Instructions to Authors

Open Access

This journal offers authors two choices to publish their research;
1. Open Access
• Articles are freely available to both subscribers and the wider public with permitted reuse
• An Open Access publication fee is payable by authors or their research funder

2. Subscription
• Articles are made available to subscribers as well as developing countries and patient groups through our access programs (http://www.elsevier.com/access)
• No Open Access publication fee

All articles published Open Access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Permitted reuse is defined by your choice of one of the following Creative Commons user licenses:

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA): for non-commercial purposes, lets others distribute and copy the article, to create extracts, abstracts and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from an article (such as a translation), to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), to text and data mine the article, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the author's honor or reputation, and license their new adaptations or creations under identical terms (CC BY NC SA).

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC-BY-NC-ND): for non-commercial purposes, lets others distribute and copy the article, and to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), as long as they credit the author(s) and provided they do not alter or modify the article.

Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY): available only for authors funded by organizations with which Elsevier has established an agreement. For a full list please see http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

Elsevier has established agreements with funding bodies. This ensures authors can comply with funding body Open Access requirements, including specific user licenses, such as CC-BY. Some authors may also be reimbursed for associated publication fees. http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

To provide Open Access, this journal has a publication fee which needs to be met by the authors or their research funders for each article published Open Access. Your publication choice will have no effect on the peer review process or acceptance of submitted articles. The Open Access publication fee for this journal is $2500 USD, excluding taxes.

Learn more about Elsevier's pricing policy http://www.elsevier.com/openaccesspricing

Submissions
Authors are requested to submit their original manuscript and figures online via http://ees.elsevier.com/Yfoot/. This is the Elsevier web-based submission and review system. You will find full instructions located on this site - the Instructions to Authors and a Guide to Online Submission. Please follow these guidelines to prepare and upload your article. Once the uploading is done, the system automatically generates an electronic pdf proof, which is then used for reviewing. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revisions, will be managed via this system.A paper is accepted for publication on the understanding that it has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal.

A paper is accepted for publication on the understanding that it has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal in the English language. Rejected papers will not be returned to authors except on request.

The Editors reserve the right to make editorial and literary corrections.

Any opinions expressed or policies advocated do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the Editors.

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.

Acknowledgement of other contributors
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.

Full Papers
Papers should be set out as follows, with each section beginning on a separate sheet: title page, summary, text, acknowledgements, references, tables, captions to illustrations. Each line of text should be numbered.

Title page. The title page should be provided as a separate file and give the following information (1) title of the article, (2) initials and name of each author, with highest academic degree(s), (3) name and address of the department or institution to which the work should be attributed, (4) name, address, telephone and fax number of the author responsible for correspondence and to whom requests for offprints should be sent and (5) sources of support in the form of grants.

Abstract. Please note that author identifiers should not be contained in the abstract. This should consist of not more than 200 words summarizing the contents of the article organised under the headings:
Background,
Objective/s,
Method,
Results,
Conclusions.
A list of three to six keywords should follow the summary.

Text. Please note that author identifiers should not be contained in the abstract. Headings should be appropriate to the nature of the paper. In general those for experimental papers should follow the usual conventions.

Other papers can be subdivided as the author desires; the use of headings enhances readability. Normally only two categories of headings should be used: major ones should be typed in capital letters in the centre of the page and underlined; minor ones should be typed in lower case with an initial capital letter at the left hand margin and underlined. Do not use . . . 'he', . . . 'she' etc where the sex of the person is unknown; say ... the patient' etc. Avoid inelegant alternatives such as, . . . he/she'. Patients should not be automatically designated as . . . she', and doctors as . . . he'

References. The references in the manuscript should follow the Vancouver style and authors are responsible for their accuracy.

References should therefore be numbered consecutively (in parentheses or superscript) in the text in the order in which they are mentioned, and listed in numerical order on a separate sheet at the end of the manuscript. Punctuation and format should be as follows:

Journals - 4. Smith JT, Jones PF. <title>. <Journal Title in Full>. <Year>; <Volume>: <Page-Page>.

Books - 5. Smith JT, Jones PF. <Title>. In: <eds>, editors. <Title>. <City>: <Publisher>, <Year>: <Page-Page>.

Tables. These should be typed double spaced on separate sheets and contain only horizontal rules. Do not submit tables as photographs. A short descriptive title should appear above each table and any footnotes suitably identified below. Care must be taken to ensure that all units are included. Ensure that each table is cited in the text.

Illustrations
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office file) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable colour figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in colour on the Web (e.g. ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For colour reproduction in print, you will receive informtion regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for colour in print or on the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authors.authors/authorartworkinstructions.

Captions should be typed, double spaced on separate sheets from the main manuscript.

Patient confidentiality. Where illustrations must include recognizable individuals, living or dead and of whatever age, great care must be taken to ensure that consent for publication has been given. If identifiable features are not essential to the illustration, please indicate where the illustration can be cropped. In cases where consent has not been obtained and recognizable features may appear, it will be necessary to retouch the illustration to mask the eyes or otherwise render the individual unrecognizable.

Permissions to reproduce borrowed illustrations or tables or identifiable clinical photographs. Written permission to reproduce borrowed material (illustrations and tables) must be obtained from the original publishers and authors, and submitted with the typescript. Borrowed material should be acknowledged in the captions in this style . . .Reproduced by the kind permission of . . . (publishers) from . . .(reference)'.

Randomised controlled trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in the Journal should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. The Foot has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which require, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. 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 a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at www.icmje.org.

Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to The Foot 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.

Proprietary Names
Proprietary names of drugs, instruments etc. should be indicated by the use of initial capital letters.

Abbreviations and Units
Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract. All unusual abbreviations should be fully explained at their first occurrence in the text. All measurements should be expressed in SI units. Imperial units are acceptable from USA contributors. For more detailed recommendations, authors may consult the Royal Society of Medicine publication entitled Units, Symbols and Abbreviations: A Guide for Biological and Medical Editors and Authors.

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/wps/find/authorshome.authors/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) 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).

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which 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 site: 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) and return to Elsevier 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 or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. 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.