Submitting an Article Online

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Author Guidelines

For more information on how to submit your research to IJS Protocols and to view the author guidelines, please click here.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, in part or in whole, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. All third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission has been obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal. Authors acknowledge their responsibility to gain all permissions prior to submission.
3. All authors qualify as authors, as defined in the authorship guidelines, and have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper.
4. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines. Every effort has been made to ensure that the submission is ready for peer review according to the journal's review policy (following the instructions to ensure blind peer review).
5. Tables are all cited in the main text and are included within the text document.
6. Figures are all cited in the main text and are uploaded as supplementary files. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
7. All patients included within case reports or other article types in which an individual or a group of individuals can be identified have signed informed consent forms, or had had their legal guardian do so, giving permission to publish the submitted content under a CC-BY licence.
8. Research has been approved by an appropriate ethics committee, with the name of the committee and reference number of approval included within the submitted file. Otherwise, a statement that ethics approval was not required has been added to the file.
9. The corresponding author is submitting an ORCID identifier in their author data and co-authors have been recommended to also provide an ORCID, as per the journal policy.

10.  One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details: E-mail address and full postal address.

11.  A competing interests statement is provided, even if the authors have no competing interests to declare.

12.  Referee suggestions and contact details provided, based on journal requirements.

13.  Manuscript

    The manuscript includes keywords, all figures (include relevant captions), all tables (including titles, description, footnotes), and that all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided.

    Indicate clearly if color should be used for any figures in print, Graphical Abstracts/Highlights files (where applicable), supplemental files (where applicable)

    Further considerations: Manuscript has been 'spell checked' and 'grammar checked'

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. The full privacy policy can be viewed here.

Publication Fees

Articles accepted for publication will be asked to pay an Article Publication Charge (APC) to cover publication costs. This can normally be sourced from your funder or institution. This fee covers all publication costs (IJS Press business costs; editorial processes; web hosting; indexing; marketing; archiving; DOI registration etc) and ensures that all of the content is fully open access. This approach maximises the potential readership of publications and allows the journal to be run in a sustainable way. Tax will be added to all fees charged, when applicable (includes VAT/Sales tax or any other applicable taxes).

Many institutions have funds available to support open access publications by their staff, therefore we ask that you contact the relevant body to cover the APC.

If you do not know about your institution’s policy on open access funding, please contact your departmental/faculty administrators and institution library, as funds may be available to you.

If published, you will receive an APC request email along with information on how payment can be arranged.

Waiver Information

If you do not have funds available to pay the APC (eg because your institution/funder will not cover the fee) then we may be able to offer a discount or full waiver. Waivers must be applied for during the submission process. There is an option to request a waiver, and provide a reason for the request in the submission steps. You will receive confirmation of approval or denial from the editorial office. Editorial decisions are made independently from the ability to pay the APC.