The Colombian Journal of Surgery is the official organ of the Colombian Association of Surgery. It publishes quarterly original contributions on topics of General Surgery or of interest to the medical profession, including those of a humanistic, socioeconomic and medical education nature.

The opinions expressed in the signed articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily coincide with those of the editors of the Colombian Journal of Surgery. The diagnostic or therapeutic suggestions, such as the choice of products, dosage and methods of use, correspond to the experience and the criteria of the authors. The Colombian Journal of Surgery does not assume any responsibility for the ideas expressed by the authors, who are the solely responsible.

The manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with the provisions of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org), under the title of Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, according to the December 2021 version. Accepted articles will be appropriate to the publication style of the Colombian Journal of Surgery.

The journal does not charge any fee to the authors for the submission, processing and publication of the articles.

All texts published in the Colombian Journal of Surgery are protected by national and international intellectual property rights. The contents of the Journal, unless otherwise indicated, are open access articles under the Creative Commons Attribution License, that is, CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution - NonCommercial - No Derivatives).

Manuscripts must conform to the grammatical and spelling rules of the Spanish language and to the correct technical and scientific terms. Only internationally recognized abbreviations should be used, and their use in the title and abstract should be avoided. The full meaning of the internationally accepted abbreviation must precede its first appearance in the text in order to illustrate and facilitate the understanding of the journal readers, unless it is a standard unit of measurement. Any figure that appears in the manuscript must adhere to the international system of units (https://www.bipm.org/en/measurement-units/).

Authors are recommended to submit their manuscript to a copyeditor before submitting it for publication in the Colombian Journal of Surgery.

For articles in English, a certificate of the quality of the translation must be attached, for example, from American Journal Experts (http://www.aje.com/) or a similar institution.

A statement must be included indicating compliance with ethical standards such as: Informed consent, Conflicts of interest, Sources of funding and Contribution of each of the authors. If the work involved experiments with human beings, it should be noted that the standards of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, modified in 2013 (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/), and the observance of Resolution No. 008430 of 1993 of the Ministry of Health or Resolution 2378 of 2008 of the Ministry of Social Protection, and specifically mention the approval of the institutional ethics committee.

The names of the authors or the institution where the research was carried out should not appear in the text of the manuscript, to guarantee that the peer review is a completely anonymous (double-blind) process.

It is recommended to preferably use the Microsoft Office Word program for text and tables. The length of the manuscripts, except for review articles, should not exceed 20 double-spaced pages, that is, approximately 5,000 words.

The manuscript text of an original article should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions.

1.1. Figures and tables

Figures and tables must be numbered consecutively according to the order of appearance in the text. They must be presented on separate pages, in a format that can be corrected. Each one must have its corresponding figure caption or table caption, where what is observed or the abbreviations used are explained.

Photographs must be attached in separate files, preferably in digital TIFF (Tagged Image File Format). The ideal resolution is 300 dpi (dots per inch) for color images and 600 dpi for black and white images. It is recommended to indicate the detail of interest by means of an arrow or circle.

Videos accompanying the manuscripts are also accepted, which may be published on the portal of the Colombian Association of Surgery. Considering that the photographs and videos are an integral part of the medical history and that this is a private document subject to reservation, a copy of the informed consent signed by the patient must be attached where its publication is authorized (Resolution 1995 of 1999, Law 1581 of 2012 and Decree 1377 of 2013).

1.2. References

The bibliographic references must include articles by Colombian authors or, failing that, Latin American authors, for which databases such as Publindex de Colciencias can be consulted (https://scienti.minciencias.gov.co/publindex/#/noticias/list) for Colombian literature, LILACS (www.lilacs.bvsalud.org/es), SciELO de BIREME (www.scielo.org.co), RedAlyC (www.redalyc.org), or REDIB (www.redib.org) for Latin American and Caribbean literature.

Bibliographic references are listed according to the order of appearance in the text and with their number in parentheses. The way of citing the references must adhere to what is stipulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), as presented below:

1.2.1. Articles

·        Articles in Spanish must be cited in the following order: Authors (first last name followed by initials, separated by commas). Journal abbreviation. Year; volume: initial page-end page. For example: Ángel-González MS, Díaz-Quintero CA, Aristizábal-Arjona F, Turizo-Agámez Á, Molina-Céspedes I, Velásquez-Martínez MA, et al. Controversies in the management of late acute cholecystitis. Rev Colomb Cir. 2019; 34: 364-71. https://doi.org/10.30944/20117582.516

·        The abbreviations of the names of the journals must be cited as they appear in the Index Medicus; for publications that are not indexed in PubMed, the full name of the journal must be entered.

·        For articles that have it, the doi (Digital Object Identifier), international standard ISO 26324 to identify digital scientific articles, must be entered.

·        Articles in journals in English or in languages ​​other than Spanish must be cited in the same order, according to this example: Petrone P, Pérez-Jiménez A, Rodríguez-Perdomo M, Brathwaite CEM, Joseph DK. Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta (REBOA) in the management of trauma patients: A systematic literature review. Am Surg. 2019;85:654-662.

1.2.2. Book chapters

·       The book chapters or documents must have the following order when citing them: Authors (first last name followed by the initials of the name, separated by commas). Chapter title. In: book author, editors. Title of the book. Edition (where applicable). City of publication: publisher; year. initial page-end page. For example: Kurzer A, Agudelo G. Head and neck, facial and soft tissue trauma. In: Olarte F, Aristizábal H, Restrepo J, editores. Surgery. Medellín: University of Antioquia; 1983. p. 311-28.

