Editorial Policies of the Journal of Anatomical Sciences

Papers are accepted for publication in the journal on the understanding that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. This must be stated in the covering letter. The covering letter must contain an acknowledgement that all the authors have contributed significantly, and that all authors are in agreement with the content of the manuscript. In keeping with the latest guidelines of the international committee of medical journal editors, each author’s contribution to the paper is to be quantified. Authors must also state that the protocol for the research project has been used. Medicines should be referred to by their generic names rather than brand names.

While every effort will be made to ensure the statement and data in the journal are accurate, all statement and data are the sole responsibility of the author(s). Accordingly, the publishers and editorial board accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for the consequences of any such inaccurate, misleading data, or statements. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made.

All authors must declare in their manuscript any conflict of interests in connection with their studies before such articles can be published.

All articles submitted to the Journal of Anatomical Sciences are peer reviewed using the blind review method

Editors will treat all manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Anatomical Sciences in confidence. Reviewers are also required to treat manuscripts with confidentiality

All research must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. If there is suspicion that work has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, Editors will follow the Misconduct policy and may reject the manuscript, and/or contact the author(s)’ institution or ethics committee. On rare occasions, if the Editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to Editors on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In rare cases, Editors may contact the ethics committee for further information.

If a study has not been submitted to an ethics committee prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. How to proceed in such cases is at the Editor(s) discretion

For all research involving human subjects, informed consent should be obtained from participants (or their parent or guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. Where applicable, copies of informed consent forms should be attached to manuscripts

For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants, written informed consent for the publication of these must be obtained from the participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. If the participant has died, then consent for publication must be sought from the next of kin of the participant. You can use our consent form to obtain consent for publication from the participant(s), or a consent form from your own institution or region if you prefer. This documentation must be made available to Editors on request, and will be treated confidentially. In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required. However the final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The Basel Declaration outlines fundamental principles to adhere to when conducting research on animals and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) has also published ethical guidelines.

Experimental research involving collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. Field studies should be conducted in accordance with local legislation, and the manuscript should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions.

Submissions should be printed, double spaced, on one side only of A4 paper. The top, bottom and side margins should be 30mm. Laser or near-letter quality print is essential. All pages should be numbered consecutively in the top right hand corner beginning with the title page. Indent new paragraphs, turn the hyphenation option off, and include only those hyphens that are essential to the meaning.

The journal uses US spellings and authors should therefore follow the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. All measurements must be given in standard international (SI) units. Abbreviations should be used sparingly and only where the reader’s task by reducing repetition of long technical terms. Initially use the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter use the abbreviation. Upon its first use in the title, abstract and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name(genus, species, and authority) in parentheses. However, for well known species, the scientific name may be omitted from the article title.

Authors should adhere to these guidelines when drafting their manuscripts. Authors should include full information on the statistical methods and measures used in their research, including justification of the appropriateness of the statistical test used. Reviewers will be asked to check the statistical methods, and the article may be sent for specialist statistical review, if considered necessary.

Manuscripts should be presented in the following order: (i) tittle page (ii) abstract and keywords (iii) text(iv)acknowledgements(v)references(vi)appendices(vii) tables (each table must come with title and footnotes and sources) (viii) figure legends and (ix) figures. Footnotes should be kept to the absolute minimum; any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter.

Title page: The title page should contain (i) the title of the paper; (ii) names of author(s), (full names preferred) and affiliations; (iii) the full postal and email address; plus facsimile and telephone numbers of the corresponding author (The present address of any author, if different from that where the work was carried out, should be supplied in a footnote, and (iv a short running title(less than 40 characters including spaces).

All abstracts must have an abstract of not more than 250 words stating the purpose, basic procedures, main findings and principle conclusion of the study. The abstract should not contain abbreviation or references.5 to 7 key words (for the purpose of indexing) should be supplied below the abstract.

Text: authors should use subheadings to divide the sections of their manuscript: Introduction, methods, results, discussion, acknowledgments, and references

Acknowledgement: The source of financial grant and other funding should be acknowledged, including a frank declaration of the author’s industrial links and affiliations, the contribution of colleagues or institutions should also be acknowledged. thanks to anonymous reviewers are not allowed.

References: The Vancouver style for biomedical journals is used. In the text, each reference is numbered chronologically with a superscript. This number corresponds to the list of authors which also appears chronologically at the end of the paper. The list of references is thus not in alphabetical order, but in the order in which the author(s) are cited in the text. If a reference to the same author is cited again, the number is merely repeated.

Papers accepted for publication becomes a copy right of the Anatomical Society of Nigeria and authors will be asked to sign a transfer of copyright form. In signing the copyright assignment form, it is assumed that authors have obtained permission to use any copyrighted or previously published material. All authors must read and agree to the terms and conditions outlined in and must sign the form or agree that the corresponding author can sign on their behalf. Articles cannot be published until a signed copyright assignment form has been received.

Rarely, it may be necessary for the Journal of Anatomical Sciences to publish corrections to, or retractions of, articles so as to maintain the integrity of the academic record.

In line with our editorial policy, corrections to, or retractions of published articles will be made by publishing an Erratum or a Retraction article, without altering the original article in any way. The original article remains in the public domain and the subsequent Erratum or Retraction will be widely indexed. In the exceptional event that material is considered to infringe certain rights or is defamatory we may have to remove that material from our site and archive sites.

Authors wishing to make a complaint should, in the first instance, contact the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Anatomical Sciences. For complains that cannot be resolved with the Editor-in-Chief (for example, complains about the Editors themselves), the authors should contact ASN, the publisher.