About Journal
Indian Journal of Natural Products (Indian J. Nat. Prod.) [www.ijnponline.com] . [ISSN: 0970-129X] is a double-blind peer-reviewed, open access journal which is primarily a natural product-oriented Journal, which publishes research findings, innovative studies and reviews on efficacy, safety, quality and mechanisms of action of medicinal and aromatic plants, phytopharmaceuticals, purified fractions, and their lead compounds. This includes clinical and preclinical studies of properly standardized herbal medicinal products, herbal preparations, and isolated compounds, which have reproducible bioactivity. All manuscripts contributed to IJNP are examined by the editorial staff and usually evaluated by 3 peer expert reviewers assigned by the editors with the understanding that they have not been published previously and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Journal is being published quarterly.
Subjects Covered
IJNP publishes a wide range of topics covering Research based ethnopharmacological evaluations and Natural product discovery and evaluation.
Editorial Policy
For Editorial Policy please visit: http://ijnponline.com/content/editorial-policy
Plagiarism Policy
For Plagiarism Policy please visit: http://ijnponline.com/content/editorial-policy
Ethical Policy
Manuscripts are considered on the understanding that they contain original material, which the manuscript and material within the manuscript have not been published and are not being considered for publication elsewhere in whole or in part in any language, including publicly accessible web sites or e-print servers, except as an abstract. The authors also certify that any and all other work in preparation, submitted, in press, or published that is potentially overlapping either in the actual data presented or in the conceptual approach is enclosed along with the original submission. Any material within the manuscript that has appeared elsewhere must be cross-referenced and permission to use or adapt the material must be received, in writing from the copyright holder.
The Editorial Process
A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to IJNP 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 IJNP readers are also liable to be rejected at this stage itself.
Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in IJNP 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 till 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 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.
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; and
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 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 in following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. Authors' contributions will be printed along with the article. One or more author 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 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.
Submission of Manuscripts
Manuscripts must conform to the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” http://www.icmje.org/. Contributions and Manuscripts must be written in English and submitted exclusively to IJNP. Manuscripts must be typewritten (double-spaced) with liberal margins and space at the top and bottom of the page.
All manuscripts must be submitted online via link provided.
Covering Letter
Disclose all possible conflicts of interest (e.g., funding sources for consultancies or studies of products). A brief indication of the importance of the paper to the field of Pharmacy, Pharmacognosy is helpful in gaining appropriate peer review.
Preparation of Manuscript
Your Manuscript should be typed, double-spaced on standard-sized – paper (8.5" x 11") with 1" margins on all sides. You should use 12 pt Times New Roman font. Authors should take care over the fonts which are used in the document, including fonts within graphics. Fonts should be restricted to Times New Roman, Symbol and Zapf Dingbats.
Title: Should be in Title Case; The first character in each word in the title has to be capitalized.
A research paper typically should include the following in the order given below :
- Title
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Introduction
- Materials and Methods
- Results including Tables and/or Figures
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements (If any)
- References
- Appendixes (if necessary)
- Abbreviations used (if necessary)
Abstract – Limit of 250 Words
A brief summary of the research. The abstract should include a brief introduction, a description of the hypothesis tested, the approach used to test the hypothesis, the results seen and the conclusions of the work.
Key words
Please, write no more than six keywords. Write specific keywords. They should be written left aligned, arranged alphabetically in 12pt Times Roman, and the line must begin with the words Keywords boldfaced. A 12pt space should separate the keywords from the affiliations.
Introduction
Description of the research area, pertinent background information, and the hypotheses tested in the study should be included under this section. The introduction should provide sufficient background information such that a scientifically literate reader can understand and appreciate the experiments to be described. The introduction MUST include in-text citations including references to pertinent reviews and primary scientific literature. The specific aims of the project should be identified along with a rationale for the specific experiments and other work performed.
Materials and Methods
Materials and/or subjects utilized in the study as well as the procedures undertaken to complete the work. The methods should be described in sufficient detail such that they could be repeated by a competent researcher. Please include the company sources for all uncommon reagents (kits, drugs, etc). Illustrations and/or tables may be helpful in describing complex equipment or elaborate procedures. The statistical tool used to analyze the data should be mentioned. All procedures involving experimental animals or human subjects must accompany with statement on necessary ethical approval from appropriate ethics committee.
Results
Data acquired from the research with appropriate statistical analysis described in the methods section should be included in this section. The results section should describe the rational for each experiment, the results obtained and its significance. Results should be organized into figures and tables with descriptive captions. The captions, although brief, should tell the reader the method used, explain any abbreviations included in the figure, and should end with a statement as to the conclusion of the figure. Qualitative as well as quantitative results should be included if applicable.
