A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to The Journal of Orofacial Rehabilitation alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding for formal peer-review. Manuscripts that are unlikely to be of interest to The Journal of Orofacial Rehabilitation readers are also liable to be rejected at this stage itself.

Manuscripts received from Editorial Board members will be screened by the Editor in Chief and sent to external peer reviewers. The editorial board members who are authors will be excluded from publication decisions.

 Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in The Journal of Orofacial Rehabilitation are sent to two or more expert reviewers. During submission, the contributor is requested to provide names of two or three qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but this is not mandatory. The reviewers should not be affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor/s. However, the selection of these reviewers is at the sole discretion of the editor. The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. Every manuscript is also assigned to a member of the editorial team, who based on the comments from the reviewers takes a final decision on the manuscript. 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 until reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.

Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within three days. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The whole process of submission of the manuscript to the final decision and sending and receiving proofs is completed online. To achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the journal publishes articles online as ‘Ahead of Print’ immediately on acceptance.

Time line for manuscript processing

• Submission of manuscript.
• Editorial review – 5 to 7 working days initial assessment and allotment of assignment for reviewing procedure to associate, section editors or reviewers.
• The process of reviewing, the comments or decisions shall be conveyed to authors in 2 months from the date of submission for the first submission. In the case of revised submission, it shall be communicated in a month’s time from the date of submission.
• Publication on acceptance shall depend on the date of acceptance and category of the manuscript (original, review or case reports).
• The entire process can be tracked by the author through their log in the dashboard and in case of queries they can email the editor through their login page of the journal software (editor query).
• Any query to the editor shall be responded by email in 5 -7 working days.

Process of appeals

The authors can appeal to the editor’s decision if they have a piece of strong reason evidence or information in response to the editor’s and reviewer’s comments. If the authors wish to appeal the decision, they should email the editorial office (email protected) explaining in detail the reason for the appeal. The appeals will be acknowledged by the editorial office and will be investigated in an unbiased manner. The processing of appeals will be done within 6 – 8 weeks. While under appeal, the said manuscript should not be submitted to other journals. The final decision rests with the Editor in Chief of the journal. Second appeals are not considered.

Anti-plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism includes the duplicate publication of the author’s own work, in whole or in part without proper citation or mispresenting other’s ideas, words, and other creative expressions as one’s own. The Journal follows strict anti-plagiarism policy. All manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Orofacial Rehabilitation will undergo plagiarism check with commercially available software. Based on the extent of plagiarism, authors may be asked to address any minor duplication or similarity with the previously published work. If plagiarism is detected after publication, the Journal will investigate. If plagiarism is established, the journal will notify the authors’ institution and funding bodies and will retract the plagiarised article. To report plagiarism, contact the journal office (email: [email protected]) Clinical trial registry The Journal of Orofacial Rehabilitation favors registration of clinical trials and is a signatory to the Statement on publishing clinical trials in Indian biomedical journals. The Journal of Orofacial Rehabilitation would publish clinical trials that have been registered with a clinical trial registry that allows free online access to the public. Registration in the following trial registers is acceptable: http://www.ctri.nic.in/; https://www.anzctr.org.au/; http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/; http://isrctn.org/; http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/index.asp; http://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr. This is applicable to clinical trials that have begun the enrollment of subjects in or after June 2008. Clinical trials that have commenced enrollment of subjects prior to June 2008 would be considered for publication in The Journal of Orofacial Rehabilitation only if they have been registered retrospectively with the clinical trial registry that allows unhindered online access to public without charging any fees.

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three 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.

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 for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all the contributors. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope and number of institutions involved (vide infra). The authors should provide a justification if the number of authors exceeds these limits.

Contribution Details

Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided into the following categories, as applicable: concept, design, the definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing, and manuscript review. The authors’ contributions will be printed along with the article. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as ‘guarantor’.

Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests

All authors of articles must disclose any and all conflicts of interest 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. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.