Authors' Guidelines

Dear author,

Welcome to Thieme! We are delighted that you want to publish in a Thieme journal.

Thieme is an international publisher of medical and science books, journals, electronic products and services, with a long-standing reputation for consistent quality and integrity. On publication, you will have benefited from peer review at the highest level and you will reach a broad professional audience.

To make submission of your article as efficient as possible, see the information below.
We look forward to receiving your manuscript!

Please note: We only accept manuscripts that have not yet been published or submitted elsewhere. If the content of your article has already been presented orally at a conference, please note this with details of the conference type, place, and date.

The corresponding author must ensure that all the other authors agree with the publication of the article in the version presented.

With acceptance of the manuscript, the publisher acquires rights of use for the duration of the legal protection term.

Publication language is English

This following section does inform you about:

• Thieme’s Journal Policies
• Artificial Intelligence and Authorship
• General Information for Authors
• Special Authors' guidelines for Nuklearmedizin/Nuclear Medicine
• Submission – online submission system

Thieme's Journal Policies

For the Thieme Group, the integrity of our content and publishing process is of the utmost importance. When preparing your manuscript for submission, please ensure that you have read and understood Thieme's  Journal Policies in all its parts. Our specific guidelines and policies for authors on research integrity and ethics are based on the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and, where appropriate, the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) and other relevant industry agencies.

Artificial Intelligence and Authorship

Thieme aligns itself with the COPE Position Statement on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Authorship.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools must not be listed as authors, as they do not fulfil all criteria for authorship. They cannot take responsibility for the integrity and the content of paper, and they cannot take on legal responsibility. Instead, GenAI use must be transparently documented in the Acknowledgements or Material and Methods sections.

General Information for Authors

In addition to the specific author guidelines for Nuklearmedizin/Nuclear Medicine (see below), please note the following general author information.

Journal Authors Lounge

Our Author Lounge will provide you with all the useful information you’ll need- from finding a journal to publishing and promoting your article.

In the author's lounge, we have summarized all the information step by step on the following aspects:

1. Find a journal
2. Prepare your manuscript
3. Open Access
4. Submission
5. Peer Review
6. Publication
7. Promotion

Please follow the Link Author Lounge.

General author guidelines (pdf-file for download)

The formal requirements your manuscript has to meet, are explained in our general author guidelines for original contributions, review articles or scientific case reports. You can download our general author guidelines as a PDF document Please, follow the link ARL_Wiss_Publikation_engl.pdf

In this document, we have compiled the formal requirements for the following points:

• Figures: rights of use / copyright / personal rights
• Scientific vocabulary
• Code names / fake names / fictional personal data
• Bibliography (If you are working with citation management software (Endnote, Zotero, Mendeley), please use the output style "Thieme-English". It is available in the relevant software or can be downloaded here.)
• Open Access
• Legal aspects
• Ethical aspects
• Financial support
• Submitting your manuscript
• Peer review of your manuscript
• Author’s proofs and approval
• Electronic reprint for personal use
• Check List — Structure of your article

Special Authors' guidelines for Zeitschrift für Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie (ZfOU)

Aims and Scopes

Our journal ZfOU aims to advance the field of orthopedics and trauma surgery/traumatology by publishing original research that contributes to the understanding of this field.

The scope of the journal includes:

• Orthopedics
• Trauma surgery/traumatology

ZfOU publishes Original Papers, Review Articles, Case Reports, and Video Papers.

Original Paper

Original papers present novel findings, are well-structured, and include comprehensive data and analysis. They follow a format that includes an abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and references (for details on structure see section Special Authors' guidelines for ZfOU below).

Review Article

Review articles provide comprehensive, critical assessments of existing literature in the field of orthopedics and trauma surgery/traumatology. They aim to summarize current knowledge, identify gaps, and propose future research directions. These articles are valuable for synthesizing information and guiding both clinical practice and further research.

Case Report

Case reports will be published as short communications. Therefore, strict guidelines and limitations are necessary. The case should be presented in a manner that clearly highlights its uniqueness. Extensive introductions and discussions should be avoided. Specific guidelines and limitations are described here.

Video Paper - Additional information for this category

The “ZFOU” Video Paper section aims to publish high-quality educational videos in the field of trauma surgery and orthopedics. The focus here is on a video that can be accessed by readers of the journal and which demonstrates an examination or treatment method. In addition to technical quality features, didactic aspects are also relevant. The video is supplemented by an accompanying paper in which the respective technique is explained and classified.

