ISSN Number - pISSN 2250 – 0685 | eISSN 2321-3817

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Editorial Policies

Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports welcomes articles that contribute to Orthopaedic knowledge from all countries. Articles are accepted for publication in the Journal of Orthopaedic Case Report. Previously published articles, even those in peer-reviewed electronic publications, are not accepted by the Journal.  All studies should be carried out in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with the “Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journal” developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (April 2010). The uniform requirements and specific requirements of the Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports are summarized below. Before sending a manuscript contributors are requested to check for the latest instructions available. Instructions are also available from the website of the journal (https://www.jocr.co.in/wp/) and from the manuscript submission site (Click Here).

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement 

The Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports follows the COPE (Committee for Publication Ethics) Guidelines and decisions about duplicate publication, plagiarism and article retraction are taken as per COPE Flowcharts. [Click Here to Download COPE Flowcharts]. All Authors need to report that their manuscript is an original publication and should sign the contributors form and conflict of interest form for each publication. 

The Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports has following salient points on Ethics and Malpractice

1. Publication and authorship:
– list of funding agencies, financial support is to be disclosed
– no plagiarism, no fraudulent data;
– forbidden to publish same research in more than one journal. 

2. Author’s responsibilities:
– All authors are obliged to participate in peer review process;
– All authors have to significantly contribute to the research;
– Statement that all data in article are real and authentic is to be given by all authors
– All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

3. Peer review / responsibility for the reviewers:
– Judgments should be objective;
– reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders;
– reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited;
– reviewed articles should be treated confidentially. 

More details on Peer Review can be found HERE

4. Editorial responsibilities:
– e.g. editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article;
– editors have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept;
– only accept a paper when reasonably certain;
– when errors are found, promote publication of correction or retraction;
– preserve anonymity of reviewers.

JOCR follows the Editorial responsibilities as noted by COPE guidelines: Click Here

5. Publishing ethics issues
– Monitoring/safeguarding publishing ethics by editorial board;
– Guidelines for retracting articles are as per the COPE guidelines
– Maintain the integrity of the academic record;
– Journal is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
– no plagiarism, no fraudulent data.

Open Access Policy

Journal of Orthopaedic case reports is open access journal and all articles are available free immediately after publication. Creative Commons License
Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Self-archiving of pre-print and post-print and publisher’s version/PDF is allowed freely.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

   The Editorial Process

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  • -The manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that they are being submitted to one journal at a time and have not been published, simultaneously submitted or already accepted for publication elsewhere. Violation may lead to serious action against authors as per COPE guidelines.
  • -The Editorial Board will review all submitted manuscripts initially.
  • -Manuscripts that seem to lack scientific message or content are rejected at first instance. Journal will not return unaccepted manuscripts.
  • -Manuscripts that are not formatted as per journal guidelines will be sent for correct formatting before the review process
  • -Manuscripts that get approval from the editorial board and are formatted as per guidelines, will be send for peer review by at least two expert reviewers [this number may exceed in cases where we do not get a definitive answer by two reviews]. The review process is blinded for author, Institution or place of origin of the manuscript. The journal wishes to publish names of all our reviewers, however the reviewers names will be kept blinded
  • -Editorial team takes a final decision based on the comments received from the reviewers and also from the section editors
  • -The contributors are usually informed about the reviewers’ comments and acceptance/rejection within a period of 10 to 12 weeks. This period may get extended in cases where more than two opinions are needed.
  • -Articles accepted would be copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style and format. All articles will also be rewritten by the Editorial team and a final copy will be send to authors for approval
  • -Page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author, which has to be returned within 4 days.

  Scope of The Journal

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Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports (JOCR) publishes original and interesting case reports that contribute significantly to Orthopaedic knowledge.

Manuscripts must meet one of the following criteria:

  • 1. Unexpected or unusual presentations of a disease
  • 2. New associations or variations in disease processes
  • 3. Presentations, diagnoses and/or management of new and emerging diseases
  • 4. An unexpected association between diseases or symptoms
  • 5. An unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient
  • 6. New technique or modification of original surgical technique
  • 7. Unusual complication of a particular disease or surgery
  • 8. Findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect
  • 9. A small series of cases with unusual outcome. (Case Series will be considered as “Research Article”)
  • 10. A technical note demonstrated on a single case.
  • 11. A Case Series with min. 3 and max. 10 cases in number. (Case Series will be considered as “Research Article”)

(Please note Video files are not accepted in an article)

   Authorship Criteria

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Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions:

