Submissions
Author Guidelines
Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics is an official publication of the Paediatric Association of Nigeria. The Paediatric Association of Nigeria (PAN) is a non-governmental, apolitical, not-for-profit professional association of medical doctors who are specialists in the care of children. The Association also includes nurses who specialise in the nursing care of children as associate members and resident doctors training to be Paediatricians as trainee members. It was founded in 1968. The association is a member of the Union of African Paediatric Societies and Associations (UNAPSA) and it is affiliated to the International Paediatric Association (IPA). Vision
This is an open-access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, transform, and build upon the work even, commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the author, and the new creations are licensed under identical terms
The Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics is a quarterly journal published by the Paediatric Association of Nigeria. It publishes original articles, brief reports on clinical and laboratory observations; case reports of substantive value; review articles; summary reports of conferences, educational materials (synopsis, clinical quizzes, excerpts from scientific meetings) and book reviews. The manuscript received, is reviewed by a panel of experts and the final status is intimated to the author within eight weeks. Articles are selected on the basis of uniqueness, originality and quality of data.
All manuscripts submitted to the Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics should not have been published in any form in any other publication, and become the property of the publishers. All manuscripts must be accompanied by the following written statement signed by all the authors. "The undersigned author (s) certify (ies) that the article is original, is not under consideration by any other journal and has not been previously published. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the journal on all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal peer review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific, technical or ethical flaws, or lack of a significant contribution to knowledge are rejected before proceeding to formal peer-review. Manuscripts that pass the evaluation process at the level of editors are adjudged suitable for the journal and are sent to three or more expert reviewers. The peer-reviewers are researchers who are known to have published in that field, possess the expertise to form scientifically sound opinions in that field and can objectively evaluate manuscripts to guide the decision of the editorial board. They are preferably not selected from the institutions of the listed authors and not known to have published with any of the listed authors in the last five years. The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. The comments and suggestions (acceptance/ rejection/ amendments in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point-by-point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the quality of the manuscript. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author for corrections if any. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within forty-eight hours. After which it may not be possible to incorporate corrections. The whole process is done electronically at www.njpaediatrics.com. The journal utilises the Open Journal System (OJS) for the electronic processes spanning submission to publishing.
Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below as specified by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data; Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and Final approval of the version to be published. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is also not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript.
Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data analysis, and interpretation, manuscript preparation, and manuscript revision. Authors' contributions will be printed along with the article. One or more author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as 'guarantor'.
Ethical considerations This journal disallows publication misconducts such as data falsification, data manipulation, gift authorship and guest authorship. Such cases, when detected, are investigated and appropriate sanctions are prescribed.
Author(s) must disclose any conflicts of interest he/she (they) may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. All funding supports and non-monetary sponsorships with respect to the research and the manuscript must be declared by the authors.
All manuscripts must be submitted online through the website https://www.njpaediatrics.com/. This requires the submitting author to register as an author and thereafter, follow the instructions through the submission process online. Manuscripts are not allowed to be submitted by e-mail attachment. The manuscript should be submitted in the form of two separate files: [1] Title Page/First Page File This file should provide (a) the type of manuscript (original article, case report, review article, Ethics Forum, Education Forum, Letter to the editor, Images, etc.), (b) title of the manuscript, written as concise as possible, (c) running title, (d) full names of all authors/ contributors (with the surname indicated in capital letters and their highest academic degrees, designation, affiliations, and E-mail addresses) and name(s) of department(s) and/ or institution(s) to which the work should be credited. All information which can reveal the identity (ies) of author(s) should be on this file. Only text/rtf/doc file formats are acceptable. The total number of pages, total number of photographs and word counts separately for abstract and for the text (excluding the references, tables and abstract), word counts for introduction + discussion in case of an original article. The full names, affiliation, E-mail address, phone number and ORCID number (obtainable from https://orcid.org) of the corresponding author must be provided. [2] Blinded Article file: This file of the manuscript 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 include the title but not the authors' names. Manuscripts not in compliance with the Journal's blinding policy will not be processed. The main text of the article, beginning from abstract till references (including tables) should be in the blinded file. The pages should be numbered consecutively, on the right-hand side of the bottom of the page, beginning with the first page of the blinded article file. [3] Images: Must be good quality colour images. Each image should be less than 4 MB in size. 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. Graphs and charts should be submitted as editable materials rather than, pictures. [4] The contributors' / copyright transfer form (template provided below) has to be submitted in original with the signatures of all the contributors at the time of submission of manuscript to nigerianjpaediatrics@pan-ng.org Source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these; Acknowledgement, if any. One or more statements should specify 1) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chair; 2) acknowledgments of technical help; and 3) acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support. This should be included in the title page of the manuscript and not in the main article file.
Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals" developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (October 2006). The uniform requirements and specific requirement of Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics are summarized below. Before submitting a manuscript, contributors are requested to check for the latest instructions available. Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics only accepts manuscripts written in English.
Copies of any permission(s)
Original articles
Statistics: When data are summarized in the results section, the statistical methods used to analyze them must be indicated under methods. The use of non-technical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as 'random' (which implies a randomizing device), 'normal', 'significant', 'correlations', and 'sample' must be avoided. Statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols must be defined and specify the computer software used. Mean differences in continuous variables, proportions in categorical variables and relative risks including odds ratios and hazard ratios should be accompanied by their confidence intervals. Where inferential statistics are used, the level of statistical significance must be indicated.
The results section should be about thirty per cent of the manuscript. Results must be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations, giving the main or most important findings first. Repetition of all the data already presented in the tables or illustrations should be avoided; rather, important observations must be emphasised in prose form while the details may be in the tables and illustrations. When data are summarized in the results section, frequencies should be provided along with percentages, rather than percentages only. Tables and figures should be restricted to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support.
Discussion Acknowledgement
Review Articles The journal expects the contributors to give post-publication updates on the subject of review. The update should be brief, covering the advances in the field after the publication of the article and should be sent as a letter to editor, as and when major development occurs in the field.
Case reports
Letter to the Editor
Others:
References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). References in text, tables, and legends should be identified by Arabic numerals in superscript after the punctuation marks. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. Examples of referencing styles are provided below; these are based on the formats used by the NLM in Index Medicus. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. The complete name of the journal should be used for non-indexed journals and the use of abstracts as references should be avoided. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source but should not be listed. A "personal communication" should preferably be avoided unless it provides essential information which is not available from a public source; in that case, the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses within the text. The commonly cited types of references are shown here. For other types of references such as newspaper items please refer to ICMJE Guidelines (http://www.icmje.org or http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).
Style of references
Standard article: Nwako FA. Peritoneal lavage in children with blunt abdominal trauma. Niger J Paediatr 1978;5:30-2
Books: List all authors when six or fewer; when seven or more, list first six and add italicised “et al”
Electronic Sources as reference Tables Explanatory matters should be placed in footnotes, not in the heading and all non-standard abbreviations that are used in each table should be defined in the footnotes. Permission must be obtained for all fully borrowed, adapted, and modified tables and figures and a credit line should be provided in the footnote. For footnotes use the following symbols, in this sequence: *, †, ‡, §, ||, ¶ , **, ††, ‡‡. Tables with their legends should be provided at the end of the text after the references. The tables along with their number should be cited at the relevant place in the text
If a figure has been published elsewhere, the original source must be acknowledged and a written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material, must be submitted. A credit line should appear in the legend for such figures. Legends for illustrations: Legends (maximum 40 words, excluding the credit line) for illustrations should be provided using double spacing, with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations. When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one in the legend. Explain the internal scale (magnification) and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs. Final figures for print production: If the uploaded images are not print quality, the publisher office can request for higher resolution images which can be sent at the time of acceptance of the manuscript. Sharp, glossy, un-mounted, colour photographic prints, with height of 4 inches and width of 6 inches are preferable. Print outs of digital photographs are not acceptable. If digital images are the only source of images, ensure that the image has minimum resolution of 300 dpi or 1800 x 1600 pixels in TIFF format. The Journal reserves the right to crop, rotate, reduce, or enlarge the photographs to an acceptable size.
