Ceylon Medical Journal is indexed in: PUBMED / MEDLINE, THOMSON REUTERS ESCI, BIOSIS, SCOPUS, EMBASE, CABI and EBSCO.
Authors should adhere to relevant national and international laws and best practice guidelines in conducting research. Medical research in humans should be conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki. The Ceylon Medical Journal requires approval of all studies involving human participants, human material or human data by an ethics committee (or institutional review board). If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). In research involving human participants a statement regarding the consent procedure should be included in the manuscript. All clinical trials should be registered in a clinical trials registry. For case reports, small case series and images of humans signed consent for publication by the patient is required.
Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The Basel Declaration outlines fundamental principles to adhere to when conducting research in animals and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) has also published ethical guidelines.
A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the manuscript. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption).
Experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild) including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. The manuscript should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions and/or licences.
We follow the guidance produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to deal with scientific misconduct at CMJ on a case by case basis.
The following are some forms of scientific misconduct:
We take seriously all possible misconduct. If an editor has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behaviour, we may discuss the case in confidence with the Sri Lanka Medical Association Ethics Committee.
Readers that suspect misconduct in a published article are encouraged to report this to the CMJ.
A combination of pre-screening and open access is the best possible defence against plagiarism. All articles submitted to Ceylon Medical Journal are automatically screened for plagiarism by the CrossCheck system from CrossRef. This system compares incoming articles to a large database of academic content, and alerts editors to any possible issues.
Retractions are considered in cases of evidence of unreliable data or findings, plagiarism, duplicate publication, and unethical research.
Authors have the right to appeal rejection of their manuscript. Appeals should be based on the scientific content of the manuscript and its suitability for publication rather than concerns about the process. Authors who wish to appeal against a rejection or make a complaint should write to the Editors giving reasons for the appeal. The Editorial Board’s decision regarding the appeal or complaint is final.