Indian Journal of Community Medicine, the official organ of the Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM), publishes original research articles focusing on community health, primary health care, epidemiology, bio-statistics, public health administration, health care delivery systems, health economics, health promotion, medical sociology/anthropology, social medicine, preventive medicine, and family medicine; and invites annotations, comments, and review papers on recent advances, editorial correspondence, and book reviews.

 IJCM is committed to an unbiased, independent, anonymous and confidential review of articles submitted to it. Manuscripts submitted to this Journal, should not have been published or under consideration for publication in any substantial form in any other publication, professional or lay. All manuscripts will become the property of the publishers.

 Submit three copies typed in double space (including references), with wide margins along with an electronic copy on CD/floppy by post to the Chief Editor, Indian Journal of Community Medicine, Department of Community Medicine, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160 012, India. Also email a copy at ijcm@iapsm.org.in. Following written statement signed by all authors must accompany the article. “The undersigned authors(s) certify(ies) that the article is original, is not under consideration by any other journal and has not been previously published. The article has been read and approved by all the authors. All copyright ownership of the manuscript entitled (title of article) is hereby transferred to the publishers of the Indian Journal of Community Medicine.” Conflict of interest, if any should also be mentioned in the covering letter.
 

Preparation of the manuscript:

Authors are requested to adhere to the word limits. Editorial/viewpoint should be about 1500 words, original articles should limit to 3000 and short articles to 1500 words, and letters should not be more than 500 words. Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts (URM) submitted to Biomedical Journals should be consulted before submission of manuscript (http://www.icmje.org). All articles should mention how human and animal ethical aspect of the study was addressed. Whether informed consent was taken or not? Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. When reporting experiment on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. (http://www.wma.net).

Each of the following sections should begin on a separate page. Number all page in sequence beginning with the title page.

Title Page:
This should contain the title of the manuscript, the name of all authors, a short title (not more than 40 letters) to be used as the running title, source of support in the form of grants, equipments, drugs etc., the institution where the work has been carried out and the address for correspondence including telephone, fax and e-mail. One of the authors should be identified as the guarantor of the paper who will take responsibility of the article as a whole. Word count of the abstract and main text, number of references, figures and table should also be mentioned in the title page.

Abstract:
This should be a structured condensation of the work not exceeding 250 words for original research articles and 150 words for short articles. It should be structured under the following headings: background, objectives, methods, results, conclusions, and 5-8 keywords to index the subject matter of the article (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=mesh).

Acknowledgment:

Conflict of interest:
A brief statement on source of funding and conflict of interest should be included. It should be included on a separate page immediately following title page.

Contribution of Authors
: Briefly mention contribution of each author in multi author article.

References:
In citing other work only reference consulted in the original should be included. If it is against citation by others, this should be so stated. Signed permission is required for use of data from persons cited in personal communication. ANSI standard style adapted by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) should be followed. Consult http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html. References should be numbered and listed consecutively in the order in which they are first cited in the text and should be identified in the text, tables and legends by Arabic numerals as superscripts in brackets. The full list of reference at the end of the paper should include; names and initials of all authors up to six (if more than 6, only the first 6 are given followed by et al.); the title of the paper, the journal title abbreviation according to the style of Index Medicus (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=journals), year of publication; volume number; first and last page numbers. Reference of books should give the names and initials of the authors, book title, place of publication, publisher and year; those of multiple authorship should also include the chapter title, first and last page numbers and names and initials of editors.

Journals: Mehta MN, Mehta NJ. Serum lipids and ABO Blood group in cord blood of neonates. Indian J Pediatr. 1984; 51:39-43.

Book: Smith GDL. Chronic ear disease. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone; 1980.

Chapter in the Book: Malhotra KC. Medicogenetics problems of Indian tribes.  In: Verma IC, editor. Medical genetics in India. vol. 2. Pondicherry: Auroma Entrprises; 1978. p. 51-55.

Papers accepted but not yet published should be included in the references followed by ‘in press'. Those in preparation, personal communications and unpublished observations should be referred to as such in the text only.

Illustration:
These should be of the highest quality, submit glossy black and white photographs. Graphs should be drawn by the artist or prepared using standard computer software. Number all illustrations with Arabic numerals (1,2,3….)

Legends:
A descriptive legend must accompany each illustration and must define all abbreviations used therein.

Tables:
These must be self–explanatory and must not duplicate information in the text. Each table must have a title and should be numbered with Arabic numerals. Each table should be typed in double space, on a separate sheet of paper. No internal horizontal or vertical lines should be used. All tables should be cited in the text.