About International Seminars in Surgical Oncology

What is International Seminars in Surgical Oncology?

International Seminars in Surgical Oncology (ISSO) is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal on all aspects of medical and surgical oncology, including the diagnosis and treatment of a patient with cancer, pathology, and techniques of cancer surgery.

This journal will have a strict ethical editorial policy, and will only consider research studies if there is evidence of ethics committee approval.

By being open access, this journal will provide a global forum for surgeons, oncologists, and all those with an active interest in the treatment of cancer. We encourage submissions from developing nations, and from less experienced researchers in surgery, oncology and cancer research.

Content overview

International Seminars in Surgical Oncology considers the following types of articles:

• Research - reports of data from original research. We especially encourage Systematic reviews.
• Case reports - well-described 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 a recent research finding. They focus on specific issues and are about 800 words.
• Letters to the Editor - 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.
• Reviews - comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. They will include teaching material from international experts on, for example, techniques in cancer surgery and experimental research methodology. This educational material will become a resource for surgeons and oncologists otherwise inexperienced in research to expand their knowledge of research techniques used in cancer.

Peer review policies

• Peer review in International Seminars in Surgical Oncology is designed to ensure that the research published is 'good science'.
• ISSO considers articles spanning a wide range of scientific interests, as long as the results and conclusions are scientifically justified and not misleading.
• We recognize the importance of highlighting articles that contain the most interesting, important or significant research. Peer reviewers are asked to indicate which articles they consider to be especially interesting or significant. These articles will be given greater prominence within ISSO and greater external publicity.
• Submitted articles will generally be reviewed by two external experts.
• Peer reviewers will have four possible options, for each article:
  • accept without revision
  • accept after revision without expecting to check those revisions
  • neither accept nor reject until author(s) make revisions and resubmit
  • reject because scientifically unsound
• In deciding whether to accept or reject an article, a reviewer asks him/herself whether the scientific community is better served by publishing or not publishing the article. Publication of research articles by ISSO is dependent primarily on their validity and coherence, as judged by peer reviewers, who are also asked whether the writing is comprehensible and how interesting they consider the article to be.
• When asking for revisions, reviewers have two possible goals: to ask authors to tighten their arguments based on existing data or to identify areas where more data are needed.
• ISSO normally allows authors a maximum of two revisions per article.
• Peer reviewers are asked to say if the article is not sufficiently clearly written for publication. In such cases authors are asked to revise the article, seeking, if necessary, the assistance of colleagues or a commercial editing service.
• We will check the articles after revision to ensure that queries have been dealt with.

Edited by Mohamad Hussein and Gurpreet Singh-Ranger, International Seminars in Surgical Oncology is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Publishing in International Seminars in Surgical Oncology

All articles are listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and are covered by PubMed Central and Embase.

Articles in International Seminars in Surgical Oncology 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:

Int Semin Surg Oncol 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, International Seminars in Surgical Oncology does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from International Seminars in Surgical Oncology, 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 International Seminars in Surgical Oncology using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

International Seminars in Surgical Oncology is published by BioMed Central, an independent publisher 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. International Seminars in Surgical Oncology however, has taken this further by making all its content open access.

International Seminars in Surgical Oncology'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.

International Seminars in Surgical Oncology 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.