Nigerian Journal of Urology (NJU) is a biannual publication (One volume with two issues each year) appearing in March and September. It publishes articles related to the science and practice of Urology. 

We intend to give a speedy editorial review process to all articles submitted to NJU and communicate them back to the author(s) as soon as possible.

Articles submitted to NJU will first be screened by the editor-in-chief to ensure they meet the journal guidelines and basic principles of scientific research. Thereafter successful articles will be sent to at least three reviewers who are experts in that field for a detailed double-blind peer review and a decision of two out of the three of the reviewers may suffice and upheld by the editor.

All articles submitted to NJU should be in clear English language and should not be more than 3.500 words including references. It is however the policy of the Nigerian Journal of Urology not to reject articles purely on their novelty.

Manuscript submission to NJU will be online through our manuscript submission and manuscript management system (recommended) or by email attachment to nigerian.j.urology@gmail.com . Notice of acknowledgment will be sent immediately to the author(s) on receipt of every manuscript.

Cover Letter
All manuscripts submitted to NJU should be accompanied by a cover letter of not more than 250 words stating the significance of the study, the specific roles performed by the co-author(s), and clearly stating that all the Co-authors have read the final draft and are in agreement with the contents. The cover letter which should be duly signed by the corresponding author should also include the email addresses of all the co-authors.

Note: When making a submission, ensure that a copy of your submission in MS Word containing your entire work from title to references, including tables and figures, is also submitted or uploaded online as the case may be. Also, ensure you insert continuous line numbering in the article for ease of referencing during the peer-review of such an article.

If you are submitting online, under “Add Contributors” ensure you enter all the co-authors as well with their full addresses.

Any article that does not conform to these requirements will be returned to the author and this may delay the review process.

Download the Article Template from the website at http://nju.org.ng 

 

Guidelines for Manuscript Preparation.
A full original article submitted to NJU should contain the following key sections outlined below.
This may not strictly apply to other submissions such as Case Reports, Methodologies, and Short Communications among others.

Authors are however advised to adhere strictly to the journal policy guidelines on the preparation of all manuscripts to avoid rejection or delays.

Title: The title of the manuscript should be a brief phrase that captures the whole essence of the study and should not be more than 20 words, concise and there should be no abbreviations.

Author(s) Information: The author's full name is required. The surname should be clearly identifiable either by underlining or capitalizing it.
Each author should have a clear and full institutional address, E-mail address, and phone number. The Corresponding author should state clearly his/her institutional address, E-mail address, and phone number, and should be indicated clearly as the Corresponding author.

Abstract: Abstract should be comprehensive, and clearly written to describe the entire study and its findings. The abstract should be structured into Background, Objectives, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusion, and Recommendations.
The entire abstract should not be more than 350 words.

Keywords: There should be between three (3) to six (6) Keywords at the end of the abstract. The keywords should be arranged in alphabetical order (A-Z) and should consist of the words in the article around which the research centers.

Main Body Text
The text of the manuscript should consist of the following sections: (This may however not apply to all articles).

Introduction or Background: This gives a brief overview and background to the study. The introduction should bring out the general contemporary information on the topic.

Materials and Methods: Author(s) should describe in detail the procedure, the materials, equipment used, inclusion and exclusion criteria, sampling method(s), sample size, methods of data collection and analysis, and degrees of significance.

Results: The main findings of the research must have clearly addressed the objectives of the study. The narration which should come before the tables and figures should only state the key findings in each of the tables and the figures. No discussion is allowed here.

Discussion: The main findings of the research should be brought out here with sufficient and comprehensive explanations provided for such outcomes. Discussion should also compare findings of the present study with that of similar studies elsewhere and proffer convincing explanations for both similarities and differences observed taking into cognizance the methodologies, sampling, and other demographic indices.

Conclusion: In just a few lines (3 to 4 lines), state the overall main findings of this study as against similar studies.

Recommendation: Recommendations should therefore be made from the conclusions drawn from the entire study.

Limitations: The limitations to the study and the degree to which they adversely affected the outcome of this research finding should be mentioned here.

Conflict of Interest: Author(s) should declare if they have any conflict of interest concerning the research in any form such as economic, social, or religious, etc.

Acknowledgment: Author(s) should briefly acknowledge institutions and individuals that played a significant role in the successful completion of the study.

Figures: Figures should not be more than three (3), submitted in the body of the text and not in a separate file.
Each figure or table should be sufficiently titled and cited within the manuscript in a consecutive manner they are listed. The figures should be in GIF and JPG formats.

Tables: Tables should be neatly prepared using MS Word table tools. Tables drawn using only lines will not be accepted. Also coloured and image tables that cannot be edited by the editor will not be accepted by NJU

Supplementary materials: NJU welcomes supplementary materials such as datasets, audio files, and video clips that authors feel might interest readers and make the article more comprehensive and interesting.

References
NJU will only accept references from published or accepted works of highly credible sources. References from first or second quartile journals are preferable.

The journal referencing style is Vancouver and the numbers should appear consecutively as superscripts in brackets. DOIs and website links should be included where available. Where more than six authors are involved, only the first six should be listed and then followed by et al in italics. Please check https://guides.lib.monash.edu/citing-referencing/vancouverhttps://guides.lib.monash.edu/citing-referencing/vancouver.

