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Author Guidelines

* Last Updated: May, 2024

Information for authors pdf

Author Guidelines are based on CSE’s White Paper on Promotion Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications, ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, December 2016.

AIM AND SCOPE

“Creative Surgery and Oncology” aims to:

• publish significant original scientific research covering all fields of surgery and oncology;
• create new research opportunities;
• translate scientific discoveries into clinical practice.

The main objectives of the journal:

• improving the quality of the published papers and visibility of the journal;
• meeting the quality and publishing ethics criteria to enter databases such as WoS, Scopus, PubMed.

The journal is aimed at researchers, practising clinicians, students.

The journal publishes a range of article types that encompass all aspects of surgery and oncology medicine: Original Studies, Literature Review, Clinical Case, Brief Communications.

The journal invites for publication the Russian and foreign scientists and experts in the above-mentioned and related areas.

This journal is published in Russian and in English language.

Rejection rate: 30 %.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE AUTHOR BEFORE SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE

The submission of an article to the journal “Creative Surgery and Oncology” implies that:

• the article has not been previously published in another journal;
• the article is not under consideration in another journal;
• all co-authors agree with the publication of the current version of the article.

Before submitting the article for review, please ensure that all necessary information is included in the files, sources of information placed in figures and tables are indicated, and all quotations are correctly formatted.

The journal's editorial office recommend the authors to use the following checklists and diagrams developed by international health organizations when preparing original articles and other materials (EQUATOR, Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Research):

• CONSORT 2010 checklist of information to include when reporting a randomizes trial
• The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) Statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies
• PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses)
• The CARE Guidelines: Consensus-based Clinical Case Reporting Guideline Development
• SRQR (Standards for reporting qualitative research)
• STARD 2015: An Updated List of Essential Items for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy Studies.

NEW SUBMISSIONS

Article Template

We differentiate between the requirements for new and revised submissions.  Only when your paper is at the revision stage, will you be requested to put your paper in to a 'correct format' for acceptance and provide the items required for the publication of your article. See REVISED SUBMISSIONS section.

Manuscripts (including Supplementary materials) should be submitted:

• online via the Creative Surgery and Oncology’s online submission and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files or
• by email csurgonco@bashgmu.ru

An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript. If you have any technical problems or questions, please contact us by email csurgonco@bashgmu.ru

You may choose to submit your manuscript (text, figures and tables) as a single Word or PDF file to be used in the refereeing process. Only when your paper is at the revision stage, will you be requested to put your paper in to a 'correct format' for acceptance and provide the items required for the publication of your article.

References. There are no strict requirements on reference formatting at submission. References can be in any style or format as long as the style is consistent.

Formatting requirements. There are no strict formatting requirements but all manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to convey your manuscript, for example Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusions, Artwork and Tables with Captions. If your article includes any Videos and/or other Supplementary material, this should be included in your initial submission for peer review purposes. Divide the article into clearly defined sections.

Figures and tables embedded in text. Please ensure the figures and the tables included in the single file are placed next to the relevant text in the manuscript, rather than at the bottom or the top of the file. The corresponding caption should be placed directly below the figure or table.

Manuscripts must be solely the work of the author(s) stated, must not have been previously published elsewhere, and must not be under consideration by another journal.

All manuscripts are subject to peer review (see Peer Review section).

All contributions will be initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then sent to independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's decision is final. 

JOURNAL AUTHOR RIGHTS

Authors sign an exclusive license agreement, where authors have copyright but license exclusive rights in their article to the publisher. Please download, modify and sign the Author Agreement Form as appropriate to your manuscript.

REVISED SUBMISSIONS

The full text of a manuscript with the illustrations shall be submitted in the Word format (*.doc, *.docx, *.rtf extension). You should send the supplementary materials as separate files together with the article immediately after loading the main manuscript file.

Supplementary materials include:

• figures (images (photographs or photographic images), illustrations (all non-photographic line-work and general drawing);
• video / audio material. Editorial board accepts video / audio material to support and enhance your scientific research. Video and audio files supplied will be published online in the online version of your article as Supplementary Content. All submitted files should be properly labeled so that they directly relate to the video or audio file’s content.

