Author Guidelines
Manuscript Submission
The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery (IJMRCAS) operates an online submission and peer review system that allows authors to submit articles online and track their process via a web interface. Manuscripts may be submitted online at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijmrcas.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
IJMRCAS aims to foster inclusive research that reflects the disciplinary, human, and geographic diversity of scientists, clinicians and other health professionals working in this area. Submissions are welcomed from authors of all ethnicities, races, colours, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, gender identities, national origins, disabilities, ages, or other individual status.
Data Protection
By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices.wiley.com/statements/data-protection-policy.html
Preprint Policy
IJMRCS will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.
Data Sharing and Data Availability
This journal expects data sharing. Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.
Data Citation
Please review Wiley’s Data Citation policy.
Copyright
If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.
For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement
If the Open Access option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:
CTA Terms and Conditions.
For authors choosing Open Access
If the Open Access option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):
Creative Commons Attribution License OAA.
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA.
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA.
To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services and visit our Copyright & License Policies page.
If you select the Open Access option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit our Funder Policies page.
Conflicts of Interest
Authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that could be viewed as presenting a potential conflict of interest. State all relevant financial (such as patent or stock ownership, consultancies, speaker's fees), personal, political, intellectual or religious interests. A conflict of interest should not prevent someone from being listed as an author if they qualify for authorship. To prevent ambiguity, all authors must state explicitly whether potential conflicts do or do not exist. This information will be included together with the published article. Authors must include the statement in the manuscript on a conflicts of interest notification page, providing additional detail, if necessary, in a cover letter accompanying the manuscript. Funding Financial and material support should be acknowledged under the headline ‘Funding’ together with the conflict of interest statement. Grant bodies and major financial contributors are to be listed. If no specific funding was obtained, this should also be stated. This information will be included together with the published article.
Authorship
The first named author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have read and approved the contents of the manuscript, and this should be confirmed in the covering letter. IJMRCAS accepts the criteria for authorship proposed in the COPE guidelines on good publication practice (www.publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines). If a paper has more than six authors the inclusion of each name must be justified. Results of multicentre studies may be reported under the name of the organizing group. Methods of recognizing contributors have been proposed ( Lancet 1995; 345: 668). Those with a peripheral association with the work should simply be acknowledged ( BJS 2000; 87: 1284-6). Acknowledgements Contributors who have made a valuable contribution but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section at the end of the manuscript. This may include a specified patient group, associations and voluntary bodies, but linguistic revision, general patient populations, regular staff members or databases are in general not included, except by editorial permission.
Author Name Changes
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.
Correction to authorship
In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, the journal will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. (Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”)
Ethics
Written consent must be obtained from the patient, legal guardian or executor for publication of any detail or photograph that might identify an individual. Evidence of such consent must be submitted. Human investigation and animal experiments must have local ethics committee approval. IJMRCAS will not publish an article if appropriate ethical standards have not been met.
Peer-review process
Upon submission to our online submission system, a paper is assigned to either the Technical Editor or the Clinical Editor (whomever is best qualified to handle that paper). The manuscript is checked by the Editor for completeness of submission, adequate match to our remit, and fitness for review. An adequate number of reviewer invitations are sent out to ensure that all manuscripts are reviewed by two reviewers. The final decision rests with the assigned Editor (Technical Editor or Clinical Editor), based on the reviewer’s comments. The Editor-in-Chief is consulted if a further opinion is needed. A manuscript may be returned to the authors without outside review if the assigned Editor finds it inappropriate for publication in the Journal. Authors may provide the Editor with the names, addresses and email addresses of up to three suitably qualified individuals of international standing who would be competent to referee the work, although the Editor will not be bound by any such nomination. Likewise, authors may advise of any individual who for any reason, such as potential conflict of interest, might be inappropriate to act as a referee, again without binding the Editor.
Preparation of manuscripts
IJMRCAS subscribes to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) policy of uniform requirements for manuscripts. Authors are advised to consult the ‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals’. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their work, including all statistical calculations and drug doses. When quoting specific materials, equipment and proprietary drugs the name and address of the manufacturer must be given in parentheses. Generic names should normally be used.
Articles must be written in correct scientific English suitable for publication. Although articles are subject to review and editing, the journal does not hold itself responsible for all statements made by contributors.
Preferred file formats
Preferred file formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are .docx, .doc, rtf, latex. Figures should be .tiff or .eps.
Manuscript Types
The categories of article accepted for publication are original articles and reviews, both of which are submitted to peer review. An article is considered for publication on the assumption that its contents have not been submitted simultaneously to another journal, have not been accepted for publication elsewhere and have not already been published.
Abstracts
These must contain fewer than 150 words and should summarize the purpose, scope, methods, results and conclusions of the paper in a structured format, comprised of Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions sections.
Original articles
Should be divided into sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion.
Reviews
Priority will be given to work that addresses a topic of current interest. Further advice on suitability is available from the Editorial Office: breaur@mcmaster.ca
Title page
On the title page give: (1) the title of the article; (2) the name and initials of each author; (3) the department and institution to which the work should be attributed; (4) the name, postal and e-mail addresses, telephone and facsimile numbers of the author responsible for correspondence and to whom requests for reprints should be addressed; (5) sources of financial support; (6) the category in which the manuscript is being submitted (original article, review, etc.); and (7) word count and numbers of figures and tables.
