Outlines

1. General
2. Submission of a manuscript
3. Organisation of full-length research papers
• Title page
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Abbreviations
• Background
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• Competing interest
• Authors contributions (authorship and contributorship)
• References
• Tables
• Figures
• Supplementary material/Appendices (if any)
4. Case reports
5. Short communications
6. Reviews
7. Letters to the Editors
8. Commentaries
9. Essays
10. Debate papers
11. Briefs
12. Supplements, conference proceedings and workshop reports
13. Revised manuscripts
14. Proofs
15. Permissions
16. Copyright
17. Online submission
18. Article Processing Charges

1. General

PAMJ is an online open access peer-reviewed journal. Authors are encouraged to submit original research, systematic review and short reports from the field of medicine and public health in Africa.
Prior to submit your first article, you should apply for a user name and password. PAMJ offers a user friendly process for online submission.

Short reports will include case report, commentary, conference proceedings, editorials, viewpoints, and letter to the editors. Short Communications should be no longer than 1500 words. They must have an abstract and references, but the main body of the text does not have to follow the original research’s format. We give privilege to invited reviews and encourage prospective authors of systematic reviews to discuss the project with the editorial office before development.

After initial screening, which takes only a few days, manuscripts are sent to two-three referees. If appropriate, a statistical reviewer is involved. On average, we will report back to authors within 4-6 weeks with a first decision.

Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The submitting author takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review.

Languages of publication are English and French. Each author should provide an abstract of his article in the other language prior to submission. Poor English of French do not prevent acceptance provided the paper's content is of high scientific quality. All accepted manuscripts are copy-edited.

To facilitate rapid publication and to minimize administrative costs, PAMJ accepts only online submission. The submission process is compatible with version 3.0 or later of Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape Navigator.

Files can be submitted as a batch. The submission process allows the authors to interrupt it at any time, and continue where they left off at their return on the site.

During submission you will be asked to provide a cover letter. Use this to explain why your manuscript should be published in the journal and to elaborate on any issues relating to our editorial policies detailed in the instructions for authors.

Assistance with the process of manuscript preparation and submission is available from the customer support team (submission@panafrican-med-journal.com). We also provide a collection of links to useful tools and resources for scientific authors, on our resources for authors page.

Online submission
Pamj only accepts online submission. Click here to access the Online Manuscript Submission System. Simple onscreen instructions are provided. If you experience problems with the online submission system, send an email to submission@panafrican-med-journal.com. Do not send your manuscript to that email address, it will be ignored.

Conflicts of interest
Will be mentioned in the manuscript as "Authors declared they have no conflicts of interest".

3. Organization of a full-length research paper

Download the journal manuscript template.

Maximum length: 4000 words in main text (i.e., excluding abstract, references, legends, tables and figures), 4 tables/figures maximum, and a structured abstract of 250 words plus up to 50 references.

Title page – This page should states: a) The title of the paper (include the study design if appropriate; for example: A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial; X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study), b) Authors names (full name – no qualification. Strictly follow this order: First Name, Middle name (if ever), Last Name. E.g: Paul Kevin Akuna), c) institution(s) of origin, d) Corresponding author plus his/her address, telephone and fax number, e-mail address, e) Word count (for both abstract and the main text)

Abstract - The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 250 words and must be structured into separate sections: Background: the context and purpose of the study; Methods: how the study was performed and statistical tests used; Results: the main findings; Conclusion: brief summary and potential implications. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.

Keywords. Up to ten keywords (suitable for Index Medicus listing) should be provided at the end of the Abstract.
Abbreviations a list of abbreviations is not accepted. Define abbreviations the first time they are used in the text and use them thereafter. No abbreviations in the abstract except for vary know ones.

Background The background section should be written from the standpoint of researchers without specialist knowledge in that area and must clearly state - and, if helpful, illustrate - the background to the research and its aims. Reports of clinical research should, where appropriate, include a summary of a search of the literature to indicate why this study was necessary and what it aimed to contribute to the field. The section should end with a very brief statement of what is being reported in the article.

Methods Sufficient information should be given to permit repetition of the experimental work. This should include the design of the study, the setting, the type of participants or materials involved, a clear description of all interventions and comparisons, and the type of analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate.

Results - The Results should be stated concisely without discussion and should not normally contain any references. The same data should not be presented in figures and tables. Do not repeat all the data that is set out in the tables or figures in the text; emphasise or summarise only important observations.

Discussion - The Discussion should deal with the interpretation of the results and not recapitulate them. We encourage authors to write their Discussion in a structured way, as follows:a) statement of principal findings; b) strengths and weaknesses of the study; c) strengths and weaknesses in relation to other studies; d) discussion of important differences in results; e) meaning of the study; f) unanswered questions and future research.

