Acknowledgments: The acknowledgments section lists each individual’s substantive contributions. Authors should obtain written, signed permission from all individuals listed in the ‘Acknowledgments’ section of the manuscript, because readers may infer their endorsement of data and conclusions. These permissions must be provided to the Editorial Office.
Sources of Funding: Authors must list all sources of research support relevant to the manuscript. All grant funding agency abbreviations or acronyms should be completely spelled out.
Conflict of Interest: Authors must state any disclosures in the cover letter when submitting a manuscript. If there is no conflict of interest, please state “Conflict of Interest: None to report.” Conflicts of interest pertain to relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers or other corporations whose products or services are related to the subject matter of the article. Such relationships include, but are not limited to, employment by an industrial concern, ownership of stock, membership on a standing advisory council or committee, membership of a board of directors, or a public association with the company or its products. Other areas of real or perceived conflict of interest could include receiving honoraria or consulting fees or receiving grants or funds from such corporations or individuals representing such corporations. The corresponding author should collect Conflict of Interest information from all co-authors before submitting a manuscript.
Original Articles: reports of data from original research.
Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by experts in the field who have been invited by the Editorial Board.
Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association or present an important adverse reaction. Authors should clearly describe the clinical relevance or implications of the case. All case report articles should indicate that informed consent to publish the information has been granted from the patients or their guardians.
Commentaries: short, focused, opinion articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to contemporary issues, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders.
Methodology articles: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may be new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.
Letter to the Editor: these can take three forms: a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article; a substantial response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication; or an article that may not cover ‘standard research’ but that may be relevant to readers.
An author is considered to have made substantive intellectual contribution to a published study, as defined by having made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; having been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; having given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content; having agreed 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. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not usually justify authorship. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in Acknowledgements. The involvement of scientific writers should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding. SurgiMed Publisher requires written confirmation from all authors that they agree with any proposed changes in authorship of already submitted manuscripts.
All submitted manuscripts must include a Competing Interests section listing all competing interests. Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should be “The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.” Editors may ask for further information relating to competing interests. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. Please refer to this article for more information.
Editors and reviewers are required to treat manuscripts confidentially. SurgiMed Publisher will not share manuscripts with third parties outside of SurgiMed Publisher except in cases of suspected misconduct.
Data registration and reporting
SurgiMed Publisher supports initiatives to improve registration and reporting of data. This includes registering of clinical trials in registries listed on the ICMJE website. If you are unsure whether your trial needs registering, see the ICMJE FAQs. The trial registration number (TRN) and date of registration should be included as the last line of the abstract. SurgiMed Publisher also encourages authors to register their systematic reviews in a suitable registry (such as PROSPERO). Authors who have registered their systematic review should include the registration number in the manuscript abstract. Authors and reviewers are requested to refer to the following checklists: randomized controlled trials (CONSORT), systematic reviews (PRISMA), observational studies (STROBE), meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE), diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD), qualitative studies (RATS), and economic evaluations (CHEERS). Standardized gene nomenclature should be used. Human gene symbols and names can be found in the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) database and any enquiries, or requests for new gene symbols, should be directed via email to [email protected]. Authors using unpublished genomic data are expected to abide by the guidelines of the Fort Lauderdale and Toronto agreements. For datasets containing clinical data, authors have an ethical and legal responsibility to respect participants’ rights to privacy and to protect their identity. Authors should gain informed consent for publication of the dataset from participants at the point of recruitment to the trial and state in their cover letter whether informed consent was obtained for publication of patient data. If informed consent was not obtained, authors must state the reason for this, and which body was consulted in the preparation of the dataset. Submission of a manuscript to a SurgiMed Publisher journal implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality. Nucleotide sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article. Any software described in the manuscript should be available for testing by reviewers in a way that preserves their anonymity. The manuscript should include a description in the ‘availability and requirements’ section of how the reviewers can access the software. The software should be available through a website or be included with the manuscript as an additional file. If published, the software application/tool should be readily available to any scientist wishing to use it for non-commercial purposes, without restrictions, such as the need for a material transfer agreement.
Manuscript Submission
One of the authors of the article, who takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review, should follow the instructions for submission and submit the manuscript. Please note that to facilitate rapid publication and to minimize administrative costs, Surgimed Publisher only accepts online submissions, and that there is an article-processing charge on all accepted manuscripts. During submission, you will be asked to provide a cover letter, in which you should explain why your manuscript should be published in the journal and declare any potential competing interests. Please provide the contact details (name and email addresses) of two potential peer reviewers for your manuscript. These should be experts in their field who will be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. The suggested peer reviewers should not have published with any of the authors of the manuscript within the past five years, should not be current collaborators and should not be members of the same research institution. Suggested reviewers will be considered along with potential reviewers recommended by the Editorial Board members.
