as the transfer of the copyright to JNDA in the case of publication.
Title page with authorship details (including signatures of the individual authors as well as emails and phone numbers of each author) and the address (both online as well as offline) for correspondence. It must be clearly stated that no other authors besides the ones mentioned in the submission have any claim to authorship. The authors should state the name of the corresponding author with signature, in the same order as it would appear in the final published article. Please state in clear words that all the authors would bear full responsibility in the instance of any authorship disputes or any violation of research ethics. Please check the website of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for more detail at https://publicationethics.org/.
Manuscript along with author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), correspondence, abstract, and references as it would appear in the final published article (Please check few published articles in the latest issue of JNDA for more clarity and error-free submission).
Ethical clearance letter for Research Articles (and whenever relevant) and Consent form signed by the patient(s) and one or more of the Author(s) for Case Reports/Series.
An additional document with only references after unlinking from the reference managers or software such as Endnote, Mendeley, Zotero, etc. For unlinking, use the "Keep Text Only (T)" paste option in a new document and make appropriate corrections in the referencing style in that document.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS APPLICABLE TO ALL SUBMISSIONS

The manuscripts should be written in British English and comply with the following guidelines:

The main title should be no longer than 15 words. If you want to have more than 15 words, please contact JNDA Editorial Board.
All titles and subtitles should be Bold (Ctrl+B for MS Word in Windows).
Font-size of the main title of the article: 14 (Title Case) and centrally aligned (Ctrl+E for MS Word in Windows).
Subtitles’ font-size: 12 (UPPER CASE) and aligned on the left side of the document (Ctrl+L for MS Word in Windows.
Text/ Content font-size: 12.
Font type: Times New Roman.
Page Layout – Size – A4.
Line and Paragraph spacing – 1.15 in MS Word.
Justify the alignment of the Contents on both sides (Ctrl+J for MS Word in Windows).
About three to six keywords, which should be a MeSH term. Check at https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search for more information. Keywords should be arranged alphabetically, separated by semicolons, and ending with a full stop. Only the first letter of the first keyword upper case, rest lower case. NO abbreviations.
Do NOT start a sentence or statement with a number. Please write the single-digit numbers (zero to nine) in words. E.g., 0 to 9 should be written as zero to nine.
About abbreviations, first use the word in full form, followed by its abbreviation in brackets, then only you may use the abbreviation independently. Mentioning in the ABSTRACT section does not count for the main body. Avoid abbreviations in the titles and sub-titles. Do not begin a sentence with an abbreviation.
References no more than eight for Editorial, Guest Editorial, Letter to the Editor, NDA News/Activities, Commentaries, and Miscellaneous sections. A maximum of 10 references for Case Report, Short Communication, View Point, Dental Education, and Student JNDA sections. No more than 30 references for Research Article and Case Series (with Literature Review) and a maximum of 100 references for the Review Article section.
The “in-text citations” should be in superscript, Hindu-Arabic numbers without brackets, preferably at the end of the sentences, after the full stops. The “in-text citations” can be kept within sentences if required at certain instances like citing two or more than two references in the same sentence and they need to be differentiated.
For the references section, we require you to hyperlink the "PubMed", "Full Text" (the link to pdf in the journal site or wherever available), and "DOI" typed as [PubMed | Full Text | DOI] at the end of each reference. Please keep all three links when available, when not at least the "Full Text" link should always be present. When you hyperlink (Ctrl+K) the respective words with their web addresses, please do not hyperlink the bracket arms or the separation bars.
Tables and Figures: not more than six in total (For Case Report/Series please check under the relevant section). Please do not merge/collage multiple "Figures/Pictures" to make one. They will be counted as individual figures/pictures and not accepted in JNDA if the figure limit is crossed.
If any confusion, first check a few published articles in the latest issue; if still, it is not clear, please feel free to contact the JNDA editorial team.

When you submit the revised manuscript/article, please send two documents: one clean copy without any comments or track changes, the other with track changes showing the changes you have made after editor/reviewer’s comments.

Title and Authorship Format

Title should be in title case (upper case for all initial letters, mainly nouns, and pronouns) and in centre alignment (Ctrl+E in MS Word in Windows). E.g.,

“Healing Response to Nonsurgical Periodontal Therapy among Smokers and Nonsmokers”

The authors’ names should be in full (complete name), right alignment (Ctrl+R in MS Word in Windows), and JNDA follows the prefix of Mr./Ms./Dr. only.

