Submission guidelines

Submit manuscript

Please read the guidelines in full before submitting your manuscript.
Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

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This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the author responsibilities section on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with our Editorial Policies and our Publication Ethics Policies.

Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions and peer review from a diverse range of authors and reviewers from across all countries and backgrounds. Read our diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge.

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal. Open access options are available – see below.

Please read the guidelines below then submit your manuscript here.

Access: Subscription
Accepts preprints? Yes
Identity transparency: Double anonymized

Please note that beginning in 2025, this journal will be online-only and will no longer offer print copies.

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.

Figures submitted in color will be published in color in the online version of the journal at no cost. 

Optional open access publishing is available for a fee via the Sage Choice program, and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Open Access agreement eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation matching an agreement at acceptance. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access.

For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.

Open access fees do not cover color charges and are charged separately.

Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.

The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.

Article types

Welcome article types include:

  • Original Article
  • Review Article
  • Letter to the Editor / Perspectives
  • Case Report
  • Special Issues
  • Invited CME Article
  • Invited Discussion
  • Images in Plastic Surgery
  • Editorial
  • State of the Art

Clinical trial registration

The journal conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first participant enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

Reporting guidelines

Your manuscript must follow the relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines, depending on the type of study. The EQUATOR wizard can help identify the appropriate guideline. You will need to upload the appropriate checklist with your submission.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.

Formatting your manuscript

Accepted file types

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. You do not need to follow a template, but please ensure your heading levels are clear, and the sections clearly defined.

Your article title, keywords, and abstract all contribute to its position in search engine results, directly affecting the number of people who see your work. For details of what you can do to influence this, visit How to help readers find your article online.

Title

Your manuscript’s title should be concise, descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reflect the precise contents of the manuscript. A descriptive title that includes the topic of the manuscript makes an article more findable in the major indexing services.

Abstract

Please include an abstract between the title and main body of your manuscript that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions. A structured abstract of up to 250 words is required for Original, Review and Special Issue Articles. The abstract should contain four sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion. Case Reports and Images in Plastic Surgery require an informative summary of up to 150 words. State of the Art and CME Articles require Learning Objectives in lieu of Abstract. Letters to the Editor / Perspectives, Invited Discussions, and Editorials do not require an abstract.
If your research includes clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract. Submissions that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.

This journal includes translated abstracts.

Keywords

Please include a minimum of 4-8 keywords, listed after the abstract. Keywords should be as specific as possible to the research topic.

Artwork, figures, and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please read Sage’s artwork guidelines.

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online at no cost.

Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Title page

To ensure fair and anonymous peer review, your manuscript must be fully anonymized. Please ensure any identifying information is removed from the main manuscript document and included on the Title Page instead. Do not include any author names in the manuscript file name and remove names from headers and footers. This version of the manuscript will be sent to the peer reviewers. The Title Page will not be sent to peer reviewers. See the Sage Journal Author Gateway for detailed guidance on making an anonymous submission.

The Title Page should include:

  • Article title
  • The full list of authors including names and affiliations of each
    • The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript – please indicate this on the title page.
    • All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission (please see the authorship section for more information).
  • Contact information for the corresponding author: name, institutional address, phone, email
  • Acknowledgments section
  • Declaration of conflicting interest
  • Funding statement
  • Ethical approval and informed consent statements
  • Data availability statement
  • Any other identifying information related to the authors and/or their institutions, funders, approval committees, etc, that might compromise anonymity.
Acknowledgments

If you are including an Acknowledgements section, this will be published at the end of your article. The Acknowledgments section should include all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship. Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your manuscript.

Writing assistance and third party submissions: if you have received any writing or editing assistance from a third-party, for example a specialist communications company, this must be clearly stated in the Acknowledgements section and in the covering letter. Please see the Sage Author Gateway for what information to include in your Acknowledgements section. If your submission is being made on your behalf by someone who is not listed as an author, for example the third-party who provided writing/editing assistance, you must state this in the Acknowledgements and also in your covering letter. Please note that the journal editor reserves the right to not consider submissions made by a third party rather than by the author/s themselves.

