Instructions to authors

About the Journal

BJS Open is a fully open access peer-reviewed journal published online.

Please read these instructions carefully and follow them closely. The Editors may return manuscripts that do not follow these instructions. If you have any questions relating to publishing an article in BJS Open, please contact the Editorial Office at  [email protected].

Scope of the journal

BJS Open publishes articles related to any field of surgery and other specialty fields relevant to surgical disciplines (e.g. anaesthesia, acute care, intensive care, etc).

Open Access

BJS Open is a fully open access journal and depends on publication fees for its operation. Visit the OUP Open Research Portal for more information.

If your paper is accepted, you will be charged an Article Processing Charge (APC). All papers are freely available online upon publication under an open access licence.

You can pay the APC on the same Author Portal you use to sign your licence to publish. You can pay immediately online or request an invoice.

Article Processing Charges

The current APCs to publish in BJS Open are:

• Regular charge: £2185
• Research Letters: £655

Invited content and Editorials are exempt.

It's important to us that authors are not prevented from publishing in BJS Open because of financial barriers. There are three routes through which you may be able to secure financial support for publication.

Read and Publish Agreements

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish Agreements with institutions and consortia, which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your Institution is participating.

Developing Countries Initiative

If the corresponding author is based in one of the low income countries included in OUP’s Developing Countries Initiative, your article will be eligible for a full waiver of the APC. This waiver will be automatically applied during the production process.

Discretionary Waivers

In addition, we may be able to offer a discretionary full or partial waiver to other authors if they do not have funding to pay the APC. Authors can request a waiver after their paper’s acceptance for publication by visiting the Discretionary Waivers page and filling out an APC Waiver Application Form.

BJS Foundation Strategic Partner Article Processing Charge Discount 

A discount on the Article Processing Charge is also available for members of the BJS Foundation Strategic Partners listed below. Please select your relevant strategic partner from the member dropdown list during submission. If you have any questions, or need help selecting your strategic partner, please contact the Editorial Office at [email protected].

50% discount
Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland (ASGBI)
European Society of Endocrine Surgeons (ESES)
Sociedad Española de Investigaciones Quirúrgicas (SEIQ)
Surgical Research Society (SRS) 
Surgical Infection Society Europe (SIS-E)
Swedish Surgical Society
Swiss Society for Surgery​

20% discount
Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT)

Licence to Publish

After your manuscript is accepted, you must sign a licence agreement on our Author Portal.

BJS Open articles can be published under the following Creative Commons licences:

1. Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY)
2. Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence (CC-BY-NC)

Your funding agencies may have specific requirements for what type of open access licence to use, so please check before selecting a licence. Please see Open Access Licences at OUP for more information about the Creative Commons licences. Please check with your funding body if you are unsure of any licence requirements.

Editorial Policies

For full details of Oxford University Press’s editorial policies, please see Publication Ethics.

Peer Review

This journal uses single-blind peer review.

On submission of a manuscript for publication, the submission is checked for compliance with these author instructions. If the submission is complete, the Editor-in-Chief assesses the manuscript for suitability. Some manuscripts are rejected without peer review at this stage; for example, if the article type is inappropriate (for example, BJS Open does not publish case reports), if the subject matter is unsuitable for the BJS Open readership, or if the scientific and/or surgical merit of the paper is flawed (for example, if it is not ethical). Articles are then allocated to a specialist Editor, who either selects relevant referees for single-blind peer review (the referees know the identity of the authors, but the authors do not know the identity of the referees) or, after consultation with the Editor-in-Chief, rejects the manuscript without peer review if it is deemed unlikely to gain sufficient support from peer review to grant publication in BJS Open.

This ‘triage’ system of rejecting manuscripts without peer review serves two purposes. First, quick decisions on papers unsuitable for BJS Open facilitate submission to another journal in a timely fashion and, second, the journal’s most valuable asset—the referees—are not overloaded with manuscripts that will not be accepted for publication.

Three referees are usually invited to comment on each submission; if the first two referee reports are in agreement, a decision is made on the basis of two reports, hopefully saving the third referee some valuable time. When the opinions of the referees differ significantly, the manuscript is discussed within the Editorial team.

Articles not subjected to peer review include solicited Leading Articles (in which case the topic and structure of the article is largely designed by the Editor-in-Chief in collaboration with the author) and Invited Commentaries, which are overseen to the highest standards by a BJS Open Editor.

