Focus and Scope

The South African Journal of Surgery (SAJS) is a quarterly, general surgical journal. It carries research articles and letters, editorials, clinical practice and other surgical articles and personal opinion, South African health-related news, obituaries and general correspondence.

Peer Review Process

Original articles are first reviewed by an Editorial Advisory Group with the power to recommend acceptance, rejection or referral for review. Manuscripts from review may be accepted, returned to author for revision or rejected. All final decisions on a manuscript are at the Editor's discretion.

Enrol as a reviewer:

The SAJS encourages readers who are actively involved in research and with particular expertise to serve as peer reviewers of the journal:

Already a registered user? Login to the journal website and edit your profile to include 'Reviewer' as a role. Kindly express your interest to serve as a reviewer in an email to robyn@jesser-point.co.za, specifying your user login.

Not a registered user? Reviewers are required to register with the journal website. Kindly also express your interest to serve as a reviewer in an email to robyn@jesser-point.co.za.

Please read our privacy policy regarding registration. 

Accept an invitation to review:

Logon to the journal website, click on Reviewer and then the title of the article under active submissions. Under Review Step 1 select the email icon adjacent to the appropriate response (will do the review/unable to do the review) to notify the Editor.

Performing/submitting a review:

Ensure that you have accepted to perform the review (outlined above) and consulted the Reviewer Guidelines provided. Login to the journal website, click on Reviewer and the title of the article under active submissions. Complete the steps. Please may we ask that you do your review in MSWord and upload the document on the website. This will ensure that the review is saved on the website. You are also welcome to email your review to Robyn Marais at robyn@jesser-point.co.za. Should you require further assistance, contact robyn@jesser-point.co.za.

Publication Frequency

Journals are published quarterly (1 volume comprising 4 issues per annum).

Open Access Policy

All articles published by the SAJS are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. The journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Copyright

Work published in the journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial 4.0 Unported Works License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Comments policy

The posting of comments to published articles requires registration with this journal website. Only constructive comments that relate to the published material will be permitted. Posted comments solely represent the opinions of the respective user and not those of the SAJS, and do not imply endorsement by the SAJS. The SAJS reserves the right to remove comments without notice that are abusive, threatening, defamatory, contain advertising or spam, or violate another user’s privacy. The SAJS reserves the right to revoke the privileges of users that post inappropriate material. Such material may be brought to the attention of the publisher (robyn@jesser-point.co.za). The SAJS reserves the right to modify this policy without notice.

Notifications

Readers of the SAJS are encouraged to register with the journal website to receive notifications of new issues online (open access).

  • Already a registered user? Login to the journal website and edit your profile to include 'Reader' as a role.
     
  • Not a registered user? Register with the journal website and specify 'Reader' as a role in your user profile. For assistance contact robyn@jesser-point.co.za. Please read our privacy policy regarding registration.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as the use of another's work, words or ideas without attribution or permission, and representation of them as one’s own original work. Plagiarism may take many forms, ranging from major plagiarism (the copy-and-paste of large amounts of text), to minor plagiarism without dishonest intent (e.g. when an author uses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper) and even self-plagiarism (the reuse of significant, identical or near-identical portions of one's own work without citing the original version).

The journal subscribes to CrossCheck, an initiative to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. All manuscripts submitted to the journal are automatically scanned against the CrossCheck database to verify originality. 

Manuscripts containing plagiarism will not be considered for publication in the journal. If plagiarism is brought to light after a manuscript has been published, the journal will proceed to conduct a preliminary investigation. Suspected misconduct will be reported to the institutes and funding agencies of the authors concerned. The journal reserves the right to formally retract such manuscripts and publish statements to reference material as plagiarism.

Publication fees

There is no charge for submissions and no article processing charge (APC) for accepted manuscripts.