For publications in the Video paper section, the originality of a contribution is significantly less important than for an original paper. Therefore, Video papers may also include methods and techniques that are already known, if they correspond to the current state of knowledge. Another difference is that authors may publish their own data on the topic, but this is not a prerequisite for submission.

Be aware:

• The videos in this special category may only be submitted via the Submit a film - dgchs website!
• The accompanying paper may only be submitted via ScholarOne Manuscripts.

The paper and the film will then undergo the review process together. If accepted, the film will be added to the media library of the German and Austrian Society for Surgery, and the paper will be published in the ZFOU.

In case of submitting a video paper you must not upload your video in Scholar One – instead use the following instructions:

Authors have the option of submitting a paper to accompany a video for this category.

Structure (Video-Paper)

The structure follows the standard format of a scientific publication:

• Introduction (classification of the procedure, motivation)
• Materials and Methods (description of the method and surgical procedure steps)
• Results (own results, if available, or results from the literature)
• Discussion (comparison with alternative surgical procedures)
• Conclusions

Technical Aspects (Video)

• Title of the video
• Commentary preferably in German, voice-over recommended
• Steady camera work, preferably using a tripod
• Good image sharpness/lighting
• Clean editing

Didactic Aspects (Video)

• Total length preferably not exceeding 8 minutes
• Avoidance of lengthy scenes (e.g., skin suturing)
• Presentation of key operative steps
• Marking of important anatomical structures (arrows, etc.)
• If necessary, schematic representations
• No reading aloud of text slides

For formal requirements regarding

• rights of use / copyright / personal rights,
• code names / fake names / fictional personal data,

please, follow the link ARL_Wiss_Publikation_engl.pdf

• The videos in this special category may only be submitted via the Submit a film - dgchs website!
• An accompanying paper may only be submitted via ScholarOne Manuscripts.

The paper and the film will then undergo the review process together. If accepted, the film will be added to the media library of the German and Austrian Society for Surgery, and the paper will be published in the ZfOU.

Special Authors' guidelines for ZfOU

You can download the ZfOU-specific guidelines as a PDF document Please, follow the link author_instructions.pdf

In this document, we have compiled the specific requirements for “Original Papers”, “Review Articles”, “Case Reports” and “Video Papers” which cover the following points:

• Authors and Institutions
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Text size
• Text Structure
• References for cited literature
• Figures Limitations
• Tables

Formal requirements for all types of manuscripts

This section briefly summarizes the formal requirements for all types of manuscripts. It corresponds to the General Author Guidelines described above.

Authors and Institutions

Full name, academic degree(s), institutional affiliation for all authors; email address of the corresponding author.

Names, addresses or any information which may indicate the identity of the author(s) may not be included in the manuscript. A divided first authorship is allowed. All institutional listings in English. Within the manuscript names and address must not be used as well as any information that conclude towards the authors.

Authorship Change

Any authorship changes must adhere to Thieme’s policy on authorship criteria and must be approved by all authors. If any authors are removed or added during revision, all authors will be notified via email and must approve or deny the change before the submission can proceed further. Any changes will be subject to a final approval by the Publisher.

Author Contributions

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) should be used to describe each author's contribution to the paper. During the submission process, authors will be asked to provide their CRediT roles via a dedicated section in the submission form. The corresponding author is responsible for accurately assigning contributions to each listed author. The assigned CRediT roles will be automatically combined and published as part of the manuscript.

Title

Short, concise, a maximum of 50 words

Main text manuscript¹

The manuscript must be organized according to the type. Manuscript main text in Word format. References to figures and tables: should appear chronologically in the manuscript main text. Abbreviate using “Fig.”; and “Tab.”. Literature references: all literature in the bibliography is to be cited in the manuscript main text using Arabic numerals surrounded by square brackets. The bibliography appears after the manuscript’s main text and lists all literature. See “Citation Format” in this table for examples.

¹ Values quoted here include blank spaces and refer to the length of the manuscripts including the bibliography. The number of characters can easily be found in Microsoft Word using “Tools” → “Word Count”.

References for cited literature

Listed in the order of appearance in the manuscript.

Reference style

According to Index Medicus and Vancouver style:

Journals:

1. Ondeck NT, Bohl DD, Bovonratwet P. Discriminative Ability of Elixhauser’s Comorbidity Measure is Superior to Other Comorbidity Scores for Inpatient Adverse Outcomes After Total Hip Arthroplasty. J Arthroplasty 2018; 33: 250-257.

Books:

1. Hosmer Jr DW, Lemeshow S, Sturdivant RX. Applied Logistic Regression. 3rd Edition. Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons; 2013.

