Information to authors
All manuscript should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, as reported at http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf.
Journal Language
Manuscripts should be written in English. Contributors who are not native English speakers are strongly advised to ensure that a colleague fluent in the English language or a professional language editor has reviewed their manuscript. Concise English without jargon should be used. Repetitive use of long sentences and passive voice should be avoided. It is strongly recommended that the text be run through computer spelling and grammar programs. Either British or American spelling is acceptable but must be consistent throughout.
Publication Frequency
The Current Thoracic Surgery is published three times annually.
Exclusive Publication Statement
Authors should certify that neither the manuscript nor its main contents have already been published or submitted for publication in another journal. This includes symposia, transactions, books, articles published by invitation, posting in electronic format and preliminary publications of any kind except an abstract of 400 words or fewer.
Peer Review Process
Manuscripts may be rejected without peer review by the editor-in-chief if they do not comply with the instructions to authors or if they are beyond the scope of the journal. Two or more reviewers (including international peer reviewers) are assigned for each article and acceptance is based on significance, originality, and validity of the presented material. Due to the Current Thoracic Surgery journal’s double-blinded review principles, the names of the authors and reviewers are not known to the other. If the article is accepted for publication, editorial revisions may be made to aid clarity and understanding without altering the meaning. After a manuscript has been accepted for publication, i.e. after referee-recommended revisions are complete, the author will not be permitted to make changes that constitute departures from the manuscript that was accepted by the editor. Before publication, the galley proofs are always sent to the authors for corrections. Mistakes or omissions that occur due to some negligence on our part during final printing will be rectified in an errata section in a later issue. This does not include those errors left uncorrected by the author in the galley proof.
The editorial and peer review process can be summarized in 15 successive steps:
1. 1st review of the manuscript by the Editor-in-Chief [reject or further evaluation]
2. 1st review of the manuscript by Editors
3. 1st plagiarism check
4. 1st review by two or more external reviewers
5. 1st review by Statistical Editor
6. Revisions (if needed)
7. 2nd evaluation by Editors
8. Plagiarism re-check
9. 2nd review by the Editor-in-Chief [reject or revision]
10. Copy editing
11. Galley proof preparation
12. Galley proof sent to the authors for corrections
13. Assignment of DOI number
14. Final review by Editors and the Editor-in-Chief
15. On-line publication
Open Access Policy
The Current Thoracic Surgery journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supporting a greater global exchange of knowledge.
By “open access” to (peer-reviewed research literature), we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users (readers, libraries, institutions and organisations) to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.
Current Thoracic Surgery publishes all articles under the open access model, defined under Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda open access declarations. The full content of the articles is freely available for anyone without any charges are other restrictions.
All content of Current Thoracic Surgery is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction, free of charge, in any medium, no matter copyright is transferred fully to the publisher.
Open Access is a true un-restricted exchange of ideas and science.
Open access publishing benefits you in both your roles as an author and as a reader. The advantages of open access are:
- All published articles are freely available to all readers, in any part of the world. Free availability of your work published under open access means more citations for your articles and increased impact of your work.
- Authors also benefit from work of other researchers published under open access. They are free to download and read their work and this provides you with the latest, peer-reviewed research information without charges.
- Everyone in the academic community has immediate and free access to the results of your research.
- The articles published under open access are fully citable.
Useful Links:
Further reading for extensive discussion of different kind of open access see, https://dash.harvard .edu/bitstream/handle/1/4322580/suber_oagratis.html?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Copyright Transfer Form
The copyright transfer form, which can be found at web site must be signed by the corresponding author on behalf of all authors and must accompany all papers submitted. Please see the form for additional copyright details. After a manuscript has been submitted, it is not possible for authors to be added or removed or for the order of authors to be changed. If authors do so, their submission will be canceled. The authors confirm that they have complied the scientific, ethical standards and responsibilities, in doubt editors would have no responsibility.
Ethics (Investigations on Human and Humane animal care)
Authors are responsible for all (ethical, scientific, legal, etc.) content of their published material.
Approval by the local institutional human research committee according to Helsinki Declaration is obligatory for experimental, clinical and drug researches. Informed consents from participants should be obtained and these two points should clearly be declared in the ‘’Materials and Methods’’ section. Also include an affirmation that informed consent was obtained from each participant. Include the date and number of approval by the local institutional human research committee and the ethical guidelines that were followed by the investigators.
All papers reporting animal experiments should include a statement in ‘’Materials and Methods’’ section giving assurance that all animals have received humane care in compliance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and indicating for the approval by the institutional ethical review board. If necessary, a copy of the form could be required by the editor. Similarly include the date and number of approval by the local institutional animal research committee and the ethical guidelines that were followed by the investigators.
Informed consent
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.
Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.
Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
The Current Thoracic Surgery is electronic peer reviewed international journal committed to upholding the possible highest standards of publication ethics. In order to provide our readers with a journal of highest quality we state the following principles of Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement. All articles not in accordance with these standards, will be removed from the publication if malpractice is discovered at any time even after the publication. The Current Thoracic Surgery is checking all papers in a double-blind peer review process. We also check for plagiats and research fabrication (making up research data); falsification (manipulation of existing research data, tables, or images) and improper use of humans or animals in research. In accordance with the code of conduct we will report any cases of suspected plagiarism or duplicate publishing. The Current Thoracic Surgery reserves the right to use plagiarism detecting software to screen submitted papers at all times.
Authors must ensure that they have written original works. In addition they must ensure that the manuscript has not been issued elsewhere. Any work or words of other authors, contributors, or sources should be appropriately credited and referenced. Authors are also responsible for language editing before submitting the article. Authors submitting their works to the journal for publication as original articles confirm that the submitted works represent their authors’ contributions and have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or in part from other works without clearly citing. Any work or words of other authors, contributors, or sources (including online sites) should be appropriately credited and referenced. All authors should disclose financial or other conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript (financial support for the project should be disclosed). When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. An author agrees to the license agreement before submitting the article. All articles must be submitted using online submission procedure. Submitting a paper simultaneously to more than one publication at a time is a breach of publications ethics. Before publication of an accepted manuscript, each author will be required to certify that he or she has participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for a meaningful share of the content of the manuscript, and that this participation included:
Conception or design of the experiment(s), or collection and analysis or interpretation of data; Drafting the manuscript or revising its intellectual content; and Approval of the final version of the manuscript to be published.
Editors must ensure a fair double-blind peer-review of the submitted articles for publication. They will strive to prevent any potential conflict of interests between the author and editorial and review personnel. Editors will also ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential before publishing. Editor-in-Chief will coordinate the work of the editors.
Reviewers evaluate manuscripts based on content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, citizenship, religious belief or political philosophy of the authors. They must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential and must report to the Editor-in-Chief if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side. They must evaluate the submitted works objectively as well as present clearly their opinions on the works in a clear way in the review form. A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor-in-Chief and excuse himself from the review process.
Plagiarism Statement
The use of someone else’s ideas or words in their original form or slightly changed without a proper citation is considered plagiarism and will not be tolerated. Even if a citation is given, if quotation marks are not placed around words taken directly from another author’s work, the author is still guilty of plagiarism. Reuse of the author’s own previously published words, with or without a citation, is regarded as self -plagiarism. All manuscripts received are submitted to iThenticate®, a plagiarism checking system, which compares the content of the manuscript with a vast database of web pages and academic publications. Manuscripts judged to be plagiarized or self-plagiarized, based on the iThenticate® report or any other source of information, will not be considered for publication.
During the peer review process, articles with a similarity rate of more than 20% will be returned to the author with a request that they address the issues through appropriate citation, use of quote marks to identify direct quotes, or re-writing. If the similarity between the manuscripts is too extensive for revision, it may be rejected. Text similarity due to the usage of common terminologies and method related details in ‘Methodology’ part of a manuscript should not raise a serious ethical concern.
