Sections
1. SUBMISSION
2. AIMS AND SCOPE
3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS
4. PREPARING THE SUBMISSION
5. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
6. AUTHOR LICENSING
7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE
8. POST PUBLICATION
Authors should kindly note that submission implies (i) that the content has not been published previously, in any language, in whole or in part, except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium; and (ii) that the manuscript is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Once you have prepared your submission in accordance with the Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ash
Surgical Practice is the official English language journal of the College of Surgeons of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Neurosurgical Society, the Hong Kong Society for Coloproctology, the Hong Kong Society of Minimal Access Surgery and the Hong Kong Society of Endourology. It publishes original contributions on all aspects of surgery and surgery-related disciplines. The Editors welcome submissions in the form of original articles, reviews, leading articles, discussion papers, history, education, short notes on surgical techniques, case reports and letters to the Editor.
3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS
The Editors welcome submissions in the form of original articles, reviews, in focus, discussion, history, education, techniques and procedures, case reports, editorial, CME page answers/questions, video articles and letters to the Editor.
Case reports: English abstracts for case reports should be fewer than 200 words. A maximum of five references and one figure or table is permitted. The main text should not exceed 1200 words without any figures or tables, or 800 words with a figure or table.
Video articles: Text description should be in English, concisely structured with no more than 600 words and five references. An abstract and keywords are not required for this manuscript type. The author is required to provide a three-minute video on DVD in AVI format, together with a short text description. Videos about surgical technique and interesting visual image findings are acceptable. The size of the video should not exceed 5 MB. The DVD should contain the relevant file(s) only. It is essential that the first author’s surname and the manuscript title are specified on the DVD.
Format and Style
• All contributions should be written in English.
• Spelling should follow the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
• Manuscripts should follow the style of the Vancouver agreement detailed in the 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals' as presented at http://www.ICMJE.org/.
• Units. All measurements should be given in SI or SI-derived units. Statistics and measurements should always be given in figures (e.g. 10mm), except where the number begins a sentence. When a number does not refer to a unit of measurement it should be spelt out, except where the number is greater than nine.
• Abbreviations. Standard abbreviations may be used and should be defined in the Abstract and on first mention in the text. In general, a term should not be abbreviated unless it is used repeatedly and the abbreviation is helpful to the reader. Avoid abbreviations in the title. Abbreviations such as e.g. and etc. should only be used in parentheses.
• Drug names. In general, generic names should be used. Brand names may be inserted in parenthesis.
Parts of the Manuscript
Title page
The title page should include the following, in this order:
(1) Title: The title should be concise and informative not exceeding 80 characters and spaces. The main title should, where possible, contain the major key words used in the body of the paper.
(2) Running title: A short running title. No longer than 40 characters and spaces, should be provided.
(3) Both given and family name of each author (Chinese names if applicable), in full, position and highest academic degree(s).
(4) Name of Department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed, including complete postal address(es) and positions held by authors(s). The number of authors should not exceed eight. The editors will grant the publication of manuscripts with more than eight authors only under exceptional circumstances.
(5) Corresponding author: The full postal address, telephone and facsimile numbers, and email address of the author who will check the proofs and receive correspondence should be included, as well as the present address of any author if different from where the work was carried out.
(6) Declaration of Conflict of Interest: Information about what to include in the Declaration of Conflict of Interest appears in the ‘Editorial and Ethical Considerations’ section below.
Abstract
All manuscripts require an abstract. For original articles this should be a concise structured abstract of no more than 200 words. It should be factual, not descriptive, and structured as below. New and important information should be emphasized:
• Objective: Why did you start the study?
• Methodology: The design of the study, its setting, description of subjects, interventions, and outcome measures.
• Results: A summary of the findings with relevant statistical indices.
• Conclusions: A description of the meaning of the findings, which should be directly supported by the data, with equal emphasis on positive and negative findings.
Keywords
Five keywords, for the purpose of indexing, should be supplied below the abstract, in alphabetical order, and should be taken from those recommended by the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s Subject Headings (MeSH) browser list at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html. If suitable MeSH terms are not yet available for recently introduced terms, present terms may be used.