Please supply ‘stills’ with your files. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalise the link to your video data.

For videos, authors should choose a relevant frame still (thumbnail) from the actual video clip that they feel is representative of the content of the video. This will be used as an image that users can click on to start playback of the video. The still image should have the same pixel dimensions as the source video file.

For audio clips, authors can optionally include a thumbnail image that they feel is representative of the content of the audio clip.

Written consent from all parties must be obtained (see the section on Statement of Informed Consent).

1. GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

1.1. Length of the manuscript from an original study, lecture or literature review (including tables and list of references) should not exceed 6000 words. Case reports should be limited to 4000 words, short reports and letters to the editor should not exceed 1500 words. Please consult the MS Word built-in statistics service prior to submission in order to find out the exact length of your manuscript. Should your manuscript exceed the aforementioned limits, the editorial board will carry out the final decision on its publication based on recommendations from your reviewer.

1.2. Text formatting. Lettering in Times New Roman is preferable in all cases (font size 12 pt with 1.0 line spacing and 2 cm margins). Kindly refrain from using underlining in your document (italic and bold formatting is acceptable).

1.3. File structure. The journal editorial board prefers to receive a manuscript as a single complete file with all figures, tables and any additional supplemental materials.

2. Please organize your text according to the following template:

• Article title. Best article titles bear short, clear and distinctive messages.
• Author names and affiliations. Write author names in the following order: first name (or initials, if used), middle name (or initials, if used), last name (surname, family name). Each author on the list must have an affiliation. The affiliation includes department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country. Academic degrees and ORCID identifiers should be provided. The corresponding author should be marked with an asterisk(*) after the name, and be written corresponding author's e-mail .

           Example:

           Correspondence to: Anna V. Smith, e-mail: …, tel.: ….

Please provide an institutional email address for the corresponding author.

• The abstract is the key and the most frequently read part of the article. The abstract should contain no abbreviations excluding units. The abstract is printed on a separate page,  it shall be structured as follows: a brief introduction, the aim of the research, methods, results, conclusions based on the obtained results .In summary it is necessary to specify the novelty of the scientific article in comparison with other related topics and purpose. The summary must be:

           - informative (no common words);
           - original;
           - meaningful (to show the main article content and research results);
           - compact (volume of 150-250 words).

• Keywords. It is necessary to include keywords (between 5 to 10 words), which help to index article in the international searching systems. They are to be the semantic core of the article and the list of main concepts and categories that describe the problem under investigation.
• Additional information.

STATEMENT OF INFORMED CONSENT. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Authors must obtain Patient's Consent to publish a case report from the patient (or, where applicable, the patient's guardian or next of kin) prior to submission.

We ask Authors to confirm as part of the submission process that such consent has been obtained, and the manuscript must include a statement to this effect in a consent section at the end of the manuscript as follows: "Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and accompanying materials».

CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. Any affiliations, financial relations, financial or political interests in the manuscript as a whole or in part, including employment and other liabilities that may result in withholding or deliberate corruption of data or adversely influenced interpretation, are considered a conflict of interest and must be explicitly stated as such. Please note that conflicts of interest do not impede a publication, though failure to disclose one does.

If there is no conflict of interest, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest."

CONTRIBUTION OF THE AUTHORS. The editorial board of the journal “Creative Surgery and Oncology” requires authors to provide an authorship statement along with their manuscript.

By providing this statement, authors guarantee that:

• each author meets the authorship criteria outlined in the ethical policy of the journal “Creative Surgery and Oncology”;
• all individuals who contributed to the research but are not authors are acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section;
• the contribution of each author is described. This information will be published in the journal “Creative Surgery and Oncology”;
• authors take responsibility for the accuracy of the information provided.

Authors must specify the contribution of each author of the article. If all authors contributed equally, please state “The authors contributed equally to this article“.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS. When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

COMPLIANCE ETHICS.  To publish the results of the original work, you must specify whether all participants signed an informed consent. In case the research involves animals, you must specify whether the study was performed in accordance with ethical principles and standards of biomedical research involving animals. In both cases, you must specify whether the study was approved by the ethics committee (bring the name of the organization, its location, the protocol number and the date of the committee meeting).

