ETHICS AND RIGHTS STATEMENT
INTERNATIONAL SURGERY
OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS

International Surgery is published by the International College of Surgeons (ICS) and is the official Journal for the ICS. The position of Editor-in-Chief is approved by the governing body of the ICS, the International Executive Council. International Surgery has the important role in the ICS of fulfilling the educational mission of the College. The Editor-in-Chief provides semi annual reports on the functioning of International Surgery to the governance of the College, the International Executive Council.

International Surgery publishing standards are based on the principles and guidelines
outlined by the following:

  • Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
  • International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
  • Council of Scientific Editors (CSE)
  • National Information Standards Organization (NISO), in particular recommended Practices for the Presentation and Identification of E-Journals (PIE-J)
  • Declaration of Helsinki Ethical Principles for Medical Research 
  • International Guiding Principles for Biomedical Research Involving Animals

Details on the author CRediT-Contributor Roles are available from the For Authors section of the International Surgery website.

Authors must warrant that the investigations reported in the submitted manuscript were performed in conformity with the Recommendations from the Declaration of Helsinki Ethical Principles for Medical Research and the International Guiding Principles for Biomedical Research Involving Animals.

Authors must obtain permission and fully acknowledge any information used from another publication or other unpublished sources. Authors are required to acknowledge any financial assistance and other material support from other contributors, who do not meet the criterial for authorship.

Authors are required to keep all information related to the submitted manuscript and peer review process confidential, that their respective work is subject to embargo considerations for non-open access manuscripts, and that none of the authors may discuss the findings of the manuscript with the media.

An experienced Editorial Review Board exists to maintain the integrity of the process and is comprised of respected academic reviewers. The publication editorial staff works closely with those providing peer reviews for International Surgery, with the objective of providing completed reviews on a timely basis for those authors who submit their manuscripts for consideration.

Rights and Permissions

Open-access publishing: involves acceptance of payment in return for making the article freely available via the internet. Such articles will be published on acceptance after peer review in the next available issue. The author will retain the copyright of the article. International Surgery will retain a non-exclusive right to the content, receive proper attribution and citation as journal of first publication and the authority to migrate the work to future formats and include the article in collections.

Open access

All Research articles published by ICS are published by default as open access (irrespective of who funded the research) and reuse is permitted in accordance with the terms of the relevant applicable open access licence.

Open Access licences for International Surgery

CC BY-NC

By default, we publish our Open Access articles under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0). CC BY-NC articles allow the author, and any non-commercial bodies, to reuse the material for non-commercial uses in any other way they choose, subject to being in accordance with the CC-BY-NC licence, without acquiring permission from ICS. Any reuse must give attribution to the author(s) and the journal and adhere to our requirements in clause 6.4.2 if our author licence. Commercial users or commercial use will require permission from ICS for any reuse.

CC BY-NC articles can be identified by the following statement that appears at the end of the article:

“This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0.”

CC BY

Articles funded by organisations that mandate publication with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence are published with this licence. CC BY 4.0 permits reuse for commercial purposes subject to the article being fully attributed (see the requirements in clause 6.4.2 of our author licence).

CC BY articles can be identified by the following statement that appears at the end of the article:

“This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0.”

Revised July 2025