Revista Argentina de Cirugía is the official scientific publication of Asociación Argentina de Cirugía (AAC). It is a quarterly journal published in the last month of the period: March, June, September and December.

Since volume 117 (January 2025) the journal moves to a continuous publication model, following Scielo’s recommendations. As a consequence of this, once an article is in its final form, after editing and proofreading, it is immediately published online.

Scope

Manuscripts related to various aspects of surgery will be considered for publication and will undergo a double-blind peer review system, using an ad hoc form. The Journal publishes the following manuscript types: clinical or experimental research, conference proceedings, original unpublished articles, state-of-the-art reviews, case reports, letters to the editor, and other types of articles accepted by the Editorial Board. All manuscripts submitted must be unpublished and written in Spanish or English. Manuscripts written in Spanish should include an abstract in English. 

Editorial policies

The opinions expressed in the manuscripts are the sole responsibility of the authors. The Editorial Board reserves the right to make grammatical and style changes and other corrections as may be necessary in order to meet the requirements of the printing process. Incomplete manuscripts will not be accepted for review. Manuscripts accepted for publication may be subject to an Editorial Comment.

Revista Argentina de Cirugía follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and the ethics rules of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE). See http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/corrections-and-version-control.html or refer to the Instructions for submitting a manuscript to Revista Argentina de Cirugía, where you will find the instructions of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. If the manuscripts prepared by the authors are not in agreement with the specifications of these guidelines, the editors of Revista Argentina de Cirugía will return them so that the appropriate changes can be made.

Peer review

The editor of the journal assigns each paper to be read by one of the members of the Editorial Board, who must return it in a very brief period and notify whether its publication is of interest.
If the report of that member is positive, the manuscript, without the name of the authors or the institution/s, is sent to 2 or 3 external reviewers who are experts in the subject, who after a maximum of 14 days should submit their analyses and comments.

According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), "Manuscripts submitted to journals are privileged communications that are authors’ private, confidential property, and authors may be harmed by premature disclosure of any or all of a manuscript’s details. Therefore, reviewers should keep manuscripts and the information they contain strictly confidential. Reviewers must not publicly discuss a manuscript and must not appropriate authors’ ideas before the manuscript is published. Reviewers must not retain the manuscript for their personal use and should destroy paper copies after submitting their reviews. Reviewers are expected to respond promptly to requests to review and to submit reviews within the time agreed. Reviewers’ comments should be constructive, honest, and polite. Reviewers should declare their conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from the peer-review process if a conflict exists".

The manuscript may be rejected or accepted with major changes or minor changes or without changes; if changes were required, the reviewers’ comments will be sent to the responsible author for corrections. The reviewers’ written comments will be anonymous. The authors should send the corrected version and a letter with detailed point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments. Once received, the corrections will be resubmitted to the reviewers for their acceptance. If the corrections are accepted by the reviewers or Editorial Board, the usual steps of the publication process are followed (editing and style, translation into English and editing of the English version, galley proof, etc.).

Ethical considerations and research transparency

When performing clinical trials with human beings, the procedures used should be clearly in agreement with the standards of the Ethics Committee responsible for human research, either institutional o regional, and with the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, amended in 1983 and revised in 2024. This information should be clearly stated in the methodology section of the study.

Data processing must comply with the Personal Data Protection Act (Law 25326) for both experimental and observational studies.
                All research studies involving experiments in animals should have been performed according to the “Guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals” (http://www.nap.edu/ readingroom/books/ labrats/), of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, updated by the American Physiological Society (APS) (http://www.the-aps.org/committes/animal/index. htm).

Manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines will not be considered for publication.

Revista Argentina de Cirugía promotes research transparency by encouraging authors to share their data, analytical methods, and study materials to facilitate reproducibility of results and control procedures. Authors are encouraged to deposit these data in appropriate public repositories and to include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscripts, with a link to the repository used. This policy applies to a variety of article types, from clinical trials to reviews, ensuring the accessibility and integrity of surgical research.

