Instructions for authors
About the Journal
Acta Chirurgica Belgica is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality, original research. Please see the journal's Aims & Scope for information about its focus and peer-review policy.
Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English.
Acta Chirurgica Belgica accepts the following types of article: review papers, original papers, experimental papers, case reports, surgical history, surgical technique, image of the month, letter to the editor.
Authorship
All authors submitting to medicine, biomedicine, health sciences, allied and public health journals should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, prepared by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and have contributed substantially to the work.
Authorship is only allowed when any of these conditions is met:
substantial contributions to conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and
drafting of the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
final approval of the version to be published; and
agreement 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.
Peer Review and Ethics
Taylor & Francis is committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review. Once your paper has been assessed for suitability by the editor, it will then be double blind peer reviewed by independent, anonymous expert referees. Find out more about what to expect during peer review and read our guidance on publishing ethics. We also refer authors to the community standards explicit in the American Psychological Association's (APA) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Manuscripts will be screened for plagiarism (including self-plagiarism).
Language
Please note that the Journal only publishes manuscripts in English. Manuscripts must be copy-edited before submission by a native speaker, a person holding a C1/C2 certificate in English, or a commercial editing company.
To help you improve your manuscript and prepare it for submission, Taylor & Francis provides a range of editing services. Choose from options such as English Language Editing, which will ensure that your article is free of spelling and grammar errors, Translation, and Artwork Preparation. For more information, including pricing, visit this website.
Article types
Acta Chirurgica Belgica accepts the following types of article: review papers, original papers, experimental papers, case reports, surgical history, surgical technique, image of the month, and Letter to the editor.
1. Review papers
Acta Chirurgica Belgica welcomes systematic reviews and meta-analyses of current surgical topics of interest. All meta-analyses should comply with the guidelines outlined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, and include a PRISMA flow chart in the submission. More information, including a downloadable checklist and flowchart, is available from the PRISMA website. In addition, authors from a systematic review should have registered their work on PROSPERO, the International prospective register of systematic reviews. Exceptionally, narrative reviews are considered, when quantitative data are lacking in the available literature. Authors should follow the Equator reporting guidelines ( https://www.equator-network.org/)
2. Original investigations
The Journal accepts any type of clinical or translational research in the broader field of surgery, including randomized trials, prospective non comparative studies, and retrospective studies (chart series). All prospective clinical studies must be registered clinicaltrails.gov or EudraCT. In order to be published in a Taylor & Francis journal, all clinical trials must have been registered in a public repository at the beginning of the research process (prior to patient enrolment). Trial registration numbers should be included in the abstract, with full details in the methods section. The registry should be publicly accessible (at no charge), open to all prospective registrants, and managed by a not-for-profit organization. For a list of registries that meet these requirements, please visit the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). The registration of all clinical trials facilitates the sharing of information among clinicians, researchers, and patients, enhances public confidence in research, and is in accordance with the ICMJE guidelines.
All clinical studies must mention approval by the local institutional review board, mentioning the reference number. All patients participating to prospective clinical studies must have signed a written informed consent. Please ensure that all research reported in submitted papers has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and is in full compliance with all relevant codes of experimentation and legislation. All papers which report in vivo experiments or clinical trials on humans or animals must include a written statement in the Methods section. This should explain that all work was conducted with the formal approval of the local human subject or animal care committees (institutional and national), and that clinical trials have been registered as legislation requires. Authors who do not have formal ethics review committees should include a statement that their study follows the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.
All authors are required to follow the ICMJE requirements on privacy and informed consent from patients and study participants. Please confirm that any patient, service user, or participant (or that person’s parent or legal guardian) in any research, experiment, or clinical trial described in your paper has given written consent to the inclusion of material pertaining to themselves, that they acknowledge that they cannot be identified via the paper; and that you have fully anonymized them. Where someone is deceased, please ensure you have written consent from the family or estate. Authors may use this Patient Consent Form, which should be completed, saved, and sent to the journal if requested.
Randomized clinical trials must adhere to the guidelines outlined in the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement, and the manuscript must include a CONSORT flowchart. More information, including a downloadable checklist and flowchart, is available from the CONSORT website ( http://www.consort-statement.org/). Information on the choice of relevant endpoints for clinical studies can be found on the website of the Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET) initiative ( https://www.comet-initiative.org/). For non interventional studies, authors should comply with the STROBE recommendations. STROBE is an international, collaborative initiative of epidemiologists, methodologists, statisticians, researchers and journal Editors involved in the conduct and dissemination of observational studies, with the common aim of STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology. STROBE makes recommendations to the three main analytical designs that are used in observational research: cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies.
3. Experimental studies
Acta Chirurgica Belgica is a clinical journal, and does not publish experimental work involving in vitro or animal experiments.
4. Case reports
The journal accepts case reports, but limits the number of published case reports. Therefore, the time between acceptance and publication may exceed one year or more. Case reports should offer more than rarity, but contribute to either the diagnosis, management, or pathophysiology of surgical disease. In addition, they should offer a review of the published literature, summarized as much as possible in tabular format.
5. History of surgery
Acta Chirurgica Belgica accepts papers on the history of the broad discipline of surgery. Topics may include biographical sketches or historical developments of a surgical disease, technique, or complication.
6. Surgical technique ('How I do it’) The journal welcomes papers that describe, with illustrations, a novel surgical technique, instrument, device, or related technical aid.
7. Image of the month
The journal welcomes educational and illustrative images that highlight a clinically relevant aspect of surgical practice. Images may consist of medical iconography (CT scan, PET...), peroperative images, clinical photography, or pathology slides. Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for color, at the correct size). Figures should be saved as TIFF, PostScript or EPS files. Figures should be supplied as separate files and not embedded in Microsoft Word™ or similar software. When submitting medical images or patient photographs, patient anonymity should be guaranteed in the appropriate manner.
8. Letter to the Editor
Acta Chirurgica Belgica welcomes correspondence related to published manuscripts. Exceptionally, the journal may accept correspondence which does not relate to published content, such as an invited expert opinion. The journal will not accept correspondence that is partisan, political, incendiary, provocative, or otherwise non-neutral in content or objective.
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