GENERAL
Indian Journal of Clinical Biochemistry publishes papers reporting original research work, critical up-to-date, topics of current interest and brief communications on all aspects of Clinical Biochemistry.

LEGAL REQUIREMENTS

It is necessary to send along with the manuscript, an undertaking signed by all the authors that
(i) The contents, in whole or in part, for the paper entitled “……..” submitted to Indian Journal of Clinical Biochemistry have not been published and are not under the consideration of any other Journal for publication
(ii) If accepted for publication in IJCB, the contents in whole or in part will not be published in any other Journal
(iii) Authorship Criteria: All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. Authorship of the paper will not be questioned by any one of the authors or by any other person whose name is not given.
Contributor’s Form:
(to be modified as applicable and one singed copy attached with the manuscript)

Manuscript Title:       _______________________________________

I/we certify that I/we have participated sufficiently in the intellectual content, conception and design of this work or the analysis and interpretation of the data (when applicable), as well as the writing of the manuscript, to take public responsibility for it and have agreed to have my/our name listed as a contributor. I/we believe the manuscript represents valid work. Neither this manuscript nor one with substantially similar content under my/our authorship has been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere, except as described in the covering letter. I/we certify that all the data collected during the study is presented in this manuscript and no data from the study has been or will be published separately. I/we attest that, if requested by the editors, I/we will provide the data/information or will cooperate fully in obtaining and providing the data/information on which the manuscript is based, for examination by the editors or their assignees. I/we also certify that we have taken all necessary permissions from our institution and/or department for conducting and publishing the present work. Financial interests, direct or indirect, that exist or may be perceived to exist for individual contributors in connection with the content of this paper have been disclosed in the cover letter. Sources of outside support of the project are named in the cover letter.
I/We hereby transfer(s), assign(s), or otherwise convey(s) all copyright ownership, including any and all rights incidental thereto, exclusively to the Journal, in the event that such work is published by the Journal. The Journal shall own the work, including 1) copyright; 2) the right to grant permission to republish the article in whole or in part, with or without fee; 3) the right to produce preprints or reprints and translate into languages other than English for sale or free distribution; and 4) the right to republish the work in a collection of articles in any other mechanical or electronic format. We give the rights to the corresponding author to make necessary changes as per the request of the journal, do the rest of the correspondence on our behalf and he/she will act as the guarantor for the manuscript on our behalf. All persons who have made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript, but who are not contributors, are named in the Acknowledgment and have given me/us their written permission to be named. If I/we do not include an Acknowledgment that means I/we have not received substantial contributions from non-contributors and no contributor has been omitted.

      Name                                 Signature                  Date signed
1 ———————————— —————————— ————————————
2 ———————————— —————————— ————————————
3 ———————————— —————————— ————————————
4 ———————————— —————————— ———————————— 
5 ———————————— —————————— ———————————— 
6 ———————————— —————————— ————————————
(iv) The Editor-in-Chief, the members of the Editorial Board, Asst. Editors and Scientific Advisory Committee and the Association of Clinical Biochemists of India and the Publisher will not be responsible for either the views expressed in the article, or any possible controversy regarding the authorship of the paper.
(v) Ethics: Author should also ensure ethical committee clearance, if required. When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm). Do not use patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. 
(vi) 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) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the article and copy of the consent should be attached with the covering letter. 
The undertaking should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief at the following address, till further notification :

Dr. Praveen Sharma,

Editor-in-Chief,
Indian Journal of Clinical Biochemistry,
52 Panchsheel Enclave,
Near Hotel Clarks Amer, Durgapura,
Jaipur-302018 (India)
E-mail: praveensharma55@gmail.com; editor@ijcb.co.in
Tel: +91 141 2722562
Mobile: +91 9414044562