Author contributions

You will be asked to list the contribution of each author as part of the submission process. Please include the Author Contributions heading within your submission after the Acknowledgements section. The information you give on submission will then show under the Author Contributions heading later at the proofing stage.

Statements and declarations

To ensure proper anonymization, please include a section with the heading ‘Statements and Declarations’ on your title page, after the Acknowledgements section [and Author Contributions section if applicable] including each of the sub-headings listed below. If a declaration is not applicable to your submission, you must still include the heading and state ‘Not applicable’ underneath. Please note that you may be asked to justify why a declaration was not applicable to your submission by the Editorial Office. This information will be added to the end of your published paper.

Ethical considerations

Please include your ethics approval statements under this heading, even if you have already included ethics approval information in your methods section. If ethical approval was not required, you need to explicitly state this. You can find information on what to say in your ethical statements as well as example statements on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

All papers reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must state that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board approved the study, or waived the requirement for approval, providing the full name and institution of the review committee in addition to the approval number. If applicable, please also include this information in the Methods section of your manuscript.

Please include any participant consent information under this heading and state whether informed consent to participate was written or verbal. If the requirement for informed consent to participate has been waived by the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (i.e. where it has been deemed that consent would be impossible or impracticable to obtain), please state this. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section. More information and example statements can be found on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.

Submissions containing any data from an individual person (including individual details, images or videos) must include a statement confirming that informed consent for publication was provided by the participant(s) or a legally authorized representative. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. Please do not submit the participant’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent to publish but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file in addition to the statement confirming that consent to publish was obtained within the manuscript text. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The journal requires a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors so that a statement can be included in your article. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, see our policy on conflicting interest declarations and the ICMJE recommendations.

If no conflict exists, your statement should read: ‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.

Funding statement

All articles need to include a funding statement, under a separate heading, even if you did not receive funding. You’ll find guidance and examples on our Funding page.

Required Statements on Title Page

All papers reporting animal and human studies must include whether approval was obtained from the local Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee and an Ethics Committee reference number.

For studies with human subjects, please include the following sentence: All 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 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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.

For studies requiring informed consent, please include the following statement: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

If any identifying information about patients is included in the article, the following sentence should also be included: Additional informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for whom identifying information is included in this article.

For studies with animals, please include the following sentence: All institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

For articles that do not contain studies with human or animal subjects, authors must include the following sentence, so that readers are aware that there are no ethical issues with human or animal subjects: This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects.

Data availability

The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

  • Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
  • Include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.
  • Cite this data in your research

Reference style and citations

The journal follows the AMA Manual of Style. View the AMA Manual of Style to ensure your manuscript conforms.

Every in-text citation must have a corresponding citation in the reference list and vice versa. Corresponding citations must have identical spelling and year.

Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.

Supplemental material

This Journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Author Services. Visit Sage Author Services for further information.

As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Preprints

The journal will consider submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Please enter the preprint DOI in the designated field when submitting your manuscript. We advise that you inform the Journal Editorial office about your posted preprint at submission.

Note that you should not post an updated version of your manuscript on a preprint server while it is being peer reviewed.

Learn more about our preprint policy.

Submission site

Submit your manuscript online via Sage Track.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.

Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

Authorship

Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

Files

PS follows the 11th Edition of the AMA Manual of Style and also recommends that authors follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Title Page

The Title page should be uploaded as a separate document, and it should include:

  • Full title of the paper (punctuation is discouraged, but colons are acceptable)
  • Names of all authors
  • Names and locations of the institutions where the work was conducted, with the authors' initials in parentheses after the appropriate institution; for example: Tokyo University (SH, TK)
  • Address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address of the corresponding author
  • Acknowledgements (if applicable)
  • Statement on any previous study related presentations and publications, including published abstracts
  • All required ethical statements (as noted above):
    • Original Articles require:
      • IRB approval statement
      • Informed consent statement, and
      • Helsinki statement
    • Case Reports require:
      • Informed consent statement
  • Study registration number, if applicable (for example: ClinicalTrials.gov, PROSPERO, etc.)
  • Declaration of Conflicting Interests
  • Funding Acknowledgements
  • A Description of Individual Author Contributions

Main Document

The main document should include the Title, Abstract, Keywords, Main text (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion), References, and Table and Figure Legends. It is recommended that the text is typed in one of the standard fonts, size 12 and double spaced.

The main manuscript text, excluding the abstract and references, should conform to the following word count and tables and figure limits:

  • Original Article: 3000 words, 16 figures +/- tables
  • Review Article: 3000 words, 16 figures +/- tables
  • Letter to the Editor / Perspectives: 500 words, 4 figures +/- tables
  • Case Report: 1000 words, 8 figures +/- tables
  • Special Issues / Special Topics: 3000 words, 16 figures +/- tables
  • Invited CME Article: 3000 words, 16 figures +/- tables
  • Invited Discussion: 500 words, 4 figures +/- tables
  • Images in Plastic Surgery: 500 words, 4 figures +/- tables
  • Editorials: 1000 words, 4 figures +/- tables
  • State of the Art: 2000 words, 12 figures +/- tables

The main document should be anonymized. Author names and institutions should be removed from the main document. (For example, institution names can be replaced with descriptive text (specifically a hospital name can be replaced with “a regional hospital” or “a tertiary care centre” where applicable) and authors citing their own work should use third person to allow for anonymized review.

Abstract

A structured abstract of up to 250 words is required for Original, Review and Special Issue Articles. The abstract should contain four sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion. 

Case Reports and Images in Plastic Surgery require an informative summary of up to 150 words.

State of the Art and CME Articles require Learning Objectives in lieu of Abstract.

Letters to the Editor / Perspectives, Invited Discussions, and Editorials do not require an abstract.

Keywords

Identify 4-8 key words and place them after the abstract in alphabetic order. Use terms from the medical subject headings (MeSH) list of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. If suitable MeSH terms are not yet available, current terms may be used.

Tables

Should be submitted as separate Word or Excel files, not as part of the main document (manuscript text file). Tables must be editable and cannot be embedded images in a Word document. Each table is identified in the order that the tables are cited in the text (Table 1, Table 2, etc.).

Figures

Figure numbering: Figures are numbered (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.) in the order cited in the text. Figures containing multiple panels (for example 1a, 1b, 1c, etc.) should be assembled and uploaded as a single figure file.

Image file format: Images should be TIF or JPEG files with a minimum of 300 pixels per inch and at 90 or 180 mm wide (i.e., one column width or two column widths).

Any images of persons where persons are recognizable require permission.

References

References follow AMA 11th Edition style and should be numbered in order of appearance of in-text citations. In text citations should be numbered consecutively using superscript numbers. The list of references should appear on a new page at the end of the manuscript. The references are to be listed numerically in the order that they appear within the text of the paper.

Supplemental Materials

Supplemental material is published electronically on the journal website and is readily accessed from the journal’s table of contents online by a hyperlink. In general, supplemental materials may include information that is of value but is not critical for readers to understand the main outcomes of the study, and may also include results that enhance or extend the findings, such as video, tables, figures, or appendices. Please keep in mind that supplemental material is not copyedited or typeset by Sage Publishing. It is uploaded exactly as it is submitted, and authors do not review proofs of supplemental material.

Please label all supplemental files with “Supplemental” somewhere in the file name.

