Surgical Infections Case Reports

Aims & Scope 

Surgical Infections Case Reports, a companion journal to Surgical Infections, is an Open Access online-only forum for the publication of high-quality, interesting single-case clinical observations.  Surgical Infections Case Reports provides rapid peer review and publication with wide dissemination of interesting cases from society members and from the surgical and infectious disease community around the globe.

BASIC MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS**

• Length: 1,500 words, maximum 4 figures, maximum 10 references
• Structure and sections:  Title; brief abstract; clinical history; physical exam; diagnosis; intervention; follow-up; outcomes; author disclosure

**For full, detailed instructions on submission, please see below.

Open Access and Copyright
All articles published in Surgical Infections Case Reports are made freely and permanently accessible online upon publication without access or subscription charges, embargo periods, or user registration. 

Authors of material published in the online journal will be the copyright holders, and a Creative Commons CC BY license will be applied. Authors will agree to copyright and open access licensing upon submission of their manuscript to Surgical Infections Case Reports. For more information, please read the full Creative Commons CC BY license. 

For authors who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, Liebert Open Access can accommodate non-standard copyright. Please contact openaccess@liebertpub.com. 

Article Publication Charges (APC)

Surgical Infections Case Reports is a fully Open Access journal. The cost of maintaining and publishing this online journal are covered by Article Processing Charges (APCs). Visit the publication’s Open Access Policy page for more information about the journal’s APCs (www.liebertpub.com/CRSI). There are no color fees or page charges for this publication.

Permissions and Reprints
Surgical Infections Case Reports publishes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this online journal without requesting prior permission from the Publisher or the author.

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., offers a reprint service for those who require professionally produced copies of a CC-BY licensed-article. Contact: reprints@liebertpub.com to obtain a quote. Please include the article DOI, title, number of reprint copies, and delivery destination.

Archiving and Preservation 
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., deposits and archives all publications in Portico for long-term digital preservation.  Surgical Infections Case Reports is fully NIH-, HHMI-, and Wellcome Trust-compliant.  Your article will be free online and will be easily searchable on Google, Google Scholar, and other search engines.

Editorial Contact
Donald E. Fry, MD
Adjunct Professor of Surgery
Northwestern University Feinberg
School of Medicine
Chicago, Illinois

Executive Vice-President
MPA Healthcare Solutions
Chicago, Illinois
dfry@consultmpa.com

Submitting to the Journal

Manuscripts should be submitted with the understanding that they have neither been published, nor are under consideration for publication elsewhere, except in the form of an abstract. Prior abstract publications should be described in the form of a footnote to the title.

All manuscripts must be submitted online via https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/crsi

Authorship

It is incumbent upon the submitting author to ensure the accuracy and inclusion of all contributing authors’ names and affiliations upon original submission of the paper.

All authors listed in the text file of a manuscript MUST be included at the time of submission.  Omission of any authors’ names could result in erroneous publication. Once a paper is accepted for publication, changes in authorship – including the page proof stage – are NOT permitted. Changes in authorship after publication are strictly prohibited.

Corresponding Authorship

It is the Journal’s policy that a manuscript has only ONE corresponding author listed on a paper.  This designation should be determined at the time of submission.  Changes to corresponding authorship are not permitted after acceptance or in page proofs.

Review Process
Case Reports are reviewed by the Editors within 14-21 days of submission.  The final decision to accept or reject a case report is made by the Editors.

Presentation 
Manuscripts submitted to Surgical Infections Case Reports will not be rejected solely on the basis of errors in sentence construction, syntax, and grammar. Surgical Infections Case Reports strives to communicate meritorious cases from all countries, and reviews will not be compromised due to deficiencies in presentations. However, manuscripts which require substantial editing may, at the editors’ discretion, be un-submitted and referred to an editorial service for a fee (subsidized by the authors). Please contact Editing@liebertpub.com for more details.  It is important to note that use of this or any other editing service does not guarantee acceptance.

Ethical Considerations in the Conduct and Reporting of Research: Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research*

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

*This portion of Instructions for Authors has been quoted directly from the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals website. For more information, visit ICMJE's website.

Preparation of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be should be prepared in Microsoft Word and double-spaced.

Please follow these guidelines for submitting figures:  

• Do NOT embed art files into the main text of your manuscript
• Do NOT prepare figures in  Word or a PDF document
• Name figure files using only alphanumeric characters.  Do not use symbols, underscores, spaces, dots, or dashes. 
• File names should be formatted with first author’s last name and the figure number. (Ex:  SmithFig1)
• File names must be in English, using only alphanumeric characters (no symbols).
• Line illustrations should be submitted at 900 dpi or higher
• Halftones and color should be submitted at a minimum of 300 dpi
• Save as either TIFF or EPS files.
• Black and White art must be submitted as grayscale
• Excel files cannot be uploaded. It is best to avoid submitted PowerPoint files.  For directions on converting a Power Point slide to an acceptable format go to: www.liebertpub.com/MEDIA/pdf/ppconvert.pdf

Color Reproduction
Surgical Infections Case Reports does not currently impose a charge for color illustrations.

Title Page
The title page should contain: A) *the complete title of the paper; B) the full name, full mailing address, full contact information (telephone, fax, and e-mail address), and affiliations of each author. C) a brief running title consisting of no more than 45 characters (including spaces); D) the designation of the corresponding author, along with  complete contact information including address and valid e-mail address. The full names, institutional addresses, and email addresses for all authors must be included on the title page.