The superscripts for institutional/ organisational affiliations should be placed after full name and comma. Each author is given a separate Hindu-Arabic number. E.g.,

Dr. Ranjita Shrestha Gorkhali,¹ Dr. Shaili Pradhan,² Dr. Khushboo Goel,³Dr. Navaraj Lamdari⁴

^1,2Periodontology and Oral Implantology Unit, Dental Department, Bir Hospital, National Academy of Medical Sciences, Mahabouddha, Kathmandu, Nepal

³Department of Periodontology and Oral Implantology, BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Sunsari, Dharan, Nepal

⁴Department of Periodontology and Oral Implantology, College of Medical Sciences, Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal

For correspondence, the details (affiliation, phone numbers, designation, etc) should be mentioned in the cover letter and title page. In the manuscript, please write only the name of the corresponding author and email under the heading “Correspondence” as it would appear in the final published article. The email should be in plain text and not hyperlinked. E.g.,

Correspondence:

Dr. Ranjita Shrestha Gorkhali. Email: ranjish2@yahoo.com

NOT ranjish2@yahoo.com

Legends of Table and Figures

For all manuscripts except Case Report/Series, the numbers of Tables and Figures should not be more than six, both combined. For Case Report, it shall have no more than 12 figures and Case Series can have up to 24 figures. Under special circumstances, if you need to have more than the allowed number of tables/figures, kindly contact the JNDA Editorial Board.

The main headings in Tables should be centrally aligned. For the contents of the table, all text should be left-aligned and numbers centrally aligned.

The legends of tables should be written ABOVE the tables while for figures they should be written BELOW the respective figures. JNDA keeps graphs, charts, bar diagrams, photographs, etc., all under the FIGURE heading. So, no other headings besides, the Tables or Figures.

Though it is not mandatory, JNDA prefers full forms instead of abbreviations in the legends. Also, it is preferred that high-quality pictures/photographs should be attached separately as well, in addition to keeping in the manuscript.

Table number colon legend full stop

(The first letter of the first word uppercase rest lowercase)

E.g.,

Table 1: Prevalence of dental anomalies present.

Figure 1: Distribution of subjects based on the impact on performance.

SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR EACH SUBMISSION CATEGORY

Instructions for Editorial/ Guest Editorial

They are written by invitation or produced in-house. It would state the opinions expressed in editorials and those of the author alone. They are in no way intended to express the official viewpoint of the journal, the board, or JNDA. Up to 800 words excluding references which in turn are restricted to a maximum of eight in number are allowed.

Instructions for Original/ Research Article

ABSTRACT - word limit-250 excluding keywords.

Structured as: Introduction; Objective; Materials and Method; Result; Conclusion.

Keywords: Three to six keywords (MeSH terms check at https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search) arranged alphabetically separated by semicolons and ending with a full stop. Only the first letter of the first keyword upper case, rest lower case. No abbreviations.

INTRODUCTION in a maximum of 200 words. Anything extra can be strategically placed in MATERIALS AND METHOD or DISCUSSION sections.

State the background of the study, rationale, and objective. In the background, the information should be given as global, regional, and local.

MATERIALS AND METHOD

State the a) study design, b) place and duration of the study, c) sample size and sampling technique, d) inclusion and exclusion criteria, e) ethical approval and informed consent, and f) statistical analysis and software used. Please do not use separate headings for study design (and other topics mentioned in the previous sentence) or other headings for inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria, data analysis, etc. Also, mention everything in paragraphs, not bullets or numbers.

RESULT

State the main findings first then move towards the rest of the findings. All the findings should be in n (%) format. For decimal values in findings, please mention up to two decimal values except for the P values where up to three decimal values are allowed.

In the legends of tables and figures, write the complete words, preferably no abbreviations: "Table Table number separated from the title by a colon" and Figure, not Fig. The title should be in "Sentence Case" and the table or figure number separated by a colon. The first letter of title upper case, rest all lower case.

Table 1: Title should be in brief.

Figure 1: Title should be simple.

For detail please check under general instructions for the "Legends of Tables and Figures" section.

DISCUSSION (limitation within it).

CONCLUSION The conclusion section should not contain the numeric findings but the conclusion you have drawn from the findings. Please write "recommendation" within this section.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (optional and no more than 100 words).

Just name the individual or organisation. Please do not use this section as a praising platform for your bosses, seniors, family, friends, colleagues, and others.

Conflict of interest: None. If any conflict or disclosure present, please mention here or write "None" if no conflict. Financial support not falling under “Conflict of interest” can be mentioned under the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT section.

REFERENCES in Citing Medicine style. It is similar to the Vancouver referencing style with a full stop after the journal name. (Citing Medicine is the newer version of the Vancouver referencing style. There is no Vancouver referencing style after 2007 AD). Include the names of six authors followed by et al. if there are more than six authors. Do not give et al. after three authors. Rules of punctuation should be strictly followed: Index name of journals, the use of full stop, space, semicolons, and colon according to Citing Medicine referencing style (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/).

No more than 30 references are allowed. At the end of each reference, please use a hyphen instead of an en-dash or em-dash while denoting page numbers and be uniform in your writing.

E.g., Thapa P, Kc S, Hamal AB, Sharma D, Khadka S, Karki N, et al. Prevalence of acute kidney injury in patients with liver cirrhosis. J Nepal Med Assoc. 2020 Aug 31;58(228):554-9. [PubMed | Full Text | DOI]

From the issues of 2021 onwards, JNDA requests you to hyperlink the PubMed, Full text (the link to pdf in the journal site or wherever available) and DOI as [PubMed | Full Text | DOI] at the end of each reference. When you hyperlink (Ctrl+K) the respective words with their web addresses, please do not hyperlink the bracket arms or the separation bars.

