Housekeeping

Each week in our clinical team meeting we have an informal item on the unwritten agenda called ‘housekeeping’. It is where any member of the team can raise any issue that involves the day-to-day running of the team, leave, meetings, theatre schedules, etc. Housekeeping is an important function of information dissemination and keeping everyone up to date with changes that affect routine practice. So it is in this spirit that I want to take this opportunity to announce the changes in Author Guidelines which are taking immediate effect. For the sake of reassurance this is not the product of editorial brain fever but something that has been considered over a period of time and discussed amongst the entire Editorial Advisory Board. What are the principle changes that are now being implemented?

The major policy change has been to go from a double blind review system to a single blind review system. The overwhelming majority of the Editorial Advisory Board felt the single blind system was acceptable although a few felt that in the perfect world the double blind system is better. The reality is that to make a manuscript unidentifiable requires a considerable effort by the authors, including omitting identifying self-citations and other ‘clues’, and in the relatively small world we practice in, the astute reviewer gets a good idea of who the author(s) are.

So the submission process will be simplified but at the same time we have to reassure authors that we are doing all we can to ensure fair reviews and to this extent we now ask our reviewers to sign a no competition disclosure with each review. We are being more emphatic in asking the authors to include a ‘conflict’ of interest statement that will be printed at the end of the text of each paper. Of note, authors should be aware that a conflict of interest need NOT prevent a paper from being published. A more extensive Financial Disclosure statement is being prepared and is the focus of an accompanying editorial, but more of that later.

With more sophisticated electronic reference checkers we are now no longer requiring authors to include copies of the first page of references with their submission. This will streamline the submissions but this does not mean that papers will be accepted for review with non-standard reference formats! Indeed part of the reason for restating these guidelines is to allow a more effective pre-screening of manuscripts so that papers will not be entered into the review process until they comply with the stated criteria. In this respect another key change is the covering letter. It is now a requirement that this is signed by ALL authors and that the contribution of each author is detailed. This was alluded to in the invited commentary on the Discussion of ‘How many plastic surgeons does it take to write a research article?’.1 Author number is one thing but responsibility is another and in the last six months out of over 500 submissions we have had three that have raised serious concerns about ethical publishing practices. It can be very embarrassing for a senior and respected figure to find that a junior has submitted a duplicate publication with their name attached as an author. If the senior figure has signed a covering letter accepting responsibility for the submission and it comes to light it is a duplicate publication then embarrassment is the least of the problems! This change is not a draconian control issue but more of a preventative measure.

In order to streamline the categories of submission we are now removing the ‘short report’ category. This has always been a bit of a misnomer and we are replacing it with a correspondence or communication category. What is the difference between these two? Both are letters but the former is related to a previous publication whereas the communication is unrelated to previous papers or articles. We have reviewed the word count and number of reference guidelines and whilst we are going to be quite strict with the correspondence and communications there will be more leeway with the original articles and especially reviews.

The final point is that we are aiming for a significant reduction in the time from submission to publication. There are two components to consider. We do ask for authors to do their utmost to submit articles with an acceptable standard of language and grammar. The author guidelines refers to possible language editing services, but these are the authors responsibility. We have streamlined the review process and setting accepted articles in proof and then print can be achieved in a matter of weeks. Whilst we can put articles in press on Science Direct, they are not published in terms of a citation. We can speed up publication by increasing the number of e-only articles. We are considering case reports in this context and also more esoteric research articles. In the author guidelines it is now being specifically stated that the Editor reserves the right to publish a submission in e-only format. It must be appreciated that this does not devalue the submission; it is still citable as a publication and appears in the indexed databases as such.

