Manuscript submission
Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions
Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission
Authors should submit their manuscripts online. Electronic submission substantially reduces the editorial processing and reviewing times and shortens overall publication times. Please follow the hyperlink “Submit online” on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

ADDITIONAL REMARK MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION
Manuscripts are submitted to Indian Journal of Gastroenterology online via Editorial Manager. This allows for quick and efficient processing of manuscripts. Please log in at the Editorial Manager site at http://ijog.edmgr.com and upload your manuscript files following the instructions provided on the screen. Please note: If you have already registered on Editorial Manger, please use your provided username and password and log in as ‘Author’ to track your manuscript or to submit a ‘New’ manuscript. (Please do not register again as you will then be unable to track your manuscript). If you have not previously registered with the Editorial Manager for the Journal, please click the ‘Register’ button and enter the requested information. Upon successful registration, you will receive an e-mail with instructions to verify your registration. If you have any questions or are unable to submit your manuscript online via Editorial Manager, please send an e-mail to the editorial office at ijg@indianjgastro.org. Please address all queries to the editorial office at ijg@indianjgastro.org and do not send mail to the personal mail of the Editor or to the publishers. Revised manuscripts should be submitted online using the user ID and password.

EDITORIAL PROCESS
All manuscripts submitted to the Journal will undergo an initial screening to exclude articles that do not conform to the Journal’s instructions, are outside the Journal’s scope, or are much below its threshold. Manuscripts describing original research work are usually reviewed by two subject experts. Additional reviewers, including statistical reviewers, will be used as required. The Editorial Board reserves the right to revise or modify articles to conform to the Journal’s style. The views expressed in the articles will, however, remain as those of the authors; the editorial board and the publishers accept no responsibility for opinions expressed by authors. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject without review any or all articles which do not strictly abide by the Instructions. After an article is published online, further changes can be made only as an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article. Ethical violations may lead to a published retraction of the printed article by the Journal. Accepted manuscripts become the permanent property of the Journal and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the editor.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND ETHICAL STANDARDS
Conflict of Interest
When an author or the institution of the author has a relationship, financial or otherwise, with individuals or organizations that could influence the author’s work inappropriately, a conflict of interest may exist. Examples of potential conflicts of interest may include but are not limited to academic, personal, or political relationships; employment; consultancies or honoraria; and financial connections such as stock ownership and funding. Although an author may feel that there are no conflicts, disclosure of relationships and interests that could be viewed by others as conflicts of interest affords a more transparent and prudent process. Therefore, all authors must disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest. As per the policy of the Journal, Editors who are authors of a manuscript are not involved in the decision-making regarding their publication. Reviewers/Editorial Board members should decline the invitation to review a manuscript which is submitted by authors from their institution.

Research Misconduct
The Journal editors consider research/publication misconduct to be a serious breach of publication ethics and will take action as necessary to address such misconduct, which includes: (1) Is intentionally incorrect, (2) Has been published elsewhere by a different author without acknowledgment (plagiarism), or by the same author without acknowledgment (duplicate publication), or (3) Is subsequently published elsewhere by the same author without acknowledgment, attribution, or permission.

Informed Consent and Ethics Committee Approval
A paper describing experimental work in humans must indicate that informed consent has been obtained from patients where appropriate. It must also include a statement that the responsible ethics committee (institutional review board) has given approval, and/or indicate that the reported investigations have been carried out in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki as revised in 2000. The patient’s right to privacy should not be infringed. Information that would identify patients should not be published. Uniform requirements should be followed for ethical standards [http://www.wma.net/en/20activities/10ethics/index.html]. Experimental Animals. Age, sex, source and, where appropriate, the genetic background of the animals used should be given. Reports of animal experiments must state that the ‘Principles of laboratory animal care’ (NIH publication no. 85– 23, revised 1985; http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/olaw/references/phspol.htm) were followed, as well as specific national laws where applicable. The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned requirements. The authors will be held responsible for false statements or for failure to fulfill the above-mentioned requirements. Animals should be described as being killed rather than sacrificed.

TYPES OF PAPERS
Original Articles describe original research that has explored the subject in some detail and should be less than 4000 words in length (excluding abstract and references), usually have up to 5 tables and figures taken together, and up to 40 references.

Short Reports describe studies that not explored the subject in detail, but whose preliminary observations are considered to be worthy of recording. They should be less than 2500 words in length (excluding abstract and references), usually have up to 3 tables (and figures), and up to 20 references. The work submitted in the manuscript as Original Article or Short Report must be original in nature. Other considerations for evaluating the decision to publish a submitted manuscript include its importance, the appropriateness of experimental design, methods and conclusions, and the quality of presentation.

Editorials are generally by invitation and usually based on an article of especial interest that is accepted for publication.

Reviews of general clinical or research interest to the readership of the Journal are invited from individuals who have a record of work in the specific field to be reviewed. Unless invited by the Editor, authors who intend to submit a Review should first send a letter of interest to the Editor-in-Chief naming the specific topic and accompanied by a paragraph describing the content of the Review. The Editors will judge the appropriateness of the review for the journal and will respond to the letter of interest welcoming or refusing the offer. The Journal is likely to reject unsolicited reviews that have not followed the above-mentioned process. The Review will be subject to the normal review process of the Journal. Reviews may contain a total of up to 6,000 words, not including abstract, references, figure legends or table legends, and a maximum of 75 references, of which at least 70 percent may be from within the last five years.

