INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Indian Journal of Surgery (Journal) is the official publication of the Association of Surgeons of India that considers for publication articles in all fields of surgery. Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journal" developed by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (October 2001). The uniform requirements and specific requirement of Indian Journal of Surgery are summarized below. Articles can be submitted online from http://www.journalonweb.com

The editorial process

The manuscripts will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that they are being submitted to one journal at a time and have not been published, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The Editors review all submitted manuscripts initially. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific flaws, or absence of importance of message are rejected. The journal will not return the unaccepted manuscripts. Other manuscripts are sent to two or more expert reviewers without revealing the identity of the contributors to the reviewers. Within a period of ten to twelve weeks, the contributors will be informed about the reviewers' comments and acceptance/rejection of manuscript. Articles accepted would be copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format.

Types of Manuscripts and word limits

• Original article: A report of a clinical or experimental surgical investigation. Up to 3000 words with up to five illustrations/tables and thirty references.
• Point of technique: Information about an innovation relating to an operation or a surgical procedure. Up to 1500 words, three figures and five references.
• Review article: A comprehensive review of a timely, important clinical subject along with analysis of the topic by the author leading to conclusions. Should not exceed 4000 words.
• Case report: New/interesting/very rare cases can be reported. Cases with clinical significance or implications will be given priority. Up to 800 words, two illustrations and eight references.
• Letter to editor: Comments on papers recently published in the Journal. Up to 500 words and three references, without any figures.
• Teachers and surgeons from the past: A short (up to 500 words) bio sketch of a revered teacher or surgeon whom you hold in esteem.
• Images in surgery, surgical pathology, and surgical radiology: A short (up to 300 words) summary of a condition of outstanding clinical interest along with no more than two illustrations. The illustrations may be in the form of clinical photographs depicting a rare diagnosis, radiological images, pathology specimen or photomicrographs.
• Announcements of conferences, meetings, courses, awards, and other items likely to be of interest to the readers should be submitted with the name and address of the person from whom additional information can be obtained. Up to 100 words.

Sending the Manuscript to the Journal

Send three copies of the manuscript along with a covering letter, contributors' form signed by all the contributors, checklist and floppy. Place the photographs in a separate envelope. The covering letter must include information on prior or duplicate publication or submission elsewhere of any part of the work/study; and a statement of financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict of interest. Copies of any permission(s) to reproduce published material, and to use illustrations or report information about identifiable people must accompany the manuscript. The manuscript should be sent to Dr T E Udwadia, Chairman, Editorial Board, Indian Journal of Surgery, B D Petit Parsee General Hospital, B Petit Road, Cumballa Hill, Mumbai 400 036. Email: editor@indianjsurg.com.

Online submission of articles

Articles can also be submitted online from https://journalonweb.com/ijs. New authors will have to register as author, which is a simple two step procedure. For online submission articles should be prepared in two files (first page file and article file). Images should be submitted separately.

• First Page File: Prepare the title page, covering letter, acknowledgement, etc. using a word processor program. All information which can reveal your identity should be here. Use text/rtf/doc/pdf files. Do not zip the files.
• Article file: The main text of the article, beginning from Abstract till References (including tables) should be in this file. Do not include any information (such as acknowledgement, your names in page headers, etc.) in this file. Use text/rtf/doc/pdf files. Do not zip the files. Limit the file size to 400 kb. Do not incorporate images in the file. If file size is large, graphs can be submitted as images separately without incorporating them in the article file to reduce the size of the file.
• Images: Submit good quality colour images. Each image should be less than 100 kb in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep up to 400 pixels or 3 inches). All image formats (jpeg, tiff, gif, bmp, png, eps, etc.) are acceptable; jpeg is most suitable. Do not zip the files.
• Legends: Legends for the figures/images should be kept ready for copy-paste during the submission process.

Preparation of the Manuscript

Send laser printout, on white thick paper, of A4 size (212 × 297 mm), with margins of 1 inch from all the four sides. Type or print on only one side of the paper. Use double spacing throughout. Number pages consecutively, beginning with the title page. The language should be American English.

Title Page

1. Type of manuscript (Original/Review/Case)
2. The title of the article, which should be concise, but informative;
3. Running title or short title not more than 50 characters;
4. The name by which each contributor is known (Last name, First name and initials of middle name), with institutional affiliation;
5. The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed;
6. The name, address, phone numbers, facsimile numbers and e-mail address of the contributor responsible for correspondence;
7. The total number of pages, photographs and word counts separately for abstract and for the text (excluding the references and abstract).
8. Acknowledgement:: Specify contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chair and acknowledgments of technical, financial and material support; and
9. If the manuscript was presented as part at a meeting, the organisation, place, and exact date on which it was read.

