ISSN 2011-7582
printed version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts
• Sending of manuscripts

1. The Revista Colombiana de Cirugía (Colombian Journal of Surgery) is the official vehicle of communication of the Colombian Association of Surgery that publishes original papers on topics of general surgery and other topics of interest for the entire medical profession, including humanistic, social and economic subjects and others related to medical education.

2. Papers must be unpublished and supplied exclusively to the Colombian Journal of Surgery in printed and digital form (e-mail, CD or diskette).

3. Every submission must include a letter from the principal authors, stating the following:
a) A statement indicating that the paper has been read and approved by all the coauthors. All the people appearing as coauthors must fulfill certain requirements and must have had sufficient participation in order to take public responsibility for the content of the paper.
b) Statement certifying that the manuscript corresponds to a trial or study that has not been published previously and will not be submitted for publication in any other journal before receiving notice on the decision of the Editorial Committee of the RevistaColombiana de Cirugía.
c) Information on any prior or duplicated information, in partial or complete form, with the corresponding authorizations in writing for the reproduction of material already published such as illustrations, figures, tables, etc., taken from this or other sources.
d) Statement regarding conflicts of interest, specifying the origin of the support received in the form of grants, equipment or medications, should that be the case.
e) In the event the work is accepted for publication in the Revista Colombiana de Cirugía, transfer of publication and reproduction rights.
f) In the event the work involves human experiments, a statement regarding the observance of the standards required by the committee in charge of supervising human trials and those included in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as modified in 2004. All original papers must make explicit reference to the observance of Resolution No. 008430 issued by the Ministry of Health in 1993, and to the approval by ethics committee of the corresponding institution.
g) Name, postal and electronic address, and phone number of the author in charge of all communications with the other authors for revision purposes.
Authors are advised to keep a copy of all the materials sent, since the Journal may choose not to return all the materials received.

4. The papers must be prepared in accordance with the standards of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) as defined in the standard requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals, available at http://www.icmje.org. All abbreviated journal names must be cited as they appear in the Index Medicus.

5. Manuscripts must adjust to the grammar rules of the Spanish language and to the correct technical and scientific terms. Only internationally recognized standard abbreviations must be used, but their use must be avoided in the title and the summary. The complete term for which an abbreviation is established must appear before the abbreviation is used for the first time in the text, unless it is a standard international measurement unit. Units of the international weights and measurement system must be used for all numbers cited in the manuscript. Authors are advised to submit their papers to a professional copyeditor before submitting them for publication in the Revista Colombiana de Cirugía.

6. Authors must submit a printed copy of the manuscript on letter-size white paper, printed on one side with 2.5 cm top and bottom margins and 3 cm side margins. The manuscript must not be more than 30 pages long. Pages must be numbered on the upper right hand corner. We recommend the use of the Microsoft Office software for text and tables. The entire text must be written in Arial 12, with double spacing and no justification.
7. The Revista Colombiana de Cirugía publishes mainly original papers. Case reports are accepted only in reference to a rare disease or a disease with an atypical presentation of significant interest for the scientific community, provided it is accompanied by an extensive review of the literature.

8. The manuscript must include the following sections:
a) Title page: contains the title of the manuscript in brief, concise form; full name and surname of the authors (no second surname initials), followed by position in the institution where the work was conducted (the name of the institutions must not be abbreviated), city and country. At the bottom of the page please include the name, mailing and electronic address, pone number and fax of the author to whom all correspondence must be addressed.
b) Summary: in the case of original work, the summary must include the following sections: introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion. The summary must not exceed 250 words and it must not contain abbreviations or references. Additionally, a summary in English must be included (the Revista Colombiana de Cirugía reserves the right to modify the English summary prepared by the author) together with a list of key words (between three and six in Spanish and English) consistent with those appearing in the thesaurus of health science descriptor terms (DeCS) (http://decs.bvs.br) and medical subject headings (MeSH) in English (http://nlm.nih.gov/mesh7meshhome.htm), and which can also be found at www.bireme.br.
c) The body of the text must be divided into the following sections: introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion.
d) Figures must be numbered sequentially in the order in which they appear in the text. They must be submitted on separate pages, each with their short title, in jpeg or gif format, in 35 mm slides or printed on photographic paper. The author is advised to keep copies of all the material sent. When color figures are required, the author will pay for the printing charges.

9. Bibliographic references must be numbered in brackets in the order in which they appear in the text. In cases of review articles, the name of the author and the year may be used in brackets instead of the number. In such a case, the list of references included at the end of the text must appear in alphabetical order.

10. References must be quoted in accordance with the Vancouver standards. Some examples are shown below:

a) Articles in journals in English or other languages different from Spanish: Turner RR, Giuliano AE, Hoon DSB, et al. Pathologic examination of sentinel lymph node for breast carcinoma. World J Surg. 2001;25:798-805.
b) Articles in Spanish: Domínguez AM, Vanegas S, Camacho F, et al. Programa de seguimiento de la infección quirúrgica y el sitio operatorio, Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, 1989-1999. Rev Colomb Cir. 2001; 16:44-57.
c) Book chapters: Kurzer A, Agudelo G. Trauma de cabeza y cuello, facial y de tejidos blandos. En: Olarte F, Aristizábal H, Restrepo J, editores. Cirugía. Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia; 1983. p. 311-28.

11. Bibliographic references must include articles by Colombian and Latin-American authors. Several databases are available as sources of information. These include: SIBRA/Colombia by FEPAFEM, and Publindex by Colciencias for Colombian literature, and SciELO by BIREME and IMBIOMED for Latin-American and Caribbean literature. The Editorial Committee of the Revista Colombiana de Cirugía may consider exclusion of Colombian and Latin-American authors as a reason for rejecting the manuscript.

12. The Editorial Committee may consider certain submissions as editorials on current topics or as important comments on papers that are especially relevant; contributions to the section on letters to the editor are also accepted in the form of short comments on papers published in previous issues or on topics of current interest.

13. The Revista Colombiana de Cirugía takes no responsibility for the ideas presented by the authors, who are solely responsible for them.

14. All submissions must be sent to the members of the Editorial Committee or to external reviewers who act as arbitrators, so that they can express their opinions about the quality of the work and make the necessary observations or recommendations for publication.