Main text
This should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgements should be made only to persons who have made genuine contributions and who endorse the data and conclusions. Personal thanks and thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.
References
A list of references should be provided in double spacing after the text. References follow the Vancouver style, i.e. numbered sequentially as they occur in the text and ordered numerically in the reference list.If cited in tables or figure legends, number according to the first identification of the table or figure in the text.
In the reference list, cite the names of all authors when there are six or fewer; when seven or more, list the first three followed by et al. Do not use ibid. or op cit. Reference to unpublished data and personal communications should not appear in the list, but should be cited in the text only (e.g. Smith A, 2000, unpublished data). All citations mentioned in the text, tables or figures must be listed in the reference list. Names of journals should be abbreviated in the style used in Index Medicus. If a journal is not listed in Index Medicus, then its name should be written out in full. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references.
Examples:
Journal article
1. Marasco S, Woods S. The risk of eye splash injuries in surgery. Aust. NZ J.Surg. 1998; 68: 785-787.
Book
2. Yates DW, Moulton C, Redmund A. Lecture Notes on Emergency Medicine, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1997.
Chapter in a book
3. Deane SA. Principles of trauma management. In: Clunie, GJA, Tjandra, JJ, Francis, DMA, eds. Textbook of Surgery. Melbourne: Blackwell Science, 1997; 436-447.
Electronic material
4. American Urological Association. Male Infertility Best Policy Committee. Report on varicocele and infertility. Linthicum, MD: AmericanUrological Association. [Cited 1 Jun 2012.] Available from URL: http://www.auanet.org.
Tables
Tables should be included on a separate page, numbered with Arabic numerals and accompanied by short titles at the top. Each table must be referred to in the text in consecutive order. Data presented should, in general, not be duplicated in the text or figures. Explanatory matter should be placed in footnotes below the tabular matter and not included in the title. All non-standard abbreviations should also be explained in the footnotes. Footnotes should be indicated by *, +, +, §. Statistical measures such as sd (standard deviation) or sem (standard error of the mean) should be identified in headings. Vertical and horizontal rules between entries should be omitted. If a table or an illustration has been reproduced from a published work, the source must be given in full, with permission having been granted by the author and by the publisher.
Figure legends
Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement in the legend (not in the figure).
Figures
All illustrations (line drawings and photographs) are classified as figures. Figures should be numbered using Arabic numerals, and cited in consecutive order in the text. Each figure should be supplied as a separate file, with the figure number incorporated in the file name.
Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers. If photographs of patients are used, either the subjects should not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission for their use.
Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are accepted.
Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.
Supporting Information
Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article, but provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online and appears without editing or typesetting. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc. Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.
Note: if data, scripts, or other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.
Graphical Abstracts
Surgical Practice publishes graphical abstracts for articles, displayed online in graphical form with a brief abstract, in addition to the up to 250 word abstract above. The online table of contents will display a schematic figure to convey the core message of your paper, alongside a short abstract highlighting the major findings of the paper. Authors are recommended to submit a new and stand-alone image, or designate an image already included in the paper. Your short abstract should consist of 2-3 sentences summarizing the essence of the paper. Graphical abstract entries should be submitted to ScholarOne in one of the generic file formats and uploaded as ‘Graphical Abstract’ during the initial manuscript submission process. The image should fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm, and be fully legible at this size.Wiley Author Resources
Manuscript Preparation Tips: Wiley has a range of resources for authors preparing manuscripts for submission available here. In particular, authors may benefit from referring to Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.
Article Preparation Support
Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.
Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.
Refer and Transfer Program
Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.
5. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Editorial Review and Acceptance
The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to our readership. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are double-blind peer reviewed by two anonymous reviewers and the editor. Final acceptance or rejection rests with the editorial board, which reserves the right to refuse any material for publication.
Manuscripts should be written in a clear, concise and direct style. Where contributions are judged as acceptable for publication on the basis of content, the editor and the publisher reserve the right to modify typescripts to eliminate ambiguity and repetition and improve communication between author and reader.
Data Sharing and Data Accessibility
The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.