SPONSORSHIP DATA. Any role of the funding sponsors in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section.

If there is no role, please state “This work is not funded”.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS for the financial and private support shall be noted at the end of the article. Individuals who made a significant intellectual input in the investigation, but do not comply with the authorship criteria, can be mentioned here.

3. The body of the text should start with a brief introduction, describing the paper’s significance. In the case of an original study, the body of the paper should follow a common structured approach to the description of the introduction, the studies aim, its materials, methods and results, as well as Discussion and Conclusions sections.

Introduction. It states the aim and necessity to perform the research and gives a short background of the issue with reference to the most significant publications. The aim of the investigation is mentioned at the end of this part.

Materials and methods. Quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the included patients (or experimental animals) are given study design, all methods of research used in the work are mentioned including those used for data processing. While mentioning the equipment and new medications it is necessary to name the producer and the country of production (in brackets). The journal uses international unlicensed names (IUN) of medications.

Results. It is the main part of the article. They should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, in tables and figures. The text shall not repeat all the data from the tables and figures, only the most important of them should be mentioned. The figures must not repeat the data of the tables.

Discussion. It is necessary to point out some new and significant aspects of the research with references and if the situation allows, compare them to other researchers’ data. This part should be concise and definite. One should not repeat the information given in “Introduction” and detailed data from “Results”. Limitations of the study and its practical significance shall be discussed. The discussion may contain justified recommendations.

Conclusions. This part must contain short results and conclusions based on the obtained results.

4. REFERENCES. List of references should be organized according to the guidelines by U.S. National Information Standards Organization NISO Z39.29-2005 [R2010].

• References should be numbered in the order in which they are cited, each source on a new line with a number.
• All the references are given in order of their reference in the text and not alphabetically. 
• Number of references is limited to 60 for literature reviews, and to 20 for original studies and lectures.
• In the text references are given in Arabic digits in brackets. Lists of references include only the sources used in the preparation of this article. All sources in the text should be referred to.
• Use of DOI is highly encouraged.
• References to dissertations and their theses are not recommended to be included in the reference as it might be difficult to examine them, and moreover their main ideas are presented in the references to these theses. It is also not advised to refer to the abstracts of presentations, especially those published more than 5 years ago.
• The order in the reference list shall be as follows:

а) author(s) of the book or article, ALL authors (!) with their initials after surname must be mentioned. If there are more than seven, list the first six, plus et al.

b) the name of the book or article

c) publisher`s name and year. In some cases editors and compilers act as authors of books. The name of the last of them shall be followed by “ed.”

• The name of the book shall be followed by the name of the city it was printed in, after a colon the names of the publishers, after a semicolon the year; number of pages after the colon. The name of city is typed in full. If a chapter from a book is referred to, then first come the authors and the name of the chapter, after a full stop – “In:” and the names of the author and the editor, then the name of the book and its publisher and year.
• In case of an article from a journal one shall give the author(s)’ surnames and initials of all authors (if there are more than seven, list the first six, plus et al.), the name of the article, the journal, the year, the volume (only in Arabic numbers), the number, numbers of pages from …to. Full stops must be printed after the name of article and name of journal.
• The names of journals are abbreviated according to the List of NLM Catalog by the National Library of Medicine. If a journal is not indexed for Medline, you should use its full title. It is unacceptable to reduce the name of the article or abbreviate the title of the national.
• List of references should be organized according to the guidelines by Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.

Example:

Author A.A., Co-author B.B. Title of the article. Title of the journal. Year; Issue (Number):p-p.

The authors are fully responsible for the reliability of the references (including the article refusal).

EXAMPLES:

Books

Gilstrap L.C. 3rd, Cunningham F.G., VanDorsten J.P., (eds.) Operative obstetrics. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002.