Examples:
i. An Original article
Shambe I, Shehu N. Novel Corona Virus Disease: A Narrative Review of the Guidelines and Protocol for Obstetric Care in the Context of a Pandemic. Western J of Medical and Biomedical Sci 2020;1(2):121–124. https://wjmbs.com.ng/index.php/wjmbs/article/view/19.

ii. A Book
Darwin C. On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life [book on the Internet]. London: John Murray; 1859. Chapter 5, Laws of Variation [cited 2013 Apr 22]; about 10 screens. Available from: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter5.html.

iii. Chapter In An Edited Book
MacDougall C, Chambers HF. Aminoglycosides. In: Brunton LL, Chabner BA, Knollman BJ, eds. Goodman & Gilman’s the pharmacological basis of therapeutics. 12th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2011. p. 1505-20.

iv. Chapter by the Book Author
Ansel HC. Pharmaceutical measurement. 13th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2010. Chapter 3: Pharmaceutical measurement; p.35-47.

v. A Website
Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. COVID-19 dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. 2020 (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html. opens in new tab)

Ethics on Research
Author(s) are to adhere strictly to the WMA Declaration of Helsinki - Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/.
For studies involving animals, national and international laws and treaties governing animal safety should be strictly adhered to. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalwelfare/sa_awa/ct_awa_program_information; https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1993/2103/made; Nigeria, Anti-cruelty, protection and welfare: https://www.globalanimallaw.org/database/national/nigeria/.

Ethical approvals should be obtained from accredited ethics Review Committees/boards before studies on humans and animals are carried out and evidence of approval made available to the journal. The issue of consent, confidentiality, and data management and storage will be handled in strict compliance with standard practices.

Ethics on Publication
NJU expects authors to adhere to strict ethical standards required in carrying out scientific research and reporting research findings. For details refer to the benchmark composed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors are advised to go through the COPE document and be conversant with aspects such as Allegations of misconduct, Authorship and contributorship, Complaints and appeals, Conflicts of interest, Data and reproducibility, Ethical oversight, and Intellectual property. Please check https://publicationethics.org/.

Editorial Policy
Nigerian Journal of Urology has a policy on publications that strives to adhere to international best practices. In doing so we adhere to the standards prescribed by the following documents:

-World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) http://www.wame.org/;
-International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) https://www.stm-assoc.org/;
-International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) http://www.icmje.org/; and --Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) https://publicationethics.org/. Articles submitted to the NJU with whole or partial violation of these prescriptions may be rejected.

Plagiarism
NJU will subject all articles submitted to similarity check using high precision anti-plagiarism checkers to ensure that there is no plagiarism.

Different types of plagiarism include:
i. Complete plagiarism is when a researcher replaces a complete work done by another person with his name. It is also called intellectual theft.
ii. Source-based plagiarism is when a researcher cites an incorrect source, cites a source that does not exist, or uses information from a secondary source to cite a primary source. Data fabrication involves making up data or findings and falsification is altering or omitting data.
iii. Direct Plagiarism is copying verbatim a text belonging to another person without the use of quotation marks or attribution.
iv. Self-plagiarism is when an author uses substantial copies of his already published work, also called self-duplication.
v. Paraphrasing plagiarism involves making minor changes in someone’s work turning it into ours still preserving the meaning.
vi. Inaccurate Authorship is either when an individual contributes to work without getting any credit for it, or another who gets credit without contributing to the work.
vii. Mosaic plagiarism is when it interlays someone else’s phrases or text within its own research
viii. Accidental plagiarism is plagiarism that occurs out of neglect, mistake, or unintentional paraphrasing.

Copyright, License, and Disclaimers
The journal will always strive to ensure the accuracy of every data published at the time of going to the press; however published articles are the views of the respective authors and not that of the Editorial board or publisher.
Neither the authors, editors nor cPrint publisher shall be held liable for any omission or error in any published article of the journal. Authors still retain the copyright of their articles published in the Nigerian Journal of Urology in line with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. This gives free and unhindered access to the work by the public provided it is properly cited, and the authors also have the right to publish a part or whole work into a book. Please Check https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Publication Fee
Currently no processing fee. The publication fee for accepted articles is charged N60,000.00 or USD $150,00  to support the open access publishing, archiving, and production.

Journal Account Details
Account Name: Nigeria Journal of Urology
Account Number:
Bank Name:

After the payment, kindly send scanned evidence of payment to nju.editors@gmail.com

Acceptance
Upon acceptance of an article, a galley proof is produced and sent to authors for final corrections and then an Acceptance letter may be issued on request to the Corresponding author. Accepted articles will normally be published within 72 days after acceptance.

Units of Measurements
Authors while preparing their manuscripts for submission to the NJU should use International Standard Units (SI) of measurements and such should be written in full before any form of abbreviation. Other units used other than SI should be properly explained.

Rapid Review
NJU will strive to respond to requests of authors concerning rapid review. Based on the degree of the scientific, social, or economic importance of such requests as determined by the editorial board, the journal will accelerate the review process to completion within 48 to 72 hours and issue acceptance letters