The Editors’ decision is final unless there is proven to be an error in the process of manuscript evaluation or peer review. If you believe that there has been an error of process in the handling of your manuscript, please address your concerns to the Editor-in-Chief ([email protected]), quoting the manuscript submission number.

Preprint Policy

Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels, such as ArXiv, bioRxiv, psyArXiv, SocArXiv, engrXiv, etc., and this does not prevent submission to the journal. Authors may also post the submitted version of their manuscript to non-commercial servers at any time. For further information see our Online Licensing, Copyright and Permissions policies. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including the published paper’s DOI, as described on our Author Self-Archiving policy page.

Self-Archiving Policy

You may self-archive versions of your work on your own webpages, on institutional webpages, and in other repositories. If you want more information about the reuse rights you retain if you publish with us, please visit our Author Self Archiving Policy page.

Research ethics

Human investigation and animal experiments must have local ethics committee approval and, if human participants were involved, manuscripts must be accompanied by a statement that the experiments were undertaken with the understanding and appropriate informed consent of each. Written consent must be obtained from the patient (legal guardian or executor, if appropriate) for publication of any detail or photograph that might identify an individual. Submit evidence of such consent with the manuscript.

Editors reserve the right to reject papers if there is doubt whether appropriate procedures have been followed.

Research transparency

a) Data, Materials, and Analytical Methods (Code) Transparency

The policy of BJS Open is to publish papers in which authors indicate whether the data, methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research will be made available to any researcher for the purposes of reproducing the results of replicating the procedure.

Authors should indicate in the acknowledgments section whether they are willing to make their data, analytic methods, and study materials available to other researchers. If an author agrees to make materials available, they should specify where that material will be available.

b) Data sharing and data accessibility

BJS Open encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a Data Availability Statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.  In support of our policy, authors of Original Articles, Randomized Clinical Trials, Systematic Reviews, Reviews, Guidelines, Protocols, and Research Letters are required to include a Data Availability Statement in their paper, even if no data are presented or discussed.

c) Preregistration

BJS Open policy is to publish papers in which authors indicate whether or not the conducted research was preregistered with an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry (for example, http://clinicaltrials.gov/, http://socialscienceregistry.org/, http://openscienceframework.org/, http://egap.org/design-registration/, http://ridie.3ieimpact.org/). Preregistration of studies involves registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions. Including an analysis plan involves specification of sequence of analyses or the statistical model that will be reported.

1. Authors should indicate in the acknowledgment section whether they did or did not preregister the research with or without an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry.

2. If an author did preregister the research with an analysis plan, the author should:

1. Confirm in the text that the study was registered before conducting the research with links to the time-stamped preregistrations at the institutional registry, and that the preregistration adheres to the disclosure requirements of the institutional registry or those required for the preregistered badge with analysis plans maintained by the Center for Open Science.
2. Report all pre-registered analyses in the text, or, if there were changes in the analysis plan following preregistration, those changes must be disclosed with explanation for the changes.
3. Clearly distinguish in text analyses that were preregistered from those that were not, such as having separate sections in the results for confirmatory and exploratory analyses.

Publication ethics

a) Originality

On submission of the manuscript the corresponding author must warrant that the article is an original work, has not been published before, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form, in either printed or electronic media.

Publication of abstracts and presentations at scientific meetings will not jeopardize full publication. Authors should declare that any republication of the data (e.g. in secondary analysis) will not constitute redundant publication, will not breach copyright, and will reference the original publication.

b) Redundant (multiple) publication

BJS Open does not consider the following to be prior publication: abstracts and posters at conferences, results presented at meetings (for example, to inform investigators or participants about findings) and results databases (data without interpretation, discussion, context or conclusions in the form of tables and text to describe data/information where this is not easily presented in tabular form). Manuscripts that have been published previously in another language should state this on the title page of the submission. Manuscripts that have been previously published in English that are submitted with the aim of serving different audiences are not generally accepted by BJS Open (an exception to this is the publication of substantially shortened Cochrane Review articles; see below ‘Article types > Reviews’).

Editors may request copies of related publications if they are concerned about overlap and possible redundancy.

Sub-group analyses, meta-, and secondary analyses should be clearly identified as analyses of data that have already been published, and must refer to the primary source.

c) Conflict of interest statements

All authors must provide details of financial interests (including employment, significant share ownership, patent rights, consultancy, research funding, speaker’s fees) in a company or institution that might benefit from the publication of the submitted article. In addition, authors must provide details of any other potential competing interests that readers or editors might consider relevant to their publication (for example, political, intellectual, or religious interests).

A detailed definition of conflicts of interests is available.

d) Research and publication misconduct

BJS Open adheres to COPE guidelines and will pursue cases of suspected research and publication misconduct (including falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, inappropriate image manipulation, redundant publication and authorship misdemeanours). In such cases, BJS Open will follow the processes set out in the COPE flowcharts. Authors found guilty of misconduct can expect their behaviour to be reported to the head of the relevant institution, and details of the case may be highlighted in the pages of the journal. If you have concerns regarding the legitimacy of an article published in BJS Open, please write to the Editor-in-Chief at [email protected].

e) Research or publication funding

Authors must disclose all sources of funding for their research and its publication on the title page of the manuscript. Involvement of the funder in study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript preparation and publication decisions should be clearly stated, and authors are also asked to confirm that they had complete access to the study data that support the publication.

Authorship

BJS Open seeks to minimize the risk of gratuitous authorship by limiting the number of authors listed on the cover page of an article. BJS Open holds the view that in the context of surgical publishing, most articles are unlikely to involve significant contributions from more than ten authors. If more than ten authors are listed from a single institution, details of their individual contribution will be required. BJS Open is a signatory to international guidelines on authorship policy: please see Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors.

Authorship should be decided at the launch of the research study. The authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors must meet all conditions 1, 2 and 3.

CRediT

The Journal uses the contributor roles taxonomy (CRediT), which allows authors to describe the contributor roles in a standardized, transparent, and accurate way. Authors should choose from the contributor roles outlined on the CRediT website and supply this information upon submission. You may choose multiple contributor roles per author. Any other individuals who do not meet authorship criteria and made less substantive contributions should be listed in your manuscript as non-author contributors with their contributions clearly described.

Group authorship: collaborators

Results of multicentre studies may be reported under the name of the organizing group. A core organizing and writing group may be listed as authors on the cover page of the article. This group should identify other collaborators who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript; they should meet all the criteria for authorship described above. Groups who wish individuals to be credited as collaborators should list them under the heading of ‘Collaborators’ in the main manuscript file. Each collaborator will be tagged individually by BJS Open, so that they will be picked up by PubMed and credited accordingly. Please note that BJS Open will not publish errata or corrigenda for errors in lists of collaborators, so the corresponding author is responsible for ensuring the list is accurate before publication.

Contributors

Authors must acknowledge any assistance they received (for example, provision of writing assistance, literature searching, data analysis, administrative support, supply of materials). If/how this assistance was funded should be described and included with other funding information. Contributors who do not qualify as authors or collaborators should be listed and their particular contribution described in the Acknowledgements section of the article. On submission of the article, the corresponding author will be asked to confirm how all individuals listed as authors and collaborators meet the appropriate authorship criteria, that no-one who qualifies for authorship has been omitted from the list, that written authorization has been received from all co-authors and contributors, and that all funding sources (for authors and contributors) have been properly acknowledged.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors and collaborators have seen, approved and are fully conversant with the contents of the manuscript. All authors are responsible for the accuracy of the manuscript, including all statistical calculations and drug doses.

Artificial Intelligence

Neither symbolic figures such as Camille Noûs nor natural language processing tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT qualify as authors, and will be screened for in author lists. The use of AI (for example, to help generate content, write code, or analyze data) must be disclosed both in cover letters to editors and in the Methods or Acknowledgements section of manuscripts. The authors bear full responsibility and must verify the correctness of the content created by AI.

BJS Open subscribes to the policies published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and adheres to publishing ethics guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Submission

We will consider your manuscript as long as

• it is your own original work and does not duplicate any previously published work, including your own;
• it is not under consideration, in peer review, or accepted for publication in any other journal;
• it has not been published in any other journal.

