Authors

Author Guidelines

Authors wishing to submit their manuscript to the journal are advised to read this detailed guide for authors and comply with all the requirements, particularly those relating to manuscript format. This is to speed up the reviewing process and reduce the time taken to publish a paper following acceptance

Authors can submit their papers online to the JNSM website via this online submission link at the “submission” section

Once the manuscript has been submitted, all subsequent correspondences between the Editorial Office and the corresponding author will be by e-mail. 

Language editing and author services

We only accept manuscripts in English language. Prior to manuscripts submission we strongly advise authors to seek professional author services providers that provides manuscript preparation services including language editing. 

Manuscript must be clearly written in good English, typewritten using Times New Roman font size 12 only, single-spaced with 2.5 cm (1 inch) from all four sides. 

All manuscripts must be accompanied by a signed “Authorship, Contribution and Copyright Agreement”. This form is to be signed by both the corresponding author and all co-authors, declaring, among other statements, that they have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and that the article has NOT been published or submitted to any other journal for publication. 

The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining permission from the copyright owner for the use of any copyrighted material in the submitted article.

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors (corresponding author) of the manuscript through the online review system. Only Word (.doc, .docx) files can be submitted, and there is no page limit. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting corresponding author takes responsibility for the manuscript during submission and peer review process and is responsible of all communications with the journal. 

The following files need to be submitted with every article:

  1. Authorship, Contribution and Copyright Agreement 
  2. Declarations form
  3. Manuscript

The first and second forms are available at the “Submission” section 

Terms of submission

Manuscripts must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are only being considered by this journal. The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other co-authors. It is also the submitting author’s responsibility to ensure that the article has all necessary institutional approvals. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication, unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission that the authors permit editing of the manuscript for readability. 

Peer review

All submitted articles are subject to assessment and peer review to ensure editorial appropriateness and technical correctness. In order for an article to be accepted for publication, the assigned Editor will first consider if the manuscript meets minimum editorial standards and fits within the scope of the journal. If an article is within scope, then the Editor will ideally solicit at least two external peer reviewers (whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors) to assess the article before confirming a decision to accept. Decisions to reject are at the discretion of the Editor.

For more details, please go to Editorial and Peer Review under “Journal Overview” section

Article Processing Charges

JNSM provides an immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports for global exchange of knowledge. Publication in JNSM is fully supported by Qassim University; therefore, there is NO PUBLICATION CHARGES for the authors.

Ethical guidelines

Please refer to the “Publishing Ethics” section under “Journal Overview”

Manuscript Formatting

A research article manuscript template can be downloaded from the “Submission and Forms” section. All manuscripts to be submitted should strictly follow the formatting of this template.

Detailed Manuscript Structure Guidelines

Original Articles

Each original article must contain:

  1. Title page
  2. Abstract
  3. Keywords
  4. Introduction
  5. Materials and Methods
  6. Results and Discussion
  7. Conclusion
  8. Conflict of Interest
  9. Funding Statement (if any)
  10. Acknowledgments (if any)
  11. References
  12. Tables
  13. Figures

 Title Page 

The title page should include:

  • Manuscript title
  • Full author(s) name(s)
  • The accurate name(s) of each author(s) and his/her degree, title and affiliation (e.g., Professor, Head of Department, Dean, Graduate student, and Senior Engineer), including the country name and the e-mail address of each author.
  • For the Corresponding author it is crucial to provide an email address and corresponding address that are kept up to date for convenience of correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication.  

Abstract

The abstract should be self-contained, citation-free, and should not exceed 300 words. It should be factual condensation of the entire work and must be written under the following subheadings:

  • Background
  • Objectives
  • Methodology
  • Results
  • Conclusion

Keywords

It helps indexers and search engines find relevant papers. Up to six keywords can be chosen carefully and should represent the content of the manuscript and be specific to the manuscript field or sub-field.

Introduction

This section should be succinct, with no subheadings. It provides a survey of literature, purpose of the study, and summarize the rationale for the study etc.

Materials and Methods

The methods section should provide enough detail for others to be able to replicate the study. Commonly used procedures and methods need not be described but require a reference to the original source.