Ethical considerations for publication                                                                   

Originality

Authors must ensure that the manuscript is an original work and has not been previously published and is not being considered for publication by any other print or electronic journal. Inclusion of abstracts and presentations at scientific meetings will not affect full publication, as long as any previous publication of the data is disclosed, and copyright is respected. Manuscripts that have been previously published in other languages must be indicated on the title page, and authors are discouraged from submitting manuscripts in English that have been previously published for other audiences. An attempt of duplicate publication, without previous notification and without the consent of the Editorial Board, will result in its rejection. If the manuscript has already been published, the Editorial Board will publish a notice about the characteristics of the duplicated material, even without the authors’ consent. 
The journal will not allow (except for exceptional cases) the preliminary dissemination in general or scientific media of part or the complete manuscript which has been accepted but not yet published.

Conflicts of interest

All authors (of original articles, reviews, editorials, or any other type of article) should disclose any affiliation with any organization with a financial interest, direct or indirect, in the subjects, matters or materials analyzed in the manuscript (e.g., consulting fee, employment, expert testimony, honoraria, paid speaker, advance payments, grants, reimbursements, royalties, stock options or other ownership interest) within the last 3 years of beginning the work that may affect conducting or reporting the manuscript submitted. If authors are uncertain about what should be considered a potential conflict of interest, they should disclose it for consideration. If there are no conflicts of interest to declare, authors should include a written statement confirming so. Information about potential conflicts of interest should be available to reviewers and will be published with the manuscript at the discretion of the Editorial Board. Authors who have questions about these issues should contact the Editorial Office.

Authorship

All designated authors should be qualified for authorship.
Every author should have had enough participation in the study to be publicly responsible for its content. Merit for authorship should be based only on solid contributions:

1. a) Conception and design or data analysis and interpretation.
2. b) Writing of the manuscript or critical review of its intellectual content.
3. c) Final approval of the review which will be published.

The three requirements described are mandatory. Participation exclusively in data collection or contribution of funds, as well as the exclusive task of overall supervision of the group do not justify authorship.
At least one author should be responsible for the parts of the manuscript that are critical regarding its main conclusions.

These criteria also apply to multicenter studies and should be fulfilled by all authors. Members of the group who do not fulfill such criteria should be listed, if they so agree, in the acknowledgment or appendix sections.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools for image or natural language processing are not considered authors. Authors who use such technology should describe, in both the cover letter and the submitted manuscript in the appropriate section if applicable, how they used it. For example, if AI was used for writing assistance, describe this in the acknowledgment section.  Authors are fully responsible for ensuring that all content generated by artificial intelligence is accurate.

Content verification

Note: according to the new requirements of SciELO and Basic Core, authors will be asked for their corresponding ORCID registration number. For instructions and to obtain the registration number, please visit the following link: https://orcid.org

Type of articles considered for publication                                                                                                     

Editorials

The Editorial Board will commission editorials on any article published in the issue or any other topic of interest to experts in each specialty. The word count is limited to 800-1000 words and the article should include no more than 10 references, and no more than 2 authors. In all cases, the Editorial Board reserves the right to modify the text style.

Concepts and methodology

This section will include brief updates on topics related to research methodology and statistics that are of interest to the authors. The word count is limited to 2000 words and the article should include no more than 15 references and no abstract.  The article might be written by members of the Editorial Board or other commissioned author.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are review articles that present a systematic and reproducible literature search of research articles on a topic of interest. Priority will be given to the most relevant topics when the manuscript is submitted.  All meta-analyses and systematic reviews should follow the guidelines outlined in the PRISMA statement (http://www.prisma-statement.org/). They should also include a PRISMA flow diagram and the corresponding checklist (https://www.prisma-statement.org/). The text word count should be no more than 3500 words with an abstract in Spanish and English of no more than 300 words. The total number of tables and figures should be no more than 6, and the article should include no more than 60 references. Additional tables and figures can be submitted as supplementary material.

Statistical analysis of meta-analyses should report the use of fixed- or random-effects model analyses, measures of heterogeneity among included articles, and possible publication biases.

