Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission Process

To submit your manuscript TRJ, register and log in to the submission Link. The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list according to ICJME criteria to qualify for authorship and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. 

Accepted File Formats

Authors are encouraged to use the Microsoft Word template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. 

Supplementary files: This may be in any format, but it is recommended that you use common, non-proprietary formats where possible. 

Cover Letter

A cover letter must be included with each manuscript submission. It should be concise and explain why the content of the paper is significant, placing the findings in the context of existing work. It should explain why the manuscript fits the scope of the journal.

Any prior submissions of the manuscript to journals must be acknowledged. If this is the case, it is strongly recommended that the previous manuscript ID is provided in the submission system, which will ease your current submission process. The names of proposed and excluded reviewers should be provided in the submission system, not in the cover letter.

All cover letters are required to include the statements:

• We confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal.
• All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to The Rehabilitation Journal (TRJ).

Manuscript Preparation

General Considerations

Title Page

These sections should appear in all manuscript types;

• Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific, and relevant. It should identify if the study reports (human or animal) trial data, or is a systematic review, meta-analysis, or replication study. When gene or protein names are included, the abbreviated name rather than the full name should be used. Please do not include abbreviated or short forms of the title, such as a running title or head. These will be removed by our Editorial Office.
• Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. The PubMed/MEDLINE standard format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, and country. At least one author should be designated as the corresponding author. After acceptance, updates to author names or affiliations may not be permitted. 
• Abstract:  The structured abstract should be followed, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Briefly describe the main methods or treatments applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers and species and strains of any animals used; 3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
• Keywords: Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline (MeSH).

Research Article Sections

• Introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the main conclusions. Keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists working outside the topic of the paper.
• Materials and Methods: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Give the name and version of any software used and make clear whether the computer code used is available. Include any pre-registration codes.
• Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
• Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted from the perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible, and the limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
• Conclusions: This section is not mandatory but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.

Declarations & Statements

The Rehabilitation Journal follows the guidelines laid down by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) while receiving, processing, and publication of research manuscripts. The Rehabilitation Journal will consider a right to authorship ONLY when ALL four of the authorship criteria of ICJME are met. These criteria are as follows:

• Substantial participation in the research work with a contribution to all stages of research namely, the conception of the research work; the research design itself; or the data collection; data analysis following collection; or data interpretation following analysis; AND •
• Active contribution to the research manuscript during drafting or its critical revision with reference to the importance of the intellectual content; AND
• Active contribution/participation in the final approval final copy of the manuscript that is ready for publication; AND
• Willingness to share responsibility for the whole research work to allow for investigation and resolution of integrity and accuracy of research work.

The following format should be used for the author’s contribution.

AA: substantial contributions to the conception and design of the study.

AA and BA: acquisition of data for the study.

ZH and BA: interpretation of data for the study.

KT: analysis of the data for the study.

ZH and SS: drafted the work.

AA, BA, ZH, KT, and SS: revised it critically for important intellectual content.

AA, BA, ZH, KT, and SS: final approval of the version to be published and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately

investigated and resolved. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Research Ethical committee (or Ethics Committee) of Name Of Institute (protocol code ABC and date of approval). OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study due to reason (please provide a detailed justification).”

For any research article that describes a study involving humans, it is necessary to include the following statement: "Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study." Alternatively, if patient consent was waived due to a specific reason, please provide a detailed justification as follows: "Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification)." If the study does not involve humans, you can use the statement "Not applicable." It is also acceptable to omit this statement if the study does not involve humans. Additionally, for studies involving patients who can be identified, including self-identification, written informed consent for publication must be acquired from the participating patients. If applicable, please include the statement: "Written informed consent has been obtained from the patient(s) to publish this paper."

Authors publishing articles in TRJ journals are strongly encouraged to share their research data. In this section, please furnish information about the location of the data that supports the reported findings. This should include links to publicly archived datasets that were analyzed or generated during the study. If no new data were created, or if data cannot be made available due to privacy or ethical constraints, it is still necessary to provide a statement. 