Journals

Shchegolev A.V., Shelukhin D.A., Ershov E.N., Pavlov A.I., Golomidov A.A. Evacuation of patients with respiratory failure on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Anesteziologiyai Reanimatologiya=Russian Journal of Anaesthesiology and Reanimatology. 2017;62(1): 32-35 (in Russ.).

Kasatkin A.A., Urakov A.L., Shchegolev A.V., Nigmatullina A.R. Internal jugular vein cannulation without the risk of double wall punctures. J Emerg Trauma Shock. 2016;9:157. DOI:10.4103/0974-2700.193387.

Oemrawsingh P.V., Mintz G.S., Schalij M.J., Zwinderman A.H., Jukema J.W., van der Wall E.E. Intravascular ultrasound guidance improves angiographic and clinical outcome of stent implantation for long coronary artery stenosis: final results of a randomized comparison with angiographic guidance (TULIP Study). Circulation. 2003;107(1):62-7. PMID: 12515744.

Patents

Pagedas A.C. Flexible endoscopic grasping and cutting device and positioning tool assembly. United States patent US 20020103498. 2002 Aug 1.

Kasatkin A.A., Urakov A.L., Nigmatullina A.R. Inventors. Method for Internal Jugular Catheterisation. Russian Federation Patent RU2573337 C1; Jan. 20, 2016 (in Russ.).

5. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 

We redraw most figures into Creative Surgery and Oncology style. The quality of the files we receive from authors has a direct effect on the accuracy and time taken to prepare figures that are suitable for publication.

Images that have been published previously should be accompanied by a statement indicating permission to reproduce the image. If you have used previously published images, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder of the paper, which might be the authors or the publisher. If all the figures are your own and have not been published before, then this requirement does not apply.

5.1. TABLES. The tables should be made clear to support but not doubling the text. Each table is numbered according to its appearance in the article and shall have a title over it. Each table should be referenced in the text (Tabl.1).

Each column in the table has a short title (abbreviations can be used). All explanations including abbreviation expansions should be placed in the footnotes. Statistical methods used to present the variability of the data and reliability of differences shall be given. Tables must be placed next to the relevant text in the article.

Example:

Table 1. Distribution of blood types among donors and patients with colorectal cancer

5.2. FIGURES

• For images (photographs or photographic images) that are used as part of illustration or image composite figures we require a file that is no less than 300 dpi when set at its final printed size. Ideal file formats are TIF or JPG.
• For illustrations (all non-photographic line-work and general drawing) we require editable vector files that contain selectable geometry and fonts (editable text).

Reduce figures to minimum (unless the nature of your study dictates otherwise). Kindly take care to provide references to all of your graphical materials within the body of the text (Fig.1).

Example:

Figure 1. Drawing of the original intramedullary rod with locking osteosynthesis of the clavicle

5.3. VIDEO / AUDIO. Authors who have video and/or audio clips that they wish to submit with their article are strongly encouraged to include these within the body of the article. This can be done in the same way as a figure or table by referring to the multi-media content and noting in the body text where it should be placed with its associated caption (video 1) or (audio 1).

Video 1. Radiotherapy in global cancer care
Audio 1. Postoperative pain management and opioids

• Video material should be submitted in .mp4 format with aspect ratio of 16:9, and be no larger than 250 Mb.
• Audio material should be submitted as an mp3 file, no larger than 250 Mb.

INTERACTION BETWEEN THE JOURNAL AND THE AUTHOR

The journal's editorial office engages in correspondence with the responsible (contact) author.

However, if desired by the authoring team, emails can be sent to all authors for whom an email address is provided.

All articles submitted to the journal “Creative Surgery and Oncology” undergo a preliminary review by the responsible journal secretary to ensure compliance with formal requirements. At this stage, the article may be returned to the author(s) for revision, with a request to address errors or add missing data. Additionally, at this stage, the article may be rejected due to non-alignment with the journal's aims and scope, lack of originality, or low scientific value. A significant number of errors (spelling, punctuation, linguistic) can also be a reason for rejection.

After the preliminary review, the responsible editor forwards the article to a reviewer, specifying the review deadline. The author is notified accordingly.

