Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine

Manuscript Submission Guidelines

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine is now a member of COPE.

Table of Contents:

1. Open Access
2. What do we publish?
    2.1 Aims & scope
    2.2 Article types
    2.3 Writing your paper
3. Editorial policies
    3.1 Peer review policy
    3.2 Authorship
    3.3 Acknowledgements
    3.4 Funding
    3.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
    3.6 Research ethics and patient consent
    3.7 Clinical trials
    3.8 Reporting guidelines
    3.9 Research Data
4. Publishing policies
    4.1 Publication ethics
    4.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
5. Preparing your manuscript
    5.1 Formatting
    5.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
    5.3 Supplemental material
    5.4 Reference style  [Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style]
6. Submitting your manuscript
    6.1 How to submit your manuscript
    6.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
    6.3 ORCID
    6.4 Information required for completing your submission
    6.5 Permissions
7. On acceptance and publication
    7.1 Sage Production
    7.2 Online publication
    7.3 Promoting your article
8. Further information

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site https://peerreview.sagepub.com/szj to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember, you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine will be reviewed. As part of the submission process, you will be required to warrant that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere.

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.

If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal

1. Open Access

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine is an open access, double-anonymize peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.

For general information on open access at Sage, please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.

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2. What do we publish?

2.1 Aims & scope

Before submitting your manuscript to Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

2.2 Article types

The Journal accepts the following paper types for publication:

1. Original Articles: These should only include original findings from high-quality planned research studies such as experimental designs, outcome studies, case–control series, surveys with high response rates, randomized controlled trials, intervention studies, studies of screening and diagnostic tests, and cost-effectiveness analyses. The word limit is 5,000, excluding references and the abstract. The abstract should be in a structured format (Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions) and within 250 words. After the abstract, include 2-3 short sentences as "Key messages" from the work. The article text should be divided into Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, and Discussion. The maximum number of tables allowed in the print version is six. If needed, more tables and other materials like videos can be published as online supplementary material.
2. Review Articles: These are systematic and critical assessments of the literature. Review articles should include an abstract of not more than 250 words describing the purpose of the review, collection and analysis of data, and the main conclusions. The word limit is 5,000 words, excluding references and abstract. The maximum number of tables allowed is six. If needed, more tables and other materials can be published as online supplementary material.
    
3. Viewpoints: These should be experience-based views and opinions on debatable or controversial issues that affect the profession. The author should have sufficient, credible experience on the subject. The word limit is 3,000 words. An abstract is not required.
    
4. Practical Psychotherapy: Manuscripts describing the use of psychotherapy in a single case or a series of cases can be submitted to this section. We are mainly looking for articles that describe the practicalities in conducting psychotherapy, the hurdles faced, how they were overcome, etc. An unstructured abstract of not more than 250 words should be included. The word limit is 2,500 words (excluding the abstract and the references). There can be one table/figure and up to 20 references.
    
5. Case Series: More than one new, interesting, and rare cases belonging to a particular diagnosis/clinical feature/treatment can be reported in this section. This can be retrospective or prospective. Up to 2000 words and 20 references are allowed. Recommended subheadings are Introduction, Case Series/Case Reports, Discussion, and Conclusion. An abstract is not required.
    
6. Commentaries: These should address important topics and may be linked to multiple or a specific article recently published in Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine. The word limit is 3,000 words, with one table/figure and up to 20 references. Abstract not required.
    
7. Letters to the Editor: These should be short, decisive observations. Reviews of books or movies pertaining to mental health too can be submitted to this section. The word limit is 750. One table/figure and up to 10 references are allowed. An abstract is not required.
    
8. Comments on Published Articles: Critical comments about or elaborations upon an article published in Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine will be published in this section. They must be received within six months of publication of the article in print. (If the situation demands so, the Editor shall allow a waiver of this duration clause.) The submission should be titled "Comments on xyz," where xyz indicates the title of the discussed article. The word limit is 750.

2.3 Writing your paper

The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

     2.3.1 Making your article

     For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online

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3. Editorial policies

3.1 Peer review policy

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewers and the authors are always concealed from each other. Submissions to the categories Original Articles, Review Articles, Viewpoints, Practical Psychotherapy, Case series, and Letters to the Editor always undergo external peer review.

The peer-review follows the procedure outlined below:

Initial screening

The Editor-in-Chief performs an initial evaluation of all the submitted manuscripts, and if needed, opinion is also sought from one of the Chief Associate Editors. Some manuscripts, especially those belonging to the below classes, may get rejected at this stage:

• Not sufficiently original
• Has serious scientific flaws
• Has extremely poor grammar or language
• Is outside the aims and scope of the journal
• Does not adhere to the ethical standards prescribed by the Journal.