Peer-review Process
Every article submitted to the journal is subjected to strict plagiarism checks through our double-check process involving software and manual checking. Once the article passes through this step, articles are subjected to editorial review for scope, relevance, and other standard requirements.
Peer review is a major quality maintenance measure for any academic journal. In this process, experts in the relevant fields analyze the scholarly work from every perspective, including its writing, the accuracy of its technical content, its documentation, and its impact on and significance to the discipline.
Reviewers play a pivotal role in scholarly publishing, and their valuable opinions certify the quality of the article under consideration. Peer review helps to ratify research, establishing a standard for evaluation within research communities.
SurgiMed Publisher journals employ the peer review process in order to maintain academic standards and ensure the validity of individual works submitted for publication. In addition, SurgiMed Publisher follows a single-blinded peer review process, to ensure impartial editorial decision-making.
Depending on reviewer commentary and recommendations, manuscripts may be sent back to authors for revision. After the assistant editor receives the revised manuscript, it is assigned to the reviewer(s) once again, for approval of changes. But the final decision to publish is made by the Editor-in-Chief.
SurgiMed Publisher is following different review strategies for each and every individual journal as per their editorial board guidelines. In general, the following stages of the review process table explain the overall outline; however, the respective editor can change the general review policy as per their editorial board members’ interest as and when required. Majorly, Sur Publisher staff will do only hosting, PDF formatting and design, communicating review process and there is no control on content and editorial practice of journals as it varies from journal to journal and editor to editor. Most of the SurgiMed Publisher journals content is published under creative commons attribution license, and SurgiMed Publisher is not responsible for the content of individual authors and their articles. All the journals articles were published under the discretion of respective contributors.
Plagiarism and copyright
SurgiMed Publishers uses Cross ref Similarity Check (Turnitin and iThenticat) software to detect submissions that overlap with published and submitted manuscripts.
Any manuscript submitted to a SurgiMed Publisher journal must be original and must not be under consideration by any other journal. SurgiMed Publisher checks each article for plagiarism and takes seriously all cases of publication misconduct. SurgiMed Publisher endorses the policies of the ICMJE in relation to overlapping publications. Replication of text from the authors’ own previous publications is considered unacceptable. Abstracts of up to 400 words and posters presented at, or published as part of, academic meetings do not preclude consideration for peer review of a full manuscript. Published abstracts should be cited. Authors should be aware that many conference proceedings exceed the allowable limit and constitute a citable form. Authors of non-research articles can include figures and tables that have been previously published in other journals provided they confirm on submission that permission has been obtained from the original publisher and cite the original article. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation is strongly discouraged. Authors are responsible for the legal correctness of their manuscripts. SurgiMed Publisher has a legal responsibility to ensure that its journals do not publish material that infringes copyright or includes libellous or defamatory content. Manuscripts containing material that infringes copyright or is potentially libellous or defamatory will be rejected.
Misconduct
SurgiMed Publisher takes seriously all allegations of potential misconduct. In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, it may be necessary for Editors to contact and share manuscripts with third parties, for example, authors’ institutions and ethics committees. All research involving humans and animals must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. All digital images in manuscripts considered for publication will be scrutinized for any indication of manipulation, and manipulation may result in retraction of a published article. Cases of suspected misconduct will be reported to the authors’ institutions.
Corrections and retractions
Corrections to, or retractions of, published articles will be made by publishing an Erratum or a Retraction article, without altering the original article in any way other than to add a prominent link to the Erratum/Retraction article. In the exceptional event that material is considered to infringe certain rights or is defamatory we may have to remove that material from our site and archive sites.
Policies
Competing interests: SurgiMed Publisher requires authors to declare all competing interests in relation to their work. All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘competing interests’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.” Editors may ask for further information relating to competing interests. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.
Competing interests may be financial or non-financial. A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment if they were to become public after the publication of the article.
http://ethics.iit.edu/sites/
Financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):
– Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the article, either now or in the future.
– Holding stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the article, either now or in the future.
– Holding, or currently applying for, patents relating to the content of the manuscript.
– Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript.
– Non-financial competing interests
– Non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to) political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests. If, after reading these guidelines, you are unsure whether you have a competing interest, please contact the Editor.
Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should declare these as competing interests on submission. They should also adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, which are designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies. Maples Scientific Publisher will not publish advertorial content.
Human and animal rights
All research must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. If there is suspicion that work has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, Editors will follow the Misconduct policy and may reject the manuscript, and/or contact the author(s)’ institution or ethics committee. On rare occasions, if the Editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. 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). Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to Editors on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In rare cases, Editors may contact the ethics committee for further information.
