Plastic Surgery
Plastic Surgery is made possible with the generous financial support of Allergan to the Plastic Surgery Journal Corporation. This support is independent of, and does not influence, editorial decisions, journal policies or peer review.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The aim of the journal is to be a respected international publication while serving as the major venue for Canadian Plastic Surgery, Hand Surgery, Microsurgery, and Aesthetic Surgery within Canada. It will consider for publication original reports of clinical and basic research relevant to plastic surgery, as well as editorials, review articles, case reports, and plastic surgery licensing examination sample questions and answers. Manuscripts on health systems, ethics, medical history, and political and financial issues affecting practice, as well as letters to the editor are also welcomed. The journal is pleased to publish article abstracts in both English and French. Manuscripts are received with the understanding that they are submitted solely to the Plastic Surgery, and that none of the material contained in the manuscript has been previously published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere, with the exception of abstracts.
| Jugpal S. Arneja, MD, MBA | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| Mirko S. Gilardino, MD, MSc | McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada |
| Marija Bucevska, MD | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| Sheina A. Macadam, MD, MSc | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| Douglas C. Ross, MD, MEd | University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada |
| Peter C. Neligan, MB, BCh | University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA |
| Robert Cartotto, MD | University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Christopher R. Forrest, MD, MSc | University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Nicholas J. Carr, MD | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| Achilles Thoma, MD, MSc | McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada |
| Michael Bezuhly, MD, MSC | Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada |
| Edward W. Buchel, MD | University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada |
| Peter E. Wyshynski, MD | University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Kirsty U. Boyd, MD | University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada |
| Mitchell H. Brown, MD, MEd | University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Paul S. Cederna, MD | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA |
| Christopher Doherty, MD, MPH | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| Jeffrey Fialkov, MD, MSc | University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Arun K. Gosain, MD | Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA |
| Subhas Gupta, MD, CM, PhD | Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, USA |
| Siba Haykal, MD, PhD | University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| JP Hong, MD, PhD, MBA | Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea |
| Kathryn V. Isaac, MD, MPH | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| William M. Kuzon Jr., MD, PhD | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA |
| Donald H. Lalonde, MD, MSc | Dalhousie University, St. John, NB, Canada |
| Peter A. Lennox, MD | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| Susan E. Mackinnon, MD | Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA |
| Colleen M McCarthy, MD | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA |
| Steven F. Morris, MD | Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada |
| Michael W. Neumeister, MD | Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, IL, USA |
| Andreas Nikolis, MD, PhD | McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada |
| Anthony J. Penington | Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia |
| Paolo Persichetti, MD, PhD | University of Rome, Rome, Italy |
| Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS | Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA |
| Roman J. Skoracki, MD | The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA |
| Ron Somogyi, MD, MSc | University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Michael Stein, MD, MAS | Columbia University, New York, NY, USA |
| Claire F. Temple-Oberle, MD, MSc | University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada |
| Edward E. Tredget, MD, MSc | University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada |
| Raymond W. Tse, MD | University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA |
| Sophocles H. Voineskos, MD | McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada |
| Joshua Vorstenboch, MD, PhD | McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada |
| Jan Jeroen Vranckx, MD, PhD | KU Leuven University, Leuven, Belgium |
Please read the guidelines below then visit Plastic Surgery (PS)’s submission site at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/psg to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.
Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions from a diverse range of authors from across all countries and backgrounds.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of PS will be reviewed.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that PS may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
This 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).
PS is a hybrid journal. Articles will be published under the subscription model by default, and there are no fees payable to submit or publish under this format. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below. Authors can choose to publish their article Open Access for a fee if desired. Please see Open access and author archiving for more information if you choose to publish Open Access through the Sage Choice program.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.3.1 Third party submissions
2.3.2 Writing assistance
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
2.7 Clinical trials
2.8 Reporting guidelines
2.9 Research data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.1.1 Plagiarism
3.1.2 Prior publication
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript for submission
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Visual Abstracts
4.4 Supplemental material
4.5 Reference style
4.6 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 OnlineFirst publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
7.1 Appealing the publication decision
Before submitting your manuscript to PS, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
1.2 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
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
PS is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper. PS adheres to a rigorous double-anonymized reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties.
All manuscripts are reviewed initally by the Editors and only those papers that meet the scientific and editorial standards of the journal, and fit within the aims and scope of the journal, will be sent for outside review. Each of these manuscripts is reviewed by at least two referees.
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.
Furthermore, PS has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for PS can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once all contributing authors give consent. This consent is the responsibility of the corresponding author. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship. A description of each author’s contribution should be provided in the submission.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.
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
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- 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.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
2.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
PS requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of PS to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that: “The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.” For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.
2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number, on the title page of your submission.
For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.
Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’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 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.
Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants.
All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The Journal has adopted the ARRIVE guidelines.
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.
PS conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient 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.
The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplemental file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplemental file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline. If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.
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, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
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 Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
PS and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. 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. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence 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 Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
PS offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme 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. 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.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
PS follows the 10th 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). The preferred format for your manuscript is Word.
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 per section 2.6 above):
- Original Articles require:
-
- IRB approval statement
- Informed consent statement, and
- Helsinki statement
-
- Case Reports require:
-
- Informed consent statement
-
- Original Articles require:
- Study registration number, if applicable (for example: ClinicalTrials.gov, PROSPERO, etc.)
- Declaration of Conflicting Interests (as per section 2.5 above)
- Funding Acknowledgements (as per section 2.4 above)
- 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:
|
Article Type |
Word Count |
Figures +/- Tables |
|
Original Article |
3000 |
16 |
|
Review Article |
3000 |
16 |
|
Letter to the Editor / Perspectives |
500 |
4 |
|
Case Report |
1000 |
8 |
|
Special Issues /Special Topics |
3000 |
16 |
|
Invited CME Article |
3000 |
16 |
|
Invited Discussion |
500 |
4 |
|
Images in plastic surgery |
500 |
4 |
|
Editorials |
1000 |
4 |
|
State of the Art |
2000 |
12 |
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 10th 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 does not appear in the print version of the journal, but 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.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For specifically requested color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
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.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
PS adheres to the AMA Manual of Style. View the guide here to ensure your manuscript conforms to this style.
4.6 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 Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
PS is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/psg to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system 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.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript 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 manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also 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 Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
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 corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. 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.
OnlineFirst allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite OnlineFirst articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the editorial office as follows:
Bin Wang
Brunel University, UK
Bin.Wang@brunel.ac.uk
7.1 Appealing the publication decision
Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.
If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com.