Author Guidelines

Scope, Originality, and Editorial Policy
The Editorial and Peer-Review Process
Research and Publication Ethics
Categories of Manuscripts
Reporting Guidelines by Study Design
Preparing the Manuscript
Assembling the Submission Package
Online Submission and Revised Manuscripts
Copyright and Open-Access Licensing
Publication Charges and Fee Waivers
Proofs, Reprints, and Publication Schedule
Complaints, Appeals, and Contact Information
Author Submission Checklist

1. Scope, Originality, and Editorial Policy

1.1 Aims and Scope JOURNAL OF AYURVEDA ACADEMIA (JAA) publishes original research, systematic and narrative reviews, case reports, letters, and invited editorial content across the classical and contemporary domains of Ayurveda, allied AYUSH systems, and integrative medicine. The Journal welcomes rigorously conducted clinical, experimental, pharmacological, and fundamental-principle (Siddhanta) research, provided the work meets the originality and ethical standards set out in this guide.

1.2 Originality and Prior Submission A manuscript is considered on the understanding that it is being offered to JAA alone at the time of submission, that it has not been published previously in any language or medium, and that it is not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere. Authors must name a single corresponding author authorised to communicate with the Journal on the manuscript's behalf. Every submission is acknowledged in writing; editors then screen it for originality, scientific soundness, and fit with the Journal's readership before it proceeds to formal peer review. Manuscripts with material scientific or technical flaws, insufficient originality, or no clear message for the Journal's readers are declined at this initial stage without external review.

1.3 Preprints JAA does not treat deposit of a manuscript on a recognised, not-for-profit preprint server (for example, a repository indexed by the EQUATOR Network's partners or a national AYUSH repository) prior to submission as duplicate publication, provided the preprint is disclosed at submission and updated with a link to the final published version once available. Authors should check that any institutional or funder policy does not conflict with this position before posting.

2. The Editorial and Peer-Review Process

2.1 Initial Screening and Assignment Every submission is first reviewed by the editorial office for completeness against Section 7 of this guide and is then assigned to a handling editor. Manuscripts submitted by a current member of the Editorial Board are screened directly by the Editor-in-Chief and routed to independent external reviewers; the author-member concerned takes no part in, and has no visibility into, the decision on their own manuscript.

2.2 Double-Blind Peer Review Manuscripts judged suitable for review are sent to two or more subject-matter reviewers under a double-blind process: neither party is told the other's identity, and author-identifying detail is confined to the title page (Section 7.1) and stripped from the manuscript file itself. Contributors may suggest two or three potential reviewers with relevant expertise, who must not share the corresponding author's institution; the final choice of reviewer rests solely with the editor.

2.3 Decisions and Revision Each manuscript is assigned to a member of the Editorial Board, who weighs the reviewers' comments and recommends a decision — accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject — to the Editor-in-Chief. Reviewer comments are relayed to the corresponding author, who is asked for a point-by-point response alongside a revised file; this cycle continues until the reviewers and editors are satisfied or the paper is declined. Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited for language, style, and journal format, and page proofs are sent to the corresponding author, who is expected to return corrections within three working days; corrections received later may not be incorporated before publication. To shorten the time to public availability, accepted manuscripts are posted online as an 'Ahead of Print' version immediately on acceptance, ahead of formal issue assignment.

2.4 Appeals An author who believes a manuscript has been rejected in error may appeal in writing to the editorial office (ayuacademia@gmail.com), setting out the grounds for appeal in detail. Appeals are acknowledged promptly and investigated without involving the original handling editor where a conflict is possible; the Journal aims to resolve an appeal within six to eight weeks. A manuscript under appeal must not be submitted elsewhere until the appeal is resolved, the Editor-in-Chief's ruling on an appeal is final, and a paper may be appealed only once.

3. Research and Publication Ethics

3.1 Authorship — the ICMJE Four-Criteria Test JAA applies the current ICMJE authorship test in full. An individual qualifies as an author only if all four of the following are true:

Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data;
Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content;
Final approval of the version to be published; and
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, including ensuring that questions about its accuracy or integrity are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group, or data collection alone does not, by itself, meet this test and should instead be recorded in the acknowledgements (Section 6.6). Every named author must be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for which parts of the work and should have confidence in those co-authors' integrity. For large collaborative studies, the group should agree who qualifies as an author before the work begins and confirm the list before submission. The order of authors reflects their relative contribution and, once submitted, cannot be changed without the written consent of every contributor.

3.2 Contribution Statement and the Guarantor Each submission must carry a structured contribution statement, expressed in the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) categories — conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing (original draft), writing (review and editing), supervision, and project administration, as applicable — against each author's name. This statement is published alongside the article. At least one author must be designated as guarantor, taking responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from the original concept through to the published article.