Conclusion - The conclusion should provide a brief summarize of the key findings, potential implications and the way forward.

Acknowledgements - Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Please also include their source(s) of funding. Please also acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study. The role of a medical writer must be included in the acknowledgements section, including their source(s) of funding. Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Please list the source(s) of funding for the study, for each author, and for the manuscript preparation in the acknowledgements section. Authors must describe the role of the funding body, if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Competing interest - Authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing conflicts of interest that might bias their work. They should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support for the work and other personal connections. Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'. When completing your declaration, please consider the following questions:

Financial competing interests

• In the past five years have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? Is such an organization financing this manuscript (including the article-processing charge)? If so, please specify.
• Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? If so, please specify
• Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the content of the manuscript? Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript? If so, please specify.
• Do you have any other financial competing interests? If so, please specify.

• Are there any non-financial competing interests (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) to declare in relation to this manuscript? If so, please specify.
• If you are unsure as to whether you, or one your co-authors, has a competing interest please discuss it with the editorial office.

Authors' contributions - In order to give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. The Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (URM) of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) recommends the following criteria for authorship (Learn more about the URM on Authorship and Contributorship):

• Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
• When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript (3). These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. The NLM indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript; it also lists the names of collaborators if they are listed in Acknowledgments.
• Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.
• All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
• Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

References - References must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets (like this [1], or this [2,3] or even this [4-7]), in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any in tables or legends. Reference citations should not appear in titles or headings. Each reference must have an individual reference number. Preferably, limit the number of references to 50. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission. We encourage authors to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted. Examples of the PAMJ reference style are shown below. Please take care to follow the reference style precisely; references not in the correct style may be retyped, necessitating tedious proofreading.

• Download output style (Pan African Medical Journal.os) for Reference Manager.
• Download output style (Pan African Medical Journal...) for EndNote.

1. Kirikou Thomas, Doe John, Shaba Kevin, Kashawa Tuma. A sample of the pamj reference style as shown on the journal website. J Hist Fant. 2006; 76(11):204-212
2. Kirikou Thomas, Doe John, Shaba Kevin, Kashawa Tuma. Another sample of the pamj reference style: as shown on the journal website. J Hist Fant. 2006; 76(12):212-228

Formatting book references: Use the format below to reference a book
Author of the book. Title of the book. Year of publication. Publisher Location. Publisher name
Example: Fleiss JL. Statistical methods for rates and proportions - 3rd edition. 2003. Hoboken. J Wiley
NB: Note the use of dots to separate the sections of the book reference.

Formatting web references: Use the format below to reference a webpage or a website
Author of the page. Name of the source (if any). Year of data. url. Date link accessed
Example: SAS Institute. SAS 9. http://support.sas.com/software/index.htm. Accessed 10 April 2005
NB: Note the use of dots to separate the sections of the web reference.

Supplementary material/Appendices (if any) - Submit any supplementary material to the editorial office bye email. the editorila office can also decide which material will be published as supplemental material.

Tables (if any) - General instructions for tables.

• Append tables at the end of your manuscript, after the reference section
• Maximum 3 tables per articles. If more tables are required, it will have to be justified
• Each table should fit on one page. No table overlapping over several pages. So no matter the size of the table, make sure it can comfortably fit on a single page (portrait or landscape)
• Elements inside the table should be contained within cells.

Figures (if any) - General instructions for figures.

• Include a legend for your images inside the main text, after the reference section
• Should be provided as separated files during the manuscript submission. Do not embed images within the main text.
• Major image formats are accepted excluding BMP. (JPEG, PNG, TIFF)
• Provide high resolution images, not tiny thumbnails. Image of poor quality will be rejected.
• The size of the uploaded image is limited to 4 MB.

• An important clinical lesson
• Findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect
• Learning from medical errors
• Unusual presentation of more common disease/injury
• Rare disease or new disease
• New way to procedure to diagnose a disease
• Innovative way to manage a condition/disease in an African setting
• Unusual association of diseases/symptoms
• Unexpected outcome (positive or negative) including adverse drug reactions

• Abstract: Up to 150 words summarising the case presentation and outcome
• Introduction
• Patient and case report: Case presentation, investigation if relevant, differential diagnosis if relevant, treatment if relevant, outcome and follow-up
• Discussion: should include a very brief review of similar published cases
• Conclusion: should highlight the educational aspect of the case report
• Competing interests
• Figures (If any)
• References: Should be limited to 10

Publication and peer review processes

PAMJ uses online peer review to speed up the publication process. Submitted manuscripts will be sent to peer reviewers, unless they are either out of scope or below threshold for the journal, or the presentation or written English/French is of an unacceptably low standard.

