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About the Journal

Journal of The Epidemiology Foundation of India (JEFI) with ISSN: 3048-8559 (PRINT) ;  2584-265X (ONLINE), is an official publication of Epidemiology Foundation of India (EFI). It is a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal with both online and print version. The JEFI full text articles are available online at https://efi.org.in/journal/index.php/JEFI with free access (Open Access) to its contents with no subscription or pay per view fees required from the readers for reading online JEFI publications. JEFI permits authors to self-archive final accepted version of the articles on any OAI-compliant institutional / subject-based repository.

 

Abstracting & Indexing

Journal of The Epidemiology Foundation of India (JEFI) is currently registered with leading abstracting partners, including:

Google Scholars l Crossref l ISSN l Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research l Scilit l Index Copernicus l Open Alex

Indexing processes with Web of Science Core Collection, DOAJ, PubMed, and EMBASE/Scopus are underway.

 

Aim & Scope

JEFI aim is to promote and publish articles on evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, translational research, public health issues, medical educational technology, nutrition, maternal & child health, communicable / non communicable diseases, environmental / occupational health, health equity and equality, etc. with special emphasis on original research findings that are relevant for developing country perspectives including India.

Authors are encouraged to submit their research work under the scope of journal sections viz. Editorial, Original Article, Review Article, Systematic Reviews, Meta-Analysis, Opinion, Commentary, Perspective, Continuing Medical Education, Letter to Editor, Editorial Correspondence and book review.

JEFI has a very transparent and robust system for reviewing articles with the help of editorial board / reviewers which include eminent scholars from India & abroad. It also publishes articles from other developing and developed nations, with an ultimate aim to contribute to the knowledge & practice of Evidence Based Public Health.

JEFI provides an avenue to medical scientists for publication of original research work so as to facilitate use of research for evidence based public health decisions.

 

Editorial Policies

JEFI expect the highest ethical standards from their authors, reviewers and editors when conducting research, submitting papers and throughout the peer-review process.

 

Editorial Process

All submitted manuscripts will undergo a three-step review process: preliminary check, plagiarism check and peer review. 

Preliminary Check

All submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by the journal’s editorial office for compliance with guidelines for preparation of articles. Articles that do not comply with the guidelines will be sent back to the authors.

Plagiarism Check

Articles that are in compliance with the guidelines will be subjected to plagiarism check. We work with Cross Ref to use iThenticate to detect plagiarism. iThenticate gives a 'similarity index', which is the word-by-word copying of materials from previously published literature. We use similarity index to make a decision. Even if the original source was cited, articles with more than 20% similarity index will be returned to the authors without peer review for re-writing. For articles with similarity index between 1-10%, we follow the guidelines of COPE on text recycling to make a decision. Articles that pass the plagiarism check will be reviewed by experts in the field.

Peer Review

JEFI employs a double-blind peer review process, in which the author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.

Peer Review Process

The following is the editorial workflow that every manuscript submitted to the journal undergoes during the course of the peer-review process. The entire editorial workflow is performed using OJS. Once a manuscript is submitted, the manuscript is assigned to an Editor most appropriate to handle it based on the subject of the manuscript and the availability of the Editors. If the Editor determines that the manuscript is not of sufficient quality to go through the normal review process or if the subject of the manuscript is not appropriate to the journal scope, the Editor rejects the manuscript with no further processing.

If the Editor determines that the submitted manuscript is of sufficient quality and falls within the scope of the journal, he/she assigns the manuscript to a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 external reviewers for peer-review. The reviewers submit their reports on the manuscripts along with their recommendation of one of the following actions to the Editor:

Accept Submission / Revision Required / Resubmit for Review / Resubmit Elsewhere / Decline Submission / See Comments

Selection of reviewers

The Journal Editorial Team will find appropriate experts to review the manuscripts. Authors may suggest three potential reviewers; however, there is no guarantee that these reviewers will be invited to review. Potential reviewers will be personally contacted by the editorial staff to seek expression of interest to review the paper. The email will contain the details of the authors and the abstract. Also, the reviewers will be asked to disclose conflict of interest. If the reviewers agree to review, and if there is no potential conflict of interest, they will receive the official invitation from the journal containing the link to access the manuscript.

