Egyptian Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology would publish clinical trials that have been registered with a clinical trial registry that allows free online access to the public. Registration in the following trial registers is acceptable: https://ctri.nic.in/Clinicaltrials/login.php, http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/, http://isrctn.org/ and http://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr. This applies to clinical trials that have begun enrollment of subjects in or after June 2008. Clinical trials that have commenced enrollment of subjects before June 2008 would be considered for publication in the Egyptian Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology only if they have been registered retrospectively with the clinical trial registry that allows unhindered online access to the public without charging any fees.
Authorship Criteria
Authorship credit should be based only on contributions to each of the different components including; concept and design of study, acquisition of data or analysis, interpretation of data, drafting the article, revising it critically for important intellectual content; and final revision and approval of the version to be published. The acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not credit authorship also, general supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. The order of authors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed. The journal allows a number of authors for manuscripts depending on the type of manuscript, its scope and the number of institutions. The authors should provide a reason if the number of authors exceeds these limits.
Contribution Details
Authors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. They are divided in the following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. One author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from submission to publish article.
Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests
All authors of must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with the publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is reported in the manuscript and/or is essential to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest with products that compete with those reported in their manuscript.
Submission of Manuscripts
All manuscripts must be submitted online through the website https://ejco.journals.ekb.eg/.
First-time users will have to register at this site. Registration is free but mandatory. Registered authors can keep track of their articles after logging into the site using their username and password. Authors do not have to pay any fees for submission, processing or publication of articles.
The journal has a strict policy against plagiarism. All submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism using professional plagiarism-checking software. Submitted manuscripts with an unacceptable similarity index resulting from plagiarism are rejected immediately.
The submitted manuscripts that don't follow the “Instructions to Authors" would be returned to the authors for technical correction, before they undergo editorial/ peer-review.
[1] Title Page/ covering letter:
This file should provide
1. The type of manuscript (original article, case report, review article, Letter to editor, Images, etc.) title of the manuscript, running title, names of all authors/ contributors (with their recent academic degrees and affiliations) and name(s) of department(s) and/ or institution(s) to which the work should be credited.
2. The total number of pages, total number of photographs and word counts separately for the abstract and for the text (excluding the references, tables and abstract), word counts for introduction + discussion in case of an original article;
3. Source(s) of support in the form of funding, equipment, drugs, or all of these.
4. Acknowledgement, if any help (financial or technical) should be included in the title page of the manuscript and not in the main article file.
5. Registration number in case of a clinical trial and where it is registered (name of the registry and its URL)
6. Conflicts of Interest of each author/ contributor. A statement of financial or other relationships should be disclosed.
7. A statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors.
8. The name, address, e-mail, and telephone number of the corresponding author, who is authorized to communicate with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the proofs.
[2] Blinded Article file:
The main text of the article, beginning from the Abstract till References (including tables) should be in this file. The file must not contain any mention of the authors' names or initials or the institution at which the study was done or acknowledgements. Page headers/running title can shouldn't include not the authors' names. Manuscripts not in compliance with the Journal's blinding policy will be returned to the corresponding author. Use doc files. Do not zip the files. Limit the file size to 1 MB. You can incorporate images in the file. If file size is large, graphs can be submitted as images separately without incorporating them in the article file to reduce the size of the file.
[3] Images: Submit good-quality color images. Each image should be less than 2 MB in size. The size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep up to 1600 x 1200 pixels or 5-6 inches). Images can be submitted as jpeg files. Do not zip the files. Legends for the figures/images should be included at the end of the article file.
Preparation of Manuscripts
Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals" developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (October 2008). Egyptian Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology accepts manuscripts written in American English.
Copies of any permission(s)
It is the responsibility of authors/ contributors to obtain permission for reproducing any copyrighted material. A copy of the permission obtained must accompany the manuscript. Copies of any published articles or other manuscripts in preparation or submitted elsewhere that are related to the manuscript must also accompany the manuscript.
Types of Manuscripts
Original articles:
These include randomized controlled trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic test, outcome studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, case-control series, and surveys with high response rate. The text of original articles amounting to up to 3000 words (excluding Abstract, references and Tables) should be divided into sections with the headings Abstract, Key-words, Introduction, Patients and Methods, Results, Discussion, References, Tables and Figure legends.
Review Articles:
It is expected that these articles would be written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field. A short summary of the work done by the contributor(s) in the field of review should accompany the manuscript.
The prescribed word count is up to 3000 words excluding tables, references and abstracts. The manuscript may have about 90 references. The manuscript should have an unstructured Abstract (250 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles would depend upon the topic reviewed. Authors submitting review articles should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.
Case reports:
New, interesting, and rare cases can be reported. They should be unique, describing a great diagnostic or therapeutic challenge and providing a learning point for the readers. Cases with clinical significance or implications will be given priority. These communications could be of up to 1000 words (excluding Abstract and references) and should have the following headings: Abstract (unstructured), Keywords, Introduction, Case report, Discussion, Reference, Tables and Legends in that order.
The manuscript could be of up to 1000 words (excluding references and abstract) and could be supported with up to 10 references. Case Reports could be authored by up to four authors.
Letter to the Editor:
These should be short and decisive observations. They should preferably be related to articles previously published in the Journal or views expressed in the journal. They should not be preliminary observations that need a later paper for validation. The letter could have up to 500 words and 5 references. It could be generally authored by not more than four authors.
Other:
Editorial, Guest Editorial, Commentary, and Opinion are invited by the editorial board.
References
References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript with square bracket after the punctuation marks. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered by the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. Use the style of the examples below, which are based on the formats used by the NLM in Index Medicus.
Protection of Patients' Rights to Privacy
Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) gives informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients' names from figures unless they have obtained informed consent from the patients. The journal abides by ICMJE guidelines:
1) Authors should obtain the patient consent form before the publication and have the form properly archived.
2) If the manuscript contains patient images that preclude anonymity, or a description that has obvious indication to the identity of the patient, a statement about obtaining informed patient consent should be indicated in the manuscript.
Sending a revised manuscript
The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online like that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. However, there is no need to submit the “First Page" or “Covering Letter" file while submitting a revised version. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, the 'referees' remarks along with point-to-point clarification at the beginning in the revised file itself. In addition, they should mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article.
Reprints and proofs:
Journal provides no free printed reprints. Authors can purchase reprints, payment for which should be done at the time of submitting the proofs.
Publication schedule
The journal publishes articles on its website immediately on acceptance and follows a 'continuous publication' schedule. Articles are compiled for print semiannual issues.
APCs:
The journal is open-access and freely available online with no fees for publishing online. Authors pay only for the preparation of the manuscript 2500 Egyptian Pounds for 2 rounds of editing according to the journal guidelines including developmental and language edits, editing paper rationale, structure, flow, and presentation, c and conducting a gap preparation to meet international publication standards and to cover the cost of printing the hard copy of the manuscript Copyrights.