1.2.3. Electronic pages

Documents on web pages must be cited in the following order: Authors (first last name followed by the initials of the name, separated by commas). Qualification. Consultation date: day, month, year. Available on: exact page where you open the document. For example: World Health Organization. Manual for the application of the WHO Surgery Safety Checklist 2009. Safe surgery saves lives. Consultation date: May 9, 2019.Available at: https://apps.who.int/

1.3. Cover letter

All works must be accompanied by a letter from the corresponding author including:

·        List of authors, specifying the participation of each one, in accordance with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), according to which authorship is based on four criteria: substantial contributions to the design; acquisition; analysis or interpretation of data; writing and critical review of intellectual content; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement of responsibility for all aspects of the work and its outcome. For this reason, the journal does not accept more than 10 authors per original article and 4 authors per presentation of a clinical case or image.

·        Declaration that the manuscript has been read and approved by all the co-authors. All those designated as authors must meet the four authorship criteria, and all those who meet all four criteria must be identified as authors. An author must be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for other specific parts of the work and must have confidence in the integrity of their co-authors' contributions. Those who do not meet the four criteria should be acknowledged in acknowledgments.

·        Certification that the manuscript corresponds to a study not previously published and that it is not presented to another journal before knowing the decision of the Editorial Committee of the Colombian Journal of Surgery.

·        To reproduce materials already published –such as illustrations, figures, tables, etc.—taken from this or other sources, partially or totally, the respective written permissions of whom holds the reproduction rights must be attached.

·        The name and number of the document, the postal and electronic address, and the telephone number of the author responsible for communication with the other authors, for review purposes.

1.4. Declaration of conflicts of interest

A form must be included with the signature of each of the authors, specifying, if any, the origin of the support received in the form of grants, equipment or drugs from commercial entities. The format can be found on the website of the Colombian Journal of Surgery (https://www.revistacirugia.org/index.php/cirugia/Dirementales).

To begin the article submission process, authors must register on the website of the Colombian Journal of Surgery (https://www.revistacirugia.org/index.php/cirugia/user/register) and create their username.

To facilitate compliance with the journal's requirements, a checklist is provided on the website and in the submission form for the preparation of submissions in order to avoid delays in the editorial process (https://www.revistacirugia.org/index.php/surgery/about/submissions).

Record the following information:

a. Manuscript language: manuscripts in Spanish and English are accepted.

b. Section: section of the journal in which the manuscript would be published. The Colombian Journal of Surgery publishes mainly original articles, as well as review articles.

Case reports are accepted as long as it is a rare disease, a novel or original procedure, or an atypical entity of interest to the scientific community.

In the 'Images in Surgery' section, short articles are accepted (not to exceed 250 words) with a maximum of 4 photographs of diagnostic images, surgical procedures, surgical pieces or histology are accepted that, due to their quality and importance, provide valuable knowledge related to surgical practice.

The Editorial Committee may consider for publication manuscripts sent as possible editorials on current issues or as a pertinent comment on articles of special relevance. Also, contributions to the letters to the editor section are accepted, in the form of short comments on some previously published work or on topics of current interest.

c. Comments for the editor: in this field a message to the Editors can be submitted.

d. Copyright statement: a letter must be attached specifying the transfer of reproduction rights to the Colombian Journal of Surgery, in case the manuscript is accepted for publication. The journal reserves the right to publish it in physical digital format or both.

e. Data handling: consenting to your data being collected and stored in accordance with the policy statement.

f. Submission files: attach all documents, manuscript, cover letter, conflict of interest declaration forms, first page of the manuscript and manuscript without mentioning authors or institution.

g. Article title: in Spanish and English; do not include names of institutions.

h. Short title: in Spanish and English, must have a maximum length of 50 characters.

i. Abstract: do not exceed 250 words, do not use abbreviations or include references. In original works, the abstract must be structured with the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results and Conclusions. The case presentations will have the following structure: Introduction, Clinical case, Results and Conclusions. An abstract in English must also be included. The Colombian Journal of Surgery reserves the right to modify the summary in Spanish prepared by the author.

j. Authorship and collaborators: the name of each of the authors must be recorded, with their academic level, institutional affiliation, country, email, position in the institution where the work was carried out (do not use abbreviations of the name of the institution) and code ORCID. A corresponding autor must be designated and to whom the correspondence should be addressed.

k. Keywords: minimum five per manuscript, in Spanish and English, which must conform to those that appear in the thesaurus of descriptor terminology in health sciences (DeCS) (http://decs.bvs.br) and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in English (http://nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html), which can also be consulted at http://www.bireme.br

l. References: register the list of the complete references of your manuscript.

m. Funding: record funding data, if any.

n. Confirm the submission and finish: the Journal will be automatically notified about its submission and a confirmation email will be sent to you for your records. When the editor has reviewed the submission, they will contact you.

The works submitted for evaluation by the Editorial Committee must be unpublished and submitted exclusively to the Colombian Journal of Surgery.

All collaboration will be sent confidentially to two external peer reviewers, who act as referees (double blind) to express their opinion on the quality of the work and make the pertinent observations or recommendations for its publication. In case of discrepancy, a third reviewer will be selected.