NO OTHER HEADINGS besides these. For legends of tables and figures, check at the end of this document.

Total word limitation - 3000 excluding abstract, references, and legends of tables and figures.

Instructions for Review Article

ABSTRACT - word limit-200 excluding keywords. Not structured.

INTRODUCTION in a maximum of 200 words should include the background of the review, rationale for doing the review. Main points to focus.

Other Appropriate headings:

NO CONCLUSION section (latest format of JNDA review article section does not keep a conclusion, if you feel necessary, write a SUMMARY instead).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (optional and no more than 100 words)

Just name the individual or organisation. Please do not use this section as a praising platform for your bosses, seniors, family, friends, colleagues, and others.

Conflict of interest None. If any conflict or disclosure present, please mention here or write "None" if no conflict. Financial support not falling under “Conflict of interest” can be mentioned under the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT section.

REFERENCES in Citing Medicine style: it is similar to the Vancouver referencing style with a full stop after the journal name. (Citing Medicine is the newer version of the Vancouver referencing style. There is no Vancouver referencing style after 2007 AD). Include the names of six authors followed by et al. if there are more than six authors. Do not give et al. after three authors. Rules of punctuation should be strictly followed: Index name of journals, the use of full stop, space, semicolon, and colon according to Citing Medicine referencing style (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/).

A minimum of 30 references and no more than 100 references. At the end of each reference, please use a hyphen instead of an en-dash or em-dash while denoting page numbers and be uniform in your writing.

For legends of tables and figures, check under the general instructions.

Total word limitation - 4000 excluding abstract, references.

For a Systematic Review or Meta-analysis, please follow the PRISMA recommendations. You can access the relevant information from their website at http://www.prisma-statement.org/

Instructions for Case Report/ Case Series (with Literature Review)

Case Report should have a maximum of four authors but no limit on the number of authors for Case Series with Literature Review.

Case Report should have no more than four patients while five to 10 patients can be reported in Case Series with Literature Review. That means a Case Series should not report more than 10 patients.

Case Report shall have no more than 12 figures and Case Series can have up to 24 figures. Under special circumstances, if you need to add more figures please contact JNDA Editorial Team.

Please do not merge/collage multiple "Figures/Pictures" to make one. They will be counted as individual figures/pictures and not accepted in JNDA if the figure limit is crossed.

ABSTRACT - word limit-100 excluding keywords. For case series 250 words allowed. Not structured.

INTRODUCTION in a maximum of 100 (200 for case series) words should include the background of the case being reported.

CASE REPORT The case(s) being reported should be new/interesting/rare with clinical significance or implications.

DISCUSSION

Other Appropriate headings:

NO CONCLUSION section (latest format of JNDA case report section does not keep a conclusion, if you feel necessary, write a SUMMARY instead).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (optional and no more than 100 words).

Just name the individual or organisation. Please do not use this section as a praising platform for your bosses, seniors, family, friends, colleagues, and others.

No more than 10 references except for "case report with literature review" where a maximum of 30 references is allowed. At the end of each reference, please use a hyphen instead of an en-dash or em-dash while denoting page numbers and be uniform in your writing.

For legends of tables and figures, check under the general instructions.

Total word limitation - 1500 (2500 for case report with literature review) excluding abstract, references.

NDA News/Activities

This section includes information about various activities of NDA. The submission to this section is open to Nepal Dental Association only.

Instructions for Letter to the Editor

It should be up to 400 words and cite a maximum of eight references and may concern any item felt to be of interest to the readership, or more usually be a question or critique concerning a paper. Letters may be subject to peer review.

Instructions for the View Point

The articles under this heading are the personal opinions and perspectives that allow the author(s) to express their own point of view on issues relevant to health. They should be of scientific or clinical value. The purpose may be to raise awareness, new ideas, thought-provoking concepts, and personal expert opinion to improve health. Current or ongoing controversial topics are recommended to be probed into. Up to 1000 words excluding references which in turn are restricted to a maximum of 10 in number are allowed.

Instructions for Miscellaneous/ Commentaries

Submission based on some experience, education, or a variety of topic which has some clinical or scientific value that does not fall under any of the above categories. Word limit – 800. References - maximum of eight in number.

Note: It is also required that the corresponding author clearly specifies the type of article s/he is submitting. However, the final decision under which category the article is published rests on the decision of the JNDA editorial board. In such a case, the author will be duly informed regarding the decision. The author will have the right to withdraw the article if s/he chooses but must do so within the specified time.

Disclaimer: The research studies or statements presented in the JNDA are the personal opinions and expressions of authors and in no way represent the official stance of JNDA Editorial Board. Neither JNDA nor NDA shall be held responsible, under any circumstances, for any loss or harm due to information provided in JNDA.

The last date of submission for 2023 Vol. 23 No. 1 Issue 36 (Jan-Jun) is --> 2023 Mar 31.

JNDA Vol. 22 No. 2 Issue 35 (July - December 2022)