Below are suggested Data Availability Statements:

1. The data presented in this study can be accessed openly in a publicly accessible repository known as [repository name e.g., FigShare] under the DOI [doi], with the reference number [reference number].
2. This study involved the analysis of publicly available datasets. Interested parties can access the data through the following link/accession number: [link/accession number].
3. Due to privacy or ethical considerations, the data presented in this study are available upon request from the corresponding author, as they are not publicly accessible.
4. The data used in this study were obtained from a third party, [third party], and can be accessed with their permission either from the authors or via a specific URL.
5. This study does not involve the creation or analysis of new data, and therefore, data sharing is not applicable to this article.
6. The data presented in this study can be found within the article itself or in the supplementary material section.

• Acknowledgments 

This section provides an opportunity to acknowledge any support received that may not be covered in the author’s contribution or funding sections. This can include acknowledgments for administrative and technical assistance, as well as donations in kind, such as materials used for experiments. Please refer to the Guidelines issued by the ICMJE to determine non-author contributors that should be included in the Acknowledgement section.

Authors are required to disclose any conflicts of interest, or alternatively state, "The authors declare no conflict of interest." It is important for authors to identify and disclose any personal circumstances or interests that could potentially be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of the reported research results.

If funders played a role in the study design, data collection, analysis, manuscript writing, or publication decision, this must also be declared. If funders were not involved in any of these aspects, authors should state "The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Additional data and files can be uploaded as "Supplementary Files" during the manuscript submission process. The supplementary files will also be available to the referees as part of the peer-review process. Any file format is acceptable; however, we recommend that common, non-proprietary formats are used where possible.

Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. There is no additional cost for publishing full color graphics.

References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text. All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references at the end of the manuscript. List the references in the order in which they appear in the text. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote etc, to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. If an article has a DOI and/or PubMed ID, this should be provided after the page number details with hyperlink.

References must be listed in following style:

1. Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002; 935(12): 406. doi.org/10.52567/trj.v7i01.212, PubMed ID: 37075043
2. Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
3. Kanwal J, Masih FJ, editors. The rand manual of assessment and treatment. 16th ed. Subway (ISB): Rand Research Laboratories; 2018.
4. Khan PS, Joseph A, Trent JM. genetic alterations in mice. In: Stein D, Sultan KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGrawHill; 2002. p. 93113.
5. Pakistan Rehabilitation Society [homepage on the Internet]. Lahore: The Society; 2020 [updated 2020 May 12; cited 2020 Oct 17]. Available from: rehabilitation.pk/.

• Preparing Figures and Tables

All Figures, Schemes and Tables should be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, etc.).

All Figures and Tables should have a short explanatory title and caption.

All table columns should have an explanatory heading. To facilitate the copy-editing of larger tables, smaller fonts may be used, but no less than 8 pt. in size. Authors should use the Table option of Microsoft Word to create tables.

Author Complaint Process

Before submitting manuscripts, authors are requested to read all the guidelines and policies regarding the processing and publication of the manuscript. How to complain? The authors have the right to complain and ask explanation if they perceive any misconduct in any applicable policies and ethical guidelines. The authors can raise their complaints by submitting a letter to:

All the complaints regarding delinquencies in the work processes are investigated according to the prevailing publication ethics practices.

Complaints categorization

An author or any other scholar may submit their complaints about any issues related to:

• Plagiarism
• Copyright violation
• Deceiving research results or wrong research results
• Violations in set standards for research
• Unrevealed conflicts of interest
• Bias in the review process
• The manuscript processing time is unusually late.
• The peer-review comments are unsatisfactory.
• Authorship issues
• Policy for Dealing with Complaints

Once a complaint is received, at first an acknowledgment is sent to the complainant with the assurance that appropriate action will be taken on the complaint within three working days excluding the complaint receiving date. The investigation process is initiated by the Journal Editorial team according to the directions of the Editor-In-Chief. After the investigation is over, a meeting is held with a complete report on the complaint. The decision is taken in and the same is forwarded to the concerned scholar through his submitted email ID.

We consider complaints as an opportunity to enhance our existing Manuscript Processing System. All the received complaints are dealt with in a polite and timely manner with certainty.