EDITORIAL PROCEDURE

Springer now offers authors, editors and reviewers of Indian Journal of Clinical Biochemistry the option of using our fully webbased online manuscript submission and review system. To keep the review time as short as possible (no postal delays!); we encourage authors to submit manuscripts online to the journal’s editorial office. Our online manuscript submission and review system offers authors the option to track the progress of the review process of manuscripts in real time. Manuscripts should be submitted to Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/ijcb:
Please login directly onto the Editorial Manager site  to upload your manuscript files following the instructions provided on the screen. Further information can be obtained online from the submission site (see”Help”)
Please note: If you have already registered on Editorial Manger, please use your provided username and password and log in as ‘Author’ to track your manuscript or to submit a NEW manuscript or revision. (Do not register again as you will then be unable to track your manuscript).
Otherwise, if you are a new author, please click the ‘Register’ button and enter the requested information. Upon successful registration you will be sent an e-mail with instructions to verify your registration.
After uploading the manuscript files please ensure that the “save and continue” button is clicked. This enables viewing the proof of the uploaded manuscript, and enables submission. An onscreen submission acknowledgement and reference number will also be provided, instantly.
If you have any questions or are unable to submit your manuscript online via Editorial Manager, please contact the Editor-in-Chief. All articles are reviewed by one or more experts to determine validity, significance, originality of the submitted content, and the Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision concerning acceptance or rejection.
CATEGORIES OF PUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS

These are systemic and critical assessments of the literature which will be invited. Review articles should include an abstract of not more than 250 words describing the purpose of the review, collection and analysis of data, with the main conclusions. The word limit is 5000 words excluding references and abstract.

The articles should not exceed 3000 words excluding abstract and references and should describe new and confirmed findings. The article, should be divided into Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results & Discussion and References. It should be comprehensive, up to date and critical on the topic of importance.

A short communication should not exceed 1500 words and present a record of completed short investigation giving details of new methods or findings. Short communications may be preliminary reports for priority, development of newer methods, techniques, or new theories. The article should be divided into Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results & Discussion and References.
Case Reports of special clinical biochemical interest. The word limit is 1500 words and up to 10 references, and an abstract of not more than 150 words.
Letters to the Editor
These should be short, decisive observation with the notation ‘for publication’. The word limit is 500 words and up to 5 references. Letters critical to an article published in the Journal must be received within 8 weeks of publication of the article.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

For general guidelines, see the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals” published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http:www.icmje.org) and Instructions to Authors available at the journal website, www.springer.com. However, please find below some of the important points regarding manuscript preparation.
The manuscript should be computer typed in MS Word (Office 97 onwards) in point size of 12. Use double spacing throughout for typing the manuscript.
Prepare your graphics (Figures) according to the instructions below:

Illustrations

The preferred figure formats are EPS for vector graphics exported from a drawing program and TIFF for halftone illustrations (photographs). EPS files must always contain a preview in TIFF of the figure. The file name (one file for each figure) should include the figure number. Figure legends should be included in the text and not in the figure file.

Scan resolution

Scanned line drawings should be digitized with a minimum resolution of 800 dpi relative to the final figure size. For digital halftones (photographs), 300 dpi is usually sufficient.

Color illustrations

Store color illustrations as RGB (8 bits per channel) in TIFF format.

Vector graphics

Fonts used in the vector graphics must be included. Please do not draw with hairlines. The minimum line width is 0.2 mm (i.e., 0.567 pt) relative to the final size.
If you are unable to embed your figures in the text document, then upload the figures separately as .GIF, .JPEG, .EPS, .TIFF, .PPT or.XLS files. Users of Macintosh computers should type the file extension name (e.g. .DOC) after the file name before uploading to ensure conversion to .PDF files.
To ensure accurate conversion of characters, standard fonts such as Times, Times New Roman, Ariel, or Helvetica should be used for preparing the text and figures. Courier or Courier New should be used for sequence alignments.
Symbol font should be used to convert Greek characters and other non-standard characters such as the degree symbol.

MANUSCRIPT FORMAT

Title Page: This page should be concise, descriptive and informative. It should include:
1. The title of the work
2. The category under which submitted
3. The authors’ full names (first name, middle initial(s),and surname)
4. Affiliations (the name of department (if any), institution, city and state or country where the work was done), indicating which authors are associated with which affiliation
5. The name, address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address of the corresponding author.

TEXT

The text should include the following :
Abstract should be restricted to summary of the important results and conclusion only without general statements. It should not exceed 150 words and be on first page without abbreviations and references. Upto 6 keywords should also be given at the end of the abstract.

Introduction should define the reason for the study, the nature of the problem, and its relation to previous work, quoting the references by numbers within brackets in the order in which they are cited.

Materials and Methods should contain sources of special chemicals, kits, animals, case material and all the actual methods employed briefly with references.