Authors will be asked to confirm that this is the case during the electronic submission process. Any attempt at dual publication will lead to automatic rejection, may prejudice acceptance of future submissions, and may be highlighted within the pages of the journal. Please submit with your manuscript copies of any other papers (including abstracts)—published, in press, or submitted for consideration elsewhere—that relate in whole or in part to the same data set; this is essential to enable assessment of any potential overlap by the Editors. Indicate on the title page whether the paper is based on a previous communication to a society or meeting.

• Articles and their illustrations become the property of the journal unless rights are reserved before publication.

Authors should observe high ethical standards and obey publication best practices. The following are all unacceptable:

• data falsification or fabrication
• plagiarism, including duplicate publication of your own work without proper citation
• misappropriation of work
• content that is abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

We treat any case of ethical or publication malpractice very seriously. We will address them in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.

Further information about OUP’s ethical policies is available.

How to Submit

You must submit your paper via our web-based submission system. If you have not published with BJS Open before, you will need to create an account. Questions about submitting can be sent to the editorial office at [email protected].

Article Types

This journal publishes several different article types. Please note that BJS Open does not publish case studies.

a) Leading articles

The Editors commission leading articles of 800–1000 words and up to ten references. A single author is preferred. Submissions may be subjected to peer review and the Editors retain the right to alter textual style.

b) Reviews (including systematic reviews and meta-analyses)

Priority will be given to work that addresses a topic of current interest. The literature search should be updated as close as possible to the submission in order to have the most recent articles included in the review.  All meta-analyses of randomized trials must adhere to the guidelines outlined in the PRISMA statement, which is designed to improve manuscript quality. It is strongly recommended that the PRISMA statement is used in conjunction with the PRISMA Explanation and Elaboration Document and PRISMA abstracts guidelines. The PRISMA for abstracts checklist gives authors a framework for condensing their systematic review and meta-analysis into the essentials for an abstract.

Authors must include a suitable PRISMA flow chart and checklist in their submission. The flow diagram depicts the flow of information through the different phases of a systematic review.

A template of the PRISMA flow diagram and the PRISMA checklist is available.

Other useful resources for authors of review articles include the article Systematic reviews and meta-analysis for the surgeon scientist by Galandiuk and colleagues, and the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions.

BJS Open will consider for publication Cochrane review articles that have been substantially shortened and re-written for a surgical audience. Such submissions must state this on the title page of the manuscript, and copies of the original article must be sent to the Editorial Office for consideration. You must be the author of the Cochrane review and must also apply for permission from the Cochrane Library—further information on how to do this is available in the Cochrane Manual. These articles will be subject to the usual BJS Open peer-review process and will usually be published only if submitted within 6 months of publication of the Cochrane Review.

Supply up to six keywords. 

c) Prospective clinical trials

BJS Open expects all authors to register prospective clinical trials in a suitable electronic and freely accessible registry (e.g. www.clinicaltrials.gov, www.controlled-trials.com), according to the ICMJE guidelines for manuscript preparation (see also the BJS Consensus Statement). 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 an intervention and a health outcome. The registration number of the clinical trial should be quoted at the end of the abstract. If you wish the Editor to consider an unregistered trial, please explain why the trial has not been registered.

In addition, all randomized clinical trials must adhere to the guidelines outlined in the CONSORT statement (see CONSORT 2010 Statement and CONSORT 2010). It is strongly recommended that the CONSORT statement is used in conjunction with the CONSORT Explanation and Elaboration Document. Investigators must include a suitable CONSORT flow chart and checklist in their submission. The CONSORT 2010 Flow Diagram template and CONSORT checklist can be downloaded at CONSORT. Furthermore, it is strongly advised that the CONSORT for abstracts guidelines are consulted.

The primary end point of the trial and the power calculation must be stated clearly. Randomized clinical trials should be identified as such in both the title and the abstract.

The main CONSORT Statement is based on the ‘standard’ two-group parallel design. However, there are several different types of randomized trials with other designs. To help improve the reporting of these trials the CONSORT group has extended and modified the main CONSORT Statement for application in various areas, and the resulting CONSORT extensions can be found at Extensions of the CONSORT Statement.

Supply up to six keywords. 

Abstracts for trials should be reported in accordance with the CONSORT Extension for Abstracts Checklist (available at Download CONSORT Extensions).

An abstract up to 350 words for trials is permissible and must include:

d) Original articles

Original articles should normally be in the format of Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. A structured abstract of fewer than 350 words should be provided (further details on this can be found below). There is no word limit or limit to the number of tables or figure for Original Articles; we only ask that you be as concise as possible.