Conflict of Interest Statement
Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.
So authors should declare that there is no conflict of interest and also, if there is any, the status for their financial support should be clear in the cover letter and within article.
Decleration of sponsorship
The authors should describe the role of the study's sponsors in the following areas: a. designing the study, b. collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data, c. writing the report.
Corrections, Retractions and Expression of Concern
It is presumed that manuscripts report on work based on honest observations. However occasionally information becomes available with may contradict this. In such situations CTS apply Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines on corrections, retractions and expressions of concern.
Corrections
Errors in published papers may be identified requiring publication of a correction in the form of a corrigendum or erratum. Because articles can be read and cited as soon as they are published, any changes thereafter could potentially impact those who read and cited the earlier version. CTS provides authors with an opportunity to review article proofs prior to publication with the express goal of ensuring accuracy of the content. Publishing an erratum or corrigendum increases the likelihood readers will find out about the change and also explains the specifics of the change.
Corrigenda and Errata will be published on a numbered page and will contain the original article's citation. Cases where these corrections are insufficient to address an error will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by the Editor in Chief. Inadequacies arising from the normal course of new scientific research are not within the scope of this and will require no correction or withdrawal.
Article retraction
Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this best practice is adopted for article retraction by CTS:
A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor will be published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list. In the electronic version, a link will be made to the original article. The online article will preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself. The original article will be retained unchanged save for a watermark on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
Article removal
In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others’ legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk. In these circumstances, while the metadata (Title and Authors) will be retained, the text will be replaced with a screen indicating the article has been removed for legal reasons.
Article replacement
In cases where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In these circumstances the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document.
Expressions of concern
Where substantial doubt arises as to the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article it is the Editor in Chief's responsibility to ensure that the matter is adequately addressed, usually by the authors' sponsoring institution. It is not normally the Editor in Chief's responsibility to carry out the investigation or make a determination. The Editor in Chief should be promptly informed of the decision of the sponsoring institution and a retraction printed should it be determined that a fraudulent paper was published. Alternatively, the Editor in Chief may choose to publish an expression of concern over aspects of the conduct or integrity of the work.
Withdrawal
Articles may be withdrawn by corresponding author before accepting for publication. If it is accepted, it could be used only for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be “Withdrawn” from CTS. Articles which have been published under an issue could not be withdrawn.
Responding to Allegations of Possible Misconduct (Explicit Policy)
All allegations of misconduct will be referred to the Editor-In-Chief, who will review the circumstances in consultation with the deputy editors. Initial fact-finding will usually include a request to all the involved parties to state their case, and explain the circumstances, in writing. In questions of research misconduct centring on methods or technical issues, the Editor-In-Chief may confidentially consult experts who are blinded to the identity of the individuals, or if the allegation is against an editor, an outside editor expert. The Editor-In-Chief and deputy editors will arrive at a conclusion as to whether there is enough evidence to lead a reasonable person to believe there is a possibility of misconduct. Their goal is not to determine if actual misconduct occurred, or the precise details of that misconduct.
When allegations concern authors, the peer review and publication process for the manuscript in question will be halted while the process above is carried out. The investigation described above will be completed even if the authors withdraw their paper, and the responses below will still be considered. In the case of allegations against reviewers or editors, they will be replaced in the review process while the matter is investigated. For further information visit “Useful links”.
Data Sharing Policy
Current Thoracic Surgery requires authors to submit a data-sharing statement form and register a data-sharing plan when registering a clinical trial. The ICMJE’s data sharing statement policy asks authors to submit a data-sharing statement for randomized clinical trials. The ICMJE’s policy regarding trial registration is explained at (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf).
Accordingly, the data sharing statements must indicate the following:
- whether individual deidentified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared,
- what data in particular will be shared,
- whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.),
- when the data will become available and for how long,
- by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism).
Authors must provide a data-sharing statement at submission to indicate whether data will be shared according to the statements written above.
