About the Journal

The Rehabilitation Journal (TRJ) publishes original articles that report on important trends and developments in the wider interdisciplinary field of Rehabilitation Sciences. TRJ accepts original articles, reviews, case reports, short communications, special reports and letters to the editor for publishing, as also are editorials and book reviews.

The journal strives to provide its readers with a variety of topics, including: functional assessment and intervention studies, clinical studies in various patient groups, methodology in Medical Rehabilitation, epidemiological studies on disabling conditions and reports on vocational and bio-psychosocial aspects of rehabilitation.

JOURNL'S POLICIES

  1. AUTHORSHIP OF ARTICLES

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 authorship criteria of ICJME are met. These criteria are as follows:

  • Substantial participation in the research work with 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 importance of the intellectual content; AND
  • Active contribution / participation in the final approval final copy of 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.

Acknowledgment Criteria

The contribution / effort of all contributors whose participation in the research work doesn’t fulfill above-mentioned conditions can be acknowledged in a separate section towards the end of the manuscript.

Addition To The List Of Authors

The TRJ doesn’t allow addition, alteration or deletion in the list of authors which was submitted to the journal at the time of initial submission.

Statement Of Contributions

The manuscript submission policy of TRJ requires that the original manuscript be accompanied by a description of individual contribution by each other at the time of initial submission. For this purpose, to facilitate the authors, an Author’s undertaking and contributions form has been made available for download at the journal’s web page.

Corresponding Author

The Rehabilitation Journal will communicate with the author designated as corresponding author during the submission process that is expected to cooperate with the journal for data requests or any additional information that may be required during or after the publication of manuscript. Therefore, the corresponding author should provide a working email address that he or she checks regularly to be able to answer any queries from the editorial board regarding the manuscript throughout the submission and peer review process after initial submission. Additionally, the corresponding author is expected to reply to all critiques and queries following publication of a research manuscript.

For Detail Instructions For Authors

  1. CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The WAME has defined conflict of interest as “... when a participant in the publication process (author, peer reviewer, or editor) has a competing interest that could unduly influence (or reasonably seems to do so) his or her responsibilities in the publication process."

Authors submitting their research manuscripts to the TRJ are required to declare any conflict of interest which may be in the form of credits / promotions, grants, memberships or any other professional or personal relationship that may influence the manuscript in any manner. Although such conflicts of interests are not entirely unethical, they should be stated clearly in the author’s undertaking and contribution form as well as in the appropriate text box during the manuscript submission process in addition as a statement at the end of manuscript text before the references section. No conflicts of interests should also be declared explicitly.

  1. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION

According to the ICJME, a clinical trial is “any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, rehabilitation educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events.”

The Rehabilitation journal will only consider publication of results of those randomized controlled trials which have been conducted according to the ICJME instructions. The clinical trials which are unregistered and / or which have recruited participants before registration of the trial will NOT be published in the TRJ. Additionally, clinical trials without provision of Ethical Review Board will NOT be published.

  1. OPEN ACCESS/COPYRIGHT POLICY

The Rehabilitation Journal (TRJ) is an open access journal.  It's all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. The users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

The copyright on any research article in TRJ is retained by the author(s). All articles published by The Rehabilitation Journal (TRJ) are licensed under the Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0. This permits anyone to copy, redistribute, remix, transmit and adapt the work provided the original work and source is appropriately cited.

  1. ETHICAL APPROVAL OF RESEARCH

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation and with the latest version of Helsinki Declaration. Do not use patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, in text and illustrative material.

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

  1. FUNDING DISCLOSURE

All sources of grants received and its spending should be disclosed. Such statements should be declared on the submission statement form and at the end of the manuscript before the references. If there are no funding sources, the authors should state “none to declare”.

  1. PEER REVIEW

The decision to publish a paper in TRJ is based on an editorial assessment and peer review. Initially all papers are assessed by an editorial committee consisting of two or more members of the editorial team. The prime purpose is to decide whether to send a paper for peer review and to give a rapid decision on those that are not.

