Editorial Policies
Copyright Policy
Before publication of an accepted manuscript, the authors must sign the licence to publish form and return it to the Canadian Journal of Surgery. The default content license used by the journal is CC BY-NC-ND; however, a CC BY license is available upon request. See our Copyright page for more information.
Duplicate submission/ publication
CJS considers manuscripts for publication on the understanding that they are not under simultaneous review with another publication and that they have not previously been published.
Authorship criteria
Authorship credit will be assigned only to individuals who meet ALL of the following criteria. Each author must have
- contributed to study conception and design OR data acquisition OR data analysis
- contributed to writing OR critically reviewing the article
- approved the final version of the article submitted for publication
CJS’s authorship criteria are in accordance with the statement on authorship issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
The acquisition of funding, data collection or general supervision of the research group does not justify authorship. Individuals who have made such a contribution to the manuscript should instead be listed in the acknowledgements section.
Obligation to register clinical trials reported in CJS
CJS endorses the statement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' concerning the registration of clinical trials. The journal requires, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the onset of patient enrolment. A clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns participants to intervention or comparison groups to study cause-and-effect between a medical intervention and a health outcome. The journal does not endorse a specific registry but, when selecting a registry, authors should use the criteria mentioned in the statement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
Corrections
CJS publishes corrections for important errors related to scientific content. Factual errors, important errors in the author byline or affiliations, errors that cause ambiguity or change meaning in the article, missing or incorrect competing interests or funding statements, and missing or wrong references are corrected. Spelling mistakes, incorrect author degrees or contributor statements, missing or misspelled names in the acknowledgements, and errors in references are not corrected.
Preprints policy
CJS will consider for publication papers that have previously been deposited in a preprint server and for which the authors retain copyright. Authors should inform the journal on submission whether a preprint version exists and provide a link to the preprint version. Neither revised versions of the manuscript created during the journal review process nor the published version should replace the draft version on the preprint site. CJS prefers nonprofit, community-based and open access preprint servers that provide preliminary screening for expected standards of research integrity and have policies for handling preprints that violate those standards. Posted preprints should be marked clearly as preliminary, non-peer-reviewed work. To facilitate future publication, the author must retain copyright for the preprint.