For Authors

Submission Categories

Surgical Video / Video Articles

IJCI welcomes video-based scholarly submissions demonstrating clinically relevant surgical and procedural techniques. Appropriate submissions may include novel operative approaches, surgical technique modifications, robotic and minimally invasive procedures, reconstructive techniques, complication management, procedural innovation, and educational demonstrations with clear clinical value.

Video submissions should provide sufficient clinical and technical context to permit scientific evaluation. Patient confidentiality must be protected, and appropriate consent for publication must be obtained whenever applicable.

• Large video files are never uploaded to the journal: authors provide a secure access link to a file-sharing service, retained for the Editorial Office throughout assessment and peer review
• MP4 preferred (MOV accepted), H.264 encoding, 1080p and 16:9 preferred, with a recommended duration of approximately 5–15 minutes
• A concise accompanying manuscript is required, with a representative thumbnail image and, ideally, a transcript or narration script

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts should be written in clear English. Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) is preferred for the main manuscript; PDF is accepted for initial submission. Use double spacing with continuous line and page numbering.

• Enter all author names, institutional or professional affiliations, affiliation countries, corresponding-author details, and ORCID identifiers when available in the submission system
• Submit an anonymized main manuscript for externally peer-reviewed content; remove author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, institutional identifiers, and other unnecessary clues to authorship
• Structured abstract for original research and clinical studies (Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions), with three to six keywords
• Main text organized as Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion, with limitations stated explicitly
• Declarations: funding, conflicts of interest, ethics approval, consent, data availability, trial registration where applicable, and any material use of generative AI

Reporting Guidelines & Clinical Trial Registration

Authors should follow the reporting guideline appropriate to the study design and provide the relevant checklist or flow diagram when applicable. Common standards include CONSORT and SPIRIT, PRISMA and PRISMA-P, STROBE, STARD, TRIPOD, CARE, SQUIRE, ARRIVE, CHEERS, COREQ, and SRQR.

Applicable clinical trials must be prospectively registered in an appropriate publicly accessible registry at or before the time of first participant consent for enrollment. The submission system requires authors to state the trial-registration status and, for registered trials, provide the registry name, registration number, and URL. Retrospective registration or absent registration requires a specific explanation and is not treated as equivalent to prospective registration; any editorial exception must be rare, justified, and disclosed if the article is accepted.

Ethics

Research involving human participants must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki and have been reviewed by an institutional review board or equivalent ethics committee. Manuscripts must name the approving body and reference number, or explain why review was not required. Animal research must comply with applicable institutional and national standards.

Case reports, case series, and any potentially identifiable material require documented written informed consent. Full requirements are set out in the journal's policies.

Conflicts of Interest

All authors must disclose financial and non-financial relationships that could be perceived to influence the work, including employment, consultancies, honoraria, patents, equity, and grant support. Where none exist, the manuscript must state that no conflicts are declared. Disclosures are published with the article.

Authorship

Each listed author must have:

• Contributed substantially to conception or design, or to acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data
• Drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for intellectual content
• Approved the version submitted for publication
• Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work

Contributors not meeting all criteria should be listed in the acknowledgements with their permission. Any change to authorship after submission requires written agreement from every author. IJCI supports CRediT contribution statements to describe contributor roles, but CRediT roles do not replace the journal's authorship criteria.

Preprints & Self-Archiving

A manuscript previously posted on a recognized preprint server may be submitted to IJCI. Authors should disclose the preprint and provide its persistent identifier or URL. A disclosed preprint is not treated as duplicate publication, but the manuscript must not be under formal consideration by another journal at the same time.

Authors may self-archive submitted and accepted manuscript versions without embargo when the version is clearly identified and confidential peer-review or editorial material is not included. After publication, the IJCI Version of Record may be shared immediately under its CC BY 4.0 license with the journal citation and link to the published article.

Data Availability

Every submission must include a data availability statement indicating whether the underlying data are publicly available, available on reasonable request, or restricted, together with the reason for any restriction. Deposition of de-identified data, analysis code, and study protocols in a recognized repository is encouraged where ethically and legally permissible.

References

IJCI manuscripts should use numbered references in the order of first citation and follow AMA/NLM medical-journal formatting. Cite primary sources wherever possible and verify every reference against the original publication, PubMed record, DOI record, or publisher page.

Published article pages also provide reader-facing citation formats in AMA, Vancouver/NLM, APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago 17th, and Harvard, plus RIS, BibTeX, CSL JSON, and JATS XML exports when available. These export formats are for readers and citation managers; they do not change the required manuscript-reference style.

• Include DOIs when available and use the original DOI rather than a secondary database link
• Use MEDLINE/NLM journal-title abbreviations where available
• Avoid citing retracted work except to discuss the retraction itself
• Do not add citations only to increase a journal, editor, reviewer, or author citation count
• Unpublished data and personal communications should appear in the text, not the reference list
• Authors are responsible for the accuracy of all references, including any generated with software assistance

Figures and Tables

Figures and tables should be cited in order, numbered consecutively, and accompanied by self-contained legends that define all abbreviations and symbols.

• Submit figures as separate high-resolution files (minimum 300 dpi for photographs, vector format preferred for line art)
• Remove all patient identifiers from clinical images, and confirm consent for any identifiable material
• Do not enhance, obscure, or move features within an image; group images must be clearly delineated
• Provide written permission for any previously published figure or table

Editorial Timelines

IJCI aims to conduct editorial assessment and peer review efficiently. Timelines vary according to manuscript complexity, reviewer and editor availability, methodological or ethics consultation, and revision requirements.

Reviewers are normally given 21 days to return a review. Reviewer availability, specialist consultation, ethics questions, or unusually complex manuscripts may extend the time needed for a decision. Authors can follow the current stage and any revision deadline in the Author Portal.

Peer-Review Process

Research articles and other content designated for external review undergo double-blind peer review. Submissions are first assessed editorially for scope, completeness, originality, ethics, reporting, and basic scientific suitability. Manuscripts proceeding to external review are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant subject or methodological expertise.

Authors may receive a decision of accept, minor revision, major revision, or decline. Reviewer recommendations are advisory; final responsibility rests with the journal's authorized editors. Revised manuscripts should include a point-by-point response and may be returned to the same or additional reviewers.

Submission Checklist

• Cover letter stating originality, article category, and any related prior publication or preprint
• Complete author information and corresponding-author details entered in the submission system
• Anonymized main manuscript with numbered lines and pages
• Structured or unstructured abstract, as appropriate to the article category, with keywords
• Applicable reporting-guideline checklist or flow diagram
• Clinical-trial registry information and explanation of retrospective or absent registration, where applicable
• Tables in editable format; figures as separate high-resolution files with legends
• Ethics approval and informed consent statements, where applicable
• Conflict-of-interest, funding, and data availability statements
• Disclosure of any material generative AI use
• References formatted in AMA/NLM style, numbered by first citation, with DOIs when available