Supply up to six keywords. 

e) Observational studies

STROBE is an international, collaborative initiative of epidemiologists, methodologists, statisticians, researchers and journal Editors involved in the conduct and dissemination of observational studies, with the common aim of STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology. STROBE makes recommendations to the three main analytical designs that are used in observational research: cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies. Please visit the STROBE website for more information and available checklists.

Supply up to six keywords. 

f) Experimental papers

Papers involving experimental or animal research are sometimes challenging to read. The Editors wish to encourage authors to submit high-quality experimental research, particularly if it has obvious clinical or translational relevance. To try to improve the quality of experimental research published in BJS Open, future submissions will generally be restricted to a maximum of 3500 words, a combined total of five figures and tables, and 30 references. Additional material over and above these instructions could be published as supplementary material.

Authors should also submit a 150-word summary describing the surgical relevance of the paper, which will be published on the front page together with the abstract. The aim is to provide a short section of text explaining the potential clinical relevance of the study using the following structure: what is already known, what is new, and the potential impact on future practice. One or two short sentences under each heading will suffice.

Authors of papers involving animal research must follow the ARRIVE Guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments). Please see ARRIVE guidelines for details.

The equator network website offers more information on enhancing the quality and transparency of reporting health care studies including key reporting guidelines. Please have a look at EQUATOR Network.

Supply up to six keywords. 

g) Study protocols

BJS Open publishes protocols related to Prospective Clinical Trials as indicated in c) above. BJS Open will also consider protocol submissions in relation to non-randomized studies that evaluate the accuracy of diagnostic or prognostic tests relevant to surgical practice, as well as protocols related to a specific phase of innovation as outlined in the IDEAL recommendations. BJS Open will not accept protocol submissions based solely on experimental non-human studies or those clinical studies not covered by the criteria outlined above.

Instructions for protocol submissions for prospective clinical trials are indicated in c) above. All other protocol submissions must include an Abstract (Background, Aims, Methods including proposed analyses) not exceeding 300 words plus a plan of the study. Trial registration is preferable but there must be documentation indicating appropriate ethical approval for the study.

Supply up to six keywords. 

h) Correspondence

We welcome topical comment from readers relating to articles published in BJS and BJS Open, or on BJS Academy. Correspondence should be submitted to [email protected] and will be published on the BJS Academy website. Comments should be no more than 300 words in length, including a maximum of five references (including one to the article being commented on). Original data will not be published in the Correspondence section. Please read this Editorial for more information.

i) Invited Commentaries

The Editors invite Commentaries on recently published articles. These should be a maximum of 600 words, five references, and one figure or table.

Supply up to six keywords. 

j) Research Letters

Research Letters to the Editor should include original data or opinion in a concise format (600 words, five references, and one table or figure). These should be submitted through ScholarOne Manuscripts. Please note that there are many mandatory sections during submission that are not relevant to Research Letters. Please mark these as ‘N/A’ in the ScholarOne submission system. 

Supply up to six keywords. 

Guidelines

The BJS Open Editorial Team welcomes proposals that might lead to the publication of evidence-based guidelines relevant to surgical practice, acknowledging that the best available evidence might be no more than a consensus view. Potential authors are encouraged to submit initial ideas for consideration, and not completed documents, to assess whether publication in BJS Open is possible.

Before guidelines are submitted, an outline proposal not exceeding 500 words should describe:

• The intended guideline topic. This can include any issue directly relevant to clinical surgery, but should explain the need for guidelines on the chosen topic.
• The proposed methodology. This might include the use of systematic reviews, a Delphi consensus or combinations of methodologies, but should be specified, along with an estimate of the life span of the guidelines.
• Details of the group responsible for the guidelines. This should indicate the involvement of professional associations or societies, and commercial organizations. Sponsorship or funding details should be provided in this section. The tasks and contributions to be undertaken by each author should be listed.
• Geographic origin and extent of influence. The relevance of the guidelines and their influence should be explained in global terms. 

A designated Editor will work with the responsible group to ensure consistency of style and prompt publication. The outline proposal should be sent to the Editorial Office at [email protected].