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 written informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients' names from figures unless they have obtained written informed consent from the patients. 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 revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to 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, except there has been a change to the title. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include a revision form which details the 'referees' remarks along with point-to-point clarification or response to each of the referee’s remarks. In addition, contributors are expected to mark the changes in the full text of the manuscript using red fonts. It is not acceptable to highlight changes on a manuscript by tracking.
Journal provides no free printed reprints. Authors can purchase reprints, payment for which should be done at the time of submitting the proofs. Proofs will be sent to the corresponding authors by email approximately two weeks before the publication date. The issues are published in last week of the previous month.
Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics charges Nigerian Naira 10,000 (for Nigerian contributors) or USD50 (for international contributors) on submission of manuscript as processing fees and Nigerian Naira 60,000 (for Nigerian contributors) or USD150 (for foreign contributors) as publication fees on acceptance of manuscript for publication. Mode of Payment: Charges are paid into the following Journal Accounts Nigerian Naira Account
US Dollar Account
GB Sterling Account
Within Nigeria - Nigeria Naira 24,000 per volume
The entire contents of the Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics are protected under the Nigerian Copyright laws. The copyright on every article published in the journal belongs to the journal. The journal, however, grants to all users a free, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium, even including reasonable commercial purposes, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights.
The journal currently archives its contents and materials in an Internet archive but is in the process of migrating to LOCKSS.
Authors
Presentation and format
Language and grammar
Tables and figures
(To be modified as applicable and one signed copy attached with the manuscript) Manuscript Title: _______________________________________________________________________________________
I/we believe that 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. 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 covering letter. 1. Copyright; 1 --------------- --------------- ---------------
The entire contents of the Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics are protected under Nigerian Copyright laws. The copyright on every article published in the journal belongs to the journal. The journal, however, grants to all users a free, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium, even including reasonable commercial purposes, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights.
Privacy Statement 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.
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Submission Preparation Checklist
- Covering letter signed by all contributors Source of funding mentioned Conflicts of interest disclosed
- The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
- The title page.
- The main article file.
- An electronic copy of the proof of payment of the submission fee.
- Authors
Last name and given name provided along with Middle name initials (where applicable),
Author for correspondence, with the e-mail address provided,
Number of contributors restricted as per the instructions,
Identity not revealed in the paper except the title page (e.g. name of the institute in Methods, citing the previous study as 'our study', names on figure labels, name of the institute in photographs, etc.)
- Presentation and format
Double spacing,
Margins 2.5 cm from all four sides,
Page numbers included at bottom,
The title page contains all the desired information,
Running title provided (not more than 50 characters),
The abstract page contains the full title of the manuscript,
Abstract provided (structured abstract of 250 words for original articles, unstructured abstracts of about 150 words for all other manuscripts excluding letters to the Editor),
Keywords provided (three or more),
Introduction of 75-100 words,
Headings in title case (not ALL CAPITALS),
The references cited in the text should be after punctuation marks, in superscript with a square bracket,
References according to the journal's instructions, punctuation marks checked
Send the article file without ‘Track Changes’ - Language and grammar
Uniformly American English,
Write the full term for each abbreviation at its first use in the title, abstract, keywords, and text separately unless it is a standard unit of measure. Numerals from 1 to 10 spelled out,
Numerals at the beginning of the sentence spelled out,
Check the manuscript for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors,
If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer's name and address (city and state/country).
Species names should be in italics,
Tables and figures
No repetition of data in tables and graphs and in text,
Write the full term for each abbreviation used in the table as a footnote,
REVIEW
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ORIGINALS
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CASE REPORTS
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ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS
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FOR DEBATE
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TECHNICAL REPORTS
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CLINICAL PROTOCOL
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PERSPECTIVES
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MEDICAL MEMORANDUM
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ANNOTATION
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CORRESPONDENCE
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Copyright Notice
The entire contents of the Nigerian Journal of Paediatrics are protected under Nigeria copyrights law. The copyright on every article published in the journal belongs to the journal. The journal, however, grants to all users a free, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium, even including reasonable commercial purposes, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights..
Privacy Statement
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.