References for tables and figures

Figures and tables must be cited in parentheses in the text in numerical order, e. g. (Fig. 1, Tab. 1).

Legends for tables should appear at the end of the manuscript.

Figures Preparation

• Figure quality: 1000 pixel width (300 dpi with a width of 8.5 cm)
• File formats: JPG or TIFF for images
• Figures with multiple sub-elements: please use small letters to classify each (a, b, c, d, etc.). Do not import figures in the text.
• Symbols, lettering, and numbering should be clear and large enough to remain legible after the figure has been reduced to fit the width of a column.
• Use only one type-size.
• Image files accompanying a manuscript must be supplied electronically in separate files to the main text.

Tables

Each table is a formatted table in word with designated rows and columns. Each table must have a table legend. Either you choose one table header over all columns or a header for each column. The editors and the publisher reserve the right to publish some of the tables online only especially large ones, if their size exceed the provided space.

Code names / fake names / fictional personal data

According to Thieme guidelines, data about actual persons must be systematically alienated to protect personal rights and to make code names always recognizable as such.

If one or several persons are provided with code names in pictures or texts, the following options are to be used:

• Individual persons (English):
  • male: Mr. D., J. Doe, Jon Doe
  • female: Ms. D., J. Doe, Jane Doe
• Several persons (English):
  • male: Andrew, Charles, David, George, James, Michael, Matthew, Robert, Thomas, William
  • female: Anne, Bridget, Catherine, Emily, Elizabeth, Jane, Melissa, Sarah, Susan, Victoria
• If absolutely necessary in an individual case, the following written-out English surnames are also valid: Brown, Jones, Smith, Taylor, Williams.
• If names from further language areas are required (for example Turkish, Russian, Spanish names), they must be un- ambiguously labeled as editorially changed names in the text as well as in the caption of figures (for example within a footnote or with the phrase “editorially changed names“ in parentheses).
• Further fictional data is combined with the word “sample” in English (for example Sample Company, Sample Institute). Furthermore, the following applies:
  • addresses: 123 Sampe Street, Sampletown 1234
  • date of birth without numbers
  • phone number: 123.555-1234
  • medication: Sample Drug
  • result: Sample Diagnosis

Videos

Labelling according to appearance within the main part of the manuscript (video 1, video 2,…)

Submission – online submission system

Please submit your manuscript exclusively online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/zorthop

For questions regarding manuscript submission or technical inquiries, for example regarding the use of figures, please contact NUK Editorial Office at zfou@thieme.de.

During submission

In case of submitting a revision of your manuscript

Save your peer-reviewed word-file on your local hard drive. Make your changes transparent by using “Track Changes” in MS Word. (To activate the “Track Changes” function in Word, go to “Tools” → “Track Changes” → “Highlight Changes”. Activate all check boxes in the “Highlight Changes” window.)

Authors and Institutions

Entry is only in specified input fields during submission - do not include in main text document.

Author Contributions

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) should be used to describe each author's contribution to the paper. During the submission process, authors will be asked to provide their CRediT roles via a dedicated section in the submission form. The corresponding author is responsible for accurately assigning contributions to each listed author. The assigned CRediT roles will be automatically combined and published as part of the manuscript.

Title

Entry only in specified input fields during submission - do not include in main text document.

Abstract

Entry only in the specified input field during submission in Scholar One - do not include in main text document. Please do not upload it as a separate file during the file upload, except for corrections in revisions

Keywords

Entry only in specified input fields during submission in Scholar One. You can choose from the key words in the list or enter your own key words in the input fields.

Main text manuscript

Upload a docx-file of the manuscript with reference list (without summary, figures and tables). The File Designation is 1. Main Document

Figures

Upload in Scholar One individually.

The File Designation is: 2. Image

Figure legends including figure number should be entered in the appropriate field during the file upload – look for “Caption/ Legend” during file upload. (Do not submit figure legends via Word file.)

Tables

Upload in Scholar One individually.

The File Designation is 3. Table

Videos

The File Designation is supplementary file

Authors' correction, imprimatur, specimen copy

The corresponding author will receive the galley proofs as a PDF file. He/she is fully responsible for the correctness of the final version that he/she releases for publication. Once the copyright transfer agreement has been submitted, changes by the authors are no longer possible.

After publication, the corresponding authors will receive a free electronic reprint (PDF file). They may use this file for professional exchange with colleagues and may upload the file to their personal homepage. Please note that all further use of this PDF is subject to approval by the publisher. Any commercial use or deposition of the file in repositories (e.g. document servers of libraries and other institutions) is prohibited.