Author Guidelines
INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS
The Russian Journal of Spine Surgery, scientific and practical journal, is a peer-reviewed periodical for clinicians, researchers, and health officials. The journal publishes original articles on basic and applied theoretical, clinical and experimental studies, practice notes, discussions, literature reviews, and information materials on topical issues of spine medicine. Russian Journal of Spine Surgery is included to the Scopus - international abstract and citation database, the RSCI - Russian scientific citation index on the Web of Science platform, and in the List of leading peer-reviewed scientific journals and editions in Russia, approved by Higher Attestation Commission for the publication of scientific results of dissertations for the degree of doctor and candidate of sciences.
Decision to publish a paper is made by the editorial board based on the opinions of independent expert reviewers, and on the paper’s conformity to standards of clinical and experimental research ethics and to manuscript submission guidelines. In controversial situations, the final decision on the publication of the paper is made by the editor-in-chief. The journal uses a double-blind peer review (the reviewer does not know who the author is, the author does not know who the reviewer is) as a basic method for peer review. In case the reviewers do not provide an expert opinion within 4 weeks, the article is sent to other reviewers. The period of 2 weeks is allotted for re-reviewing. Publication in the Russian Journal of Spine Surgery is free of charge. The editors reserve the right to edit the narrative style and design of the article. The texts of all papers submitted to the journal undergo a mandatory uniqueness check using the Antiplagiat system. If the originality of the text is less than 85 %, the manuscript will be rejected for the publication.
Conformity to the ethical standards
When submitting manuscript to the editor, an author should be guided the rules drawn up in compliance with the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals» (http://www.icmje.org/index.html), which are developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and COPE's Guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/about). Fulfillment and description of all clinical trials should fully comply with the CONSORT standards (http://www.consort-statement.org).
In describing research involving human subjects it is necessary to specify whether that research met standards of bioethics committee operating within the institution where the work was performed, which were developed in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki "Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects", as revised in 2000, and "Rules of clinical practice in the Russian Federation" approved by the Order of Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation of 19.06.2003, N 266. All persons involved in the investigation, must give informed consent to participate. Manuscripts describing animal experiments should specify that they were conducted in accordance with the "Rules of work with the use of experimental animals" (Annex to the USSR Ministry of Health Order from 12.08.1977, N 755). In both cases, it is necessary to specify whether the study protocol was approved by the ethics committee (to bring the name of the organization, its location, the protocol number and the date of the committee meeting). Guidelines for manuscript preparation and submission
General rules. The final electronic version of a manuscript should be sent to the editorial board by e-mail (spine.surgery@mail.ru). The paper should be accompanied by recommendation for publication on the corporate letterhead signed by the institution’ head including expert judgement testifying that the manuscript does not contain any information prohibited for publication and has not been published in other editions, and by a cover letter confirming the transfer of publication rights, with the signatures of all authors. Duplicates of all materials are kept by authors.
Format. A manuscript should be submitted in Word for Windows text editor, with margins no less than 2.5 cm, 1.5-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font. Pages are numbered with Arabic numerals in the bottom right corner, beginning with the title page. Charts are submitted in Microsoft Excel format. The total length of an original paper should not exceed 12 pages, of a review – 16 pages, and of a short report – 4 pages.
Title page should contain the paper title, first, patronymic, and last names of authors, indication of their higher rank and position, the full name of the institution(s) where the study was performed; and contact information (e-mail, phone); and personal international ORCID identifiers of all authors for publication in the journal. All the listed information should be submitted in English and in Russian.
Authorship. Information about authors is indicated in the sequence determined by their joint decision and confirmed by the signatures on the title page. In addition, the contribution of each author to the study should be indicated. Other persons whose contribution to the study is not sufficient to justify authorship (they cannot take responsibility for the content of the work, but rendered technical, financial, and intellectual assistance) should be noted (with their written consent) in the "Acknowledgements" after the paper text. The author's name should not be mentioned in the journal issue more than once.
Summary and Key Words A structured summary (in Russian and in English) of no more than 200 words should reflect the subject of the study (observation), objective, methods, key results, field of application, and conclusions. It is followed by 3-8 keywords (phrases).
Headings. Original paper usually has the following composition: introduction, methods (material and methods), results, discussion, and conclusion. Sections Results and Discussion in major papers may have subheadings. Structure of the text in Review and Case Report may vary. The introductory part of the article should include the type of publication and the level of evidence of the study.
Literature references should be checked against the originals and listed under the heading "References" in the order in which they are cited in the paper. References are cited in the text in square brackets: [1], [3-6], [8, 9]. The journal title should be abbreviated according to the style of Index Medicus/Medline/NLM. In the original papers, it is recommended to use literary sources published in the past 10 years. Under the new rules, taking into account the requirements of the international systems of citing such as Web of Science and Scopus, the list of references should be presented in Russian and English languages. Bibliographic description in Russian is performed on the basis of GOST R 7.0.5-2008 ("Bibliographic Reference. General Requirements and Rules"). English-language part of references must comply with the format, recommended by National Information Standards Organisation (NISO), adopted by National Library of Medicine (NLM) for data bases (Library’s MEDLINE/PubMed database) NLM (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine). Each reference must include names of all authors. Use of the DOI is encouraged.
Illustrations. Drawings, graphs, charts, and photographs should be consecutively numbered and marked by the first author’s last name and the first words of the paper title. They must be accompanied by legends appearing in a separate file. The first mention of each Figure is indicated in the text and in the left margin of the page. Illustrations should be distinct and suitable for reproduction, in a TIF or JPG format with a resolution 300 dpi. The total number of figures, including a, b, etc., is limited to eight. For all previously published illustrations, the original source should be referenced in figure legends, with submission of written permission from the author (owner).
Tables are numbered if their total number is more than one, and sequentially cited in the text (limited to five). Each column should have short heading, and gaps in the lines are denoted by dashes. If data from another published source are used in a table, the source is fully acknowledged. Tables should not duplicate data given in the text or figures.
Abbreviations. Internationally agreed rules for nomenclature and abbreviations should be followed (GOST 7.12-93 for Russian and GOST 7.11-78 for foreign European languages) avoiding new those without a good reason. Non-standardized abbreviations should be defined when first used in the text and remain unchanged throughout the text. All nonstandard abbreviations used in a table should be defined in a footnote to the table.
English language and transliteration Transliteration must follow the BGN/PCGN standard (United States Board on Geographic Names/Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use), recommended by international publisher Oxford University Press as the «British Standard». For transliteration of the text in accordance with the BGN standard author can use the link http://ru.translit.ru/?account=bgn. The English title of the paper must be orthographically correct and fully correspond to the meaning of Russian-language title. Surname, first name and middle name should be written as they appear on a passport or as used in previously published papers. First-time authors not having a passport should use the BGN/PCGN standard transliteration. Authors must specify the official English-language name of institutions. A complete list of the names of institutions and their official English versions can be found on at RUNEB eLibrary.ru website. The English-language version of the paper's summary should fully coincide with the Russian-language summary within its meaning and structure. To select the key words in English a thesaurus of the US National Library of Medicine - Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) should be used.
Procedure to review articles submitted to the editoral board of the peer-reviewed journal “Hirurgia Pozvonocnika” (Russian Journal of Spine Surgery)
Information for authors
Cover letter for submission of manuscript
Covering_letter
