Instructions to Authors

Aim and Scope

The scope of Complementary and Persian Medicine Reviews (CPMR) is to publish high-quality review articles in the field of traditional and complementary medicines, especially Persian medicine. These articles will be in line with the formation of reliable sources for the movement towards evidence-based medicine and will cover a wide range of areas from historical reviews to reviews of the effectiveness and safety of medicines, techniques and practices of traditional and complementary medicines, and also ethnopharmacology, pharmacognosy and phytotherapy.

Editorial Independency

Although the CPRM journal is sponsored financially by Tehran University of Medical Sciences, it benefits from editorial freedom. The editors evaluate and accept articles based only on significance, originality, validity, and adherence to the aims and scope of the journal.

Our editorial policy is consistent with the principles of editorial independence presented by World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

Assignment of Authorship Responsibilities

Your article will not be published unless you warrant that “This article is an original work, has not been published before, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form”. The corresponding author of each article while submitting it, must provide a cover letter to the editor, mentioning the above information, and after signing it by all the authors of the article, he/she must scan the file in the attachment and send the article.

Submission of Manuscripts

Manuscripts must be in Word program (.doc or .docx), and authors should register in the CPRM Journal website and submit their papers through the online submission system. When a manuscript is submitted, a Ref. Num. is devoted to it. Correspondence had to use this number in connections. If an article is accepted to publish; authors must submit permissions to reproduce copyrighted material and must sign an agreement for the transfer of copyright to the Journal. All accepted manuscripts, artwork, and photographs become the publisher's property.

Language of the Journal

The journal accepts and publishes articles in English.

Manuscript types

Several types of articles are available to publish in Complementary and Persian Medicine Reviews. They are described and explained in the below table.

Article Type

	Abstract (Summery)	Word count limitation (including abstract, text and references)	References Limitation	Tables/ Figures Limitation
Narrative Reviews	Up to 300 Words	6000	No limit	10
Systematic/ and Meta-analysis	Up to 300 words	6000	No limit	10
TM Conceptual Reviews	Up to 300 Words	4000	50	8
TM Historical Reviews	Up to 300 Words	4000	50	8
Mini Review	Up to 300 Words	3000	50	4
TM Biography	Up to 300 Words	3000	30	4
Letter	N/A	500	10	1
Commentary	N/A	700	10	1
News and Events	N/A	300	5	2

 

Narrative Reviews: High quality reviews by experts in the field are welcomed. They should give evidence on and provide answers to a well-defined aspect or question in a particular area, including different subjects on traditional medicine, integrative medicine, complementary medicine, Persian medicine, pharmacognosy, ethnopharmacology and phytotherapy.  

Systematic/ and Meta-analysis: CPMR published systematic reviews that identifies, appraises, and synthesizes all empirical evidence meeting pre-specified criteria to answer a specific research question in the fields of traditional medicine, integrative medicine, complementary medicine, Persian medicine, pharmacognosy, ethnopharmacology and phytotherapy. Also, meta-analyses are welcomed that statistically combine results from multiple studies to produce a single quantitative estimate.

TM Conceptual Reviews: CPMR publishes TM Conceptual Reviews that scientifically articulate and define the concepts and terminologies of traditional and complementary medicines. These articles should contribute to a better understanding of these concepts in the medical community.

TM Historical Reviews: Historical reviews that can help better understanding historical backgrounds of traditional and complementary medicines or the philosophy of these paradigms are welcome.

Mini Review: Short Narrative, Systematic/ and meta-analyses reviews with addressed limitations of word count, the number of tables/ figures and references could be published as Mini Reviews.

TM Biography: Biography of important physicians, scientists or any persons who had great contribution to developing traditional and complementary medicines or have important impact to developing medicine in medical history could be published as TM Biography in CPMR.

Letter: CPMR accepts letters that discuss on a previously published paper in CPMR.

Commentary: CPMR accepts research letters discussing a novel subject as commentary (without referring to a previously published paper in CPMR).

News and Events: Any announcements or reports about important events or news on traditional and complementary medicine could be published in CPMR.

Authors are encouraged to refer to the SAGER guidelines for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analyses, results, and interpretation of findings: www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/sager-guidelines/.

Manuscript formatting

Each manuscript must be included cover letter, cover page, abstract (if needed), text, acknowledgment (if exist), Conflict of Interest clarification, Funding (if exist), Authors role and contribution, AI disclosure statement, references, tables and figures. Each part must be begun in new page but all in a word file (.doc or .docx). Figures can be submitted in separate file (jpeg format). The whole parts of submission must be double-spaced with 1-inch margins, written by New Times Roman font, size of 12 in A4 papers. Number all manuscript pages. Use italics with bold type for section headings and subheadings, and do number. Indent new paragraphs.

Cover Letter - for all submissions: Correspondence must write a letter to editor and explain the importance of manuscript to publish.

Cover Page - for all submissions: Include the article title, a short running title (short form of the main title presented on the top of published pages under 50 characters, with space), the full names of all authors and their academic titles, affiliations and Orchid ID. Also phone number, postal address and email address of Correspondence must be noticed.

Abstract: Abstracts must be written unstructured for Systematic/ and Meta-analysis reviews, Narrative Reviews, TM Conceptual Reviews, TM Historical Reviews, Mini Reviews, TM Biography, followed by 3-5 Key Words selected from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Limit word counts for abstracts is 300 words.

Text: Systematic/ and Meta-analysis reviews, Narrative Reviews, TM Conceptual Reviews, TM Historical Reviews, Mini Reviews, TM Biography must include some parts such as Introduction, Material and Methods (if needed), Results (if needed) and Discussion (and/or Conclusion) according to the article type. Headings and subheadings can be used with numbering. Commentary, and News and Events do not need any headings.