Original article

Original articles are scientific reports of the results of an original basic or clinical research. The text word count should be no more than 2700 words with the abstract in Spanish and English of no more than 250 words each. The total number of tables and figures should be no more than 5, and the article should include no more than 40 references and no more than 10 authors (up to 15 authors for multicenter studies). Additional tables and figures can be submitted as supplementary material. They may correspond to any of the following designs:

Observational studies (prospective and retrospective cohort studies, case-control studies and cross-sectional studies)

Observational studies are those where there is no active intervention by the researcher.  We strongly recommend the use of the STROBE (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology) guidelines (https://www.strobe-statement.org/) to conduct and prepare this type of articles. 

Special article

It includes personal data and conclusions, usually focusing on areas such as economic policy, ethics, teaching, laws or health care services. The text word count should be no more than 2700 words with an unstructured abstract in Spanish and English of no more than 250 words each. The total number of tables and figures should be no more than 5, and the article should include no more than 50 references.

Brief communications

Brief communications are original investigations. The introduction and discussion are shorter than in an original article.  The text word count should be no more than 1300 words and the abstract in Spanish and English no more than 150 words each. The total number of tables and figures should be no more than 3, and the article should include no more than 15 references, and no more than 6 authors.

Scientific letters

Clinical cases involving rare diseases or novel therapeutic approaches will be accepted. They should be written according to the CARE (Case Reports) guidelines for accuracy, transparency and usefulness (https://www.care-statement.org/writing-a-case-report). The text word count should be no more than 1200 words with an unstructured abstract in Spanish and English of no more than 150 words each. The total number of tables and figures should be no more than 2, and the article should include no more than 6 references.

Surgical technique

This section includes articles on novel surgical techniques. The technique should be described as detailed as possible so that it can be reproduced and should be accompanied by appropriate illustrations. We recommend not to use intraoperative photographs, but professional quality drawings instead. The technique must have been practiced several times with good results. The interventions performed only once do not correspond to this section, but to Scientific Letters. The text word count should be no more than 1500 words. The total number of tables and figures should be no more than 9, and the article should include no more than 10 references. The article should include an abstract in Spanish and English of no more than 150 words each.

Images and videos in surgery

This article includes images or videos of rare cases and/or original techniques of clinical relevance in the different aspects of surgery.

The article should not exceed 6 authors and should be accompanied by a text of up to 500 words, 2 representative images or one video lasting no more than 6 minutes. It should include no more than 6 references. The video must be accompanied by a voice-over in Spanish and/or English and/or subtitles, without background music. The video must not contain institutional logos or authors' data to comply with the double-blind review policy.

Opinion articles

These articles are opinion essays, similar to editorials but are not related to any specific article published in that issue. Often, they contain opinions about health policy issues and are generally unsolicited. The article should include no more than 2 authors, no more than 15 references and the text word count should be no more than 2000 words. It should include an unstructured abstract in Spanish and English of no more than 200 words each and the total number of tables and figures should be no more than 4.

Letters to the Editor

Each Letter to the Editor is an opinion of an article published within the past 3 issues of the Journal. The text is limited to a maximum of 500 words and generally has no tables or figures (at most one, approved by the Editorial Board), references are limited to 5 and authors are limited to 3.  Authors may submit responses to the letter up to three issues after its publication.

Instructions for submitting an article                                                                                                              

When preparing articles, the authors should follow the instructions listed below and the international requirements described in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals written by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199701233360422

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3142758/

Manuscript preparation                                                                                                                                          

Original articles will be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Material and methods, Results and Discussion. Longer articles may need subheadings in some sections (results and discussion) to clarify their content.
This format is not required when preparing review articles, state-of-the-art reviews and editorials. The manuscript should be submitted in Microsoft Word® format.
Pages should be numbered consecutively, beginning with the title page, in the upper right-hand corner of every page. The size of the pages should be A4, including figure text and legends. Use a 12 pt. font size. Please follow the quality guidelines for each type of article when writing your manuscript https://www.equator-network.org

Title

1. Title of the article, concise but informative.
2. No more than 2 lines of 50 characters each.
3. Name, middle initial and last name of each author with their highest academic degree stating whether they are MAAC (full members of Asociación Argentina de Cirugía) and institutions with which the authors are affiliated.
4. Name of the department or institution to which the work should be attributed.
5. Name and e-mail of the author to whom correspondence about the article should be sent.
6. Sources of funding (donations, equipment, etc.).
7. The title page should include the text word count. The title, abstract, references, tables and figure legends should be excluded from the word count.