Author(s) of the manuscripts rejected at this stage will usually be informed within a week of submission.

In this stage, manuscripts may also be returned to the author(s) for a full linguistic and stylistic revision or for the addition of missing components such as abstract, tables, mention of ethical committee approval, etc.

Those manuscripts that meet the minimum criteria are normally passed on to at least two experts for peer review.

How the reviewers are selected

Whenever possible, reviewers are matched to the manuscript according to their expertise.

Reviewer reports

Reviewers are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript:

• Is original as to thought and method (including data)
• Is methodologically sound
• Has results that are clearly presented and support the conclusions
• Correctly and exhaustively cites relevant existing literature
• Follows appropriate ethical guidelines, including those related to plagiarism
• Clearly adds to the knowledge and development of the field

Before they proceed to review a manuscript, the reviewers are requested to reveal if they have any conflict of interest in relation to that particular manuscript. If any conflict of interest is revealed, the Editor-in-Chief will weigh the magnitude of the conflict and assign the manuscript to the same or another reviewer.

The reviewers are instructed to delete the digital or print copies of the manuscripts once the review process is over.

Correction of errors in the language is not an essential part of the peer-review process, but the reviewers are encouraged to suggest corrections of language and style. The reviewers advise the Editor-in-Chief to accept or reject the manuscript or to request the author(s) to revise the manuscript in a minor or substantive way.

The typical time for the first round of the review process is approximately 3-4 weeks, with a maximum of six weeks. Should the reviewers’ reports contradict each other, or a report is unnecessarily delayed, opinion from another expert or a member of the editorial team may be sought. In the rare cases when it is difficult to find a second reviewer to assess the manuscript, and the one reviewer’s extant report has thoroughly convinced the Editor-in-Chief, a decision to accept, reject, or ask the author(s) for a revision may be made based on the single review available.

The decision of the Editor-in-Chief will be conveyed to the corresponding author with the reviewers’ recommendations, usually including the latter’s verbatim comments. If major revisions are needed, the author may be informed that a decision on acceptance or rejection will be taken only after an assessment of the new draft. The authors are allowed ten days for minor revisions and four weeks for major revisions.

What happens next?

Revised manuscripts may again be sent to one of or both the initial reviewers for re-review, and there may be further requests for revision.

In the next stage, a Chief Associate Editor will perform an editorial rereview and suggest further revisions. The person may also assess subsequent revised drafts if any. If a decision about acceptance or rejection is not already taken, the Chief Associate Editor may give the Editor-in-Chief a recommendation in this regard too.

The Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision about acceptance or rejection and convey the same to the corresponding author. For accepted articles, the Editor-in-Chief will check the manuscript for matters of linguistic and stylistic correctness and may suggest or apply corrections. All manuscripts are checked for plagiarism before the final acceptance. Instances of plagiarism will be handled in accordance with the COPE flowchart.

Overall, for most manuscripts selected for peer review, a decision is made within two weeks to four months.

The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board, and the submitting Editor /Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.

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3.2 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

(i) Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
(ii) Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
(iii) Approved the version to be published,
(iv) Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.

Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.

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3.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support. 

Please supply any personal acknowledgements in the title page only and not in the manuscript file, to facilitate anonymous peer review.

3.3.1 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g., from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose the use of language polishing services.

3.3.2 Declaration regarding the use of generative AI

Authors who had used AI tools to collect or analyze data, produce images or graphs, or write the article should disclose, in the appropriate section, such as the Materials and Methods or the acknowledgements, which AI tool was used and how. Authors should also declare that they assume full responsibility for the entire content of the manuscript, including the parts generated by the AI tool.

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3.4 Funding

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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3.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
     
Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway

It is the policy of Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors, enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.

For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.

All submissions must be accompanied by the ICMJE Conflict of Interest Forms. The form can be downloaded here. Each author should fill the relevant fields, save the file to his/her computer, and at the time of manuscript submission, the corresponding author should upload all the forms. In exceptional situations, the corresponding author may fill and submit the forms on behalf of the other contributors after ensuring the accuracy of the information and with consent.

Authors need to include the Author Contribution Section in their papers. Please make sure that this statement is not included in the main manuscript but in the Title page.

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3.6 Research ethics and patient consent

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval.

All submissions must be accompanied by a title page.

• Write the manuscript title.
• Provide the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.
• Include a statement to the editor that the paper being submitted has not been published, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere.
• Include a statement that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors, that the requirements for authorship as stated earlier in this document have been met, and that each author believes that the manuscript represents honest work.
• The author must declare that the manuscript, to the best of the author’s knowledge, does not infringe upon any copyright or property right of any third party.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent, but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example, in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants

All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The Journal has adopted the ARRIVE guidelines.

