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.
Paper submissions are not normally accepted.
If you cannot submit electronically, please contact the editorial office for assistance:
Janet Willis, Foot and Ankle Surgery Journal,
University of Sheffield Medical School, C Floor, Beech Hill Road, Sheffield S10 2RX, UK, Tel: +44 (0)114 271 2189, j.willis@sheffield.ac.uk
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, acknowledgments, references, figures and/or tables, captions for figures and/or tables.
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://authors.elsevier.com/artwork.
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 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 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.