Figures
Submit each figure as separate source files (in .tiff or .eps format), not included in the Word file. Provide a separate figure legend at the end of the document. Figure legends are to be numbered consecutively as follows: Fig. 1., Fig. 2., etc., and should follow the sequence of reference in the text. Supply artwork at the intended size for printing. Line drawings are acceptable as clear black on white graphics and must be high quality. Use hatchings, not tints. All figures must be supplied at the correct resolution:
Black and white and colour photos – 300dpi.
Graphs, drawings, etc – 800dpi preferred; 600dpi minimum.
Combinations of photos and drawings (black and white and colour)– 500dpi.
Figures in colour will be printed at no cost to the author. A black and white alternative may be requested for figures where colour is not essential. Before submitting your files online please ensure that you have named the individual files appropriately, taking care to include the number of any figure in the filename.
Tables
Provide each table on a separate page with a brief title at the end of the document (in .docx, .doc or .rtf format).
Supporting Information
The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery Online gives authors the opportunity to include data that would be inappropriate or impractical to include in the printed version. These data may substantially enhance the importance of the research and may also be of benefit to readers. Authors are encouraged to include data such as videos, 3-D structures/images and any other supporting data too large for print publication. All supporting information must be submitted with the original manuscript via ScholarOne Manuscripts. Supporting information guidelines including acceptable file formats and sizes are available here.
Abbreviations
Avoid using abbreviations. Terms that are mentioned frequently may be abbreviated but only if this does not impair comprehension. Abbreviations must be used consistently and must be defined on first use.
Numbers and units
Provide absolute numbers always; percentages may be given in addition but never on their own. Use the decimal point, not a comma, for example 5.7. Use a space and not a comma after thousands and multiples thereof, for example 10 000. Use SI units (International System of Units) except for the measurement of blood pressure (mmHg).
Mathematics, algorithms and programs
Only include essential details in the paper and focus on explaining concepts. Detailed explanations, extensive equations, or programming details should be submitted as supplementary information, as separate files, and will be hosted on the journal website.
References
References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in parentheses. References should be in accordance with AMA style. Examples of this style are included below, however authors are strongly advised to consult the above sites for the full specification. Authors are strongly encouraged to keep the number of references below 40, and reference to abstracts and personal communications is discouraged.
Sample References
Journal:
Format:
Author(s). ArticleTitle. Abbreviated JournalTitle. Publication year;volume(issue No.):pages.
Example:
Duric N, Littrup P, Babkin A, et al. Development of ultrasound tomography for breast imaging: technical assessment. Med Phys. 2005;32(5):1375–1386.
Book:
Format:
Author(s). BookTitle. Edition number (if it is the second edition or above). City, State (or Country) of publisher: Publisher Name; copyright year.
Example:
Kak AC, Slaney M. Principles of Computerized Tomographic Imaging. New York, NY: IEEE Press;1988.
Edited Book:
Hansen C, Schasse A, Hüttebräuker N,et al. 9C‐2 reconstruction of speed of sound for a correction of transit time in full angle spatial compounding. In Ultrasonics Symposium, Yuhas MP (ed), New York, NY: IEEE, 28–31 2007; 785–788.
Proceedings:
Abowd GD, Dey AK, Brown PJ, Davies N, Smith M, Steggles P. Towards a better understanding of context and context-awareness. In Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing, ser. HUC ’99. Springer-Verlag: London, UK; 1999; p. 304–7.
ELocators
This journal now uses eLocators. eLocators are unique identifies for an article that service the same function page numbers have traditionally served in the print world. When citing this article, please insert the eLocator in place of the page number. For more information, please visit the Author Services eLocator page here.
Further Information
Proofs will be sent to the author for checking. This stage is to be used only to correct errors that may have been introduced during the production process. Prompt return of the corrected proofs, preferably within two days of receipt, will minimise the risk of the paper being held over to a later issue. Free access to the final PDF offprint or your article will be available via Author Services. Please therefore sign up for Author Services if you would like to access your article PDF offprint and enjoy the many other benefits the service offers.
Accepted Articles
The journal offers Wiley’s Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. This service ensures that accepted ‘in press’ manuscripts are published online very soon after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting. Accepted Articles are published online a few days after final acceptance, appear in PDF format only, are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked, and are indexed by PubMed. After publication of the final version article (the article of record), the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.
Accepted Articles will be indexed by PubMed; submitting authors should therefore carefully check the names and affiliations of all authors provided in the cover page of the manuscript so it is correct for indexing. Subsequently the final copyedited and proofed articles will appear in an issue on Wiley Online Library; the link to the article in PubMed will automatically be updated.
Transferable Review: Health Science Report
This journal works together with Wiley’s Open Access Journal, Health Science Reports to enable rapid publication of good quality research that is unable to be accepted for publication by our journal. Authors may be offered the option of having the paper, along with any related peer reviews, automatically transferred for consideration by the Editor of Health Science Reports. Authors will not need to reformat or rewrite their manuscript at this stage, and publication decisions will be made a short time after the transfer takes place. The Editor of Health Science Reports will accept submissions that report well-conducted research that reaches the standard acceptable for publication. Health Science Reports is a Wiley Open Access journal which is indexed on PubMed/MEDLINE and Scopus. For more information please go to www.healthsciencereports.org. We look forward to your submission.
Data Protection and Privacy
By submitting a manuscript to, or reviewing for, this publication, your name, email address, institutional affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices.wiley.com/statements/data-protection-policy.html.