Abstract Page

The second page should carry the full title of the manuscript and an abstract (of no more than 150 words for case reports and 250 words for original articles). For original articles the abstract should be structured and state the Context (Background), Aims, Settings and Design, Methods and Material, Statistical analysis used, Results and Conclusions. Below the abstract should provide 3 to 6 key words.

Text of the article

State the purpose of the article and summarize the rationale for the study or observation in Introduction. For case reports give incidence of similar cases in past.

Describe the selection of the observational or experimental subjects clearly in Patients and Methods section. Identify the age, sex, and other important characteristics of the subjects. Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer's name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail. Give references to established methods, describe new or substantially modified methods, give reasons for using them, and evaluate their limitations. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration. Reports of randomised clinical trials should be based on the CONSORT statement (http://www.consort-statement.org).

When reporting experiments on human subjects, procedures followed should be in accordance with the standards ethical committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (<http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html>). Do not use patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material.

Present the results in logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations. Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or illustrations; emphasise or summarise only important observations. Use standard guidelines for statistics (See Ann Intern Med 1988;108:266-73).

Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them along with implications of the findings and their limitations in the Discussion section.

References

References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Avoid using abstracts, unpublished observations, and personal communication as references. Please refer http://www.icmje.org for other types of references such as electronic media, newspaper items, etc.

1. Standard journal article: Seshadri L, George SS, Vasudevan B, Krishna S. Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and human papilloma virus infection in renal transplant recipients. Indian J Cancer 2001;38:92-5.
   List the first six contributors followed by et al.
2. Personal author(s): Ringsven MK, Bond D. Gerontology and leadership skills for nurses. 2 ^nd ed. Albany (NY): Delmar Publishers; 1996.
3. Chapter in a book: Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, editors. Hypertension: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management. 2 ^nd ed. New York: Raven Press; 1995. pp465-78.

Tables

• Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material. Tables with more than 10 columns and 25 rows are not acceptable. Limit the number to minimum required.
• Number tables, in Arabic numerals, consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each.
• Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations that are used in each table. For footnotes use the following symbols, in this sequence: *, †, ‡, §, ¦, ¶, **, †† ;, ‡‡
• Obtain permission for all fully borrowed, adapted, and modified tables and provide a credit line in the footnote.

Illustrations (Figures)

• Submit three sets of sharp, glossy, un-mounted, colour photographic prints, with height of 4 inches and width of 6 inches.
• Computerised colour printouts are not acceptable.
• Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text.
• Each figure should have a label pasted on its back indicating the number of the figure, the running title, top of the figure and the legends of the figure. Do not write on the back of figures, scratch, or mark them by using paper clips.
• Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background and should marked neatly with transfer type or by tissue overlay and not by pen.
• If a figure has been published, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material. A credit line should appear in the legend for figures for such figures.
• Type or print out legends (maximum 40 words, excluding the credit line) for illustrations with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations. When symbols, arrows or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend. Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.

Electronic Version

• The manuscript must be accompanied by a 3.5 inch (1.44 MB) floppy containing the manuscript.
• Do not use 'oh' (O) for 'zero' (0), 'el' (l) for one (1). Do not use space bar for indentation. Do not type headings or any other text in ALL CAPITALS. Do not break words at the end of lines. Do not use an extra hard return/enter between paragraphs. Do not insert a tab, indent, or extra spaces before beginning of a paragraph. Do not use software's facility of automatic referencing, footnotes, headers, footers, etc.
• Use a hyphen only to hyphenate compound words. Use hard return/enter only at the end of paragraphs and display lines (e.g. titles, headings)..

Sending a revised manuscript

• While submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, along with single copy of the final revised manuscript, a photocopy of the revised manuscript with the changes underlined in red and with the point to point clarification to each comment. The manuscript number should be written on each of these documents.

• If the manuscript is submitted online, the contributors' form and copyright transfer form has to be submitted in original with the signatures of all the contributors within two weeks from submission. Hard copies of the images, for articles submitted online, should be sent to the journal office at the time of submission of a revised manuscript.

Reprints

Journal does not provide any free printed reprints. Reprints can be purchased at the time of submitting the proofs.

Copyrights

The whole of the literary matter in the copyright of the Editorial Board. The Journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work (either in pre-print or post-print format) publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights. The journal also grants the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal non-commercial use.

Copyright 2002 - Indian Journal of Surgery.