Competing interests from are seek from authors and reviewers. Reviewers declare any competing interests and have to agree to open peer review. This implies that authors and reviewers agreed that if the manuscript is published, the peer review will be made available to the readers. The pre-publication history (initial submission, reviews and revisions) is then posted on the web with the published article.

The article will be available online through PAMJ as browser able (html) and PDF format. The ultimate responsibility for any decision lies with the Editor-in-Chief, to whom any appeals against rejection should be addressed.

Each author will be asked to provide the contact details (including e-mail addresses) of at least 2 potential peer reviewers for their manuscript. These should be experts in their field of study, who will be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. However, any suggested peer reviewers should not have published with any of the authors of the manuscript within the past five years and should not be members of the same research institution. Members of the Editorial Board of the journal can be nominated. Suggested reviewers will be considered alongside potential reviewers identified by their publication record or recommended by Editorial Board members.

Reviewers are asked whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, how interesting it is and whether the quality of the writing is acceptable. Where possible, the final decision is made on the basis that the peer reviewers are in accordance with one another, or that at least there is no strong dissenting view. In cases where there is strong disagreement either among peer reviewers or between the authors and peer reviewers, advice is sought from a member of the journal's Editorial Board. The journal allows a maximum of two revisions of any manuscripts.

Reviewers are also asked to indicate which articles they consider to be especially interesting or significant. These articles may be given greater prominence and greater external publicity.

Any manuscript or substantial parts of it, submitted to PAMJ must not be under consideration by any other journal. The manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, with that exception that the journal is willing to consider peer-reviewing manuscripts that are translations of articles originally published in another language. In this case, the consent of the journal in which the article was originally published must be obtained and the fact that the article has already been published must be made clear on submission and stated in the abstract. Authors who publish in PAMJ retain copyright to their work. Correspondence concerning articles published in PAMJ is encouraged.

Submission of a manuscript to PAMJ implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework, e.g. if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.

Generic drug names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses in the Methods section.

We ask authors of PAMJ papers to complete a declaration of competing interests, which should be provided as a separate section of the manuscript, to follow the Acknowledgements. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'. To learn more about competing interests the following articles provide some background:

• K Morin, H Rakatansky, FA Riddick Jr, LJ Morse, JM O'Bannon 3rd, MS Goldrich, P Ray, M Weiss, RM Sade, MA Spillman: Managing conflicts of interest in the conduct of clinical trials. JAMA 2002, 287 :78-84
• CD DeAngelis, PB Fontanarosa, A Flanagin: Reporting financial conflicts of interest and relationships between investigators and research sponsors. JAMA 2001, 286 :89-9
• R Smith: Beyond conflicts of interest. BMJ 1998, 317 :291-292
• R Smith: Making progress with competing interests. BMJ 2002, 325 :1375-1376

For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written and signed consent from each patient to publish must also be mailed or faxed to the editorial staff. The manuscript should also include a statement to this effect in the Acknowledgements section, as follows: "Written consent for publication was obtained from the patient or their relative."

1. Requirements

You will need the following to complete the submission of your manuscript:

• Name and email addresses of all authors.
• Correctly formatted manuscript: Microsoft Word (version 3 and above). Get manuscript template here
• Correctly formatted figures in one of the acceptable formats (see Figures).
• Cover letter that explains why the journal should consider your manuscript, declares any competing interests and confirms that the manuscript is not currently considered for publication in any other journals.

2. PAMJ reference style

We strongly encourage authors to use a reference software to format references. Output styles for Reference Manager and EndNote are provided below. In case these software aren't available, format your references manualy.
A sample of the PAMJ reference style below [1,2].

1. Kirikou Thomas, Doe John, Shaba Kevin, Kashawa Tuma. A sample of the pamj reference style as shown on the journal website. J Hist Fant. 2006; 76(11):204-212
2. Kirikou Thomas, Doe John, Shaba Kevin, Kashawa Tuma. Another sample of the pamj reference style: as shown on the journal website. J Hist Fant. 2006; 76(12):212-228

Download journal output style for Reference Manager
Download journal output style for EndNote

Access the online Manuscript Submission System.

To maintain its Open Access business model, the Pan African Medical Journal will charge an Article Processing Fee (APF) of $180 US per manuscripts accepted for publication in the journal. Authors or research sponsors are responsible for the payment of the APF. Authors who are covered through one of our Institutional Members are eligible for a discount or waiver of this fee. We strongly encourage authors to assess their capacity to cover the APF before submitting their manuscript for publication to PAMJ. A discout or waiver may be granted for multiple submissions from the same authors during the same year.

Authors can request partial or complete waiver during the submission process. Waivers are subjected to thorough investigation and are rarely granted, considering that the amount charged is already very low and barely cover the cost of publishing a manuscript.

For more on PAMJ article processing charges, consult our Article Processing Charges Questions and Answers page.