Third-Party Permissions

If you wish to reproduce any material for which you do not own the copyright—including quotations, tables, or images—you must obtain permission from the copyright holder. The permissions agreement must include the following documents:

• non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in your article in BJS Open
• electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium
• lifetime rights to use the material
• worldwide English-language rights.

Further information on obtaining permissions is available.

Manuscript Preparation: Format, Structure, and Style

BJS Open accepts first submission in any format, structure, or style. References may also be in any format on first submission. However, please note that following the Author Guidelines is recommended for first submission and need to be followed at revision stage at the latest.

BJS Open subscribes to the policy of uniform requirements for manuscripts; this facilitates resubmission of papers to journals without extensive recasting. Authors are advised to consult the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals. BJS Open accepts the criteria for authorship proposed in the ICMJE and subscribes to the COPE guidelines on good publication practice. These guidelines are summarized below.

a) Preferred file formats

Preferred file formats for text and tables are .doc, .docx, or .rtf. Figures should be .jpeg, .jpg, .tiff or .eps. Please note: restricted file extensions include .bmp, .gif, .shs, .zip, .exe, .com, .vbs and .pdf.

If you wish to use LaTeX to write your paper, information on files and formatting can be found at Preparing and submitting your manuscript.

b) Title page

On the title page please state:

1. the title of the article;
2. the full first name, middle initials, and surname of each author;
3. the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed;
4. the name, postal and e-mail addresses of the author responsible for correspondence and to whom requests for reprints should be addressed;
5. sources of funding for research and/or publication (please also state if there is no funding);
6. the category in which the manuscript is being submitted (original article, review, randomized clinical trial); 
7. whether the paper is based on a previous communication to a society or meeting (with full details);
8. a disclosure statement (please also state if there are no conflicts to declare); and
9. a data availability statement.

c) Abstract

This must contain fewer than 250 words in a structured format.

• Background: state why the study was done, the main aim and the nature of the study (randomized clinical trial, retrospective review, experimental study, etc.).
• Method: describe patients, laboratory material and other methods used.
• Results: state the main findings, including important numerical values.
• Conclusion: state the main conclusions, highlighting controversial or unexpected observations.

For systematic reviews/meta-analysis and randomized controlled trials please see guidelines for abstracts as reported by PRISMA and CONSORT.

d) Main text

The main text of the paper should have separate Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion sections (these sections may not be applicable to all article types, for example, reviews). A short Acknowledgements paragraph may also be included. When quoting specific materials, equipment and proprietary drugs, the name and address of the manufacturer must be given in parentheses. Generic names should normally be used. Any data mentioned in the abstract or discussion must be presented in the results section of the main text.

e) Tables and Figures

Submit each figure as a separate file except compound figures, for example, 1a, 1b, 1c, etc., which should be supplied as a single file. Please ensure that figure legends are included in the main manuscript file, at the end of the text. Please do not present tables in landscape format and include a maximum of ten columns. Tables should not be split into different parts (a, b, etc.); they should either be merged, or split into completely separate tables. If tables are too large to be displayed in portrait format, please supply them as supplementary material and they will be available for download with the published article. Type each table on a separate page with a brief title. Supply artwork at the intended size for printing. Line drawings are acceptable as clear black on white graphics and must be high quality. Use hatchings, not tints. Figures should be provided in .tiff, .jpeg, .jpg, or .eps format; .pdf, .doc, .ppt (or any Microsoft Office software format) will not be accepted. All figures must be supplied at the correct resolution:

• 1200 dpi (dots per inch) for black and white line art (simple bar graphs, etc.)
• 300 dpi for halftones (black and white photographs)
• 600 dpi for combination halftones (photographs that also contain line art such as labelling or thin lines.

and named Figure_1, Figure_2 etc.

Figures in colour are encouraged and will be published at no cost to the author. Indicate the top of the illustration and a measure of magnification for photomicrographs. Include explanations of symbols and shading within the figure, use arrows to identify particular areas of interest. Survival curves must be accompanied by a table giving the actual numbers of patients involved and should be truncated when the numbers at risk are small; that is, when they are less than one-third of the starting figure. The preferred style for health-related quality of life measurements is presentation as radar or spider plots, in preference to standard graphs. These plots can be created in Excel. Include in the legends to illustrations, and the footnotes to tables, brief but comprehensive explanations of all the information presented. Look at recent issues of the journal for examples of accepted layout.