Discussion/Conclusion
This section should relate the results section to current understanding of the scientific problems being investigated in the field. Description of relevant references to other work/s in the field should be included here. This section also allows you to discuss the significance of your results - i.e. does the data support the hypotheses you set out to test? This section should end with new answers/questions that arise as a result of your work.
Tables and Figures
Tables
Each table must start on a separate sheet. They should be numbered with Roman numerals according to their sequence in the text, and have a short self-explanatory heading. Use SI units. Tables should include vertical rules, but horizontal rules should separate column headings from the content. Authors should keep in mind the page layout of the journal when designing tables. Tables that fit onto one printed page are preferred. Detailed explanations of symbols, units, and abbreviations should follow below the table.
Illustrations
Figures for final production should be submitted as electronic files (soft copy). Please pay particular attention to the guidelines below. The editorial office cannot undertake preparation of manuscripts and illustrations not conforming to journal style. Manuscripts of insufficient quality will be returned immediately without refereeing. A high standard of illustration (both line and photo) is an editorial priority. All illustrations should be prepared for printing to fit 80 x 240 mm (column width) or 169 mm by up to 240 mm (full page) size. The authors should keep in mind that the full-page length is not used and the caption will be placed underneath the figure. Figure(s) must be numbered consecutively in the text. Compound figures with more than one micrograph or photo should be referred by a single figure reference (e.g. Figure 1), and individual parts should be labeled with capitalized letters in the lower left-hand corner. Lettering should be of a sans-serif type (i.e. fonts without serifs such as Arial) with a minimum published size of 4.2 mm (12 pt). Descriptive labeling in the figures should be clearly readable, and all lettering should have a minimum published size of 6 pt (2.1 mm) for labeling items on photographs or in line art is recommended and a maximum size of 10 pt is suggested. Use a scale bar to indicate magnifications and place in the lower right corner if possible. The photographic images must be at a minimum of 350 dpi at the final publication size. Lower resolution will result in pixilation and poor quality images. These should be submitted as JPEG or TIFF, but encapsulated postscript (EPS) format is also acceptable. Figures provided must be of higher quality. Please note that graphs produced by many statistical packages are rarely adequate. In particular, letter quality on axes and captions are often poor. Such figures should be exported into an accepted graphics package and lettering rendered using a text function. Authors should note that .dot, .bmp, and .pat fills should be avoided. Do not use postscripts fill patterns as these are often based on bit map patterns that result in screening patterns during final reproduction. When filling illustrations, use fills such as lines, tints or solids. Line width minimum is 0.25 pt (0.09 mm). Also avoid the use of bitmap scans to render text and detail. Text should be saved as text at a minimum text size of 6 pt (2.1 mm). Submit line art as Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, or EPS files. These must be at a minimum resolution of 800 DPI at publication size. High resolution may be necessary where fine line detail is present.
For graphs, Excel graphs are also acceptable. Note that vertical axes must all be at the same scale especially when the paper compares them. Otherwise they should be produced as separate figures. Avoid 3D plots when presenting 2D data.
All tables and figures must be placed in appropriate places in the manuscript and when this is not possible, appropriate place must be indicated in the manuscript. Please note good quality figures must be submitted as separate files as said above apart from presenting a copy of the same at appropriate places in the manuscript. This will make job of the reviewer easy.
Table and Figure captions
Figure and table captions should be included at the end of the manuscript. Figure captions/legends should include a statement at the end of each caption/legends about reproduction size (e.g. at full page width, at column width). They should be double spaced and typed in the journal format. Explanations should be brief and authors should keep in mind that captions/legends will be placed below figures.
Acknowledgements – Limit of 100 Words
This is a brief section crediting the people who have helped make your manuscript possible and who aided you in your work but are not part of the authorship. Please mention all applicable grants and other funding that supported your work.
Review Articles:
It is expected that these articles would be written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field. A short summary of the work done by the contributor(s) in the field of review should accompany the manuscript.
The prescribed word count is up to 3000 words excluding tables, references and abstract. The manuscript may have about 90 references. The manuscript should have an unstructured Abstract (250 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles would depend upon the topic reviewed. Authors submitting review article should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.
The journal expects the contributors to give post-publication updates on the subject of review. The update should be brief, covering the advances in the field after the publication of the article and should be sent as a letter to editor, as and when major development occurs in the field.
