Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Author Guidelines

Malaysian Physiotherapy Journal (MPJ)
Official journal of the Malaysian Physiotherapy Association

GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

  1. All manuscripts should be submitted online to mpj.editorial@gmail.com. Authors should
    kindly note that submission implies that (i) the content has not been published previously,
    in any language, in whole or in part, except as a brief abstract in proceedings or scientific
    meeting or symposium and (ii) the manuscript is not currently under consideration for
    publication elsewhere.
  2. A cover letter containing an authorship statement should be included together with the
    submission. The cover letter must include the following sections: (1) introductory
    sentence with manuscript titles, (2) paragraph (not more than 5 sentences) explaining why
    the work described in the manuscript is important and suitable for publication in MPJ and (3) a paragraph outlining any special notes in relation to word count, ethical approval,
    conflict of interest or any relationship with recent work submitted elsewhere for
    publication and copyright.
  3. One Word file needs to be submitted, including: The title page, abstract, keywords, main
    text (introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion), acknowledgement, conflict
    of interest statement, references, tables and figure legends.
    iv. Manuscript is to be typed double-spaced for all parts including the tables and footnotes
    using a 12-point Times New Roman font type, on A4 size paper with 2.5cm margins at
    the top and the left-hand side of the pages and must be in Word (doc or docx) format only.
    All pages should be numbered accordingly beginning with the title page.

TYPES OF PAPERS

The editorial board will consider the following types of paper for publication in MPJ

  1. Original research - original study reporting the results of basic and clinical investigations
    that are sufficiently well documented to be acceptable to critical readers. Clinical trial
    registered prospectively in a publicly accessible trials registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov,
    Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry) will be given high priority. Authors must
    provide the name and website address of the registry and trial registration number upon
    submission.
  2. Review papers - review articles (e.g., systematic review / narrative review/ scoping
    review/ rapid review) which provide a comprehensive review of a subject of importance
    to clinicians and researchers. For systematic review, authors are encouraged to
    prospectively register the review protocol in a publicly available registry (e.g.,
    PROSPERO) and submit the proof of registration when submitting the manuscript for
    consideration.
  3. Study protocol. Submission of study protocol should include a detailed account of the
    hypothesis, rationale and methodology of the study. A protocol paper with a proof of
    registration in an established trial registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov, Australia New
    Zealand Clinical Trials Registry) will be given a priority.
  4. Case report. Case reports are considered for publication when at least one of the following
    criteria is met: (a) a rare condition is reported, (b) atypical symptoms and signs are
    observed, (c) new diagnostic or therapeutic methods are introduced, (d) atypical clinical
    and laboratory findings for populations residing in Asia and the Pacific Rim. Descriptions
    of clinical cases (individual or a series) should be unique, should deal with clinical cases
    of exceptional interest or innovation and should preferably be a first-time report.
  5. Brief report. This type of manuscript is short but important in providing preliminary
    communications with less complete data sets than would be appropriate for original
    contributions that present novel and impactful clinical and basic research of a more
    preliminary nature.
  6. Others (Letter to editor, commentaries, expert opinion)

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION
Please use these guidelines to prepare your manuscript. Completed applicable checklists,
structured abstracts and flow diagrams should be uploaded with your submission; these will be
published alongside the final version of your paper. We also strongly recommend that authors
refer to the minimum reporting guidelines for health research hosted by the EQUATOR
Network when preparing the manuscript, and FAIRsharing.org for reporting checklists for
biological and biomedical research (where applicable). Authors should adhere to these
guidelines when drafting their manuscript, and peer reviewers will be asked to refer to these
checklists when evaluating such studies. The guidelines listed below should be followed where
appropriate.


CONSORT statement for the reporting of randomised controlled trials: please use the
appropriate extension to the CONSORT statement, including the extension for writing
abstracts. More information can be found at http://www.consort-statement.org//


SRQR and COREQ are recommended for reporting qualitative research. More information can
be found at https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/srqr/ and
https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/coreq/.


STARD is recommended for the reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies. More information
can be found at https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/stard/.


STROBE is recommended for the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology. More
information can be found at https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/strobe/.


PRISMA is recommended in reporting systematic reviews while PRISMA-P and PRISMAScR are used for reporting systematic review and meta-analysis and scoping reviews,
respectively. More information can be found at https://www.equator-network.org/reportingguidelines/prisma/ for PRISMA, https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma-protocols/ for PRISMA-P and http://www.prismastatement.org/Extensions/ScopingReviews for PRISMA-ScR.


