The Journal of One-day Surgery considers all articles of relevance to day and short stay surgery. Articles may be in the form of original research, review papers, audits, service improvement reports, case reports, case series, practice development and letters to the editor. Research projects must clearly state that ethics committee approval was sought where appropriate and that patients gave their consent to be included. Patients must not be identifiable unless their written consent has been obtained. If your work was conducted in the UK and you are unsure as to whether it is considered as research requiring approval from an NHS Research Ethics Committee (REC), please consult the NHS Health Research Authority decision tool at http://www.hra-decisiontools.org.uk/ethics/.

Articles should be prepared as Microsoft Word documents with double line spacing and wide margins. Submissions must be sent by email to the address below. A scanned letter requesting publication signed on behalf of all authors must also accompany articles.

Any source of funding should be declared and authors should also disclose any possible conflict of interest that might be relevant to their article.

Title Page

The first page should list all authors (including their first names), their job titles, the hospital(s) or unit(s) from where the work originates and should give a current contact address for the corresponding author.

The author should provide three or four keywords describing their article, which should be as informative as possible.

Abstract

An abstract of 250 words maximum summarising the manuscript should be provided and structured as follows: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions.

Main article structure

Manuscripts should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and References. Tables and figures should follow, with each on a separate page. Each table and figure should be accompanied by a legend that should be sufficiently informative as to allow it to be interpreted without reference to the main text.

All figures and graphs are reformatted to the standard style of the journal. If a manuscript includes such submission, particularly if exported from a spreadsheet (for example Microsoft Excel), a copy of the original data (or numbers) would assist the editorial process.

Copies of original photographs, as a JPEG or TIFF file, should be included as a separate enclosure, rather than embedding pictures within the text of the manuscript.

Figures and Graphs

Where possible, we will use the figures and graphs you provide in the manuscript. This ensures that the data you provide is that which is used. Figures and graphs can be presented in colour BUT try to avoid 3-d effects, shading etc. Figures and graphs may be redrawn if the quality is not in keeping with the Journal. Please provide these at the end of your Word document BUT make it obvious where you would like these placed in the finished article (ie in the main text, type ‘Figure 1 near here’ or Table 1 near here’)

Photographs

Photographs can be provided as jpg or tiff files but should be included as a separate enclosure, rather than embedded within the text of the manuscript. This ensures higher quality images. However, we will accept images within Word documents but image quality might suffer!

References

References should be cited numerically in the order in which they appear in the text. References should list all authors' names. Please provide both the first and last page numbers.

Authors. Article title. Journal title (in italics) Year of publication;Volume:page range.

Example reference

Ravikumar R, Williams J. The operative management of gallstone ileus. Ann R Coll Surg Engl 2010;92:279–281.

Submissions are subject to peer review. Proofs will not normally be sent to authors and reprints are not available.

All items should be emailed to The Editor:

Email Address for submissions: davidbunting@nhs.net

Mr David Bunting   Editor, Journal of One Day Surgery, Consultant Upper GI Surgeon, North Devon District Hospital

[These guidelines were last revised on 11.03.2018]