Author Guidelines

The Traditional and Integrative Medicine is an international open access peer-reviewed journal covering all scientific aspects of traditional, complementary and integrative medicines including history, chemistry, pharmacology, molecular mechanism, proteomics, genomics, metabolomics, safety, quality control, clinical trial, case reports and case studies.

Papers submitted for publica­tion should not be previ­ously published else­where, totally or partly. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and should be written according to sound gram­mar and proper terminol­ogy. Submission is only acceptable via Jour­nal website

Manuscript must be accompanied by a cover­ let­ter to the Editor-in-Chief, introducing your intentions to submit your work to this journal, declaring if you have any conflicts of interest, and under­taking that it has not been pub­lished or sub­mitted elsewhere.

The title page of the paper should only con­tain the ti­tle, running title, authors' name(s) and their affiliations, full ad­dresses (Tel, Fax, and Email) of the corresponding author, as well as acknowledgement section.

The Abstract (no more than 300 words) in unstructured for­mat as followed by 3 to 10 Keywords must be presented.

Note: All kinds of papers except Letter to the Editors should have a suitable Abstract.

Tables in limited numbers should be sub­mitted with the captions placed above. Do not submit tables as pho­tograph. Place explanatory matters in footnotes, not in the heading.

Figures should be in limited numbers, with high quality art work and mounted on separate pages. The cap­tions should be placed below.

The same data should not be presented in tables, fig­ures and text, simultane­ously.

 

Types of papers

Research Article

Research Articles report on primary research. They must describe significant and original observations. Consideration for publication is based on the article’s originality, novelty, and scientific soundness, and the appropriateness of its analysis. Research Articles are reports of original work. Authors are asked to prepare voucher number from an authentic herbarium certainly if they work on a special herb. Prior approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or an Ethics Review Committee is required for all investigations including experimental and human studies. Original researches need to have sections of Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion in the main text.

Review Article

Review Articles are considered reviews of research or summary articles. They are state-of-the-art papers covering a current topic by experts in the field. They should give evidence on and provide answers to a well-defined aspect or question in a particular area. Review Articles must include a critical discussion of the reported data and give a clear conclusion with potential impacts on the standard of care. The organization and subdivision of review articles can be arranged at the author's discretion.

Systematic Review/ Meta-Analysis

Systematic Reviews are literature reviews focused on a research question that synthesizes all high-quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic Reviews should be presented in the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion format. The subject must be clearly defined. The objective of a Systematic Review should be arrived at an evidence-based conclusion. The Methods section should give a clear indication of the literature search strategy, data extraction procedure, grading of evidence, and kind of analysis used. We strongly encourage authors to comply with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.

Case Reports/ Case Series

Case Reports can present a case study, case report, or other description of a case. Case Reports present significant new insights or cases with an unusual and noteworthy course. Submissions can be based on a case or a number of similar cases. The most important aspect of the presentation is that it should provide a new perspective on a recognized clinical scenario or may represent an entirely new clinical condition. The novelty of the case(s) may lie in the phenotype, the presentation, the investigation, and/or the management. We strongly encourage authors to comply with the CARE guidelines and upload the filled form. The manuscript must include a statement detailing that written informed consent for publication was obtained and from whom (e.g. “Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and any accompanying images.”). If the patient has died, consent for publication must be obtained from their next of kin. If the patient described in the case report is a minor or vulnerable, then consent for publication must be obtained from the parent/legal guardian. The completed consent form must be made available to the Editor if requested, and will be treated confidentially.

Editorial

Editorials are discussions related to a specific article or issue written by an editor or other members of the publication staff.

Letter to the Editor

Letters are encouraged if they directly concern articles recently published in the journal. If accepted, the editors reserve the right to submit such letters to the authors of the articles concerned prior to publication, in order to permit them to respond in the same issue of the journal.
In exceptional cases, Letters may also address general subjects related to matters discussed in the journal. The letters should contain no more than 1000 words with up to 10 references and 2 figures and/or tables. They should not be divided into sections.

Clinical Trials 

Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT Statement. Clinical trials done in Iran should be registered first via (www.irct.ir/‎) because no RCT articles are accepted unless it contains the official registered code. 

History of Medicine 

Researches in the field of history of medicine, biography of medical scientists, evidence based researches on historical aspects of medicine and roots of traditional approaches of medical sciences are categorized in this type of manuscripts. These studies should contain Introduction, Main Body of the paper (including sections of the results), Discussion and/or Conclusion.

 Concept Definition

In this type of articles, the authors are encouraged to describe the basic concepts of Traditional Medicine according to the ancient and novel resources.

 

References

References should be numbered consecutively as they occur in the text [number in brackets]. The refer­ences should ob­serve the following style:

Article: Farzaei MH, Rahimi R, Abdollahi M*. The role of dietary polyphenols in the management of inflammatory bowel disease. Curr Pharm Biotechnol** 2015;16:196-210.

Chapter: Rahimi R, Taheripanah T, Rezaeizadeh H. An evidence based approach to traditional herbal remedies for the management of cancer. In: New approaches to natural anticancer drugs. Ed, S Saeidnia. Springer, New York, USA, 2015; pp 13-25.

Book: Liu WJH. Traditional Herbal Medicine Research Methods: Identification, Analysis, Bioassay, and Pharmaceutical and Clinical Studies. 2^nd ed. John Wiley & Sons. New Jersey 2011; pp 120-125.

Thesis: Rahimi R. Formulation of Sofuf Magliasa, explanation of quality control methods and evaluation of its efficacy in experimental model of colitis [PhD thesis]. School of Traditional Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran; 2012.

*Note: If there are five or less authors contributing in a manuscript, all of the names must be mentioned. If the contributed authors are more than five, the name of first five authors should be mentioned plus et al.

**Note: The name of journal must be in its standard abbreviation form. If the journal does not have a standard abbreviation, its full name should be mentioned.

 

Abbreviations and symbols

Please use only stan­dard abbre­viations. Avoid using them in the title and ab­stract. The full term for which an abbre­viation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a stan­dard unit of meas­urement.

 

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the four components mentioned below:

1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Willingness to assume responsibility of the study.

Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript.

 

Reprint

No reprints are presented to authors. The Journal is open access and all authors may acquire their article full text free of charge through the web.

 

Proofs

Authors are sent galley proofs for checking the production after acceptance of the article. Proofs are sent by e-mail as a PDF file and considering that the Journal is published every season, if for any reason, after 3 days, the Journal does not receive any reply, we consider the manuscript approved, and no changes will be acceptable after that. It is the authors’ responsibility to check that all the text and data as contained in the page proofs are correct and suitable for publication. We request that authors pay particular attention to author's names and affiliations as it is essential that these details are accurate when the article is published. In this step, the authors absolutely, cannot add any authors or large sentences to the article, besides; they are not allowed to change the corresponding author.

After approving the galley proof no changes would be accepted and the responsibility would be on author(s) side.

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. The submission file is in Open Office, Microsoft Word, RTF, or Word Perfect document file format.
3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
4. The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed. The authors are asked to prepare and submit a blinded version of their manuscript for blind review process.

 

Copyright Notice

The Traditional and Integrative Medicine allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions. Also the journal allows the author(s) to retain publishing rights without restrictions.

 

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.