Editorials and Letters may be accepted at this stage but in all other cases, the decision is to reject the paper or to send it for peer review. The Papers which do not meet basic standards or are unlikely to be published irrespective of a positive peer review, for example because their novel contribution is insufficient or the relevance to the discipline is unclear, may be rejected at this point to avoid delays to authors who may wish to seek publication elsewhere. Occasionally a paper will be returned to the author with requests for revisions to assist the editors in deciding whether send it out for review or not. Authors can expect a decision from this stage of the review process within 1–2 weeks of submission.

Manuscripts going forward to the review process are undergo a double-blind peer review by two or more reviewers, under supervision of the journal editor also the editor in chief. We aim to complete the review process within 4-8 weeks of the decision to review although occasionally delays do happen, and authors should allow at least 6 weeks from submissions before contacting the journal. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to the final decision regarding acceptance. You may find the journal’s article reviewing procedure, here.

  1. REJECTED ARTICLES - APPEALS

Authors whose articles have been rejected have the right to send a letter of appeal giving detailed explanations. This will be reviewed in-house and a decision will be taken accordingly.

Revised articles will not be considered at this stage.

  1. REPRODUCTION OF PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED ARTICLES

Reproducing material from other sources

It is the author's responsibility to secure all permissions prior to submission of the manuscript. Any part of the article accessed from another source, should be accompanied by a signed letter of consent from the copyright holder, which may be the author, journal or the publisher.

Reproducing material published by TRJ

No part of the Journal may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission, in writing, of The Rehabilitation Journal . This includes material previously published by the requesting author.

  1. RESPONSES TO PUBLISHED WORK

Comments on previously published articles in TRJ will be reviewed by the editor-in-chief and forwarded to the authors of the published manuscript for a reply. Appropriate time will be given for the response. Both will be published simultaneously in one of the forthcoming issues. In case the author of the published article does not reply, the comments will be published on their own. This process will only be undertaken if the comments are appropriate.

  1. .SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT

TRJ follows the guidelines provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan (HEC) for dealing with scientific misconduct.

The following examples and forms of misconduct have been taken from WAME, originally with minor modification from the ORI publication Analysis of Institutional Policies for Responding to Allegations of Scientific Misconduct:

  • Falsification of data: ranges from fabrication to deceptive selective reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or wilful suppression and/or distortion of data.
  • Plagiarism: The appropriation of the language, ideas, or thoughts of another without crediting their true source, and representation of them as one's own original work.
  • Improprieties of authorship: Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published; or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
  • Misappropriation of the ideas of others: an important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
  • Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results.
  • Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, wilful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of human subjects, investigational therapies/drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or chemical materials.
  • Inappropriate behaviour in relation to misconduct: this includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding or destruction of information relevant to a claim of misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.

TRJ also includes redundant publication and duplicate publication, lack of declaration of competing interests and of funding/sponsorship, and other failures of transparency to be forms of misconduct.

  1. SUPPLEMENTS

TRJ is willing to accept supplement publishing requests made by external organisations based on different topics, abstracts, or meetings. The cost of publishing the supplement will be paid by the requesting body after discussion with the journal management.

It is vital to note that all the articles published represent the opinions of the authors and do not reflect official policy of the journal. For more details regarding supplements, please get in touch with the Journal at ce@trjournal.org.

  1. WITHDRAWAL POLICY

It is considered unethical to submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. If the authors want to withdraw the manuscript during its processing, an email has to be sent notifying as to their intention, to the effect that the manuscript withdrawal form will be emailed for the signatures of all the authors. This needs to be completed, scanned and sent back. A final letter from the editorial office for withdrawal of the manuscript will then be dispatched. Electronic signatures will not be accepted.

Please note that without a formal letter of withdrawal, a manuscript is not considered withdrawn and use of such a manuscript elsewhere will be construed as an ethical misconduct.

     14. ARCHIVING AND REPOSITORY POLICY

The Rehabilitation Journal (TRJ) has data depositing function installed via PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) that digitally preserves the Journals regulating under Open Journal System (OJS). We support digital archiving to ensure the security and accessibility of the data. TRJ maintains its archives through LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system.