  • To conception and design or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data
  • Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
  • Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship
  • General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship
  • Order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors
  • For an original article the number of contributors should not exceed six; for case reports, letter to the Editor and review articles, the number of contributors should not exceed four
  • A justification should be included, if the number of contributors exceeds these limits
  • Only those who have done substantial work in a particular field can write a review article. A short summary of the work done in the field of review should accompany the manuscript.
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   Online Submission of the Manuscripts

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  • Manuscript is to be submitted only online using submission software “Scripture” [Click Here]
  • New authors will have to register as “author”, which is a simple two step procedure

   Preparation of the Manuscript

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  • Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports (JOCR) publishes original and interesting case reports that contribute significantly to Orthopaedic knowledge. Manuscripts must meet one of the following criteria:
    1. Unexpected or unusual presentations of a disease
    2. New associations or variations in disease processes
    3. Presentations, diagnoses, and/or management of new and emerging diseases
    4. An unexpected association between diseases or symptoms
    5. An unexpected event in the course of observing or treating a patient
    6. New technique or modification of the original surgical technique
    7. Unusual complication of a particular disease or surgery
    8. Findings that shed new light on the possible pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect
    9. A small series of cases with unusual outcomes. (Case series will be considered as “Research Article”)
    10. A technical note demonstrated on a single case.
    11. A Case Series with min. 3 and max. 10 cases in number. min. 3 and max. 10 in number. (Case Series will be considered as “Research Article”)
    Manuscripts are reviewed by the Editorial Board and two external referees, and if your manuscript is accepted, it will be subject to 12,000/- rupees article-processing charge (for oversees the article processing charges will be 325 $). No charges for submitting the manuscript or for the decision on the manuscript. Authors will usually receive a decision on their manuscript within 8-12 weeks. All manuscripts are to be submitted via the Journal submission software ‘Scripture’ on the website www.jocr.co.in Any other query regarding article formatting for the submission process can also be mailed to editor.jocr@gmail.com

JOCR accepts the following formats of articles

Case Reports
Case Series (Research Article)
Case Image
Technical Note
Video Technique
Surgical Tips
Case Study
Case Approach
Letter to Editor
Letter to Experts

Case Reports: Have been detailed below and all the remaining formats follow similar guidelines as case reports

Case Series (Research Article): Min. 3 to Max. 10 cases are considered in the case series. Case series will be considered as “Research Article”.

Case Image: is a description of a single Image that has a unique learning point

Technical Note and Video Technique: detailed description of a new technique or improvisation of an old technique

Surgical Tips: Small surgical tips and pearls are invited to this section. Pictures are essential and video will be preferable

Case Study: This new format combines level V evidence with Clinical Decision Making (CDM). The article published in this issue should be taken as a template to write Case Study articles. It focuses on getting the thought process of the treating surgeon

Case Approach: This is a new but invited-only section. We will invite an expert to describe to his approach to a particular case scenario with literature and rationale behind the approach

Letter to Editor: on articles in JOCR. A letter should be a short, decisive observation with a word limit of up to 400 words with a maximum of 4 references.

Letter to Experts: JOCR will soon be creating an Expert panel of surgeons. Readers of JOCR can ask queries regarding complicated cases JOCR Experts. These queries will be answered by experts. The Orthopaedic Research Group will add a literature review to this expert opinion and the article will be peer-reviewed and published in 15 days.

  • The following files will be essential for the submission of an article

– Cover letter
– Title page
– Blinded manuscript
– Tables
– Figures
The details of formatting these files are provided below.
The accepted format for case report articles
The Journal follows the Uniform Requirements for manuscripts as laid down by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
(http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html)

Manuscripts submitted to JOCR must be submitted in the format described below. Articles that do not meet the journal’s style will not be peer-reviewed or considered for publication. All articles should be no more than 2000 words long with a maximum of 15 references and 10 figures. Manuscripts should also contain an abstract of up to 350 words. Case reports will only be accepted for peer review in the following format:
Title page
Abstract
Introduction
Case presentation(s)
Discussion
Conclusions
References
Illustrations and figures
Figure legends (if any)
Additional data files (if any)
List of abbreviations used (if any)
Competing interests
Authors’ contributions
Acknowledgments and Funding

Title page
The first page of the manuscript should be a dedicated title page, including the title of the article. The title should include the study design, i.e. Case report. For example

Authors’ names should appear in sequence that will be final, with superscript numbers mentioning authors’ affiliations

First Author Name1, Second Author Name2, Third Author Name3*

Address: 1 Full designation, degree, and postal address of first author; 2 Full designation, degree, and postal address of second author; 3 Full designation, degree, and postal address of third author

* Corresponding author should be indicated with an asterisk.

The full names, institutional addresses, and email addresses of all authors must be included on the title page. No other information should be included on this page.

