Foot and Ankle Surgery

The aims of Foot and Ankle Surgery are to promote the art and science of ankle and foot surgery, to publish peer-reviewed research articles, to provide regular reviews by acknowledged experts on common problems, and to provide a forum for discussion with letters to the Editors. Book reviews are also published. Papers are invited for possible publication in Foot and Ankle Surgery on the understanding that the material has not been published elsewhere or accepted for publication in another journal and does not infringe prior copyright.

Submission of manuscripts
Authors are requested to submit their original manuscript and figures online via http://ees.elsevier.com/fas/. This is the Elsevier web-based submission and review system. You will find full instructions located on this site - a Guide for Authors and a Guide for Online Submission. Please follow these guidelines to prepare and upload your article. Once the uploading is done, our 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.

Authors of Case Reports should note that, if accepted, their Case Report will be published online only, with the title and author name listed in the Table of Contents of the corresponding print issue

Authors whose 'first' language is not English should arrange for their manuscripts to be written in idiomatic English before submission.

Authors are encouraged to suggest referees with their submission although the final choice is left to the Editors. If you do, please supply the email address if known to you. It is in the interests of both authors and the journal that revised manuscripts are returned promptly. A revised manuscript will retain its original date of receipt only if it is returned to the Editorial Office within 6 months.

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.

Acknowledgements 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.

Preparation of manuscripts
All papers should be double-spaced with a wide margin. The pages should be numbered consecutively beginning with the title page. The manuscript should consist of the following sections: Title page, summary, keywords, introduction, methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, references, figures and/or tables, captions for figures and/or tables.

Word Count
Regular articles: 4000 words including abstract and references, with no more than 10 figures and 8 tables (counting a,b,c separately).
Review articles: a maximum of 6000 words and 100 references.

Authors should provide an accurate word count with their submission.

Title page:
This page should include a concise title of the article, together with the name(s), qualification(s) and address(es) of the author(s). The name and complete mailing address (including telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address) of the person to whom correspondence and proofs should be sent should be given on this page.

Abstract: This should be a brief account on the subject, of no more than 150 words. For full papers, the abstract must be structured, using the following headings: Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions.

Text: This should start on a separate page and include introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusions. The suggested location of tables and figures should be indicated in the margin.

Headings in the text can be of three types and should be indicated by a circles letter "A", "B" or "C" in the margin.

Symbols, abbreviations and statistics: Symbols and abbreviations should follow the conventions described in "Units, Symbols and Abbreviations: A Guide for Biological and Medical Editors and Authors"(1988) Ed. D.N. Baron, published and available from the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London W1M 8AE, UK, or where more appropriate may be reported in traditional units, e.g. pressures should be identified as mmHg or cmH₂O.

Acknowledgements: These should be brief and must include reference to sources of financial and logistical support.

References in text: References to articles, chapters, monographs or other publications in the text should be in the Vancouver style, i.e. they should be numbered consecutively (by Arabic numerals in [brackets]) in the order in which they are first mentioned. References cited only in legends should be numbered in accordance with a sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or illustration. Lists of references should start on a new page. The references themselves should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. More than six authors to a paper should be abbreviated to the first six authors followed by et al. Unpublished observations and personal communications should not be listed but may be inserted in the text. Papers which have been accepted for publication should be included in the list of references as "in press". Authors are responsible for verifying the wording of all references and that references of unpublished work are approved by the original author.

Examples of references:
1. Krauspe R, Vispo Seara JL, Loehr JF. Long-term results after surgery for congenital clubfoot. Foot Ankle Surg 1996; 2: 77-82.
2. McGlamry DE, Ed. Fundamentals of Foot Surgery. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1987.
3. Lehman WB, Atar D, Grant AD, Strongwater AM. Revision surgery in clubfeet. In: Simons GW Ed., The Clubfoot. New York: Springer, 1994: 506-15.

Tables and figures: Tables 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 should be suitably identified below. Care must be taken to ensure that all units are included. Ensure that each table is cited in the text.

Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office file) and with the correct resolution. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authors.authors/authorartworkinstructions.

Correspondence and notices: Letters to the Editor should conform with the above conventions and should be sent with a covering letter including names and degrees of each author, and must be signed personally by all participants.

Preparation of Supplementary Data
Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary data to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authors.authors/authorartworkinstructions.

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. Foot and Ankle Surgery has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which requires, 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 http://www.icmje.org.

Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to the Journal 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. When clinical photographs of patients are submitted, consent by the patient or parent must be obtained prior to submission of the article and is the responsibility of the author.

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.

Agreements with Funding Bodies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in this journal to comply with manuscript archiving requirements of the following funding bodies, as specified as conditions of researcher grant awards. Please see http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/fundingbodyagreements for full details of the agreements that are in place for these bodies:

• Arthritis Research Campaign (UK)
• British Heart Foundation (UK)
• Cancer Research (UK)
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA)
• Medical Research Council (UK)
• National Institutes of Health (USA)
• Wellcome Trust (UK)


These agreements and policies enable authors to comply with their funding body's archiving policy without having to violate their publishing agreements with Elsevier. The agreements and policies are intended to support the needs of Elsevier authors, editors, and society publishing partners, and protect the quality and integrity of the peer review process. They are examples of Elsevier's ongoing engagement with scientific and academic communities to explore ways to deliver demonstrable and sustainable benefits for the research communities we serve.

Authors who report research by funding bodies not listed above, and who are concerned that their author agreement may be incompatible with archiving requirements specified by a funding body that supports an author's research are strongly encouraged to contact Elsevier's author support team (AuthorSupport@elsevier.com). Elsevier has a track-record of working on behalf of our authors to ensure authors can always publish in Elsevier journals and still comply with archiving conditions defined in research grant awards.

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.