Please visit http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf that provides illustrative examples of data sharing statements that would meet these requirements.
Authors of secondary analyses using shared data must attest that their use was in accordance with the terms (if any) agreed to upon their receipt. They must also reference the source of the data using its unique, persistent identifier to provide appropriate credit to those who generated it and allow searching for the studies it has supported. Authors of secondary analyses must explain completely how theirs differ from previous analyses. In addition, those who generate and then share clinical trial data sets deserve substantial credit for their efforts. Those using data collected by others should seek collaboration with those who collected the data. As collaboration will not always be possible, practical, or desired, the efforts of those who generated the data must be recognized.
Statistical Knowledge
The statistical method used should be reported in a way that a reader whoever could reach the original data could understand the results. The terms used, abbreviations, symbols, the pc programme used and the statistical method should all be defined.
When reporting the results, especially when giving means and percentages, two digits should be given after the comma (112.20 or 112.21 instead of 112.2). P, t, Z values are exceptional and three digits should be given after the comma (p=0,001, instead of p<0,05).
Briefly, except whole numbers, two digits after the comma should be given, but for statistical values like p,t,z,F,Chi-square, three digits after the comma should be given. When presenting p values, the exact p value together with the test statistics should be given, except for the case when this value is smaller than one percent or one per thousand (this time p<0.01 or p<0.001, respectively should be given).
Preparation of Manuscript
Cover Letter
The Current Thoracic Surgery requires authors to disclose in the “cover letter” any commercial association (eg, employment, direct payments, stock holdings, retainers, consultantship, patent licensing arrangements, or honoraria) that might pose a conflict of interest issue concerning the manuscript. All funding sources supporting the work should be acknowledged in a footnote. Also authors should mention that none of the material in the manuscript has been published previously, and that none of this material is currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. This includes symposia, transactions, books, articles published by invitation, and preliminary publications of any kind except an abstract of 400 words or fewer.
Style and Format
Manuscripts should be double-spaced with 3-cm margins on all sides of the page, in Times New Roman font. Every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc., should be numbered. All copies of the manuscript should also have line numbers starting with 1 on each consecutive page.
Symbols, Units and Abbreviations
In general, the journal follows the conventions of Scientific Style and Format, The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, Council of Science Editors, Reston, VA, USA (7th ed.). If symbols such as ×, μ, η, or ν are used, they should be added using the Symbols menu of Word. Degree symbols (°) must be used from the Symbol menu, not superscripted letter o or number 0. Multiplication symbols must be used (×), not the letter x. Spaces must be inserted between numbers and units (e.g., 3 kg) and between numbers and mathematical symbols (+, –, ×, =, <, >), but not between numbers and percent symbols (e.g., 45%). Please use SI units. All abbreviations and acronyms should be defined at first mention. Latin terms such as et al., in vitro, or in situ should not be italicized.
Manuscript Content
Research articles should be divided into the following sections. Principal sections should be Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References sections. Please see below for information about other types of manuscripts.
Title and Contact Information
The first page should contain the full title in sentence case, the full names (last names fully capitalized) and affiliations (in English) of all authors (University, Faculty, Department, City, Country), and the contact address and e-mail for the clearly identified corresponding author.
Abstract
An informative abstract of not more than 250 words must accompany each manuscript. The abstract must be structured to include the study’s background, materials and methods, results, and conclusions and key words under 5 separate headings. Abstracts of review articles should be a brief overview of the main points from the review.
Keywords
Please provide at least 3 key words or phrases to enable retrieval and indexing. Acronyms should be avoided.
Always try to use terms from the Medical Subjects Headings (MeSH) list from PubMed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov /pubmed.
Introduction
This should argue the case for your study, outlining only essential background, and should not include the findings or the conclusions. It should not be a review of the subject area, but should finish with a clear statement of the question being addressed.
Materials and Methods
Explain clearly but concisely your clinical, technical, or experimental procedures. Previously published papers related to the methods should be cited with appropriate references. Brand names and company locations should be supplied for all mentioned equipment, instruments, chemicals, etc.