3.3 Conflicts of Interest All authors, reviewers, and handling editors must disclose any financial, institutional, personal, or competing-product relationship that could reasonably be seen as influencing the work, using the current ICMJE Disclosure Form. This includes conflicts arising from products or institutions that compete with those discussed in the manuscript. A conflict-of-interest statement — including an explicit 'nothing to declare' where applicable — is mandatory and is published with the article.

3.4 Research Integrity and Plagiarism JAA follows the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) core practices and its published flowcharts for handling suspected misconduct. Every submission is screened with commercial similarity-detection software; the Journal considers both the overall similarity score and, more importantly, the nature, location, and intent behind any matched text, since brief matches in standard methodological phrasing carry a different weight than reproduced findings or unattributed passages. Authors found to have duplicated their own previously published work, misrepresented others' ideas or data as their own, or fabricated or falsified results will be asked to explain the finding; where misconduct is established after publication, JAA will notify the authors' institution and funding body and retract the article in line with COPE's retraction guidance. Suspected plagiarism, image manipulation, authorship disputes, or other integrity concerns can be reported at any time to ayuacademia@gmail.com and will be investigated in confidence.

3.5 Use of Artificial Intelligence in Manuscript Preparation Artificial-intelligence and large-language-model tools cannot be listed as authors, since they cannot take responsibility for the work or give the assurances the ICMJE criteria require. Where such a tool has been used materially in drafting text, generating or analysing data, or producing figures, its use must be disclosed in the Methods section (for research contributions) or the Acknowledgements (for writing assistance), naming the tool and describing what it was used for. Authors remain fully accountable for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of any AI-assisted content, including the correctness of every reference; citing sources that an AI tool has generated or that the author has not personally verified is not acceptable. Submitted images and figures must not be generated or materially altered by AI beyond standard, disclosed adjustments to brightness, contrast, or colour balance applied uniformly across an image.

3.6 Registration of Clinical Trials JAA endorses prospective trial registration and is a signatory to the position statement on publishing clinical trials in Indian biomedical journals. Any trial reported in a JAA submission must be registered, before enrolment of the first participant, with a registry offering free public access — the Clinical Trials Registry of India (ctri.nic.in), ClinicalTrials.gov, ISRCTN, or the UMIN-CTR. This prospective-registration requirement reflects the mandate that has applied in India since 1 April 2018; trials that began enrolment before that date will be considered only if they have since been registered retrospectively with a registry that allows unrestricted, fee-free public access. The registry name and registration number must appear on the title page and in the manuscript abstract.

3.7 Ethical Approval, Informed Consent, and Animal Research Studies on human participants must state that procedures followed the standards of the responsible institutional or regional ethics committee and the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013). Prospective studies must report the approving Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board, confirm informed consent from adult participants, and confirm assent from participants above the locally applicable paediatric age threshold, in addition to consent from a parent or guardian. Participants' names, initials, and hospital or registration numbers must not appear anywhere in the manuscript or illustrative material. Studies involving animals must confirm compliance with CPCSEA guidelines (or the equivalent national framework for the country of origin) and with the World Medical Association's principles for research involving live subjects, and must report the anaesthetic or analgesic regimen used. Evidence of ethics-committee approval must be produced on request for both human and animal studies; manuscripts describing ethically unacceptable procedures will not be considered regardless of scientific merit.

3.8 Protection of Patient Privacy Identifying material — names, photographs, case numbers, or any detail from which a patient could reasonably be identified — must not be published unless it is essential to the scientific content and the patient (or a parent or guardian, where applicable) has given informed, written consent specifically for publication. Where a photograph cannot be fully anonymised, recognisable facial features unrelated to the study must be digitally obscured. Authors, not the Journal, are responsible for obtaining and archiving the consent form; it must not be uploaded with the manuscript or emailed to the editorial office, but its existence should be stated in the manuscript.

3.9 Data Availability Every manuscript must include a data availability statement describing where the data underlying the reported results can be found — for example, in a public repository (with accession details), as supplementary material, or available from the corresponding author on reasonable request, with any restriction explained. Authors are expected to retain the ability to grant reviewers and editors access to the underlying data set on request during peer review.

4. Categories of Manuscripts

The word and reference limits below exclude the abstract, tables, figure legends, and reference list unless stated otherwise.

