Submissions

Author Guidelines

The aim of Journal of Plastic Surgery and Hand Surgery is to serve as an international forum for hand and plastic surgeons from all over the world. The journal accepts research articles on all subjects related to hand surgery and plastic surgery including:

• Original articles on basic research, operative methods and clinical outcomes with a follow-up of at least one year
• Systematic reviews
• National/international guidelines

Please note that case reports are rarely published in this journal.

From volume 58 in 2023, all contents will be published fully Open Access, and according to a continuous publication model, ensuring that the valuable and clinically relevant content published by Journal of Plastic Surgery and Hand Surgery is published swiftly and that it is freely accessible to all. For information pertaining to article processing fees for new submissions, please click here.

Preparing for submission in Journal of Plastic Surgery and Hand Surgery

All authors submitting to medicine, biomedicine, health sciences, allied and public health journals should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, prepared by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Please note that submission of a manuscript is held to imply that it has not previously been published and is not otherwise submitted for publication (except as an abstract presented at a meeting).

Authorship: All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript. If available, please also include ORCIDs. All persons designated as authors in a paper must participate sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility in its contents. Everyone meeting the ICMJE requirements for authorship should be included as an author of a paper. Individuals who have contributed to the article but who do not meet these criteria for authorship should be listed by name and affiliation in an ‘Acknowledgments’ section instead. The journal may require authors to justify assignments of authorship. One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article. Authors’ affiliations are the affiliations where the research was conducted. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after your paper is accepted.

Length: A typical paper for this journal should be no more than 15 pages, inclusive of tables, references and figures or table captions. A recommendation is that a paper contains five figures and or tables. The number of references should be less than 30 for an original research article and no more than 50 in a systematic review article or an article describing national or international guidelines.

Using third-party material in your paper: You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.

Clinical Trials Registry: In order to be published, all clinical trials must have been registered in a public repository at the beginning of the research process (prior to patient enrolment). Trial registration numbers should be included in the abstract, with full details in the methods section. The registry should be publicly accessible (at no charge), open to all prospective registrants, and managed by a not-for-profit organization. The registration of all clinical trials facilitates the sharing of information among clinicians, researchers, and patients. This aids in enhancing public confidence in research and is in accordance with the ICMJE guidelines. More information regarding the ICTRP Registry Network list of registries that meet these requirements can be found here: https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network

Ethical Considerations: All papers which report in vivo experiments or clinical trials on humans or animals must include a written statement in the Methods section. This should explain that all work was conducted with the formal approval of the local human subject or animal care committees (institutional and national), and that clinical trials have been registered as legislation requires. Authors who do not have formal ethics review committees should include a statement that their study follows the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. For more information regarding publishing ethics please visit: https://medicaljournalssweden.se/JPHS/ethics

Preparing your manuscript

Your manuscript file should be submitted as one Microsoft Word file using 12-point font (Times New Roman); 1.5-spacing; utilizing italics, rather than underlining for headings etc. Tables should be placed at the end of the paper, after the references. Figure captions should also be included at the end of the manuscript file. The manuscript file should be uploaded as the article text file in the system. Figures should be uploaded as separate EPS or TIFF files. Supplemental material is to be submitted as a separate submission file and should be uploaded as supplementary material.

Structure: Your paper should be compiled in the following order:

Title page (including author affiliations and ORCID)
Abstract
Keywords
Introduction (including a clear statement of the aim of the study)
Materials and methods
Ethics
Results
Discussion
Acknowledgments
Declaration of interest statement
References

All tables and figures should appear on their own respective pages which should appear at the end of the manuscript file after the references. Figure legends should be included on the last page of the manuscript file.  

Appendices/supplementary material is to be uploaded as a separate submission file.

Please include a word count for your paper.

Style guidelines: Please use British or American spelling style consistently throughout your manuscript.

Abbreviations/Acronyms: All abbreviations/acronyms (with the exception of standard units of measurement) should be written in full the first time they are used and their use should be consistent throughout the rest of the paper. Please avoid using non-standardised two and three letter acronyms as far as possible as they decrease readability. For example, “BP” should be written out as “breast reduction”, or “CLP” should be written out as “cleft lip and palate”. Accepted acronyms and in special cases where non-standardised acronyms are deemed to be necessary, such as in cases where expressions are very wordy, for example; Deep inferior epigastric artery perforator flap (DIEP flap), they should be written in full the first time they are used in the abstract as well as in the manuscript each section.

References: References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. No abstracts from proceedings or submitted manuscripts not in press are allowed. Identify references in the text using Arabic numerals in parenthesis (NOT in superscript). The style of references must follow the Vancouver system, and for the abbreviations of journal titles please use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word available at www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php.