In contentious cases, the editor may involve multiple experts in the review process, as well as the editor-in-chief.

Upon receiving a positive review, the article is passed on to the editor for preparation for publication.

If a decision is made to revise the article, the reviewer's comments and suggestions are conveyed to the author. The author is given 2 months to address these comments. If the author does not inform the editorial office of their intended actions within this timeframe, the article is removed from the publication queue.

If a decision is made to reject the article for publication, a corresponding message is sent to the author.

The responsible (contact, corresponding) author of an accepted article receives the final version of typesetting, which they are obligated to review. A response is expected from the authors within 1 day. In the absence of a reaction from the author, the typesetting of the article is considered approved.

ACTIONS OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD IN CASE OF PLAGIARISM, FABRICATION OR FALSIFICATION OF DATA

In case of discovering misconduct on the part of the author, such as plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, the editorial board follows the guidelines set by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).

The journal “Creative Surgery and Oncology” defines “misconduct” as any actions by a scientist that involve improper handling of research objects or intentional manipulation of scientific information, causing it to deviate from observed studies. It also includes behavior by a scientist that does not adhere to accepted ethical and scientific standards.

The journal does not consider honest errors or honest disagreements regarding the planning, implementation, interpretation, or evaluation of research methods or results as "misconduct". Nor does it consider misconduct unrelated to the scientific process.

If plagiarism or self-plagiarism is detected, the article is excluded from the issue at any stage of preparation.

CORRECTION OF ERRORS AND ARTICLE RETRACTION

In case errors are found in the text of an article that affect its comprehension but do not distort the reported research results, they may be corrected by replacing the PDF file of the article and indicating the error within the file itself and on the article's webpage on the journal's website.

If errors are found in the text of an article that distort the research results, or in case of plagiarism, misconduct by the author(s) involving falsification and/or fabrication of data, the article may be retracted. The initiative for retracting an article may come from the editorial board, the author, an organization, or an individual.

A retracted article is marked with the label "Article Retracted," and information about the reason for the retraction is provided on the article's webpage. Information about the retraction is sent to databases where the journal is indexed.

USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) SERVICES

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT or Large Language Models in research publications is expanding rapidly. The journal “Creative Surgery and Oncology” follows World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Recommendations on Chatbots and Generative Artificial Intelligence in Relation to Scholarly Publications (Chatbots, Generative AI, and Scholarly Maniscripts, Artificial intelligence (AI) in decision making).

1. Chatbots cannot be authors. Chatbots do not meet the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, particularly that of being able to give “final approval of the version to be published” and “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.” No AI tool can “understand” a conflict-of-interest statement, and does not have the legal standing to sign a statement. Chatbots have no affiliation independent of their developers. Since authors submitting a manuscript must ensure that all those named as authors meet the authorship criteria, chatbots cannot be included as authors.
2. Authors may use AI and LLMs in the writing and preparation of their manuscripts. In some cases, such programs can be useful for editing text, searching for additional sources of literature, collecting and analyzing data. However, it is necessary to take into account, that Chatbots may actually be capable of lying intentionally; its programming enables it to fabricate “facts.
3. Authors should be transparent when chatbots are used and provide information about how they were used. The extent and type of use of chatbots in journal publications should be indicated.
4. Authors are responsible for material provided by a chatbot in their paper (including the accuracy of what is presented and the absence of plagiarism) and for appropriate attribution of all sources (including original sources for material generated by the chatbot). Authors of articles written with the help of a chatbot are responsible for the material generated by the chatbot, including its accuracy.
5. “Creative Surgery and Oncology” use native russian-language plagiarism detection software Antiplagiat which allows to detect generated text.

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 work is not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

2. The work has been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans and animal experiments.

3. ORCID identifiers for the authors are given.

4. Data provided in the references are correct. Journal articles are cited using DOI number.

5. Supplementary materials (images, illustrations, video / audio) are send as separate files together with the article.

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

Specified when registering the names and addresses will be used solely for technical purposes of a contact with the Author or reviewers (editors) when preparing the article for publication. Private data will not be shared with other individuals and organizations.