Notes for Authors
Trauma operates a single-blind reviewing policy in which the reviewer’s name is always concealed from the submitting author.
Published Conflict of Interest Statement
Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.
- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ("Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals") -- February 2006
Published Statement of Informed Consent
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.
Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.
The requirement for informed consent should be included in the journal's instructions for authors. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article.
- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ("Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals") -- February 2006
Published Statement of Human and Animal Rights
When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ("Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals") -- February 2006
Trauma is an important journal dedicated to providing comprehensive and authoritative information to the wide range of individuals who care for and manage victims of trauma. The journal draws on the expertise of many specialists, allowing individual practitioners access to a variety of material presented in the form of major reviews, current controversies and shorter pieces. Trauma includes papers which have relevance to practice and which acknowledge the interdisciplinary and international readership of the journal. All material submitted for publication is assumed to be submitted exclusively to Trauma unless the contrary is stated.
Priority and time of publication are decided by the Editors, who retain the customary right to edit material accepted for publication.
Electronic submission of the manuscript only as a PDF or MS Word file attached to an E-mail message sent to Dan.Huke@sagepub.co.uk
Any artwork provided should be in either TIFF, or EPS format. Each piece of artwork should be saved as a separate file. No
artwork should be included in the text files. Revised manuscripts should be resubmitted as executable files only, i.e. MS Word or TeX.
Authors whose first language is not English are requested to have their manuscripts checked carefully for linguistic correctness before submission.
An abstract should be included, comprising approximately 150 words of your article. Approximately six key words are also required.
When preparing your paper:
Use the minimum formatting
Roman, bold and italic type can be used, but use only one typeface and size
Capitals should be used only where they are to appear in the finished text
The text should be ranged left and unjustified, with hyphenation cancelled
Indents, underlining and tabs should be avoided unless absolutely necessary
Headings and paragraphs should be separated by two carriage returns
There should be only one space between words and only one space after any punctuation
The title page: Give the title of the paper and a running title if the main title is very long. Authors should include their names and initials, their posts at the time they did the work and their current appointments and qualifications. The name, address and email of the author to whom correspondence, proofs and offprints are to be sent should be given, together with telephone and fax numbers if possible.
Headings: In dividing articles under headings, please grade the headings by writing A, B, or C in the margin:
A - subheading
B - subsubheading
C - subsubsubheading
Please avoid using more than three levels of subheading.
Style
(i) Generic names should be used for drugs. Authors should be aware of different drug names and availability in the UK, North America and Australia, and give alternative names or drugs in the text.
(ii) Scientific measurements should be given in SI units, but blood pressure should be expressed in mmHg and haemoglobin as g/dl.
(iii) For numbers, adopt a rule that all numbers under 10 should be written as words, except when attached to a unit of quantity (e.g. 1 mm or 3 kg), and that numbers of 10 or more should be written as digits, except at the beginning of a sentence.
(iv) Abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and must be clearly defined when used for the first time. Abbreviations should be typed with no full point.
(v) Avoid excessive capitalization. For the titles of books and articles, capitals should be used for the initial letter of the first word only. However, for the titles of journals and series, the initial letter of all principal words should be capitalized.
(vi) Use italics for emphasis only very sparingly.
Illustrations
Computer generated graphics. All art that must be sent electronically in .eps or .tif files, at 300 dpi resolution, for superior
reproduction.
Please indicate the position of all figures in the text. When graphs or histograms are submitted the numerical data on which
they are based should be supplied.
Line drawings: Originals should always be submitted. Wherever possible, graphs should be boxed in, and scale divisions
should be marked on the inside of the boxes. Grids should not be shown. Insofar as possible, explanations should be placed in the legend. Original drawings should not be larger than 20 25 cm (8 10 in).
Lettering should be planned for 50% reduction; text must be readable after reduction.
Text must be readable after reduction
Photographs: All photographs should be in a high quality digital format of at least 300 dpi resolution. Patients in photographs should not be identifiable and should have their eyes masked. Any identifiable photograph should be accompanied by written permission from the patient, parent or guardian. Photographs will only be printed in colour if the author bears the cost of reproduction, however if colour photographs are supplied they will appear as such online.
Tables: Indicate in the margin of the text where tables should be positioned. Each table should have an explanatory caption,
and be clearly numbered.
Ethics: It will be assumed that studies reported in papers submitted to Trauma have the approval of local ethical committees where relevant.
References should always be appropriate: more is not necessarily better and should be given in the ‘Harvard style’ and always be double spaced. The principle is that reference is made in the text to works included in a list of references at the end of the article. In the text, references should be indicated by giving the author’s name and year of publication.
For example:
...a quality of Liebenstein (1967) call ‘x-efficiency’.
Piaget points out that ‘between two structures of different levels there can be no one-way reduction, but rather there is reciprocal assimilation’ (1972, p.93).
The list of references is placed at the end of the article in the following form:
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors 1991. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Br Med J 302: 401-405.
Lowry S, Smith J. 1992. Duplicate publication. Br Med J, 304: 999-1000.
Huff D. 1991 How to lie with statistics. London: Penguin.
Compton J, Hammerston M, Tan E. 1995. Ocular injuries. In: David DJ, Simpson DA eds. Croniomaxillo-facial trauma. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 233-49.
Copyright and Permissions:
SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement for all articles we publish. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is a licence agreement under which the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright.
Authors must obtain permission from the original publisher to reproduce all matter in the following categories:
(i) All maps, diagrams, figures and photographs – forms are available from the publishers.
(ii) Single passages of prose exceeding 250 words, or scattered passages totalling more than 400 words from any one work.
Please supply full information for all work cited, including author, date published, publisher and page references.
EU copyright extends to 70 years after the death of the author or 70 years after publication of a scholarly edition, whichever is longer.
Proofs will be supplied only once by email in pdf format. Please remember that:
(i) Proof corrections are disproportionately expensive. For example, the insertion of three commas on a page will frequently cost as much, or more than, the original setting cost of the entire page.
(ii) If you return proofs even a few days after the date stipulated, it may be too late to include your corrections in the final version of the journal.
E-Prints:
Access to 25 free e-prints will be provided; the corresponding author will receive a maximum of five complimentary copies of the journal.
SAGE Open:
If you wish your article to be freely available online immediately upon publication (as some funding bodies now require), you can opt for it to be included in SAGE Open upon payment of a publication fee. Manuscript submission and refereeing procedure is unchanged, but on acceptance of your article you will be asked to let SAGE know directly if you are choosing SAGE Open. For further information please visit http:/www.sagepub.co.uk/sageopen.sp
If funding has been provided for your research, convention dictates that you acknowledge the source and grant information in the Acknowledgements section of your article. Please note that in some cases, grant funders require authors to attribute the funding source, describe the role of the study funding body and include the relevant grant reference numbers.
English Language Editing Services: Please click here for information on professional English language editing services recommended by SAGE.