Case Reports are considered for publication only if they illustrate some novel aspect of the molecular genetics, diagnosis, or management of a specific condition.

Case Series, describing a collection of patients with a particular disease or condition, will be considered for publication if they provide a new or interesting perspective, or data highlighting interesting differences in the disease from a particular geographical area. Not less than three cases may be described if the condition is extremely rare, while a much higher number will have to be described if the condition is not so rare. These may contain up to 1500 words, and a maximum of 3 tables/figures and 10 references.

Letters to the Editor may state opinions about and discuss material published recently in the Journal, or report short studies or preliminary observations. Letters may contain up to 750 words with a maximum of 1 Table or Figure and 10 references.

Clinico-pathologic conferences (up to 3000 words) are edited transcripts of the discussion of a patient (whose clinical details are provided) by a clinical discussant, followed by the findings at a definitive test (biopsy, autopsy, confirmatory serological test, etc.) discussed by a pathologist. Appropriate radiological, histological and other images should be included.

Obituary about individuals of Indian origin, who have made significant contributions to the field of Gastroenterology, and of life members of the Indian Society of Gastroenterology, are invited from close associates. A brief sketch (up to 500 words) of the person’s personal and professional life along with a photograph may be submitted.

TITLE PAGE
The title page should include:
1. The full name(s) of all author(s) with expansion of all initials
2. A concise and informative title
3. The affiliation(s) and address(es) of all author(s)
4. The name, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers (including country code and city code) of the corresponding author.
5. The name of the department(s) and institution(s) where the work was done
6. Statement regarding conflict of interest (if none, state that “AB, CD, EF … declare that they do not have any conflict of interest to report”)
7. Source(s) of support.

Abstract
Original articles must have a structured abstract with Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions. The length should not exceed 250 words. A short unstructured abstract (not exceeding 150 words) must be provided for Short Reports and Case Series. Reviews should have a non-structured abstract of up to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or references.

Keywords
Please provide 3 to 6 keywords. Keywords are meant for indexing purposes, and should exclude any words that are already present in the Title.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Each author’s contribution to the manuscript should be listed (e.g., study concept and protocol design; collecting data; analysis of data; preparing the initial draft of the manuscript; critical revision of the manuscript for intellectual content; obtained funding; administrative, technical, or material support; study supervision).

TEXT
Organize the text into an introductory section that conveys the background and purpose of the report, and then into sections titled “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Authors may wish to include a section called “Conclusions” after the “Discussion”. This section should not be in bullet form, but typed as continuous text. This last section should form conclusions based only on the reported work and not from a review of the literature.

Text formatting
Articles should be formatted as Rich Text Format (.rtf) documents using Microsoft Word or equivalent software.
1. Use 12-point Times Roman font for text.
2. Use italics for emphasis.
3. Use the page numbering function to number the pages.
4. Do not use field functions.
5. Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
6. Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
7. Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
8. Do not insert figures in the text.

Note: If you use Word 2007, do not create the equations with the default equation editor but use MathType instead.
Save your file in two formats: .doc and rtf. The journal does not accept .docx files.

Headings
Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Terminology
Generic names of drugs and chemicals are preferred; if trade names are used, the generic name should be given at first mention.

Equation
Please use the standard mathematical notation for formulae, symbols, etc.

• Italic for single letters that denote mathematical constants, variables, and unknown quantities
• Roman/upright for numerals, operators, and punctuation, and commonly defined functions or abbreviations, e.g., cos, det, e or exp, lim, log, max, min, sin, tan, d (for derivative).
• Bold for vectors, tensors, and matrices.

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

• Supply all figures electronically.
• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MS Office files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with “Fig” and the figure number, e.g., Fig1. eps.

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

• Color art is free of charge for online publication.
• If black and white will be shown in the print version, make sure that the main information will still be visible. Many colors are not distinguishable from one another when converted to black and white. A simple way to check this is to make a xerographic copy to see if the necessary distinctions between the different colors are still apparent.
• If the figures will be printed in black and white, do not refer to color in the captions.
• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures, "A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices (Electronic Supplementary Material) should, however, be numbered separately.

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• For most journals the figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• For books and book-sized journals, the figures should be 80 mm or 122 mm wide and not higher than 198 mm.

• All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-to-speech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)
• Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (color-blind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

• All submitted photographs should be in 300 dpi and in TIFF format.
• All computer-generated graphs should be supplied as EPS files, ensure that the lines used in the graphs are at least 0.1 mm thick, with a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.

• Always use MPEG-1 (.mpg) format.

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

• Spreadsheets should be converted to PDF if no interaction with the data is intended.
• If the readers should be encouraged to make their own calculations, spreadsheets should be submitted as .xls files (MS Excel).

• Specialized format such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., “... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)”, “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

• Electronic supplementary material will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)