Keywords: Include four to ten keywords representing the content of the paper.

Footnotes and abbreviations: List information such as prior conference presentation of the submitted material and a list of non-standard abbreviations (standard abbreviations need not be listed).

Abstract: The abstract must not exceed 350 words. Please do not use proprietary names, trademarks, abbreviations, or references in the abstract. The abstract should be organized into three sections: Background: why the case is important or needs to be reported; Case presentation**: brief details of the case including patient’s age, sex, and ethnic background; [Conclusion: summarized conclusion of what the reader should learn from the case report and how to will add to our knowledge of treatment of surgical infections.

**For papers containing more than one case, provide background and conclusions for each case; Case 1, Case 2, etc.

Introduction and background: This section should briefly introduce the background of the case and a review of the case for non-specialist readers. If the case discusses drug interaction or new technology then details of common use or reported side effects should be noted along with a brief review of the literature. End this section with cogent statement of what is being reported in the paper.

Presentation of Case: This should present all pertinent details concerning the case(s) including a description of the patient's relevant demographic information; pertinent medical history; symptoms; any tests that were produced and a description of any treatment or intervention. For case series, details for all patients must be included. Patient names or identifying features should not be included.

Discussion and Literature Review (optional): This is an optional section for additional information not included in the case presentation. This section should also include a brief literature review to compare and evaluate the patient case for accuracy and uniqueness.

Conclusion: This section should state the conclusion of the case report and offer a cogent explanation to its importance and relevance. If novel, information should be included on how it will significantly advance knowledge of the treatment of surgical infections.

Acknowledgments: State funding sources and other assistance that were necessary for the conduct of the study.

Author Disclosure Statement:  Immediately following the Acknowledgments section, include a section entitled “Author Disclosure Statement.” In this portion of the paper, authors must disclose any commercial associations that might create a conflict of interest in connection with submitted manuscripts. This statement should include appropriate information for EACH author, thereby representing that competing financial interests of all authors have been appropriately disclosed according to the policy of the Journal. It is important that all conflicts of interest, whether they are actual or potential, be disclosed. Please see the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals at http://www.icmje.org/index.html#conflicts for further guidance.  If no conflicts exist, the authors must state “No competing financial interests exist."

References: Should be cited in the text and listed numerically at the end of the paper in the order of citation, as detailed in instructions below.  Be sure to include current references from the literature.

Figures: Please do not include patient names or any identifying features.

Figure legends: These must be double-spaced in a separate file. For radiographic images, please describe the findings, add arrows, and use high quality original work. Avoid using poor quality intraoperative photo as they are often uninterpretable.

Tables: Number these consecutively throughout the text. Tables should be prepared in a separate file, and should not be included as part of the main text document. Include footnotes to define any abbreviations used in the table.

IMPORTANT:

Please upload individual files of all manuscript material — do NOT upload a single PDF file containing all text, figure, and table files of your paper. Once all individual files are uploaded on to Manuscript Central, the system will automatically create a single PDF proof for the peer-review process.

References (PLEASE FOLLOW CAREFULLY)

References may be made to published work and papers in press. Reference citations are not permitted in the abstract. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of all literature citations. Work in progress, in preparation, unpublished work, and personal communications should be cited as footnotes to the text. References should be listed numerically in the text in the order of appearance as superscripted consecutive numbers, e.g., ^1,2. Where there are more than two references within text, the citation should appear as hyphenated numbers, e.g., ^1–3. The reference section should be typed double-spaced in numerical order of citation, with the first three authors listed, followed by et al. Abbreviations of journals titles should conform to those used in Medline. The following formats must be used:

Journal articles:

Dave OH, Patel KA, Andersen CR, et al.  Surgical procedures needed to eradicate infection in knee septic arthritis.  Orthopedics 2015;1-5. DOI: 10.3928/01477447-20151222-05.

Chapter in a Book:

Mazuski JE.  Intra-abdominal infections.  In:  Surgical Infections. London: JP Medical Publishers. 2013, pp 75–88.

Books:
Fry DE:  Surgical Infections. London: JP Medical Publishers; 2013.

If it is necessary to cite an abstract, this should be so designated. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references and are reminded that inaccurate references are highly frustrating to the reader, the cited author, and indexing services. Abbreviations of journal titles should follow Medline. 

Unpublished Material

When a reference is unpublished data, a manuscript in preparation, or a manuscript submitted but not in press, it should be included in parentheses in the body of the text, and not cited in the reference list. Personal communications should also be listed parenthetically in text, and should contain the first initial and last name of the contact, as well as the month and year of the communication. Published manuscripts, and those that have been accepted and are pending publication, should be cited in the reference list.

Page Proofs

Page proofs will be sent to the (one) corresponding author as designated when the manuscript was submitted.  It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to share the page proofs with co-authors and to coordinate all authors’ corrections into one proof.  The Publisher will not accept corrections from multiple authors.

Changes in authorship in page proofs are NOT permitted.

Ownership
Surgical Infections Case Reports is owned and published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 140 Huguenot Street, New Rochelle, NY 10801-5215. Telephone: (914) 740–2100; Fax: (914) 740–2101; Website: www.liebertpub.com; Email: info@liebertpub.com