Reviewer responsibilities

The reviewers will remain anonymous. Reviewers are expected to keep the manuscript confidential, provide an unbiased scientific opinion of the manuscript and declare any conflict of interest. Also, reviewers are expected to submit their comments within the indicated time frame. 

Criteria for assessing original articles: 

• Does the abstract convey the major theme of the paper?
• Does the manuscript require language editing?
• Does the introduction describe the rationale for the study in the context of the available literature?
• Where relevant, have appropriate ethics approval and informed consent been obtained?
• Are the methods adequately described?
• Is the number of samples, number of repeats, equipment and chemicals used clearly mentioned?
• Are statistical methods clearly stated?
• Is the discussion well-balanced in light of the available literature and the research findings?
• Is conflict of interest stated?

Criteria for assessing review articles: 

• Does the manuscript require language editing?
• Does the abstract convey the major theme of the article?
• Does the article comprehensively and critically evaluate an existing problem in the context of the available literature?
• If relevant does the article suggest a possible solution to the problem?
• Is conflict of interest stated? 

Editorial decision

When all reviewers have submitted their reports, the Editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations. The corresponding author will be notified of the decision.

Accept Submission / Revision Required / Resubmit for Review / Decline Submission

If the Editor recommends “Accept Submission” the manuscript is accepted for publication.

If the Editor recommends “Revision Required” the authors are notified to prepare and submit a final copy of their manuscript with the required changes suggested by the reviewers. Only the Editor reviews the revised manuscript after the changes have been made by the authors. Once the Editor is satisfied with the final manuscript, the manuscript can be accepted.

If the Editor recommends “Resubmit for Review ” the authors are notified to prepare and submit a revised copy of their manuscript with the required changes suggested by the reviewers. The revised manuscript after the changes have been made by the authors wiil again go under a fresh peer review.

If the Editor recommends "Decline Submission", the manuscript is immediately rejected. Also, if two of the reviewers recommend Decline Submission, the manuscript is immediately rejected.

The editorial workflow gives the Editors the authority in rejecting any manuscript because of inappropriateness of its subject, lack of quality, or incorrectness of its results.

This review process is to ensure a high-quality, fair, and unbiased double blinded peer-review process of every manuscript submitted to the journal, since any manuscript must be recommended by one or more (usually two or more) external reviewers along with the Editor in charge of the manuscript in order for it to be accepted for publication in the journal.

Each published article will be assigned a DOI, deposited with Cross Ref and permanently archived with various abstracting and indexing agency.

Moreover, even the finally published articles’ readers and authors have ample opportunities to review the publications and correspondingly communicate to JEFI in case if the published materials correspondingly warrant any publication of erratum/corrections in future JEFI issues.

Ahead of Print Policy

The editors of Journal of the Epidemiology Foundation of India are pleased to offer electronic publication of accepted titles prior to issue publication.

Articles appearing in “Ahead of Print” section have been peer-reviewed and to achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the journal publishes articles online as ‘Ahead of Print’ immediately on acceptance.

Articles appearing here may contain statements, opinions, and information that have errors in facts, figures, or interpretation.

Plagiarism Policy

Journal of the Epidemiology Foundation of India is extremely strict in matters of Plagiarism. The Journal will not accept plagiarized articles for publication. If the journal finds a submitted plagiarized article, then it may ban all the authors responsible for the article in publishing with it. So, all the authors/researchers are requested to check their respective articles for plagiarism before submitting them for publishing.

All received manuscripts will be vigorously checked for plagiarism. We use software for the detection of plagiarism before forwarding the manuscripts for the peer-review process.