Abstract and keywords

The second page should contain an abstract; the number of words should fit the type of article chosen.
The abstract should describe the objectives of the study or investigation, the basic procedures (patient selection or selection of laboratory animals for the study, and observational, analytical and statistical methods), main findings (specific data and their statistical significance, if possible) and main conclusions. It should emphasize the important and new aspects of the study or observation.

Below the abstract, the authors should provide or identify 3 to 10 keywords for indexing purposes. Keywords should preferably be selected from the list published in the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) of the National Library of Medicine (available on https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search).

Abstract in Spanish

It should consist of a translation of the abstract in English and should follow the same guidelines. The abstract in Spanish should be reviewed by a professional translator with experience in scientific writing.

Text

The text will be divided into sections called: a) Introduction, b) Material and methods, c) Results and d) Discussion.

Introduction

Contains the background information and description of the research problem and provides only references which are strictly pertinent and should not include data regarding the study conclusion. The end of the section should clearly state the hypothesis and the objectives of the work. The objectives should be set according to the response variables that will be described later in the Results section. 

Material and methods

This section must be consistent with the type of study conducted according to the appropriate quality guidelines described in the "Types of Articles Considered for Publication" section. The authors should be clear and concise and provide the necessary tools for the reproducibility of the research. The section must address the following elements: study design, variables used and their role, data collection, and inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Statistical analysis: the statistical methods should be sufficiently described to allow readers to verify the results. The statistical tests and the software used are included at the end of Material and methods. The results of those tests are presented in tables and in the Results section.

Results

The results are a report of the observations, not an interpretation of the observations. They should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables and figures. Do not repeat in the text all data in the tables or figures; emphasize or summarize only important observations.
The number of tables and figures used should be restricted to those necessary to explain and support the material presented. Graphs can be used as an alternative for tables with numerous entries.

The results of the statistical tests are included in this section.

Discussion

New and important aspects of the study should be emphasized and the conclusion thereby derived. Do not repeat data already included in the Introduction or in the Results section.
In the Discussion section include the findings, and their implications and limitations, even those for future research. Relate the observations made to those of other important studies. Do not include information about economic cost-benefit relations unless the manuscript includes economic data and their analysis. Avoid claiming priority or referring to other studies that have not been completed. Consider other hypotheses when justified, but define them clearly as such.

Conclusions should be related to the objectives of the study and are the last paragraph of the discussion section. Avoid statements that are not completely supported by the data.

Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest must be disclosed at the end of the article according to what has been detailed in "Ethical considerations for publication".

Acknowledgments

1. Acknowledgments should be included in the appendix of the text . Specify: contributions that merit acknowledgment but do not justify authorship, such as the general support of the chair or department.
2. Acknowledgment for material and financial support, specifying the nature of the support.

Persons who have contributed intellectually to the material but whose involvement does not justify authorship may be mentioned; their role and contribution may also be described. For example: "scientific advisor", "critical review of the purposes of the study", "data collection", or "participation in clinical work". Such persons must give their written consent to be mentioned.

It is the authors' responsibility to obtain written permissions from the persons mentioned in the acknowledgments section since the readers may infer their approval of the data and conclusions. The technical legend should be acknowledged in a separate paragraph.

References

The use of a reference manager software is recommended. References in text, tables and legends should be numbered consecutively in the order they are cited in the text using Arabic numbers in square brackets.

Avoid citing abstracts. Accepted but not yet published references or material will be designated "in press" or "in preparation"; the authors should provide the corresponding written permissions to cite such material. Information from articles that have been submitted but not yet accepted is cited in the text as "unpublished observations" with written permission from the source. Authors should verify and check references against the original documents.

Examples

Article
For citations with six (6) or more authors, list the first six authors (last name followed by the initial of the names for each author) followed by "et al."
Oria A, Cimmino D, Ocampo C, Silva W, Kohan G, Zandalazini H, et al. Early endoscopic intervention versus early conservative management in patients with acute gallstone pancreatitis and biliopancreatic obstruction. Ann Surg. 2007; 245(1):10-17.
For publications in Spanish, use "y col" instead.