The material and methods section should:

  • Describe clearly the methods applied in performing the experiments and used in collection of data. 
  • Identify the methods, apparatus (including manufacturer's name and address in parentheses or footnote), and procedures in sufficient details. 
  • Give references to established methods, including statistical methods
  • Describe new or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations. 
  • Identify precisely all chemicals, guidelines, and standards used. 

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, the authors are responsible for checking the license and obtaining any necessary permission. If permission was required, a statement confirming permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

Results and Discussion

The results should be presented in logical sequence in text, tables and illustrations emphasizing and summarizing only important observations with no discussion of the significance of the data.

The discussion should present the significance of the data under the prevalent understanding of the phenomenon. Discussion will relate the observations to other relevant studies. Speculative discussion is allowed but it should be concise and corroborated by the presented data. It should not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction or the Results section. It should include the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research. Authors should avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. 

Conclusions and Recommendations

It summarizes the study and is drawn from the results and discussion. It should clearly explain the main conclusions of the article, highlighting its importance and relevance. Recommendations, when appropriate, may be included.  

Conflicts of Interest (if any)

Authors must declare all relevant interests that could be perceived as conflicting. All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Authors should explain why each interest may represent a conflict. Submitting corresponding authors are responsible for co-authors declaring their interests. If no conflicts exist, the authors will state this: “We hereby declare that none of the authors has any competing financial or conflict of interest”.

Funding Statement (if any)

Authors must state how the research and publication of their article was funded, by naming financially supporting body(s) (written out in full) followed by associated grant number(s) in square brackets (if applicable), for example: “This work was supported by xxxxx xxxx [grant numbers xxxx].

Acknowledgments (if any)

All acknowledgments, if any, should be included at the very end of the manuscript before the references. Anyone who made a contribution to the research or manuscript, but who is not a listed author, should be acknowledged (with their permission).

References

The template will number citations consecutively within brackets [1]. The sentence punctuation follows the bracket [2]. Refer simply to the reference number, as in [3] - do not use “Ref. [3]” or “reference [3]” except at the beginning of a sentence: “Reference [3] was the first ...”

Number footnotes separately in superscripts. Place the actual footnote at the bottom of the page in which it was cited. Do not put footnotes in the abstract or reference list. Use letters for table footnotes.

Papers that have not been published, even if they have been submitted for publication, should be cited as “unpublished” [4]. Papers that have been accepted for publication should be cited as “in press” [5]. Capitalize only the first word in a paper title, except for proper nouns and element symbols.

For papers published in translation journals, please give the English citation first, followed by the original foreign-language citation [6].

Following are the examples of references:

Published Journal Articles

  1. Eason, G.; Noble, B. and Sneddon, I. N. “On certain integrals of Lipschitz-Hankel type involving products of Bessel functions,” Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London, 1955, vol. A247, pp. 529–551. 

 

Journal Articles in Press

  1. Elissa, K. “Title of paper if known,” unpublished.
  2. Nicole, R. “Title of paper with only first word capitalized,” J. Name Stand. Abbrev., in press.

 

Book

  1. Clerk Maxwell, J. “A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism”, 3rd ed., vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1892, pp.68–73.
  2. Jacobs I. S. and Bean, C. P. “Fine particles, thin films and exchange anisotropy,” in Magnetism, vol. III, Rado G. T. and Suhl, H. Eds. New York: Academic, 1963, pp. 271–350.
  3. Young, M. The Technical Writer’s Handbook. Mill Valley, CA: University Science, 1989.

 

Conference Papers

  1. Yorozu, Y. Hirano, M. Oka, K. and Tagawa, Y. “Electron spectroscopy studies on magneto-optical media and plastic substrate interface,” IEEE Transl. J. Magn. Japan, vol. 2, pp. 740–741, August 1987 [Digests 9th Annual Conf. Magnetics Japan, p. 301, 1982].

 

Online sources

  1. Qassim University News, accessed 15 May 2021, < https://www.qu.edu.sa/content/p/746>.

 

Tables and Figures (or Images)

An image can refer to the following: Graphs, photographs, maps, charts, paintings, drawings, diagrams, etc.

