About the Journal | British Journal Of Surgical Science

British Journal Of Surgical Science BJOSS

General:

BJOSS is a peer review journal, publishing high-quality articles in General Surgery, Upper and Lower GI surgery, Minimal access surgery, endoscopy, and interventional radiology.

Aim and scope:

BJOSS is an open-access journal providing a free access platform for high-quality research. It publishes original research, reviews, meta-analyses, prospective and retrospective studies, and case reports.
The open-access nature of our journal is providing a wide readership across the globe.
The main aim of the journal is to support and disseminate scientific research and help authors whether they are junior or senior academics in publishing their work. The ultimate goal is to create an easy-access platform for basic and clinical surgical research.
BJOSS will concentrate on research that focuses on minimal access/laparoscopic/endoscopic techniques no matter what type of abdominal surgery is.
The journal will accept short video submissions to support a surgical technique demonstration or purely as case reports.
The journal is free for submission [NO article processing charge APC] and access.
The journal is supported by an experienced editorial board and academics to assess the submissions, provide constructive feedback to the authors, and guide the journal in its mission.

Publication ethics:

The publication of the scientific research process is complex and based on several pillars.

The ultimate goal of each party is the production of pure, sound, correct, and meaningful facts.

It acts as a stone in the science pyramid and should be a legible and correct piece of work.

The fundamental role of authors, editors, and publishers will be reflected in each published work.

BJOSS declares that any submission will be treated fairly without any influence of age, sex, location, ethnicity, name, cultural, social, or religious beliefs, country, sexual orientation, financial ability, institution, university rank, or any other factors.

All manuscripts are assessed merely on their intellectual scholarly quality. The editor will decide on each article and will be guided by the journal policy and the editorial/reviewers’ comments.

Editorial process

BJOSS have an editor and an editorial board.
- The editorial board is listed on the website.
- The names and affiliations of all editors and board members are included.
- If the journal is run by Mr Hussain, the founder and the editor-in-chief.
All articles are passed through a quality control system (peer review) before publication.
- The anonymous[blind] review process is applied to all articles, and details of the peer review process are stated on the website.
- The corresponding author is informed of the confirmation of submission.
- The submitted article is initially assessed by an editorial board member to check suitability for the journal and all required documents are submitted.
- If the article is eligible for publication, a blind peer review process will start by asking at least 3 reviewers to assess the submissions. While the period of the peer review process would be variable according to the time frame of each reviewer, the journal is aiming to reach a decision and reply to the correspondence author within 2-4 weeks of submission.
- The decision by reviewers can be one of the following: accepting the paper in its current form, accepting after minor revision, accepting after major revision is required, or rejecting. The reviewers will be asked again to assess the paper after minor or major revision decisions.
- The correspondence author is informed of the peer review decision accordingly.

Authorship criteria:

BJOSS is adopting icmje 4 criteria for authorship[www.icmje.org]:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship will not be listed as authors, but they will be acknowledged.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology: BJOSS is adopting icmje criteria for the use of AI :

At submission, the journal should require authors to disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology should describe, in both the cover letter and the submitted work, how they used it. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are required for authorship (see Section II.A.1). Therefore, humans are responsible for any submitted material that included the use of AI-assisted technologies.

Plagiarism :

The journal policy is zero tolerance for plagiarism. All articles are checked for plagiarism before publishing. The author's institution will be contacted in line of the plagiarism investigation.

Peer review process:
Each submission will undergo a blind /anonymous peer review process, in the definite time frame, at least three reviewers will be asked to assess the submission. These reviewers are experts in the field /subject of the submitted study. The reviewers will be asked to disclose any potential conflict of interest before the assessment of the submission.
Reviewers are expected to put their objective assessment. Personal critics of the authors are condemned and it's outside the BJOSS policy. Reviewers are asked to provide objective, clear comments backed with evidence from the study or a reference in debatable issues.
Reviewers should avoid any bias or influence of any work and cite them as authors of one or more of the references/supportive studies.

Confidentiality:
All submissions are treated as confidential documents. All communications related to the submissions are treated with the utmost confidentiality.
The authors will receive anonymous feedback/critics/ comments related to their study. No reviewers’ names /emails will be disclosed to the authors and no author's details will be disclosed to the reviewers.

Conflict of interest:
The editor should declare COI in cases of submissions by relatives, colleagues, and studies from the editor's institution. The editor should not decide on the paper he wrote himself or co-authored.
These submissions will be decided by associate /deputy editors.

Published studies:
The editor makes sure that the published work meets the accepted and agreed standards. Any work that raises the alarm of misconduct/falsifying data/plagiarism will be identified and investigated and an appropriate decision will be taken in line with internationally accepted rules/guidance/policies.

Research Data:
BJOSS may ask authors to provide the raw data. Authors will confirm the originality of the submission, refer to supportive studies and acknowledge the sources of data/information/supportive materials that are used in the study. Any form or conduct of plagiarism will not be tolerated and appropriate action will be taken. Authors should not submit the same work to two or more journals other than BJOSS.
Authorship should only be granted by significant contribution to the work by the theory, research conduct, data collection, drafting of the study, critical review and tables, figures, diagrams formatting /production, data analysis /statistical analysis, collaboration in multicentre studies and. Usually, a combination of these roles will justify the authorship. In general, it should be fulfilling the requirements set by ICMJE[http://www.icmje.org/].

Errors after publication:
It is the responsibility of the authors to inform the editor if they discover errors in the study. If the editor or third party raises concerns/discovers errors in data /calculation/statistics, etc, the authors should practice full cooperation with the editor to sort out the issue, maybe by publishing the erratum or paper retraction depending on the scales.

Animal research:
The guidance /policies of the following resources should be followed in any animal study:

Patients consent:
All involved patients should be consented before any study unless it is decided by the ethics committee that consent is not needed. This applies to certain types of studies. Patient consent is mandatory in all case reports and the editor may ask for evidence after submission. Retrospective studies and audit studies should be submitted with an appropriate ethical/audit leader agreement.

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes .
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Citation and indexing:

The journal is part of PKP platform and the contents are archived in PKP PN.

The journal is archived in LOCKSS,CLOCKSS,CROSSREF sytems.

The journal is aiming for inclusion in major indexing platforms such as Scopus and PubMed.

Deposition of submitted articles:

The journal is permitting authors to deposit their works in any scientific and educational platform without embargo. The journal allows all article types to be deposited:

Submitted version
Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript)
Published version (Version of Record)

Copyright terms:

The initial copyright of a paper is held by the authors (or their employer, in some instances). When publishing that paper the copyright may continue to be held by the author or can be licensed or transferred to the publisher.

BJOSS confirm allowing authors to retain the copyright of their papers without restrictions. Authors will then grant the publisher the right of first publication, and other non-exclusive publishing rights.

Repository terms:

BJOSS is allowing authors to deposit versions of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice. All following types of articles are allowed to be deposited by authors in respective institutional platforms, or authors' choice sites.

Submitted version
Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript)
Published version (Version of Record)

ORCID ID:

BJOSS allows for ORCID iDs to be present in article metadata