References
Reference List: Author/Authors, References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (not in alphabetic order). Manuscript with square bracket after the punctuation marks. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. Use the style of the examples below, which are based on the formats used by the NLM in Index Medicus. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Use complete name of the journal for non-indexed journals. Avoid using abstracts as references. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source. Avoid citing a "personal communication" unless it provides essential information not available from a public source, in which case the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text. The commonly cited types of references are shown here, for other types of references such as newspaper items please refer to ICMJE Guidelines (http://www.icmje.org or http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).
In-text citation examples
Correct / Acceptable Format
Natural products have proven to be a great source of new biologically active compounds. Thus, in an effort to discover new lead anti-malarial compounds, several research group screen plant extracts to detect secondary metabolites with relevant biological activities that could served as templates for the development of new drugs. Flavonoids have been isolated and characterized from many medicinal plants used in malaria endemic areas.[10] However, controversial data have been obtained regarding their antiplasmodial activity, probably because of their structural diversity.[11-13] More recently, several flavonoids have been isolated from Artemisia afra[14,16] and Artemisia indica, [17-20] two plants related to Artemisia annua, the famous traditional Chinese medicinal plant from which artemisinin is isolated.
JOURNAL REFERENCES [Vancouver Style]
1. Single/Multiple Authors
Parasuraman S, Raveendran R, Kesavan R. Blood sample collection in small laboratory animals. J PharmacolPharmacother 2010;1:87-93
2. More than six authors
Parasuraman S, Sujithra J, Syamittra B, Yeng WY, Ping WY, Muralidharan S,et al. Evaluation of sub-chronic toxic effects of petroleum ether, a laboratory solvent in Sprague-Dawley rats.J Basic Clin Pharm. 2014;5(4):89-97.
3. Organization as Author
Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. Hypertension, insulin, and proinsulin in participants with impaired glucose tolerance.Hypertension. 2002; 40(5): 679-86.
4. Unknown Author
21st century heart solution may have a sting in the tail. BMJ. 2002; 325(7357): 184-5.
5. Journal article on the Internet
Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [serial on the Internet]. 2002 Jun [cited 2002 Aug 12]; 102(6): [about 3 p.]. Available from:
http://www.nursingworld.org/AJN/2002/june/Wawatch.htm
Note: Plant/Micro organisms, in-vivo, in-vitro should be in italics.
6. Personal author(s)
Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA.Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
7. Editor(s), compiler(s) as author
Gilstrap LC 3rd, Cunningham FG, VanDorsten JP, editors.Operative obstetrics. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002.
8. Author(s) and editor(s)
Breedlove GK, SchorfheideAM. Adolescent pregnancy.2nd ed. Wieczorek RR, editor. White Plains (NY): March of Dimes Education Services; 2001.
9. Organization(s) as author
Royal Adelaide Hospital; University of Adelaide, Department of Clinical Nursing.Compendium of nursing research and practice development, 1999-2000. Adelaide (Australia): Adelaide University; 2001.
10. Chapter in a book
Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93-113.
11. Conference proceedings
Harnden P, Joffe JK, Jones WG, editors.Germ cell tumours V. Proceedings of the 5th Germ Cell Tumour Conference; 2001 Sep 13-15; Leeds, UK. New York: Springer; 2002.
12. Thesis
N. Khoshakhlagh. The compositions of volatile fractions of Peganumharmala seeds and its smoke.Pharm. D. Thesis, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. (2002).
13. WEBSITES
Website informationCancer-Pain.org [homepage on the Internet]. New York: Association of Cancer Online Resources, Inc.; c2000-01 [updated 2002 May 16; cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: http://www.cancer-pain.org/.
Submission
Submission of Manuscript
Manuscripts should be submitted to https://emanuscriptonline.com/index.php/ijnp
Acknowledgements
All messages and reviews sent electronically will be acknowledged automatically upon receipt.
Note: Do not send hard copies/CDs, until you receive e-mail request from Editorial office.
A timely submission, however, is not a guarantee that your work will be accepted for forthcoming publication. All submissions are peer reviewed by the editorial board and a select group of reviewers. Please make sure that all guidelines are followed carefully. All the accepted articles will be queued for publication and will appear in the futures issues based on the priorities set by the editorial board.
The manuscript should be submitted as Soft Copy ONLY. Hard copies are not accepted.
Check List for Submitting a Manuscript
- Covering letter (first page)
- Copyright Form (Scanned)
- Manuscript
- Illustrations (if any)
Status of Manuscript
The corresponding author can check the status of the submitted manuscript on the journal website.