Upon submission of an article, authors should include all figures and tables embedded within the manuscript text of the article in the Microsoft Word format file of the manuscript. Figures and tables should not be submitted in separate files. If the article is accepted, authors may be asked to provide the source files of the figures in high resolution. The tables and figures pages should be consecutively numbered 

Figures and tables specifications:

Figures and tables should be supplied in either vector art formats (Illustrator, EPS, WMF, FreeHand, CorelDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) or formats (TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PSD or PNG). A minimum of 300 dpi resolution is required for the grayscale (or black and white) and at least 600 dpi for color scale. 

Figure permissions:

If the submitted manuscript includes figures that have already been published elsewhere, authors must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that JNSM will not refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used[h1] .

Date formatting

JNSM recommends writing dates out fully to avoid confusion with different all-numeral date styles. For example, 12/09/2020 could be 9 December 2020 or 12 September 2020 depending on the reader, therefore, the date should be written out in full. For example, the date December 9, 2020 can be used rather than 12/09/2020 or 09/12/2020.

 

  1. SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS / META-ANALYSIS

Systematic Reviews or Meta-Analysis should be systematic, critical assessments of literature and data sources pertaining to clinical or basic sciences topics that includes a statistical technique for quantitatively combining the results of multiple studies that measure the same outcome into a single pooled investigation. Data must be searched for and selected systematically for inclusion and critically evaluated, and the search and selection process must be mentioned. The text should NOT exceed 6000 words excluding abstract, references, tables and figures.

Each of the sections of these articles should include specific sub-sections as follows:

Title and Authorship Information

Structured Abstract: (Not exceed 300 words):

  • Background
  • Objectives 
  • Methodology
  • Results
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

  1. Rationale
  2. Objectives
  3. Research question

Methods:

  • Study design
  • Participants, interventions, comparators
  • Systematic review protocol
  • Search strategy
  • Data sources, studies sections and data extraction
  • Data analysis

Results:

  1. Provide a flow diagram of the studies retrieved for the review
  2. Study selection and characteristics
  3. Synthesized findings
  4. Risk of bias

Discussion:

  • Summary of main findings
  • Limitations
  • Conclusions

Declaration Statements:

  • Conflict of Interest
  • Funding Statement (if any)
  • Acknowledgements (if any)

 If any of the sections are NOT relevant to your article, please write 'Not applicable'. For all other information’s including title page, declaration statements, typing and reference style, please follow the original articles instructions.

CASE  STUDIES 

The case studies will only be considered if they represent unique first time or rarest-of-the-rare observations and should have practical significance in engineering or computer science. 

Case Studies should contain a single paragraph abstract and text should not exceed 2000 words (excluding abstract, references, tables and figures) with maximum 15 bibliographic references. Each case report must contain:

  • Abstract (should not exceed 150 words)
  • Keywords
  • Introduction
  • Case Study
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Conflict of Interest
  • Funding Statement (if any)
  • Acknowledgements (if any)
  • References

 

For all other information on manuscript formatting, typing and reference style, please follow the instructions for original articles.

RAPID/SPECIAL/SHORT COMMUNICATIONS

Rapid/Special/Short communication should be complete work, such as complete results of a short pilot study, not merely a preliminary report and should not exceed 1500 words with one figure and/or one table. An editorial decision will be provided rapidly without reviews. For writing and references style, follow the same instructions listed above.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Opinions on topics and articles recently published in the journal will be considered for publication if they are objective and constructive in nature and provide some academic or clinical interest to the readers. These letters may also be forwarded to the author of the cited article for possible response. The editor reserves the right to shorten these letters, delete objectionable comments, make other changes, or take any other suitable decision to comply with the style and policies of the journal. For writing and references style, follow the same instructions listed above.

EDITORIALS

Editorial will be written either by a member of the editorial board or someone invited by the editor as solicited by the Editor-in-Chief. It should have fewer than 1200 words or so WITHOUT abstract, no figures or tables. Editorials are generally concise scientific review on one or two of the hot topics pertaining to engineering or computer science. It may also be an opinion-based that discusses the key findings of research article(s) and places it in a broader context within the field. For writing and references style, follow the same instructions listed above.

Privacy Statement

  1. The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.