Category	Structured abstract	Body text limit	References	Typical authors
Original Article	≤ 250 words (Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion)	≤ 3,000 words	≤ 30	No more than 6, unless justified
Review Article	≤ 250 words (Objective, Data Source, Review Methods, Result, Conclusion)	≤ 3,000 words	≤ 90	As justified by scope
Case Report	≤ 150 words (Introduction, Main Finding, Diagnosis, Intervention, Outcome, Conclusion)	≤ 1,000 words	≤ 10	No more than 4
Letter to the Editor	Not required	≤ 500 words	≤ 5	No more than 4
Editorial / Commentary / Opinion	Not required	By editorial invitation	As appropriate	Invited

Review articles must include a dedicated sub-section describing the methods used to locate, select, extract, and synthesise the literature, summarised also in the abstract; systematic reviews should be registered with PROSPERO and the registration number reported under the methodology heading. Contributors to a review are expected, where a major development occurs in the reviewed field, to submit a short post-publication update as a letter to the editor.

5. Reporting Guidelines by Study Design

Authors should follow the reporting checklist appropriate to their study design and submit the completed checklist with page references as supplementary material.

Guideline	Applies to	Source
CONSORT	Randomised controlled trials	consort-statement.org
STROBE	Cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies	strobe-statement.org
PRISMA (2020)	Systematic reviews and meta-analyses	prisma-statement.org
CARE	Case reports	care-statement.org
SQUIRE	Quality-improvement studies	squire-statement.org
STARD	Diagnostic accuracy studies	equator-network.org
ARRIVE	Studies involving live animals	arriveguidelines.org
AGREE	Clinical practice guidelines	agreetrust.org

Reporting guidance for study types not listed above can be found through the EQUATOR Network, which JAA treats as the authoritative index of current reporting standards.

6. Preparing the Manuscript

6.1 Language and Style Manuscripts should be written in clear, formal Indian English following British spelling conventions (for example, 'colour', 'organise'), used consistently throughout the manuscript, title page, and abstract. A Hindi translation of the abstract, set in Unicode Devanagari font, must accompany every submission. Spell out the full term for any abbreviation at first use in the title, abstract, keywords, and body text separately, except for standard units of measurement; thereafter, use the abbreviation consistently. Numerals one to ten are spelt out in running text, as is any numeral opening a sentence. Species and cultivar names, and Sanskrit or other classical-language terms (for example, Vata, Ama, Rasayana), are italicised at each occurrence. Section headings should use title case rather than full capitals, and running titles are limited to 50 characters.

6.2 Structure of an Original Article Abstract, Keywords (three or more), Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, References, Tables, and Figure Legends, in that order. The Introduction should state the study's purpose and rationale concisely, in roughly 75–100 words, without pre-empting the Results or Discussion.

Materials and Methods

Ethics and consent: state the approving committee, adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki (human studies) or CPCSEA/WMA standards (animal studies), and the informed consent or assent process, as set out in Section 3.7.
Participants: describe eligibility and exclusion criteria and the source population precisely enough for the selection to be reproduced.
Technical detail: name apparatus and manufacturers, state drug and chemical names generically with dose and route, and reference established methods rather than re-describing them; new or modified methods should be described in full, with the reasoning and limitations stated.
Trial design: randomised trials should report randomisation method, allocation concealment, and blinding in line with CONSORT (Section 5).
Statistics: quantify findings with confidence intervals or another measure of precision, name the statistical software used, report losses to follow-up, and give exact P values (for example, P = 0.048) rather than thresholds such as 'P < 0.05'. Report mean differences, proportions, odds ratios, and hazard ratios together with their confidence intervals, and avoid the non-technical use of statistical terms such as 'random', 'normal', 'significant', and 'correlation'.

Results and Discussion Present findings in a logical sequence, leading with the most important results, and report both derived figures (such as percentages) and the absolute numbers behind them. Restrict tables and figures to those that materially support the argument; use a graph rather than a large table where that communicates the data more clearly. The Discussion should summarise the key findings, state the study's strengths and limitations, situate the results within the wider evidence base, note any controversies the study raises, and suggest directions for further research, without repeating detail already given in the Introduction or Results, and without claiming economic benefit unless supported by economic data. New hypotheses may be proposed if clearly labelled as such.

6.3 References References are numbered consecutively in the order first cited in the text — never alphabetically — and marked with superscript Arabic numerals after the punctuation. Journal titles are abbreviated as in Index Medicus; give the full title for a non-indexed journal. Manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted are cited in text as 'unpublished observations', with the source's written permission; personal communications should be cited sparingly and only with the individual's name and the date of communication given parenthetically in the text. Reference formatting follows the NLM/Vancouver style, consistent with the ICMJE Recommendations (January 2026 edition). AI-generated citations, or references an author has not personally read and verified, may not be used.

