As a general surgical journal, International Journal of Surgery covers all specialties, and is dedicated to publishing original research, review articles and more all offering significant contributions to knowledge in clinical surgery, experimental surgery, surgical education and history.

Please note, IJS no longer accepts case reports and case series; however authors are encouraged to submit them to the sister journal, International Journal of Surgery Case Reports, an online-only, author-pays journal that is freely available to all without a subscription. For more details, and to submit your case report or case series, go to http://www.casereports.com/

Online Submission of Manuscripts
http://ees.elsevier.com/ijs
Submission and peer review of all papers is now conducted entirely online, increasing efficiency for editors, authors, and reviewers, and enhancing publication speed. Online submission to International Journal of Surgery:
•Decreases the transfer time between author, editor, reviewer and production
•Provides authors with live Information on manuscript status
•Provides editors with an end-to-end system to support the peer-review process
•Provides reviewers with online refereeing capability.

The system creates PDF version of the submitted manuscript for peer review, revision and proofing. All correspondence, including the editor s decision and request for revisions, is conducted by e-mail. Authors are guided stepwise through the entire process and are kept abreast of the progress of their paper at each stage.

Authors requesting further information on online submission are strongly encouraged to view the system, including a tutorial, at http://ees.elsevier.com/ijs. A comprehensive Author Support service is also available to answer additional enquiries: authorsupport@elsevier.com.

Uniform Requirements
These guidelines generally follow the `Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals , published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The complete document appears at http://www.icmje.org.

Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

When submitting a paper authors must complete the Authorship form download from here. This form confirms that all authors agree to publication if the paper is accepted and allows authors to declare any conflicts of interest, sources of funding and ethical approval (if required). Please download the form and submit it with your paper. Submissions that do not include a completed form will be returned without review.

Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Conflict of Interest
At the end of the text, under a subheading `Conflict of interest statement , all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

Role of the Funding Source
All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Open access
This journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article on your own website. More information can be found here: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

Randomised Controlled Trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in International Journal of Surgery should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart and ensure that all elements in the CONSORT checklist are covered. A copy of the CONSORT checklist must be uploaded as supplemental material. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information.

Systematic Reviews
Systematic reviews should be reported in accordance PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Guidelines (www.prisma-statement.org/) and must include the flow diagram as a figure and the checklist as supplemental material (http://www.prisma-statement.org/2.1.2%20-%20PRISMA%202009%20Checklist.pdf).

Cohort, Case-control and Cross-sectional studies
Cohort, Case-control and Cross-sectional studies should all be compliant with the STROBE criteria (Strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology). Please see http://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=available-checklists - each study type has its own checklist which should be uploaded as a supplemental file.

Diagnostic, Quality Improvement and Qualitative studies
Diagnostic Studies should be reported in accordance with the STARD statement criteria (STAndards for the Reporting of Diagnostic accuracy studies) flow diagram and checklist please see (http://www.stard-statement.org/). Quality Improvement studies should comply with the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) criteria: http://squire-statement.org. Qualitative studies require the Consolidated criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) checklist, please see : http://intqhc.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/6/349.long

Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to International Journal of Surgery should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki (Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989). The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines. Patients and volunteers names, initials, and hospital numbers should not be used.

Article Structure
In general, articles should conform to the conventional structure of Summary, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and References.

Word Limits
Papers should not exceed 3000 words for an original research article, review article, Cohort, Case control, Cross Sectional, diagnostic, Quality Improvement, Qualitative studies, experimental research or editorial (excluding references). Correspondence, book and media reviews should not exceed 1000 words.

Title
Your title page, numbered as 1, should give the title in capital letters (not exceeding 100 letters), a running title (not exceeding 50 letters) and the authors names (as they are to appear), affiliations and complete addresses, including postal (zip) codes. The author and address to whom correspondence should be sent must be clearly indicated. Please supply telephone, fax and e-mail numbers for the corresponding author.

Abstracts
An abstract of your manuscript, a maximum of 250 words, summarizing the content, should be provided.

Reference Format
Manuscripts should use the Vancouver style for references, which should be numbered consecutively (using superscript numerals) in the order in which they are first cited in the text and listed at the end of the paper. For journal references, all authors should be included when there are six or fewer (first three followed by `et al. when seven or more), followed by the title of article, name of journal abbreviated according to Index Medicus (see http://www.nih.nlm.gov), year, volume, and first and last pages. For example:

1. Tockman MS, Anthonisen MD, Wright EC et al. Airways obstruction and the risk of lung cancer. Ann Intern Med 1987;106:512 18.
For book references, the author(s) should be followed by the chapter title (if appropriate), editor(s) (if applicable), book title, place of publication, publisher, year and (if relevant) page numbers. For example:

2. Colby VT, Carrington CB. Infiltrative lung disease. In: Thurlbeck WM, ed. Pathology of the Lung. New York: Thieme Medical Publishers, 1988.

Figures
Figures of good quality should be submitted online as separate files. For detailed instructions on the preparation of electronic artwork, consult the Artwork Instructions to Authors: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. Permission to reproduce illustrations should always be obtained before submission and details included with the captions.

To help authors submit high-quality artwork early in the process, the Artwork Quality Control Tool automatically checks the submitted artwork and other file types when they are first uploaded against the artwork requirements outlined in the Artwork Instructions to Authors. Each figure/file is checked only once, so further along in the process only new uploaded files will be checked.

Tables
Tables should be submitted online as a separate file, bear a short descriptive title, and be numbered in Arabic numbers. Tables should be cited in the text.

Keywords
A list of three to six keywords should be supplied; full instructions are provided when submitting the article online.

Units and Abbreviations
Système Internationale (SI) units should be used, with the traditional equivalent in parentheses where appropriate. Conventions for abbreviations should be those detailed in: Baron DN, ed. Units, Symbols, and Abbreviations: A Guide for Biological and Medical Editors and Authors. 5th edition. London: Royal Society of Medicine Services, 1994.

Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a Journal Publishing Agreement (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/authors). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a Journal Publishing Agreement form.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases; contact Elsevier s Rights Department, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Tel. (+1) 215 238 7869; Fax (+1) 215 238 2239; e-mail healthpermissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, which they are requested to correct and return within 48 hours. Elsevier now sends PDF proofs that can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe website: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win

If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post.

Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

Accepted Articles
Visit http://www.elsevier.com/authors for the facility to track accepted articles and set email alerts to inform you of when an article s status has changed. The website also provides detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those related to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.