Results and Discussion may be given separately or combined according to the discretion of the authors. Present the results in logical sequence using appropriate, tables and figures without duplication. Indicate the conclusions that may be drawn and place them in the context of a critical appraisal of previous work. Distinguish clearly new information from previous findings, and speculation from fact. Problems arising out of the study may be identified, and relevant hypotheses may be generated.

Abbreviations and Units : Standard abbreviations should be used after giving the full names first time along with the abbreviation in parenthesis. Quantities and units should be as SI units or according to international practice. Concentrations be expressed on molar basis and Enzyme units as IU/L whenever possible.

Figures (with Legend) and Tables : To appear on separate pages and numbered consecutively (1, 2 etc.). Only standard symbols should be used for figures. Tables should have brief titles and without vertical lines. Statistical significance to be given as foot-note to the tables.

Acknowledgement : This should be brief. Personal acknowledgements will not be printed.

Statistics : Statistics should be completed in consultation with a biostatistician.

Drug names : Use generic names with the trade name in parenthesis.

References : This should be numbered in order of citation in the text at appropriate place in brackets in line with the text (e.g. 1). References in the end must be on separate sheets in serial order. They must be complete in Vancouver format. List all authors; if the number is seven or more, cite first six names followed by et al.
References must be given in the following format.

Articles

Harris EK. Statistical principles underlying analytic goal-setting in clinical chemistry. Am J Clin Pathol 1979; 72:374-82.
Savory J, Wills MR . Trace metals: essential nutrients or toxins. Clin Chem 1992;38:1565-73.
Caroli S, Alimonte A, Coni E, Petrucci F, Senofonte O, Violante N . The assessment of reference values for elements in human biological tissues and fluids: a syustemic review. Crit Rev Anal Chem 1994; 24:363-98.
Thienpont L, Franzini C, Kratochvila J, Middle J, Ricos C, Siekmann L, et al. Analytical quality specifications for reference methods and operating specifications for networks of reference laboratories. Eur J Clin Chem Biochem 1995; 35:949-57.

Supplements

Williams DN. Reducing costs and hospital stay for pneumonia with home intravenous cefotaxime treatment: Results with a computerized ambulatory drug delivery system. Am J Med 1994; 97(Suppl 2A):50-5.

Abstracts

Henney AM. Chronic plaque or acute rupture? The yin and yang of vascular tissue remodeling [abstract]. Atherosclerosis 1997; 134:111.

Books and Monographs

Kahn CR, Weir GC, editors. Joslin’s diabetes mellitus, 13ed. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1994: 1068pp.

Book Chapters

Karnofsky DH, Burchenal JH. The clinical evaluation of chemotherapeutic agents in cancer. In: Macleod CM, editor. Evaluation of chemotherapeutic agents. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949: 191-205.
Schmidt H . Testing results. In: Hutzinger O (ed) Handbook of environmental chemistry, vol 2E. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 1989: p 111.
Smith SE .Neuromuscular blocking drugs in man. In: Zaimis E (ed) Neuromuscular junction.
Handbook of experimental pharmacology, vol 42. Springer, Berlin
Heidelberg New York, 1976: pp593–660.

Proceedings as Book

Zowghi D, Ghose AK, Peppas P. A framework for reasoning about requirements in evolution. In: Foo N, Goebel R (eds) PRICAI’96: topics in artificial intelligence. 4th Pacific Rim conference on artificial intelligence, Cairns, August 1996.

Paper presented at a conference

Chung S-T, Morris RL. Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. Paper presented at the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4– 9 June 1978

Patent

Norman LO. Lightning rods. US Patent 4,379,752, 9 Sept 1998

Thesis

Reference to a thesis must be made if it is unavoidable. Ratnakar P. Biochemical studies of Allum sativum Linn. (Garlic) Ph.D. thesis, Delhi University, Delhi:1992 p 87.

Internet publication/Online document

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. Available via DIALOG.  http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Cited 15 Jan 1999

Unpublished work and personal communication

May be included, If absolutely necessary, in the text Sinha KP , Personal communication; Shukla, R. et al. unpublished results
Publication Charges from Indian Authors Rs. 1000/- and US $60 from outside India for each publication.
NOTE : Correspondence related to publication and other matters concerning the Journal, including inquiries regarding the back volumes, should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief.