Editorial Policy
Aims and Scope
Annals of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes significant and novel contributions in thoracic surgery. The journal, which is supported by the Japanese Association for Coronary Artery Surgery, aims to facilitate the communication and progress of thoracic surgery worldwide.
Article types include Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Editorials, New Methods, and Letters to the Editor. The journal publishes articles related to cardiovascular surgery, thoracic surgery, and esophageal surgery in the fields of general medicine, social medicine, nursing science, clinical medicine, and related areas. Articles can take basic, experimental, applied, or clinical approaches, and the journal welcomes articles that present work at the interface of these areas.
The journal provides its authors with rapid but rigorous peer review. Articles are published online immediately upon acceptance and are freely available to all readers. A print journal is also available six times a year for subscribers. They are a vital resource for the journal’s broad global audience of researchers and clinicians.
Journal and Ethics Policies
ATCS upholds the highest standards in scholarly publishing.
Before submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors must ensure that they have read and complied with the journal’s policies. The journal reserves the right to reject without review, or retract, any manuscript that the Editor believes may not comply with these policies.
The responsibilities of the journal’s authors, editors, reviewers and publisher regarding research and publication ethics are described in full below.
Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript has not been previously published (in part or in whole, in any language), is not in press, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Authors must inform the editors if any related manuscripts are under consideration, in press or published elsewhere. The availability of a manuscript on a publicly accessible preprint server does not constitute prior publication (see ‘Preprints’).
If authors choose to submit their manuscript elsewhere before a final decision has been made on its suitability for publication in ATCS, they must first withdraw it from the journal.
Authorship
Submission to the journal implies that all authors have seen and approved the author list. Changes to the author list after manuscript submission – such as the insertion or removal of author names, or a rearrangement of author order – must be approved by all authors and the editor.
Authors are encouraged to consider the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations on ‘Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors’. The ICMJE recommends that authorship is based on four criteria: 1)making a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; 2)drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3)approving the final version of the manuscript for publication; 4)and agreeing to be held accountable for all aspects of the work. Any contributor who has met all four criteria should be an author on the manuscript. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria should not be authors of the manuscript but may be included in the Acknowledgements section instead.
Conflict of Interest
In the interests of transparency, the journal requires all authors to declare any competing or conflicts of interest in relation to their submitted manuscript. A conflict of interest exists when there are actual, perceived or potential circumstances that could influence an author’s ability to conduct or report research impartially. Potential conflicts include (but are not limited to) competing commercial or financial interests, commercial affiliations, consulting roles, or ownership of stock or equity.
When submitting a manuscript, all authors are required to disclose financial relationships with commercial manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial entities that have an interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes any interests held by spouses, other immediate family or close associates.
Authors must complete the disclosure form and upload it at the time of submission. In addition, each manuscript must include a “Disclosure Statement” section (which comes before the “References” section) that is based on the sample text as per the form.
Copyright, Open Access License Policy
ATCS is fully Open Access and uses a Creative Commons (CC) license, which allows for the non-commercial use and reuse of material published in the journal without charge or the need to ask prior permission from the publisher or author.
Copyright and licensing
Authors are required to assign all copyrights in the work to the Society, who then publish the work under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This license allows users to share and adapt an article, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Transfer of Copyright Agreement
Animal/human experimentation and informed consent
Authors of manuscripts describing experiments involving humans or materials derived from humans must demonstrate that the work was carried out in accordance with the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki, its revisions, and any guidelines approved by the authors’ institutions. Where relevant, the authors must include a statement in their manuscript that describes the procedures for obtaining informed consent from participants regarding participation in the research and publication of the research.
All papers reporting experiments using animals must include a statement in the Methods section giving assurance that all animals have received humane care in compliance with the “Principles of Laboratory Animal Care” formulated by the National Society for Medical Research and the “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” prepared by the Institute of Laboratory Animal Research (ILAR), published by the National Academies Press
(2011; see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54050/).
Editorial and peer review process
The journal uses single-blind peer review. When a manuscript is submitted to the journal, it is assigned to the Editor-in-Chief, who performs initial screening. Manuscripts that do not fit the journal’s scope or are not deemed suitable for publication are rejected without review. The Editor-in-Chief allocates each of the remaining manuscripts to an Editor, who handles peer review. The Editor selects two appropriate reviewers to provide their assessment of the manuscript. Reviewers are selected based on their expertise, reputation, and previous experience as peer reviewers. The deadline for submission of the reviewers’ reports varies by article type.
Once the reviewers’ reports have been received, the Editor determines whether the manuscript requires revision. Authors who are asked to revise their manuscript must do so within two months, otherwise, it may be treated as a new submission. The Editor may send revised manuscripts to peer reviewers for their feedback or may use his or her own judgment to assess how closely the authors have followed the comments on the original manuscript. The Editor then makes a final decision on the manuscript’s suitability for publication in the journal.
The Editor-in-Chief acts as an arbitrator when necessary.