Submission Guidelines

TOJ Manuscript Submission and Review Process

TOJ publishes original manuscripts semiannually both in print and online. Manuscripts may include review articles, case reports, technical notes, commentaries, short communications, letters, or editorials.

Requirements

 A manuscript submitted to TOJ must not be published or under consideration for publication elsewhere
 The submitted work must be original
 If figures and/or tables are adopted from another source, the pertinent permissions should be obtained by the authors
Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval should be stated for the manuscripts involving human subjects
Food & Drug Administration (FDA) status should be specified for all instruments, devices, drugs, and procedures referred to in clinical papers
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approval should be stated in manuscripts involving animal research
Potential conflict of interest should be included for all authors; if no conflict exists, the statement “The authors report no conflict of interest regarding the published work” should be included in the cover letter.

Submission

All manuscripts are to be submitted to TOJ electronically as attached files via the email address: toj@texasorthojournal.org. Submissions should include a cover letter, title page, manuscript text, figures and/or tables, and legends as separate files. 

Formatting Guidelines

Cover Letter

A brief cover letter describing the manuscript should accompany the submission. It should include the affiliation (including department) of all authors, and the postal address, email and phone number of the corresponding author. The cover letter must include a statement indicating that the submitted work is original, and that all listed authors contributed to the submitted work, and all reviewed and approved the manuscript prior to its submission to TOJ. The cover letter should designate the type of the submitted manuscript, word count, and number of tables and/or figures. 

Manuscript Text, Tables, and Figures

Manuscript text should be submitted in an editable word format (eg, DOC, DOCX, PDF, RTF) and should consist of the following components: 

Title
Authors
Affiliations (with complete details of the corresponding author)
Abstract (200 to 300 words)
Keywords (4 to 6)
Level of evidence (according to table below)
Manuscript body
Acknowledgements
Ethical statement (for research work using human or animal studies)
References (numbered consecutively in the sequence in which they appear in the manuscript text; PubMed styling)
Tables (as editable text files)
Figures (color or black & white) with a resolution of a minimum 300 dpi in JPEG, BMP, PPT, PPTX, or TIFF format
Legends
Supplementary files (if any)

Peer Review Process

A manuscript submitted to TOJ is reviewed first by the editorial staff for its compliance with the TOJ guidelines for originality and ethical requirements.
The manuscript is then reviewed within 20 business days by two independent reviewers identified as experts in the field.
After the manuscript review is completed, the editors make the recommendation to accept, revise, or reject the submitted work, and the corresponding author will be notified within 30 business days of submission.
If the decision is to reject, the corresponding author is notified with the concerns raised by the reviewers.
If the decision is to revise, the authors are invited to revise the manuscript accordingly and resubmit it to TOJ.
An accepted article enters the TOJ production process, and a formatted proof of the paper is sent to the corresponding author for correction and approval. Authors are requested to send the corrections and/or approval of the galley proof to the editorial office within 48 hours. The final corrected version will be published in TOJ; the online version will appear as soon as the article is finalized.
Each author of a paper published in TOJ receives a complimentary copy of the printed issue of TOJ in which the paper appears.