Visual Abstracts

A graphical abstract is meant to be a clear, quick, and concise pictorial representation of research that has been published in the journal. It is meant to support the written abstract that accompanies original articles and review articles submitted for review to the journal. Authors are strongly encouraged to include a visual abstract in their submission. The visual abstracts of accepted papers may be used for promotion on social media. All figures published in the journal, including graphical abstracts, should be of the highest quality and should highlight paper findings.

  • The graphic should be labelled as “graphical abstract” or similar, so that it is clear the file is not an article figure file (e.g. it should not be labelled “Fig1”, “Fig2” etc.)
  • The aspect ratio for the graphic should be 16:9 (the recommended size ratio would be 600px X 338px)
  • Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
  • The figure file type should be the same as for other article figures. Graphical abstracts, as with all figures in the journal, are only accepted in the following formats: JPG, TIF, or EPS. The journals do not accept Word or PowerPoint figure files.
  • A caption should be provided with the graphic. The caption should read: “This is a graphical representation of the abstract.”
  • Do not use images subject to copyright clearance for graphical abstracts. If at all, graphical abstracts should feature aspects of the original figures created for the paper it is supporting.
  • The final visual abstract image should be sent with accepted article.
  • Simplicity is the key to conveying information visually. Terms and abbreviations should match overall journal usage and style.

Other information required for submission

  • ORCID ID of the submitting author.
    • It is strongly encouraged that all co-authors ensure their ORCID IDs are linked to their accounts in the submission system prior to article acceptance, as this is the only way to have their ORCID ID present on the published article. ORCID IDs cannot be added to manuscripts after acceptance/publication. Please note that each co-author must log in to the submission system to add their own ORCID ID to their account. To add an ORCID ID, edit your account, click the link when prompted, and sign into your ORCID account to validate your ID. You will then be redirected back to the submission system and your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata.
    • Please create an ORCID ID if you do not already have one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
  • Complete list of authors, with their institutional affiliations.
    • The author information you enter at submission must exactly match what is included on your manuscript and/or title page, including full names, academic affiliations, and corresponding author contact details.
    • The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript.
    • All listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship (above).
    • All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission.
    • All authors must have given consent for the manuscript to be submitted in its current form.
  • Keywords: During submission, you may be asked to select or enter keywords for your manuscript. These keywords are used to match appropriate reviewers to your manuscript.
  • The number of figures, tables, and words in your manuscript.
  • Funder information: Name, grant/award number.
  • You may be required to enter your declaration of conflicting interest as part of the submission process, in addition to listing it on your manuscript and/or title page. Please have it on hand.
  • If you have posted your manuscript to a preprint server, you will be asked to supply the DOI (this does not prohibit submission, but no changes should be made to the preprint version while your manuscript is under evaluation in this journal). Please see our guidelines on prior publication. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your manuscript is accepted, you must include a link in your preprint to the final version of your published article.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency: Double-anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: None

Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.

After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.

The journal adheres to a rigorous double-anonymized reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. Two independent reviews are required for a manuscript to reach a Revise or Accept decision.

To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.

All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision on all manuscripts, including those appearing in a special issue or special collection. The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

As a COPE member we engage with multiple forms of post-publication discussion in line with wider guidance from Sage: Commentaries, Critiques and Responses.

You can view our complaints and appeals policy here.

Read Sage's complete peer review policy.

Plagiarism

The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.

All submitted articles are evaluated with duplication-checking software to calculate a similarity index. Submitted articles containing unacceptable percentage of text identical to existing published work, will be rejected, unless for a legitimate reason.

Contributor’s Publishing Agreement

Before publication, we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Journal Author Gateway.

Preprints

If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.

Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.

Publication

OnlineFirst publication: This enables us to publish final articles online immediately, without waiting for assignment to a future issue of the Journal. This usually significantly reduces publication lead time. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite OnlineFirst articles.

Access to your published article: We provide you with online access to your published article. The online access link is provided to the corresponding author for sharing with their co-authors.

Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.

The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.

You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.

Contact us

You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office:

Marija Bucevska
marija.bucevska@ubc.ca