TRJ's repository Policy  encourages authors to post their pre-publication manuscript in institutional repositories or on their websites prior to and during the submission process and to post the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version after publication without embargo. These practices benefit authors with productive exchanges as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.   

     15. CONFLICT OF INTEREST

A conflict of interest is anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, commissioning, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to AIP Publishing Journals. A conflict of interest exists if a person or institution has a relationship, personal or otherwise, which has the potential to compromise or in any way interfere with professional objectivity or judgment in issues related to the relationship. A conflict of interest is actual if a relationship exists, or apparent if the possibility for a relationship could be inferred. In either case, it is the responsibility of journal Editors, Associate Editors, Editorial Board members, authors and reviewers to declare Conflicts of Interest, actual or apparent, in order that appropriate mitigating action is taken. As conflict of interest is common, it reaches the level of concern when an observer may wonder if the individual’s behavior or judgment was motivated by his or her competing interest. Having competing interest does not imply wrongdoing, however it could undermine the credibility and trustworthiness of the journal. AIP Publishing, through this policy, aims to protect the integrity of the journals.

Editors

AIP Publishing has in place procedures by which potential conflict-of-interest information is obtained from all Editors and Associate Editors on a regular basis; annually, or upon appointment or re-appointment. Such information includes identification of editorial service with related or competing journals, institutional affiliations, paid consultancies, etc. Editors, in consultation with AIP Publishing, manage their own conflicts of interest as well as those of their Associate Editors, staff, authors, reviewers and Editorial Board members. They maintain a summary of relevant interests (financial, academic and other kinds) of all editorial staff and members of editorial boards (which is updated at least annually). Article submissions from the Editors, Editorial Board members, or employees are managed so that no details of the review process, other than the anonymous reviews and decision, are accessible to the Editor or employee.

Authors

The author has the obligation to reveal any personal interest or relationship that has the potential to be affected by publication of the submitted manuscript. Sources of funding must be acknowledged in the manuscript. All authors must report any financial interest in corporate or commercial entities dealing with the subject matter of the manuscript. On behalf of all the authors, the corresponding author has the responsibility to advise the Editor of an actual or apparent conflict of interest at the time of submission of the manuscript. Such conflicts will be acknowledged in the Acknowledgement section of the published article. Authors must also submit corrections if conflicts of interests are revealed after publication.

Reviewers

A reviewer is entrusted to provide an unbiased assessment of the scientific merit of a manuscript under review. Any situation or relationship that could bias or be construed to bias this assessment must be reported to the Editor. These include personal relations to the authors, concurrent competitive research on the same subject in the manuscript, or professional or financial ties to an organization with interests in the subject under review. In such cases where an actual or apparent Conflict of Interest is disclosed, the use of a review provided or requested is at the discretion of the Editor.

  1. PLAIGERISM POLICY

The Rehabilitation Journal strictly follows International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines for plagiarism. We use ‘Turnitin’ software for checking similarity index.. It is the authors’ responsibility to apprise them of plagiarism in any form including paraphrasing, self-plagiarism and salami slicing etc. Manuscripts submitted to TRJ can be sent to other health sciences journals’ editors and any international agency for authentication of originality. The disciplinary committee of TRJ would deal with cases of plagiarism and comprise of the staff, editors and the Chief Editor or his representative.

For a plagiarized article in processing, the identification of act will lead to dropping of article from further processing/consideration for publication. The author will be required to give an explanation on demand. In case of an unsatisfactory reply, the matter will be referred to the disciplinary committee that may decide the course of action. For a published article, the allegedly plagiarized article will be temporarily retracted from publication and a notice to the effect will be published in the TRJ. The author will be served an explanation.

In case of non-response in the stipulated time or unsatisfactory explanation, the article will be permanently retracted and the author will be on watch. In case of multiple submissions, other editors will also be informed. The author(s) will have to provide documentary proof of retraction from publication, if such a defense is pleaded. Those claiming intellectual/idea or data theft of an article must provide documentary proof in their claim.