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3.7 Clinical Trials

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and the registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

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3.8 Reporting Guidelines

The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

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3.9 Research Data 

The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
• cite this data in your research

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4. Publishing policies

4.1 Publication ethics

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.

4.1.1 Plagiarism

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

4.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

4.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement

Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are made available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, at the author’s request.

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5. Preparing your manuscript

5.1 Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. Word templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

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5.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines

1. Acceptable graphic files include TIFF or JPEG formats. Graphs can be submitted in the original program files. Minimum resolution is 300 dpi or 1800 x 1600 pixels in TIFF format. Each image should be less than 1024 kb (1 MB) in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (Keep up to 1240 x 800 pixels or 5-6 inches).
2. Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text.
3. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background.
4. Titles and detailed explanations belong in the legends for illustrations; not on the illustrations themselves.
5. When graphs, scatter-grams or histograms are submitted, the numerical data on which they are based should also be supplied.
6. Identifying information, including patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be present in images unless the information is essential for scientific purposes. If any identifiable images are used, the patient (or parent or guardian) should give written informed consent for publication.
7. If a figure has been published elsewhere, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material. For such figures, a credit line should appear in the legend.
8. The Journal reserves the right to crop, rotate, reduce, or enlarge the photographs to an acceptable size.
9. Do not send graphs or diagrams as freehand drawings.

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5.3 Supplemental material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

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5.4 Reference style

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver EndNote output file.

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6. Submitting your manuscript

6.1 How to submit your manuscript

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine is hosted on Sage Track Sage, a web based online submission and peer review system. Visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/szj to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.

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6.2 Title, keywords and abstracts

Please supply a title, an abstract, and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online

1. Title Page: This should include -
   • Type of the manuscript: Original Article, Review Article, Viewpoint, etc.
   • Title: Should be informative and as brief as possible.
   • Running title: 50 characters or less. Must not contain the authors' names.
   • Name, highest degree, and affiliation of each author.
   • Name, telephone number, email address and mailing address of the author to whom correspondence should be directed.
   • The total number of pages, word counts for abstract and for the text (excluding the references), and the total number of images and tables.
   • Date and place of the meeting if the paper was presented orally
   • Names of any peer reviewers to whom you do not want us to assign the manuscript.
2. Abstract
3. Text

   • Use double spacing throughout all portions of the manuscript— including the abstract, text, references, individual tables, and legends.
   • Use font size 12, Times New Roman / Arial font, color black.
   • Number pages consecutively, in the upper right-hand corner.
   • The language should be US English.
   • Internationally accepted units, symbols, and abbreviations, including those of the Système international d'unités (SI), must be used.
   • On the first appearance in both abstract and text, place abbreviations and acronyms in parenthesis following the term in full.
   • Names of drugs: Use the official (generic) name throughout. If necessary, trade (proprietary) names may be placed in parenthesis the first time the drug is mentioned.
   • Numerals from 1 to 10 are spelled out. Numerals at the beginning of the sentence are also spelled out. Numerical equivalents must precede all percentages – e.g., "Of 100 patients, 30 (30%) had visual field changes".
   • Statistics: Whenever possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Report losses to observation (such as dropouts from a clinical trial). When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Avoid non-technical uses of technical terms, such as 'random' (which implies a randomizing device), 'normal,' 'significant,' 'correlations,' and 'sample.' Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. Specify the computer software used. For all P values, include the exact value and not "less than 0.05" or "<0.001". 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.

4. Acknowledgment
   • Granting and sponsoring agencies must be clearly acknowledged. Any source of funding must be mentioned here. See section 3.3.
5. References
   • Please see section 5.4.
6. Legends to Figures and Tables
   • Captions should briefly explain the figures/tables without the use of abbreviations and should be understandable without reference to the text.
   • 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.

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6.3 ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

We encourage all authors and co-authors to link their ORCIDs to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. We collect ORCID IDs during the manuscript submission process and your ORCID iD then becomes part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

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6.4 Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed on the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper.

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6.5 Permissions

Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.

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7. On acceptance and publication

If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement.

7.1 Sage Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit, or by email to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. 

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7.2 Online publication

Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.

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7.3 Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

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8. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine editorial office as follows:

Editor-in-Chief - Dr Rajshekhar Bipeta

E-mail: editor@ijpm.info

Any complaints regarding the functioning of the journal or the editorial team can be sent to the Journal Tribunal Committee of Indian Psychiatric Society South Zonal Branch. The Chairperson is Dr. Suresh Kumar M (email: msuresh1955@gmail.com) and the members are Drs. MS Reddy (email: msreddyiapp@gmail.com) and Suresh Bada Math (email: sureshbm@gmail.com).

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