Authorship and Acknowledgements
Surgical Practice adheres to the definition of authorship set up by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). According to the ICMJE, authorship criteria should be based on: 1) substantial contributions to conception and design of, or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3. Contributors who do not qualify as authors should be mentioned under ‘Acknowledgements’.
Wiley’s Author Name Change Policy
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.
Correction to authorship
In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Surgical Practice will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. [Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”]
Declaration of Helsinki/Declaration of Istanbul
Manuscripts must contain a statement to the effect that all human studies have been reviewed by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in an appropriate version of the Declaration of Helsinki/Declaration of Istanbul. It should also state clearly in the text that all persons gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study. Details that might disclose the identity of the subjects under the study should be omitted. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects from being recognized (or an eye bar should be used).
Clinical Trial Registration
Surgical Practice requires that the clinical trials submitted for its consideration are registered in a publicly accessible database. Authors should include the name of the trial register and their clinical trial registration number in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of their manuscript. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between the intervention and a health outcome. The registration number of the clinical trial should be quoted at the end of the abstract.
Randomized Controlled Trials
Reporting of randomized controlled trials should follow the guidelines of ‘The CONSORT Statement’: http://www.consort-statement.org. A suitable CONSORT flow diagram illustrating the progress of patients through the trial should be included as a figure in the manuscript. The primary endpoint and power calculation must be clearly stated.
Declaration of Conflict of Interest
All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. It is the sole responsibility of authors to disclose any affiliation with any organization with a financial interest, direct or indirect, in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript (such as consultancies, employment, paid expert testimony, honoraria, speakers bureaus, retainers, stock options or ownership, patents or patent applications or travel grants) that may affect the conduct or reporting of the work submitted. All sources of funding for research are to be explicitly stated. If uncertain as what might be considered a potential conflict of interest, authors should err on the side of full disclosure. If there are no declarations, authors should explicitly state that there are none. This must be stated at the point of submission within the manuscript, after the main text, under the subheading "Declaration of Interest." Manuscript submission cannot be completed unless a declaration of interest statement (either stating the disclosures or reporting that there are none) is included. This will be made available to reviewers and will appear in the published article. If any potential conflicts of interest are found to have been withheld following publication, the journal will proceed according to COPE guidance.
The intent of this policy is not to prevent authors with any particular relationship or interest from publishing their work, but rather to adopt transparency such that reviewers, editors, the publisher, and most importantly, readers can make objective judgments concerning the work product.
Publication Ethics
This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices). Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read the Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found at authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html.
Reproduction of Copyright Material
If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is the author’s responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ here.
If a paper is accepted for publication, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to log in to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be required to complete a copyright license agreement on behalf of all authors of the paper.
Authors may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.
General information regarding licensing and copyright is available here. To review the Creative Commons License options offered under Open Access, please click here. (Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used; to check this please click here.)
Self-Archiving Definitions and Policies: Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions. Please click here for more detailed information about self-archiving definitions and policies.
Open Access fees: Authors who choose to publish using Open Access will be charged a fee. A list of Article Publication Charges for Wiley journals is available here.
Funder Open Access: Please click here for more information on Wiley’s compliance with specific Funder Open Access Policies.
7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE
Accepted Article Received in Production
When an accepted article is received by Wiley's production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. The author will be asked to sign a publication license at this point.
Accepted Articles
The journal offers Wiley’s Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. This service ensures that accepted ‘in press’ manuscripts are published online shortly after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting. Accepted Articles are published online a few days after final acceptance, appear in PDF format only, and are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked. After publication of the final version article (the article of record), the DOI remains valid and can still be used to cite and access the article.
Proofing
The corresponding author will receive an email with details on how to provide proof corrections. It is therefore essential that a working email address be provided for the corresponding author.
Early View
The journal offers rapid speed to publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. Early View articles are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before allocation to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.
Access and Sharing
When the article is published online:
Print copies of the article can now be ordered online (instructions are sent at proofing stage or please visit https://www.sheridan.com/wiley/eoc, fill in the necessary details and ensure that you type information in all of the required fields).
To find out how to best promote an article, click here.
Article Promotion Support
Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.
Measuring the Impact of an Article
Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.
Author Guidelines Updated 5 March 2021