MOOSE is recommended for the reporting of meta-analyses of observational studies. More
information can be found at
https://www.elsevier.com/__data/promis_misc/ISSM_MOOSE_Checklist.pdf.

SPIRIT is recommended in reporting protocols for RCTs. More information can be found at
https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/spirit-2013-statement-definingstandard-protocol-items-for-clinical-trials/.


Words Limits
The length of the manuscript (not including title page, abstract, references, tables or figure
legends) depends on the type of study:
Systematic review : Not more than 5000 words
Original research : Not more than 3500 words
Study protocol, brief report
Others (Letter to editor, commentaries, expert opinion)
: Not more than 2500 words
: Not more than 1500 words

MANUSCRIPT STRUCTURE
Title Page:
Title: should be concise and informative. Avoid abbreviations and formulae (where possible).
Author names and affiliations: please indicate the given name (s) and family name (s) of each
author and ensure that all names are accurately spelled. Present the authors' affiliation addresses
below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a superscript number immediately after the
author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Please also provide the e-mail address of
each author.
Corresponding author: clearly indicate the person that will handle correspondence at all stages
of publication and post-publication.
Abstract & Keywords:
A concise and factual abstract of no more than 250 words is required for all types of articles
except for the Letter to editors and Commentaries. The abstract should be structured as follows:
Background and objective, Method, Results and Conclusions. References or footnotes should
be avoided. A non-standard or uncommon abbreviation should also be avoided. Below the
abstract provide a maximum of six (6) key words that will assist indexers in cross-indexing
your article.
Introduction:
Provide an adequate background and state the purpose/ objectives of your study. Avoid a
detailed literature review in this section.
Materials and methods:
Provide adequate details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher.
Methods that are already published should be summarised and indicated by a reference.
Results:
Results should be clear and concise. Do not elaborate or discuss the findings of your study in
this section.
Discussion:
This section should explore the significance of the results of the study. Do not repeat the results
in this section. Include in the discussion the implications of the findings and their limitations
and relate the observations to other relevant studies.
Conclusion:
The main conclusions of the study should be presented in a short concluding paragraph without
a further discussion of the statements. Relate the conclusions with the objectives of the study
but avoid unqualified statements or statements which are not supported by your data.
Acknowledgements:
Acknowledge the research ethics body which approved the study (provide the study code in a
bracket). Individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., those providing language
help, writing assistance, proof reading, etc) may also be acknowledged in this section.
Conflicts of Interest:
Malaysian Physiotherapy Journal requires that authors disclose any potential or actual
competing interests (financial or other), or state the absence of such competing interests, as part
of the manuscript.

If none of the authors have any competing interests to disclose, the published statement will be
‘The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest’. If only part of the authors has
competing interests to disclose, the published statement will end with the sentence ‘The other
authors have nothing to disclose’.


Funding:
Use the following template when listing the funding sources.
This work was supported by xxx [grant number: xxx], the city, country (e.g., Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia).

References:
Provide a list of no more than 40 references for original research and an adequate number of
references for review papers using a format as described in the ‘REFERENCING STYLE’
section below.

Tables:
Table should be included in the main manuscript document i.e., at the end of the document (one
table per page and each table accompanied by a descriptive caption at the top). Each table should be referred to in the text and numbered in the order of mention. The number of tables should be kept to a minimum. The combined number of tables and figures must not exceed 6.
For assistance in formatting of tables, figures and images, please refer to APA referencing style
guide at https://aut.ac.nz.libguides.com/APA6th/tables.

Figure legends:
A caption should comprise a brief title (not the figure) and a description of the illustration.

REFERENCING STYLE
Each reference must be written using APA style. The APA style can be found as a standard
referencing style in EndNote, RefWorks, Mendeley and Zotero. Journal titles should be
abbreviated according to the style used for Medline
(www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals).
Reference in text. Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the
reference list (and vice versa). Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of
citations. References in text should be written as authors’ name and year in a bracket e.g.
(Taylor, 2020), (Taylor & Black 2020), (Taylor, Black, & Golden 2020). For papers with more
than 3 authors, please use et al. e.g. (Taylor et al. 2020) for in-text reference.
Reference in References List. Each reference must be written in an alphabetical order and
contain the following:
i. Authors (last name and initials), listing all when there are up to six; first three followed
by et al in the case of more than six authors
ii. Year of publication
iii. Title of article (sentence case, no quotation marks)
iv. Publication source (italicized), when referring to a journal, the journal name should be
abbreviated according to Index Medicus
v. Volume and issue number
vi. Page numbers
Reference formatting and punctuation should conform to the following Journal style examples:

Journal article:
Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A
comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217.
In-press journal article:
Castle, R. (in press). Shadowing a police officer: How to be unobtrusive while solving cases in
spectacular fashion. Professional Writers’ Journal.
Book:
Jackson, L. M. (2019). The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action (2nd ed.).
American Psychological Association.
Book chapter:
Aron, L., Botella, M., & Lubart, T. (2019). Culinary arts: Talent and their development. In R.
F. Subotnik, P. Olszewski-Kubilius, & F. C. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high
performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 345–359). American
Psychological Association.
For assistance in formatting other types of references, please refer to the Reference Guide for
Journal Articles, Books and Edited book chapters (7th edition) at
https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-guide.pdf

Copyright Notice

Studies on humans and animals
If the research involves the use of human subjects, the author should ensure that the work described has been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association for experiments involving humans. The manuscript should be in line with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and aim for the inclusion of representative human populations (sex, age and ethnicity) as per those recommendations. The terms sex and gender should be used correctly.

Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

All animal experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines
(https://arriveguidelines.org/), and the authors should clearly indicate in the manuscript that such guidelines have been followed. The sex of animals must be indicated, and where appropriate, the influence (or association) of sex on the results of the study.


Informed consent and patient details
All authors are required to follow the MPJ requirements on privacy and informed consent from patients and study participants.

Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in the paper. Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in the publication. Written consents must be retained by the author, but copies should not be provided to the journal. Only if specifically requested by the journal in exceptional circumstances (for example, if a legal issue arises), the author must provide copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained. Unless the author has written permission from the patient (or, where applicable, the next of kin), the personal details of any patient included in any part of the article and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

Declaration of interest
Please include a disclosure statement using the subheading “Disclosure of interest.” All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential competing interests
include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. If there are no interests to declare, then please state this: 'Declarations of interest: none'.

Submission declaration and verification
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried
out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright holder.

If additional papers have or will be published with any overlap of the current dataset, it is the authors’ responsibility to notify the editor at the time of submission.

Use of inclusive language
Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities. Content should make no assumptions about the beliefs or commitments of any reader; contain nothing which might imply that one individual is superior to another on the grounds of age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability or health condition; and use inclusive language throughout. Authors should ensure that writing is free from bias, stereotypes, slang, reference to the dominant culture and/or
cultural assumptions. We advise to seek gender neutrality by using plural nouns ("clinicians, patients/clients") as default/wherever possible to avoid using "he, she," or "he/she." We recommend avoiding the use of descriptors that refer to personal attributes such as age, gender,
race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability or health condition unless they are relevant and valid. These guidelines are meant as a point of reference to help identify appropriate language but are by no means exhaustive or definitive.

Author contributions
An 'author' is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author, one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) have given final approval of the version to be published; and 4) agree 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. Each author
should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not justify authorship. MPJ assumes that all authors have read and approved the final manuscript before submission. Each author’s contribution should be clearly stated in a section before references.

Example of author credit statement:
A.B. conceived and planned the experiments. A.B., B.C., C.D. and D.E. carried out the experiments. A.B., F.G. and E.F. planned and carried out the simulations. J.K., K.L., A.B., B.C., D.E., C.D., F.J., and F.G. contributed to sample preparation. A.B., B.C., C.D., D.E., FJ, E.F., F.G. and G.H. contributed to the interpretation of the results. A.B. took the lead in writing the manuscript. All authors provided critical feedback and helped shape the research, analysis and manuscript.

Changes to authorship
Authors are expected to carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in the author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.

Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the Editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been
published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.

Clinical Trials Registry
In order to be published in MPJ, all clinical trials are suggested to be registered in a public repository at the beginning of the research process (prior to patient enrolment). Trial registration numbers should be included in the abstract, with full details in the methods section.

The registry should be publicly accessible (at no charge), open to all prospective registrants, and managed by a not-for-profit organization. For a list of registries that meet these requirements, please visit the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). The registration of all clinical trials facilitates sharing of information among clinicians, researchers, and patients and enhances public confidence in research.

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.