Abstract
This should start on page 2 of the manuscript. The abstract must not exceed 350 words. Do not use abbreviations or references in the abstract. The abstract should be structured into three sections and should make clear how the case report adds to the Orthopaedic literature:

Introduction: An introduction about why this case is important and needs to be reported. Please include information on whether this is the first report of this kind in the literature.
Case presentation: Brief details of what the patient presented with, including the patient’s age, sex, and ethnic background.
Conclusion: A brief conclusion of what the reader should learn from the case report and what the clinical impact will be. Is it an original case report of interest to a particular clinical specialty of medicine or will it have a broader clinical impact across medicine? Please include information on how it will significantly advance our knowledge of a particular disease etiology or drug mechanism.

Keywords: Add 3 to 5 keywords at the end of the abstract. MESH terms will be preferable

Introduction
The introduction section should explain the background of the case, including the disorder, usual presentation and progression, and an explanation of the presentation if it is a new disease. If it is a case discussing an adverse drug interaction the introduction should give details of the drug’s common use and any previously reported side effects. It should also include a brief literature review.

Case Report
This should present all relevant details concerning the case. The case presentation should contain a description of the patient’s relevant demographic information (without adding any details that could lead to the identification of the patient); any relevant medical history of the patient; the patient’s symptoms and signs; any tests that were carried out and a description of any treatment or intervention. This section may be broken into subsections with appropriate subheadings. If it is a case series, then details must be included for all patients.

Discussion:
This section should discuss the peculiarities of the case in detail with reference to the literature. A detailed literature review at least of the Medline using Pubmed should be given here along with keywords. This should then logically conclude with the take home message from the case report

Conclusion
This should state clearly what can be concluded from the case report, and give a clear explanation of the importance and relevance of the case. Is it an original case report of interest to a particular clinical speciality of medicine or will it have a broader clinical impact across medicine? Please include information on how it will significantly advance our knowledge of a particular disease etiology or surgical technique or pathology.

Abbreviations (if any)
If abbreviations are used in the text they should either be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided.

Consent
This section is compulsory. It should provide a statement to confirm that the patient has given their informed consent for the case report to be published. You do not need to send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication

Competing interests
Please declare whether competing interest exists. A competing interest exists when your interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by your personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations.
Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing must read: “The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests”.

Clinical Message
A short one or two sentences about the clinical relevance of the article. How will this article change clinical practice.

Authors Corner: This is to be written in the third person with the names of the authors and their personal opinions about their Publication. This may also be in a format of the chronological history of the case and how every author was involved and deliberated over the publication. It is the informal story of the evolution of the article from the presentation of the case, to the decision of publishing it with a viewpoint of why the authors though the case should be published. It might also include how the literature review helped authors to look into other modalities of management of the case. Any further deliberations of the authors about if they would have still managed the case in the same way, or if literature and their thought process about the case have changed their view can be included.

Acknowledgment
Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to the conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship.

References
All references must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any in tables or legends. Please check the Instructions for Authors page for details on the format of references.

The must be no more than 20 references listed, e.g.

For an article within a journal:
Bentolila V, Nizard R, Bizot P, Sedel L. Complete traumatic brachial plexus palsy. Treatment and outcome after repair. J Bone Joint Surg Am 1999;81:20-8.
For a book chapter, or an article within a book
Songcharoen P. Neurotization in the treatment of brachial plexus injury. In: Omer G, Spinner M, van Beek A, editors. Management of peripheral nerve problems. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders; 1998. p. 459-64.

Preparing illustrations and figures:
Please note that JOCR can only publish ten figures in each case report. If you have more than ten figures and feel that all are essential to the understanding of the case report, please make this clear in your cover letter, explaining why the figures are needed. Figures and tables should be sequentially referenced. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article.
Figures should be provided as separate files and should not be included in the main text of the submitted manuscript or included within them the figure legend. Each figure should comprise only a single file. There is no charge for the use of color.
Authors should make every effort to preserve the anonymity of the patient by removing or concealing any identifiable features, including birthmarks and tattoos. Please take extra care with images of the head and face, ensuring that only the relevant features are shown. Publication of facial images will be subject to approval by the Editor-in-Chief.

Formats
The following file formats can be accepted:
EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)
PNG (preferred format for photos or images)
TIFF
JPEG
(Video files in an article are not accepted)

Figure legends: No more than 10 figures per case report is accepted. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals – i.e. Figure 1, 2, 3, etc); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 300 words. Figures should be provided as separate files.
The legends should be included in the main manuscript text file rather than being a part of the figure file. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals – i.e. Figure 1, 2, 3, etc); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 300 words.
The legend should include a brief description of the exact location of the image on the patient, the type of image (e.g. micrograph/x-ray), and time in relation to progression e.g. one week after surgery. There must be no abbreviations unless they are expanded (excluding common abbreviations such as antibodies).
Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.

Preparing tables: Each table should be numbered in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, 2, 3, etc.). Tables should also have a title that summarizes the whole table, a maximum of 15 words. Detailed legends may then follow, but should be concise.
Smaller tables considered to be integral to the manuscript can be pasted into the document text file. Such tables should be formatted using the ‘Table object’ in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data are kept aligned when the file is sent electronically for review.

Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or comma-separated values (.csv). As with all files, please use the standard file extensions.

Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports also allows movies and/or animations to be included as additional files and allows movies to be viewed in the context of the article. Video files should be sent to us by email to editor.jocr@gmail.com
Additional datafiles should be referenced explicitly by file name within the body of the article, e.g. ‘See additional file 1: Movie1 for the original data used to perform this analysis’.

Style and language
General: Currently, JOCR can only accept manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture.
It is essential that submitted manuscripts have a high standard of written English. Manuscripts that are poorly written will be returned to authors for revision prior to peer review. Authors are advised to write clearly and simply and to have their articles checked by colleagues before submission. Non-native speakers of English may choose to make use of a copyediting service before submission.

JOCR will copy and edit accepted manuscripts before they are published. The editing is designed only to correct such things as misused words, spelling errors, missing references or incomplete citation information.
Typography
Please use double-line spacing.
Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks.
Abbreviations spelled out in full for the first time
Numerals from 1 to 10 spelled out
Numerals at the beginning of the sentence are spelled out
Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines.
Capitalize only the first word, and proper nouns, in the title.
All pages should be numbered.
Use the JOCR reference format.
Footnotes to text should not be used.
Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full.
Gene names should be in italic, but protein products should be in plain type.
Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise, they will be lost during conversion to PDF.
Genes, mutations, genotypes, and alleles should be indicated in italics, and authors are required to use approved gene symbols, names, and formatting. Protein products should be in plain type.

Units
SI Units should be used throughout (liter and molar are permitted, however). 

Ethics

  • When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html).
  • Do not use patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material.
  • When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution’s or a national research council’s guide for or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
  • All human and animal studies should be accompanied by a certificate of Ethics clearance, issued by an appropriate Institutional Review Board/Ethics Committee/ Departmental Board of Study or an equivalent authority of competence.

Statistics

  • Statistical methods should be described in detail.
  • The statement “no significant difference was found between two groups” cannot be made unless a power study was done and the value of alpha or beta is reported. Use of the word significant requires reporting of a p-value.
  • Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are required whenever the results of survivorship analysis are given in the text or graphs.
  • The use of the word correlation requires reporting the correlation coefficient.

Acknowledgments

As an appendix to the text, one or more statements should specify

  • Contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chair
  • Acknowledgments of technical help
  • Acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support.
  • This should be included in the title page of the manuscript.

   Protection of Patients’ Rights to Privacy

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  • Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., 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 the patient be shown the manuscript to be published. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the article, and a copy of the consent should be attached to the cover letter

   Sending a revised manuscript

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  • Before submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to ensure that each and every comment of the reviewers/editorial board is answered.
  • Also, mention the changes in the column in the form of Page No. & Line No.
  • These changes should be clearly mentioned in the revised manuscript.

   Reprints

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Permission of Journal is required to reprint the articles.

   Copyrights

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Commercial Copyrights for the first publication belong to the journal. For all other purposes, the commercial copyright belongs to the authors

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   Checklist

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(To be tick marked as applicable and attached in the First Page File) Manuscript Title
Covering letter

  • Signed by all contributors
  • Previous publication / presentations mentioned
  • Source of funding mentioned
  • Conflicts of interest disclosed

Authors

  • Full name along with Middle name initials provided
  • Author for correspondence, with e-mail address provided
  • Number of contributors restricted as per the instructions
  • Identity not revealed in paper except title page (e.g. name of the institute in Methods, citing previous study as ‘our study’, names on figure labels, name of institute in photographs, etc.)

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement 

The Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports follows the COPE (Committee for Publication Ethics) Guidelines and decisions about duplicate publication, plagiarism and article retraction are taken as per COPE Flowcharts. [Click Here to Download COPE Flowcharts]. All Authors need to report that this is an original publication and should sign the contributors form and conflict of interest form for each publication.

Plagiarism is checked for all articles by using online plagiarism checker tool: http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/

Open Access Policy

All articles of the journal will be available for open access immediately after publication