Reference examples

Type	Example
Journal article (up to 6 authors)	Parija SC, Ravinder PT, Shariff M. Detection of hydatid antigen in fluid samples from hydatid cysts by co-agglutination. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 1996;90:255-6.
Journal article (more than 6 authors)	Roddy P, Goiri J, Flevaud L, Palma PP, Morote S, Lima N, et al. Field evaluation of a rapid immunochromatographic assay for detection of Trypanosoma cruzi infection. J Clin Microbiol. 2008;46:2022-7.
Book (personal author)	Parija SC. Textbook of Medical Parasitology. 3rd ed. New Delhi: All India Publishers and Distributors; 2008.
Chapter in an edited book	Nesheim MC. Ascariasis and human nutrition. In: Crompton DWT, Nesheim MC, Pawlowski ZS, editors. Ascariasis and its Prevention and Control. London: Taylor and Francis; 1989. p. 87-100.
Journal article on the internet	Parija SC, Khairnar K. Detection of Entamoeba histolytica DNA and lectin antigen for diagnosis of amoebic liver abscess. BMC Microbiol. 2007;7:41. Available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/7/41
Classical Samhita text	Charak Samhita, Sutrasthana, Matrashitiyaadhyaya, 5/104. Available from: http://niimh.nic.in/ebooks/echarak (accessed 31 July 2020).
Commentary on a Samhita	Chakrapani on Charak Samhita, Sutrasthana, Matrashitiyaadhyaya, 5/104. Available from: http://niimh.nic.in/ebooks/echarak (accessed 31 July 2020).
Other classical literature	Deva RRK. Shabda-kalpadruma. Vol. 5. 3rd reprint ed. Varanasi: Amar Publications; 1967. Chapter 10, verse 22, p. 89.

For source types not covered above — newspaper items, datasets, and similar — follow the current ICMJE Recommendations.

6.4 Tables

Self-explanatory, numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals by order of first citation, each with a brief title; explanatory detail belongs in a footnote, not the heading.
No more than 10 columns or 25 rows; footnote symbols are applied in the sequence *, †, ‡, §, ‖, ¶, **, ††, ‡‡.
Where the same information is shown as a graph, it should not also be duplicated as a table.
Written permission and a credit line are required for any borrowed, adapted, or modified table.

6.5 Illustrations and Figures

Submit good-quality colour images in JPEG format, each under 2 MB; where digital capture is the only source, aim for at least 300 dpi.
Number figures consecutively by order of first citation; keep lettering large enough to remain legible once reduced to column width.
Legends (maximum 40 words each, excluding any credit line) are listed together at the end of the article file, not on the image itself.
A previously published figure requires the original source acknowledged and written permission from the copyright holder, with a credit line in the legend.
Recognisable patients require documented consent as described in Section 3.8; unrelated identifying features should be digitally obscured.

6.6 Abbreviations and Acknowledgements Include a consolidated list of abbreviations with their expansions. Acknowledgements should separately record non-author contributions that do not meet the authorship test (Section 3.1) — general departmental support, technical assistance, and financial or material support, each specified by nature — and the corresponding author is responsible for obtaining each acknowledged individual's written permission to be named.

7. Assembling the Submission Package

A complete submission comprises four components, each prepared as described below. Do not compress or zip any file.

7.1 Title Page and Covering Letter Submitted as a separate .doc/.rtf file, and the only place in the submission where identifying information may appear:

Manuscript type, full title, and a running title (≤ 50 characters);
Full names, highest qualification, designation, affiliation, and ORCID iD of every author, and the department or institution to be credited;
Total pages, photographs, and separate word counts for the abstract and body text (and, for original articles, the combined Introduction + Discussion word count);
Sources of support (grants, equipment, drugs) and their role, or a statement that none applies;
Acknowledgements, as described in Section 6.6;
Details of any related conference presentation (organisation, place, exact date) and a full disclosure of any submission that could be considered redundant with the current one, with copies attached;
Clinical trial registry name, URL, and registration number, where applicable (Section 3.6);
Each author's conflict-of-interest disclosure (Section 3.3), unless already captured on a separate ICMJE disclosure form;
The CRediT contribution statement and the designated guarantor (Section 3.2);
A statement that every author has read and approved the manuscript, confirms it represents honest work, and confirms the authorship criteria in Section 3.1 have been met; and
The corresponding author's postal address, email, and telephone number.

7.2 Blinded Manuscript File A single .doc/.rtf file, under 1 MB, containing everything from the Abstract to the References (tables included), with no author name, initials, institution, or acknowledgement anywhere in the text or running header — the running title may appear, but not the authors' names. Do not embed images; where file size is a concern, submit graphs as separate image files instead. Number pages consecutively from the first page of this file. A manuscript that reveals author identity outside the title page will be returned for correction before it enters review.