Authors who used AI technology to conduct the study should describe its use in the methods section in sufficient detail to enable replication of the approach including the tool used, version, and prompts where applicable.

Acknowledgments: Authors can thank from any persons who help them to prepare manuscript and also any organizations which support them. This section must be located before references. The use of AI for writing assistance should be reported in the acknowledgment section.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology

At submission, the authors should disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology should describe, in both the cover letter and the submitted work in the appropriate section if applicable, how they used it. For example, if AI was used for writing assistance, describe this in the AI disclosure statement section. If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, authors should describe this use in the methods. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work. Authors should carefully review and edit the result because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors should not list AI and AI assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. Authors should be able to assert that there is no plagiarism in their paper, including in text and images produced by the AI. Humans must ensure there is appropriate attribution of all quoted material, including full citations.

References: References should be numbered consecutively as they occur in the text [number in brackets] and listed in Vancouver style at the end of the paper

Note: Referencing AI-generated material as the primary source is not acceptable.

Tables and figures: Tables and figures can be added after the references in separate pages or submitted by separate file(s). A short descriptive title should appear above each table with a clear legend, with suitably identified notes below it. Also, a clear legend is needed for each figure which must appear on the separate page at the end of manuscript (after the tables). Illustrations must be 300 dpi or higher resolution. The figures which were obtained from other sources and not original are needed to permission from original source.  

Numbers: Use Arabic numerals for all measurements, number of subjects in a group, ages, and the like, except when starting a sentence, where the numbers should be spelled out.

Non-English Words: Italicize non-English words (including society names, book titles, quotations, and isolated words), within the text.

Quotations: Short quotations within a paragraph should have double quotation marks. Use single quotation marks only for a quote within a quote. Long quotations (more than one sentence) should be indented as a block of text with opening and closing quotation marks in new and separate paragraph.

Reviewing

Editor will read the submission and, if it is suitable, will send it to reviewers. Feedback is usually within two months of receipt, includes a decision letter of rejection or acceptance and also can be sent back for revision. 

Peer Review Process

The articles are primarily evaluated by our statisticians who check the articles for any methodological flaws, format, and their compliance with the journal’s instructions. Then a submission code will be allocated and all the future contacts should be based on this code. Through a double-anonymized review, the articles will be reviewed by at least two external (peer) reviewers. Their comments will be passed to the authors and their responses to the comments along with the reviewers’ comments will then be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief, and a final reviewer who can be a member of the Editorial Board. The final review process will be discussed in regular editorial board sessions and on the basis of the comments, and the journal’s scope, the Editors-in-Chief will decide which articles should be published.

Ethical Considerations

The journal follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) rules and regulations. COPE's flowcharts and guidelines are approached in confronting any ethical misbehavior. The Journal also follows the guidelines mentioned in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscript Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/#privacy).

Human and Animal Rights

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board).

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the Guideline for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals in Iran. For reports of such studies, authors should refer to the ARRIVE guidelines checklist.

Informed consent

All patients and participants of the research should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects of the drugs and intervention. Written informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians is necessary for any such studies. The Journal reserves the right to request the related documents.

Authorship

Based on the newly released Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, by the ICMJE, “an Author” is generally considered to be someone who meets the following conditions 1, 2, 3, and 4.

1-Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2-Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3-Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4-Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Conflict of Interest

We request all the authors to inform us about any kinds of "Conflict of Interest" (such as financial, personal, political, or academic) that would potentially affect their judgment. Authors are preferably asked to fill the uniform disclosure form available through: (http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf)

General institutional support for an author's time on the work should be distinguished from direct overall funding of the work. An appropriate funding statement might be: “This study was funded by A; Dr. F's time on the work was supported by B.”

Plagiarism

The authors are not allowed to utilize verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere. All submitted manuscripts will be checked for possible similarity in any part of the work by iThenticate plagiarism checker. Based on the amount of plagiarism detected in a manuscript, will be passed to the authors and ask them to rephrase copied phrases or include as direct quotations with references. COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in cases in which plagiarism is detected.

Data Fabrication/Falsification

Falsification is the practice of omitting or altering research materials, data, or processes so that the results of the research are no longer accurately reflected. Fabrication is the practice of inventing data or results and reporting them in the research. Both of these misconducts are fraudulent and seriously alter the integrity of the research. Therefore, articles must be written based on original data and the use of falsified or fabricated data is strongly prohibited. In confronting cases with fabricated or falsified data COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are followed.

Image Manipulation

The CPMR Journal encourages authors to send their original images. All digital images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be checked for inappropriate manipulation. No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable as long as they are applied to the entire image and do not misrepresent any information present in the original, including the background. The editors will request the original data from the authors to compare the manipulated figures in cases suspected of inappropriate manipulation.

Copyright

If a manuscript contains any previous published image or text, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders. The author is required to obtain and submit the written original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscripts.

Proofs and Reprints

When a manuscript is accepted and ready to publish, a final proof will be send to correspondence to approve it or correct errors. After approving the proof, it will be published in the Journal as soon as possible.

Open Access Policy 

This journal provides immediate free access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Retraction Policy

The CPRM Journal uses the COPE flowchart for retraction of a published article (http://publicationethics.org/guidelines) to determine whether a published article should be retracted.

Complaints and appeals

The “Complementary and Persian Medicine Reviews” responds promptly to complaints and ensures there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further by sending an email to editor-in-chief of the journal. We follow the COPE's guidelines and flowcharts for handling complaints against the journal, its staff, editorial board or publisher.