The Journal is abide to UGC guidelines for plagiarism [https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/7771545_academic-integrity-Regulation2018.pdf]

 

Authorship Criteria

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Contribution Details

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Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests

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Online Submission

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Manuscript Preparation

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Copies of any permission(s)

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Clinical trial registry

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Types of Manuscripts

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Protection of Patients' Rights to Privacy

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Sending a revised manuscript

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Reprints and proofs

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Copyrights

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Checklist

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Contributors' form

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Ethics and Misconduct

The Journal of the Epidemiology Foundation of India has a zero-tolerance policy for publications linked to publication misconduct in order to protect the standards of academic integrity and respect for other people's intellectual property rights. Plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, duplicate submission/multiple submissions, overlapping publishing, and salami publication are all examples of publication misconduct. According to PILA and COPE Committee criteria for publishing misconduct, we have created Journal of the Epidemiology Foundation of India definitions and policies, which are as follows:

1. Plagiarism: The unjustified use of another person's words, ideas, data, statistics, research techniques, or other work without giving due credit, as well as the excessive citation of another person's published work.
2. Fabrication: Without conducting the pertinent study, fabrication is the technique of inventing data or outcomes.
3. Falsification: Falsification is the deliberate alteration of facts or results to lead to false conclusions.
4. Inappropriate authorship: The author's contributions are not taken into account for determining authorship.
5. Duplicate submission/multiple submissions: Refer to the act of submitting the same manuscript or multiple manuscripts with minor differences (e.g., differences only in title, keywords, abstract, author order, author affiliations, or a small amount of text) to two or more journals at the same time, or submitting to another journal within an agreed-upon or stipulated period.
6. Overlapping publication: Publishing a paper that considerably overlaps with one that has already been published is referred to as an overlapping publication.
7. Salami publication: Salami publication is the process of dividing data from a large study into smaller portions that could have been reported in a single paper and publishing them in two or more articles that all address the same population, techniques, and question.
8. Cross-referencing references with the text

 

What If There Was Misconduct?

• Immediate Rejection the manuscript or revoke the published article.
• Not accept submissions submitted within two years by the same research team.
• Informing the institution of the corresponding author.

Journal of the Epidemiology Foundation of India has also joined Crossref - iThenticate Similarity Check in the battle against plagiarism and to guarantee high ethical standards for all of the published papers. iThenticate Turnitin is a powerful tool for identifying plagiarised material, allowing our editors to protect the integrity of the journal and the authors' copyright.

We shall carry out detection on approved articles. A fair citation was generally considered to be one that did not exceed 200 words of overlap between the paper and the literature. When substantial amounts of text overlap are discovered (e.g., >5% overlap or >10% similarity), we immediately check to see if the article is linked to publishing misconduct. We may immediately enforce the aforementioned sanctions if publication misbehaviour with the material is discovered.

 

 

Archiving Policy

Journal of the Epidemiology Foundation of India archives its content with LOCKSS and CLOCKSS.

The LOCKSS program offers decentralized and distributed preservation, seamless perpetual access, and preservation of the authentic original version of the content.

The PKP PN ensures that journals that are not part of any other digital preservation service (such as CLOCKSS or Portico) can be preserved for long-term access. For additional details about the PKP PN, see the  high-level overview (an early discussion document). All URLs are OAI-qualified

 

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

 

Open Access Policy

Content License: This work is licensed under a https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribution: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Non commercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

No Derivatives: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

No additional restrictions: You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

 

Manuscript submission, processing and publication charges

Submission Charge: Nil

Journal does not charge the authors or authors’ institutions for the submission of manuscripts.

Publication Charges: Nil

JEFI follows an Open Access Policy which allows unrestricted online access to all its content. In order to support the publication, the journal does not depend on any external grant or advertisement subscription income from any public or private sources.  To support an Open Access System and in order to cover offset expenses for journal management systems, pre-publication production, publication and archiving. The Epidemiology Foundation of India (EFI) covers the publication cost of accepted manuscripts.