7.3 Image Files Colour images in JPEG format, each under 2 MB; reduce file size by adjusting the actual dimensions (up to roughly 1600 × 1200 pixels, or 5–6 inches) rather than by compressing an oversized image. Figure legends belong at the end of the blinded article file, not with the image files themselves.

7.4 Contributor and Copyright Transfer Form Once all co-author details are entered in the system, each author receives an automated request to confirm authorship and transfer of first-publication rights under the licence described in Section 9. Where the online form cannot be used, a signed original or a scanned copy (up to 5 MB, high resolution) may instead be emailed to ayuacademia@gmail.com.

7.5 Permissions Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any copyrighted material and must submit a copy of that permission with the manuscript, along with copies of any related published work or manuscripts in preparation or under review elsewhere.

8. Online Submission and Revised Manuscripts

All manuscripts are submitted through www.ayuacademia.com. First-time users must register; registration is free but mandatory, and registered authors can track a submission's status after logging in. A submission that does not comply with Section 7 is returned for technical correction before editorial or peer review begins. Technical queries can be directed to the editorial office at ayuacademia@gmail.com.

A revised manuscript is submitted online in the same way as a new one, except that no title page or covering letter is required; instead, the revised file should open with the reviewers' comments alongside a point-by-point response, and changes in the manuscript itself should be shown as tracked, underlined, or coloured text so reviewers can locate them quickly.

9. Copyright and Open-Access Licensing

Published content remains protected under Indian and international copyright law. JAA publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): readers may copy, redistribute, and adapt an article for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, including translation and text-and-data mining, provided the original authorship and the Journal are properly credited and any derivative work is shared under the same licence. Authors retain the underlying copyright in their work and grant JAA the right of first publication under this licence; readers may also make a small number of printed copies for personal, non-commercial use.

10. Publication Charges and Fee Waivers

An article-processing charge (APC) applies to all submitted categories other than invited content, payable once a manuscript is accepted. Current rates are ₹3,000 for authors affiliated with an Indian institution, US$100 for authors from other SAARC countries, and US$200 for authors from all other countries. The APC is unrelated to the editorial decision and is requested only after acceptance; authors from low-resource settings who cannot meet this cost may request a waiver from the editorial office, with the request assessed independently of the manuscript's review.

11. Proofs, Reprints, and Publication Schedule

Corresponding authors receive page proofs before publication and are asked to return corrections within three working days, as noted in Section 2.3; the Journal does not undertake to incorporate corrections received later. JAA does not provide free printed reprints; authors wishing to purchase them may do so at the time of returning proofs. Issues are published on the Journal's website twice yearly, covering January–June and July–December, with individual articles made available online as 'Ahead of Print/Online First' immediately on acceptance.

12. Complaints, Appeals, and Contact Information

Questions about a submission's status, technical difficulties with the online system, reports of suspected plagiarism or other integrity concerns (Section 3.4), and appeals against an editorial decision (Section 2.4) should all be directed to the editorial office at ayuacademia@gmail.com. The full author guidelines can also be downloaded as a PDF from the Journal's website.

13. Author Submission Checklist

Review every item below before submitting or resubmitting a manuscript.

Covering letter and title page

Signed by all contributors; previous presentations or related submissions disclosed
Funding source and conflicts of interest stated for every author
Every author's full name, qualification, affiliation, and ORCID iD included
Corresponding author's contact details provided
Number of authors within the limit in Section 4, or justified where it is exceeded
No identifying detail appears anywhere outside the title page (institution names, 'our study' phrasing, photograph or figure labels, and the like)

Presentation and format

Double line spacing; margins of 2.5 cm on all sides; page numbers at the foot of each page
Running title of 50 characters or fewer
Structured abstract of the correct length for the manuscript category (Section 4)
Three or more keywords provided
Headings in title case, not full capitals
In-text references in superscript, in square brackets, placed after punctuation
Reference list formatted per Section 6.3, punctuation checked
File submitted without tracked-changes markup switched on

Language, tables, and figures

Indian English with British spelling used consistently throughout
Abbreviations spelt out at first use; numerals one to ten spelt out
Species names and classical-language terms italicised
No duplication of the same data across text, tables, and figures; raw numbers behind any graph supplied
Figures necessary, of good quality, and in colour where relevant
Tables and figures numbered in Arabic numerals; legends of 40 words or fewer supplied
Patient privacy protected, or documented consent obtained (Section 3.8)
Credit line included for any borrowed table or figure
Non-standard abbreviations in each table explained in a footnote