The Foot and Ankle Online Journal will accept manuscripts through email. Manuscripts are welcome and can be sent to the email listed at the bottom of this page.   Send all documents using Microsoft Word.   All photos should be sent separately.

Preparing for submission

Submitted manuscripts should follow the recommendations stated in Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals.  (The ICMJE) Please review these guidelines.

The corresponding author should reveal whether the submitted article – or very similar work – has been previously published, or is under consideration elsewhere.

General Information

Language

All articles should be written in English.  Please subject the manuscript to professional language editing before submitting the final version if you are not a native speaker.

Acknowledgements

All contributors should be acknowledged in the manuscript. Technical assistance, statistical analysis and other contributors to the work should also be acknowledged. Financial and material support should be stated in the manuscript. (see conflict of interest)

Conflict of interest and funding Authors are responsible for disclosing all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Please refer to the ICMJE statement on conflicts of interest.

Published Conflict of Interest Statement

Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (“Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals”) — February 2006

Published Informed Consent

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.

The requirement for informed consent should be included in the journal’s instructions for authors. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article.

- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (“Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals”) — February 2006

Submitting to Multiple Journals or resubmitting published works

Submitting an original manuscript to multiple journals at time of submission or after publication in this journal is considered unethical. Authors should download the Copyright Transfer Agreement when submitting original material. Once the article is published in the Foot and Ankle Online Journal, original articles may be cited and used to educate and redistribute information under the creative commons license by written consent from the primary author and publisher of this journal. For more information, go to the Committee on Publication Ethics or COPE website.

Manuscript Format and Information

Please see Guidelines and document format for electronic article submission to the FAOJ.

Abstracts

All submitted manuscripts must contain an abstract. The abstract is not a formal component of the manuscript, but serves to introduce and summarize the written work. It should be concise and include the main ‘points’ of the case report. The importance of the abstract should not be under estimated. It is the first few lines the audience will read and will serve to entice the reader to continue reading the case report or study. After the abstract, please give 5-10 key words; avoid using the same words as in the title.

Manuscript Introduction

The introduction of a case report should provide the reader with a general overview of the case or condition presented. Introductions vary from one journal to another. Some journals recommend a historical perspective of the case, disease or procedure that includes referenced material.

Other journals recommend a description of the case to be reported, and a statement about the uniqueness or unusual nature of the condition or treatment being described. Some simply recommend a one sentence description of the case.

Whatever method one chooses, there are a few questions the author should ask. Is the rationale for reporting this case adequately explained and is the rationale sustained by references? Has the condition or technique been described before? A good introduction will drive the point home: What is the single most important point in making this case? What am I trying to communicate with my audience? A common mistake in the introduction is to begin the discussion of the case before the entity or point of your case is made. The introduction is also used to introduce background information on a product, surgical entity, pathology or condition.

Figures, Tables and Graphs

We encourage pictures and illustrations that are original in format. There is no size contraint to your photos. We prefer photos over 1MB in size. Set your digital camera to 1MB minimum when photographing your case presentations. In fact, 1MB to 8MB pictures are encouraged for digital detail. Digital photos will be resized and formated during the editing process.

Do not resize your photos before editing or sending them by email. This will greatly decrease the quality of the photos. Do not embed the photos in the word document.

All photos must be sent in JPEG format with high resolution. If the figures/graphics/tables/images have been taken from sources not copyrighted by the author, it is the author’s sole responsibility to secure the rights from the copyright holder to reproduce the works for both worldwide print and web publication. All reproduction costs charged by the copyright holder will be the responsibility of the author and corresponding author(s).

When images are reproduced, a parenthesis should be added to the figure legend thus: (Reproduced with permission from . . .)

References

Should follow the standard biomedical format. In the manuscript, number the references consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in the MS Word text by a suprascript. The references should be listed at the end of the manuscript as regular text.

Reference Example:

Leurs R, Church MK, Taglialatela M. H1-antihistamines: inverse agonism, anti-inflammatory actions and cardiac effects. Clin Exp Allergy 2002 Apr;32(4):489-98.

Information from manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted should be cited in the text as ‘unpublished observation(s)’ or ‘personal communication’. For additional information and key of how to abbreviate medical journal names, please consult the List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus.

Primary Email

Secondary Email

Download Copyright Transfer Agreement (Please fill out and sign when submitting a manuscript)