If a study has not been submitted to an ethics committee prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. How to proceed in such cases is at the Editor(s)’ discretion.
Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient’s clinical need. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors’ institution. Authors will be expected to have obtained ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool where a clear clinical advantage based on clinical need was not apparent before treatment.
Informed consent
For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.
For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants, written informed consent for the publication of these must be obtained from the participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. If the participant has died, then consent for publication must be sought from the next of kin of the participant. This documentation must be made available to Editors on request, and will be treated confidentially. In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required. The final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.
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 (e.g. the revised Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the UK and Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) and/or 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). The Editor will take account of animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research. In rare cases, Editors may contact the ethics committee for further information.
For experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also document informed consent from the client or owner and adherence to a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care.
Field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or appropriate permissions or licences must be included in the manuscript. We recommend that authors comply with the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction.
Authors are strongly encouraged to conform to the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines, developed by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), for reporting animal studies.
For studies reporting livestock trials with production, health and food-safety outcomes, authors are encouraged to adhere to the Reporting Guidelines for Randomized Controlled Trials in Livestock and Food Safety (REFLECT).
Editors’ responsibilities
Reviewers’ responsibilities
Authors’ responsibilities
Authors should ensure that any studies involving human or animal subjects conform to national, local and institutional laws and requirements (e.g. WMA Declaration of Helsinki, NIH Policy on Use of Laboratory Animals, EU Directive on Use of Animals) and confirm that approval has been sought and obtained where appropriate. Authors should obtain express permission from human subjects and respect their privacy.
References
All references, including links, must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, and should be formatted in the National Library of Medicine style. Each reference must have an individual reference number. Please avoid excessive referencing. Only articles, datasets and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited. The author is responsible for obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from cited colleagues. Journal abbreviations should follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
Citations in the reference list should include all named authors, up to the first 6, before adding ‘et al.’. Any in press articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers’ assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.
Stages of Review Process
Style and Language
SurgiMed Publisher only accepts manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be either U.S. English or British English, but not a mixture.
SurgiMed Publisher will not edit submitted manuscripts language; thus, reviewers may advise rejection of a manuscript due to grammatical errors. Authors are advised to write clearly and simply, and to have their article checked by colleagues before submission. In-house copyediting will be minimal. Non-native speakers of English may choose to make use of our copyediting services. Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible and should be defined when first used.
Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular character, please type out the name of the symbol in full. Please ensure that all special characters are embedded in the text; otherwise, they will be lost during PDF conversion.
SI units should be used throughout (‘liter’ and ‘molar’ are permitted).
Tables and Figures
Each table should be numbered and cited in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e., Table 1, 2, 3, etc.). Titles for tables should appear above the table and be no longer than 15 words. They should be pasted at the end of the document text file, in A4 Portrait or Landscape format. These will be typeset and displayed as such in the final, published form of the article. Tables should be formatted using the ‘Table object’ in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data remain aligned when the file is sent electronically for review. Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files. Larger datasets or tables too wide for a Landscape page can be uploaded separately, as additional files. Additional files will not be displayed in the final, laid-out PDF of the article, but a link will be provided to the files as supplied by the author.
Figures should be provided in a separate single .DOC, .PDF or .PPT file, with a resolution of at least 300 dpi and not be embedded in the main manuscript file. If a figure consists of separate parts, please submit a single, composite illustration page that includes all parts of the figure. There is no charge for the use of color figures. The figure legends should be included in the main manuscript text file at the end of the document, rather than as part of the figure file. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure numbers in sequence, using Arabic numerals, a title of 15 words maximum and a detailed legend of up to 300 words. Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.
Word Count
For Original Articles, Methodology Articles and Reviews, there is no explicit limit on the length of papers submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise. Commentaries and Case Reports should be between 800 and 1,500 words. Letters to the Editor should be between 1,000 and 3,000 words. There is also no restriction on the number of figures, tables, additional files or references that can be included. Figures and tables should be numbered in the order in which they are referenced in the text. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article.
The abstract of Original and Methodology Articles should not exceed 250 words and must be structured into Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions. For Reviews, please provide an unstructured, single paragraph summary of no more than 350 words, of the major points raised. For Commentaries and Case Reports, please provide a short, unstructured, single paragraph summary of no more than 150 words. For Letters to the Editor, please provide a short, unstructured, single paragraph summary of no more than 250 words.
Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. Please list your trial registration number after the abstract, if applicable.
Add a list of 3 to 10 keywords below the abstract.
The Accession Numbers of nucleic acid, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided in square brackets and include the corresponding database name