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

f) Videos

Videos may be included and will be playable within the online version of the article. Submit each video as a separate file, provide a legend alongside figure legends in the main manuscript file, cite these within the main text, and name them in the same format as figures and tables (e.g. Video­_1, Video_2).

Formats/File Types: We will accept digital files in .mp4. Please upload as a ‘Video’ in ScholarOne. Combined files of a manuscript, including video, tables, figures and text, must not exceed 100MB.

Authors are encouraged to upload a still from the video to be used in the PDF version of the article, naming it Video_1_still, Video_2_still etc., in an accepted figure format. In the absence of a still, an image will be selected for use by the typesetting team during the production process.

Content: Contributors are asked to be succinct, and the Editors reserve the right to require shorter video duration. The video should be high quality (both in content and visibility). The video should make a specific point; particularly, it should demonstrate the features described in the text of the manuscript. In addition, the content of the video sequence should directly follow the content of the video legend. The content of the video should not display overt product advertising. Educational presentations are encouraged.

Authors are encouraged to upload a still from the video to be used in the PDF version of the article, naming it Video_1_still, Video_2_still etc., in an accepted figure format. In the absence of a still, an image will be selected for use by the typesetting team during the production process.

Patient Consent: The corresponding author must confirm in the Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) that they have received a signed release form from each patient videotaped authorizing the offline and/or online distribution of this video material. Ideally patients should not be identifiable from the video.

The Editors reserve the right to request additional video editing by the authors (which may delay publication) and to edit video submissions prior to posting and/or distribution, including the insertion of a voiceover by the Editor.

g) Abbreviations

Avoid using abbreviations. Terms that are mentioned frequently may be abbreviated but only if this does not impair comprehension. Abbreviations must be used consistently and must be defined on first use.

h) Numbers and units

Provide absolute numbers always; percentages may be given in addition but never on their own (percentages are not acceptable for sample sizes less than 50). Use the decimal point, not a comma; for example 5.7. Use a space and not a comma after thousands and multiples thereof; for example 10 000. Use SI units (International System of Units) except for the measurement of blood pressure (mmHg).

i) Statistics and design

Set out clearly the objectives of the study; identify the primary and secondary hypotheses, the chosen end-points and justify the sample size with a power calculation.

Clearly describe methods used for analysis; methods not in common usage should be referenced. Report results of statistical tests by stating the value of the test statistic, the number of degrees of freedom and the P value. Actual P values should always be reported to three decimal places, especially when the result is not significant. The results of the primary analyses should be reported using confidence intervals instead of, or in addition to, P values. For detailed guidance on the handling of statistical material consult the article by Murray.

j) Reporting of sex

BJS Open is a member of the Surgery Journals Editors Group that believes that conducting sex-inclusive biomedical and clinical research is imperative to improving health outcomes of men and women (2018). The majority of biomedical research in the field of surgery and related topics is conducted on male animals and male cells, even when studying diseases prevalent in women. We support uniform, defined reporting of the sex used for human, animal, tissue, and cell research in all manuscripts published in BJS Open. If only one sex is reported, authors must include a justification statement.

k) References

We will accept any reference format at initial submission stage, but use double spacing in the Vancouver style at revision stage at the latest. Reference to abstracts and personal communications is discouraged. In the text, number references consecutively by superscript: for example, ¹ or ^1-3. References cited only in tables or figures should be numbered in sequence.

l) Supplementary Material

You must submit supplementary data or supplementary material at the same time as the main manuscript, using our Supplementary material template.

• Supplementary material must be cited in the text of the main manuscript (Table S1, Figure S1 etc.).
• Supplementary material will be available online only and will not be copyedited or typeset.
• Supplementary material should be formatted to function on any internet browser.

m) Pre-submission Language Editing

If you are not confident in the quality of your English, you may wish to use a language-editing service to ensure that Editors and reviewers understand your paper. Language editing is optional and does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted. Edited manuscripts will still undergo peer review by the journal.

Production

On acceptance of a manuscript it is edited by both an Editor and a copyeditor before being sent for typesetting. If there are extensive queries at this stage, the authors may be asked to provide clarification before the typesetting process. Proofs are sent approximately 6–8 weeks after acceptance. Absent authors should arrange for a colleague to access the e-mail to retrieve the proof.