• Journal article with up to 3 authors: Surname AA, Surname BB, Surname CC. Title of article. Abbreviated title of journal. Year; volume: pages xx-xx.
  Yagishita M, Hirase Y, Onozawa H. A new surgical strategy for reconstruction of claw nail deformity. J Plast Surg Hand Surg. 2022; 56: 127-132.
• Journal article with more than 3 authors: Surname AA, Surname BB, Surname CC, et al. Title of article. Abbreviated title of journal. Year;volume:pages xx-xx.
  Homsy SP, Repo JP, Lindford AJ, et al. Validation of the Finnish FACE-Q for use in patients undergoing surgery for functional problems or malignancy. J Plast Surg Hand Surg. 2022; 56: 270-276.
• Reference to books: Surname AA, Surname BB, Surname CC. Title of book. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher; Year of publication.
  Miró AL. Lipoabdominoplasty with previous flap resection. In: Rubin JP, Jewell ML, Richter D, Uebel CO, editors. Body contouring and liposuction. Edinburgh, Scotland: Elsevier Health Sciences; 2013. p. 220–226. 
• Journal article in electronic format: Surname AA, Surname BB, Surname CC. Title of article. Title of newspaper [Internet]. Date [cited date]; Available from: URL.
  Morse SS. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 1995 Jan-Mar [cited 1996 Jun 5]; 1(1): [24 screens]. Available from: URL:http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/eid.htm

What to Include with your submission:

Author details. Please see above for details.

Title: Please consider incorporating at least two of the keywords within the first 65 characters in order for the title to appear in search engines. The title should also be easily understood by laymen. Avoid abbreviations, formulae, and numbers. One-liners and titles that divulge the main result should also be avoided.

Abstract: Abstracts should be unstructured and no more than 250 words. Make sure that your abstract provides a concise summary that makes sense on its own. Include keywords throughout, but make sure the writing still flows naturally. Avoid background information and technical terms.

Graphical abstract (optional): This is an image to give readers a clear idea of the content of your article. For the optimal online display, your image should be supplied in landscape format with a 2:1 aspect ratio (2 length x 1 height). Graphical abstracts will often be displayed online at a width of 525px, therefore please ensure that your image is legible at this size. Save the graphical abstract as a .jpg, .png, or .tiff file and ensure that g"GraphicalAbstract" appears in the file name. Please do not embed it in the manuscript file. 

Keywords: Please include between 3 and 10 keywords. Keywords are used to index your article on search engines and are therefore vital for good visibility of your work. Read through your paper and highlight any keywords that are most relevant to the focus of your work. Narrow down your keywords to make sure they are as accurate as possible and are effective at indexing the article. Search with your keywords to make sure the results fit with your article and will be useful when others when conducting searches.

Ethics: Please include the ethical clearance number (if applicable) as well as details surrounding your ethical considerations in following the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Funding details: Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies as follows:
For single agency grants
This work was supported by the [Funding Agency] under Grant [number xxxx].
For multiple agency grants
This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx], and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].

Disclosure statement: This is to acknowledge any financial or non-financial interest that has arisen from the direct applications of your research. If there are no relevant competing interests to declare please state this within the article, for example: The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Figures: Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale, and 300 dpi for colour, at the correct size). Figures should be supplied in one of our preferred file formats: EPS, PS, JPEG, TIFF, or Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX) files are acceptable for figures that have been drawn in Word.

Tables: Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable tables.

Equations: If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word document, please ensure that the equations are editable.

Supplementary material and Video Abstracts

Supplementary material can include for example video and audio files but also figures, tables, and datasets that are of relevance to the main article. Including supplementary material with your article can make it more discoverable and help maximize downloads and citations.

Video abstracts can be a good way of getting others to engage with your research, ultimately increasing the visibility and impact of your work. Through a video abstract you can introduce the article in your own words, telling readers what the unique contribution of your article is and why they should read it. We recommend keeping a video abstract short and to the point (no more than a few minutes) and that you use images, charts or tables to help explain the focus of your article. Consider the aim of the video throughout – to get people to read your article. The best video format is MP4 although other video formats such as MOV and MPEG4 are also supported. The minimum dimension is 426 x 240 and the max dimension is 3840 x 2160.

Please make sure to include any supplementary files at the same time as submitting your manuscript, although a video abstract can be sent upon acceptance instead.

Supplemental material will be published as submitted, and will thus not be checked for scientific content, will not be copyedited, and will not be typeset. Please note that publishing supplementary material involves a fee of 25 €/file to cover administration costs, but video files will be published free of charge.