Results
Findings must be described without comment. The same data or information given in a Table must not be repeated in a Figure and vice versa. It is not acceptable to repeat extensively the numbers from Tables in the text or to give lengthy explanations of Tables or Figures.
Discussion
Statements from the Introduction and Results sections should not be repeated here. The final paragraph should highlight the main conclusions of the study. Names of funding organizations should be written in full.
References
In the text, references should be identified using numbers in square brackets in which they appear consecutively. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Ageneral guide limit the number of references to 25 for original articles, to 6 for case reports and to 85 for reviews. For articles with 1 to 6 authors, list all authors. For articles more than 6 authors, list the first 6 authors followed by “et al.”. Do not use individual sets of parentheses for citation numbers that appear together, e.g., [2,3,5-9], not [2],[3],[5]–[9]. For other styles of publication or Internet articles, see www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html References should be formatted as follows (please note the punctuation and capitalization)
Journal titles should be abbreviated according to ISI Web of Science abbreviations. Authors are solely responsible for the accuracy and completeness of references.
Articles in Journals
Özpolat B, Gürpınar ÖA, Ayva EŞ, Gazyağcı S, Miyaz M. The effect of Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor and adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stem cells on wound healing, epithelization and angiogenesis in a tracheal resection and end to end anastomosis rat model. Turk Gogus Kalp Dama 2013; 21: 1010-9.
For other styles of publication or Internet articles, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html
Tables and Figures
All illustrations (photographs, drawings, graphs, etc.), not including tables, must be labeled “Figure.” Figures must be submitted both in the manuscript and as separate files.
All tables and figures must have a caption and/or legend and be numbered (e.g., Table 1, Figure 2), unless there is only one table or figure, in which case it should be labeled “Table” or “Figure” with no numbering. Captions must be written in sentence case (e.g., Macroscopic appearance of the samples.). The font used in the figures should be Times New Roman. If symbols such as ×, μ, η, or ν are used, they should be added using the Symbols menu of Word.
All tables and figures must be numbered consecutively as they are referred to in the text. Please refer to tables and figures with capitalization and unabbreviated (e.g., “As shown in Figure 2…”, and not “Fig. 2” or “figure 2”). The tables and figures themselves should be given at the end of the text only, after the references, not in the running text.
The resolution of images should not be less than 118 pixels/cm when width is set to 16 cm. Images must be scanned at 1200 dpi resolution and submitted in jpeg or tiff format. Graphs and diagrams must be drawn with a line weight between 0.5 and 1 point.
Graphs and diagrams with a line weight of less than 0.5 point or more than 1 point are not accepted. Scanned or photocopied graphs and diagrams are not accepted.
Charts must be prepared in 2 dimensions unless required by the data used. Charts unnecessarily prepared in 3 dimensions are not accepted.
Figures that are charts, diagrams, or drawings must be submitted in a modifiable format, i.e. our graphics personnel should be able to modify them. Therefore, if the program with which the figure is drawn has a “save as” option, it must be saved as *.ai or *.pdf. If the “save as” option does not include these extensions, the figure must be copied and pasted into a blank Microsoft Word document as an editable object. It must not be pasted as an image file (tiff, jpeg, or eps) unless it is a photograph.
Tables and figures, including caption, title, column heads, and footnotes, must not exceed 16×20 cm and should be no smaller than 8 cm in width. For all tables, please use Word’s “Create Table” feature, with no tabbed text or tables created with spaces and drawn lines. Please do not duplicate information that is already presented in the figures.
Tables must be clearly typed, each on a separate sheet, and double-spaced. Tables may be continued on another sheet if necessary, but the dimensions stated above still apply.
Berkant Özpolat, MD.
Professor of Thoracic Surgery
Editor-in-Chief, Current Thoracic Surgery
Phone: +90 (538) 302 59 49
e-mail: cts@tgcd.org.tr
http : www.cts.tgcd.org.tr