The inclusion of the digital object identifier (DOI) is recommended when they are available.

Book chapter

Tisi PV, Shearman CP. Systemic consequences of reperfusion. In: Grace PA, Mathie RT, eds. Ischaemia-reperfusioninjury. London: Blackwell Science; 1999:20-30.
Full book
Courtney M T Jr, Beauchamp RD,  Evers BM, Mattox KL. Sabiston Textbook of Surgery, 19th Edition. Elsevier Health Sciences; 2012.

Electronic publication ahead of print

4. Authors. Title. Journal.; [online]. Accessed mm/dd/yyyy. Available at: website (exact website or sufficient to guide the reader to the link).

Personal communications

“Personal communications” should be avoided unless they contain information which is essential or not available from other sources. The name of the person and the date of the communication will be quoted in the text in parentheses. Authors must obtain written permission and confirmation of accuracy of a personal communication.

Software
Epi Info [computer program]. Version 6. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 1994.

Databases
CANCERNET-PDQ [database online]. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute; 1996. Accessed on January 20, 2010.
WWW
Helman A. Air pressure and Mount McKinley. At: http:// www.cohp.org/ak/notes/pressure_altitude_simplified_ II.html; accessed on 10/19/2009.

Tables and figures

Tables

Tables should be submitted in editable files so that they can be modified according to the style of the Journal. They should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they were previously cited in the text and with a brief title for each one. Place in each column an abbreviated heading and the explanatory notes at the foot of the table (not in the headings). All non-standard abbreviations in the table should be explained at the bottom of the table. For footnotes, use the following symbols in this sequence: *, †, ‡, §, ¶, **, ††, ‡‡, ans so on. Statistical measures, as standard deviation and standard error of the mean should be identified. Ensure each table has been cited in the text. If data from another source (published or unpublished) are used, permission must be obtained and the source must be fully disclosed. Do not include vertical lines in the tables, but only horizontal lines, if they are strictly necessary to clearly understand their content.
The use of too many tables for the length of the text may lead to problems in page configuration.

Figures

Revista Argentina de Cirugía considers "figures" to be diagrams, drawings, photographs, micrographs, algorithms, and flow charts, among others.

Numbers, letters and symbols must be clear and their size appropriate so that even after being reduced for publication all items remain legible. Titles and detailed explanations are placed in the legend text and not in the illustration itself.
If photographs of persons are used, either the person should not be identified or the authors should obtain written permission to use the photograph (see "Protecting Patient Privacy").
If microscopy photographs are submitted, the magnification used (e.g., 40x), and the staining method should be noted. Each structure described should be clearly marked with an arrow. The types of arrows to use are, in the following order: black arrow, black arrowhead, white arrow, white arrowhead, short black arrow, long black arrow, hollow black arrowhead, hollow white arrowhead. Avoid marking structures with asterisks, stars, circles or other non-conventional symbols. Figures should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they have been previously cited in the text. If a figure has already been published, indicate the original source and attach written permission for its publication.
Obtain permission from all authors and publisher, except if the documents are in the public domain. Color illustrations will only be published if the authors agree to pay an additional fee.

Units of measurement

Length, weight, height, and volume should be expressed in units of the metric system, temperature in degrees Celcius (°C), and blood pressure in mm Hg, according to the units and symbols used by the International System of Measurements (Système International d'Unités)
All clinical, hematological and chemical measurements should be expressed in the metric system or IU.

Abbreviations and symbols

Use standard abbreviations only. Do not use abbreviations in the title or abstract; when they are used in the text, the complete word should be spelled out before the abbreviation, unless it is a standard unit of measurement.
All numerical values ​​must be accompanied by their corresponding unit. Decimal separators are a comma in Spanish and a dot in English. Thousands separators (space, dot or comma) will not be used for four-digit numbers (for example: 1357, 6893 and 3356). For five-digit numbers or greater, a space will be used as thousands separator (for example: 24 689, 163 865 and 9 786 432).  Years will be written without a space, dot or comma.

Manuscript submission

Authors should submit the manuscript as .docx or .doc format by e-mail to: revista@aac.org.ar.