Author guidelines

Ethical Policy

Plagiarism screening

Appeals

Authors are entitled to appeal against a rejection decision made by a journal. Appeals should be submitted to the journal email address. We must receive your valid appeal within four weeks of the original decision, otherwise it will not be considered. An appeal is considered to be an extension of the peer review process and so you should not submit your article to another publication whilst an appeal is ongoing.

To be considered, appeals must directly address the reason(s) given for the initial rejection decision. If reviewer reports were included with the decision letter, then these criticisms must be responded to in the appeal, however you should not prepare and submit a revised version of your article with the appeal. Appeals that are received late, do not address reviewers’ criticisms, are dismissive of the reviewer comments, or contain offensive language will not be considered.

Valid appeals will be sent to a member of the journal’s Editorial Board for consideration. Where possible, an independent member of the Editorial Board who was not connected to the original decision will oversee the appeal.

If successful, an appeal may result in the decision being rescinded and a continuation of the peer-review process. If the appeal is rejected, then the original rejection decision is upheld and no further consideration of that article is possible.

Article types

Review Articles

Review Articles should summarise the current state of understanding on a topic within the fields of orthopaedics and traumatology.

The journal’s focus is on instructional review articles, which discuss and synthesize the key, recent, peer-reviewed literature on the topic. The aim is that readers may quickly gain an overview of current knowledge and practice in the field. Review articles should display sufficient originality in their analysis of the field and recommendations for practice, and should not merely repeat or paraphrase existing literature – all submitted articles are screened for similarity to published works, including the author’s own previous publications. Your expert assessment of the most relevant literature may also cover current debates and advise on future directions. Illustrative figures, including annotated radiographs, images and diagrams should be included to aid understanding.

The abstract should summarise the content and main conclusions of the article into 3–6 bullet points, and should be limited to a maximum of 250 words.

Systematic Reviews

In addition to instructional review articles, EOR publishes systematic reviews, which are more extensive analyses that critically assess all published studies on a topic, according to clearly defined search criteria.

PRISMA

Systematic Reviews must meet the requirements of the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Authors are required to complete the PRISMA checklist and submit this with their manuscript. You can find the checklist here. Authors should include a statement confirming adherence to the PRISMA guidelines in the abstract and the 'Materials & Methods' section of their manuscript. An example statement is included here:

‘The review process was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.’

PROSPERO

Although not an obligatory requirement, the journal encourages registration of Systematic Reviews with PROSPERO (International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews). If registered, authors should include the registration number in the abstract and the 'Materials & Methods' section of their manuscript.

The abstract should be structured into Purpose, Methods, Results and Conclusions and be limited to a maximum of 250 words.

Online submission

All manuscript submissions should be made online at the EFORT Open Reviews ScholarOne Manuscripts site: https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/eor

If you have been invited to submit an article, please click on the link within your invitation email to navigate directly to your ScholarOne Author Centre, where you can enter information about the article and upload article and figure files.

If you are submitting an unsolicited manuscript, please read the manuscript guidelines carefully to check that your article meets the criteria for submission, then click the 'Create Account' link and follow the on-screen instructions.

Preparing your article

File type

The article text should be supplied as a Word DOC or RTF. Please use continuous line numbering in your main document file (in Word 2010, go to Page Layout>Line Numbers>Continuous). See additional guidelines on figure and table files below.

Word count

Review articles should be as concise as possible – we recommend a maximum word count of 4000 words.

Authorship

Each article should have a maximum of 6 authors, and each author must have contributed substantially to the review. The corresponding author provides final approval for publication. Each author is required to complete an ICMJE conflict of interest form prior to publication

Cover letter

• Editor's name (you can find this on the Editorial Board page)
• Your manuscript's title
• Statement that your article in part or in whole has not been previously published and is not currently under consideration by another journal
• Brief description of the research you are reporting in your article, why it is important, and why you think the readers of EFORT Open Reviews would be interested in the article
• Your contact information
• Conflict of interest statement
• (For Systematic Reviews) The PROSPERO registration number.

If you need further help to write your cover letter, you can download and use our sample cover letter template here. This will download a Word document.

Copyright

EFORT Open Reviews publishes manuscripts under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license (CC-BY-NC) as standard, which allows others to re-use the work without permission so long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

If you are in receipt of funding and your funder requires publication under another licence (either CC-BY or CC-BY-NC-ND), please inform your Production Editor following acceptance and we will accommodate this.

During the submission process the submitting author will need to complete a publication agreement on behalf of the co-authors and the copyright holder for the article. As part of this agreement, the copyright holder will grant the European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology and Bioscientifica a non-exclusive licence to publish the article. The copyright is retained by the original copyright holder and is not assigned to the European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology or Bioscientifica.

Authors may download a copy of this agreement in advance.

Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.

No patient identifying information should be published in written descriptions, photographs, or multimedia material unless essential, in which case written informed consent must be provided.

Article Structure

Title page

The title page should contain the full title of the manuscript, author name(s) and affiliation(s), and the name, postal and email addresses of the corresponding author. Any Acknowledgments, Contribution statements or Funding statements should also be included in the title page.

Abstract and keywords

For narrative, instructional Review Articles, the abstract should summarise the content and main conclusions of the article into 3–6 bullet points, and should be limited to a maximum of 250 words.

For Systematic Reviews, the abstract should be structured into Purpose, Methods, Results and Conclusions and be limited to a maximum of 250 words.

Keywords should be supplied for every article, based upon 3–8 key terms that might be used when searching for the article online.

Figures and tables

Each review article should include a small number of figures or images to illustrate points (techniques, materials, procedures and so on) that are discussed in the text, in order to aid readers' understanding. For any figures that are reproduced from previously published material (including websites), permission must be requested from the copyright holder, and confirmation of permission must be provided to the EOR Editorial Office. It is the author's responsibility to request permission to reproduce figures.

Figures and tables should be submitted as separate files, and should not be embedded in the Word doc. All figures and tables must be clearly cited in the text, and legends should be listed at the bottom of the main text file.

Each figure should have a figure legend, and figures should be numbered consecutively.

Each table should have a short, descriptive heading, and tables should be numbered consecutively. Each table should be supplied as a word file that can be edited, using proper table formatting with columns and rows. Do not include tables as images within a word document.

Figures should be provided as original source files, and should not be embedded within another document. Images may be supplied as JPEG or TIFF files at 300dpi or higher; line art may be supplied as EPS files at 800 dpi or higher.

Conclusions

Articles should usually finish with a Conclusions section. This should be more than simply a repetition of the body text, and should provide clear recommendations based on the literature and the authors' experience (as appropriate). Bullet points may be used for succinct expression of recommendations. This section may also briefly discuss the need for ongoing study and future directions.

Acknowledgements and/or Contribution statements

Authors are encouraged to include acknowledgements and/or contribution statements within their article.

Funding

If there is funding to report for your article this should be reported here, including the name of the funding organisation and the grant number(s).

References

References should be kept to a minimum, comprising only works that have been studied in full by the authors, and should only cite published work. All references must be cited within the body of the article. The majority of references should refer to peer-reviewed literature published within the last 5 years.

References should be presented using the Vancouver system, whereby references are numbered according to the order of citation in the text (not in alphabetical order). The reference list should appear at the end of the article. Do not use an Endnote style which abbreviates the reference list in your submitted article.

Vancouver style reference examples are as follows: