About Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery

What is Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery?

Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of research in the field of cardiothoracic surgery.

The journal aims to provide a forum for the publication and free access of high quality original scientific reports documenting clinical and experimental advances in cardiac and thoracic surgery, and related fields. The intended audience is cardiothoracic surgeons, cardiothoracic anaesthesiologists, cardiologists, chest physicians, and allied health professionals.

Content overview

Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research. For research articles there are two slightly different templates.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. Opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board usually write these articles. They have an educational aim and are 2000-3000 words.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction. All case report articles should be accompanied by written and signed consent to publish the information from the patients or their guardians.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board. They focus on specific issues and are about 800 words.
• Letters to the Editor: they can take three forms: a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article, or a substantial response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication, or an article that may not cover 'standard research' but that may be relevant to readers.
• Study protocol: describes proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study. If the study is a randomised controlled trial it must have an International Standardised Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN).

Peer-review policies

The Editors-in-Chief will decide whether submitted manuscripts are suitable for peer review. Articles that are deemed suitable for peer review will be sent to the appropriate members of the editorial board, and also external reviewers with an interest in that area. We will require the reviewers to guarantee a review within two weeks except in special cases. Based on the comments of the reviewers, the Editors-in-Chief will decide on whether to accept or reject a manuscript.

Edited by Vipin Zamvar and David Taggart, Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Publishing in Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery

All articles are listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and are covered by PubMed Central, MEDLINE, Thomson Reuters (ISI) and Scopus.

Articles in Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

J Cardiothorac Surg 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery is published by BioMed Central, part of Springer Science+Business Media. BioMed Central is committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is open access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery however, has taken this further by making all its content open access.

Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.