So that completes the section of Housekeeping on author guidelines. Anything else? Well yes, three more things. LFA - Letter from America is now going to be a regular bi-monthly feature. In this respect I am delighted to introduce the author Felix Freshwater. Felix is one of those rare creatures, a happy American plastic surgeon! Okay, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but again more of that later. Felix is not a typical American plastic surgeon and as he told me he has done no cosmetic surgery since the millennium. His practice is 90% hand and 10% reconstructive surgery. When he introduces himself socially he calls himself a ‘hand doctor’ as he says he ‘is ashamed of what has become of plastic surgery in the US’ including the ‘trivialization and sensationalization of the field in the media’. When my predecessor, Simon Kay, called for more reviewers in 2005, Felix volunteered his services and was invited onto the editorial board. When I took over last year I exchanged a few e-mails with Felix and quickly came to realize that he is an extraordinary person with such a lot to offer. After receiving a few communications from various airport lounges on the East coast my mind went to one of the key figures of my youth, Alistair Cooke! Alistair was born on November 20th, 1908 in Salford, Lancashire, UK, and died 95 years later in New York city on March 30th 2004. He was a journalist and a broadcaster and moved to America in 1937, becoming an American Citizen in 1941. In 1946 he broadcast his first ‘Letter’ from America on March 24th. This was to be the first of a series of 13 weekly installments but it went on for 58 years and 2869 installments. He enjoyed an enormous world-wide audience through the BBC World Service, including my mother. Before the era of television, the radio, was a focal point of contact with the world and we would ‘tune in’ as a family to listen to this wonderful vocal delivery which was delightfully entertaining, educational and always thought-provoking. The style and content of Alistair Cooke's letters was just like Felix Freshwater's e-mails. I felt a sense of discomfort that I should be the sole recipient of his wit and wisdom and that his e-mails should have a much wider audience. And so I invited Felix to become a regular contributor to the journal and what better title could we have than ‘Letter from America’?

Being a bi-monthly feature we may not get 2869 installments out of him but I hope we get a few decades at least. I have had the opportunity to read a letter from Paul Manson, Professor of Plastic Surgery at Johns Hopkins in which he described Felix Freshwater as a world class historian in Plastic Surgery, ‘unafraid to challenge the accepted dogma’ and correct erroneous impressions. A ‘true scholar’, an ‘outstanding clinician’ and a great humanitarian. I hope you all get to know more about this outstanding American Plastic Surgeon through his letters in the years to come.

That brings me to the third editorial in this month's issue. Those of you who travel to the East will know that whilst in China, your lecture may be received with polite and reserved applause and you may receive a question or two from a senior member of the audience, in India, every member of the audience will have an opinion to share, usually several simultaneously. It is no surprise than that a Yahoo discussion group based on Indian Plastic Surgeons is full to overflowing of wit and wisdom, humour and controversy. I am delighted to subscribe to this group, though play mostly a passive role. It was as such that my eye caught a most beautiful comment about the present crisis in Plastic Surgery in America. The United States of America is going through a tough patch and whilst the leadership may have lost direction we must not lose sight of the many wonderful people who are citizens of the world's current number one super power. Our professional sympathies extend to professional colleagues and so there was some surprise expressed at the documented unhappiness of many American Plastic Surgeons. Of the posts in the Yahoo group, that of Dr Surajit Bhattacharya was outstanding. Compared to the reported doom and gloom of many of our American colleagues, the perspective of Dr Bhattacharya is a breath of fresh air that needs to be shared around the world and I am delighted that he has accepted the invitation to expand on his views. This is what JPRAS is about and I welcome these challenging and inspirational perspectives and hope you, the readers, appreciate them too.

With regard to the cover picture, this relates to that beautifully complex structure, the eyelid. There is no way, absolutely no way that even the most able and technically gifted reconstructive surgeon is going to recreate the beauty and function of nature's eyelids. As I study the Asian face in more intimate detail (professionally) I realize how critical and crucial the eyes are, not only for individual beauty but also for ethnic identity. I can only reflect on how the loss of the eyelids can have possibly tipped my blind patient into suicidal action2 and how an eyelid transplantation may figure in the context of facial transplantation.3 Fascinating thoughts. So as a fifty-something International Reconstructive Plastic Surgeon, unlike my American colleagues, retirement is the least of my concerns. Whilst God gives me a steady hand and a keen eye I hope to be contributing to this wonderful specialty for a few more years to come!