About the Journal

Mission

The mission of Impact Surgery is to publish high quality research that will influence better decision making for patients, focussing on methodology rather than positive and negative results alone. As an independent, open access, peer reviewed journal, we also aim to create a fairer financial ecosystem that supports faster and better peer review.

Submissions are invited from across surgery and perioperative care. We prioritise research that is likely to impact on better decision making for patients but we do not chase impact factors. 

Why choose Impact Surgery?

Author experience: Save time with these key features: fast submission system with no formatting requirements, initial Editor review within 48 hours, peer review and initial decision within 14 days. We provide quick and fair post peer-review decisions.

Fair ecosystem: Our ambition is to pay peer reviewers and editors for their time,  ensuring that we can sustainably provide rapid expert peer review.

Impact: Find a home for your paper in a cross-discipline environment, with a reputation for impactful research and a focus on ensuring high quality methodology and reporting.

Journal scope

Impact Surgery publishes English language original research and editorial across all surgical (including obstetrics and gynaecology, ophthalmology) and perioperative care disciplines.

Impact Surgery publishes manuscripts with the following study designs: randomised controlled trials, cohort studies, case-control studies, health economics and modelling studies, qualitative studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses.

The journal does not publish case reports, animal studies, or laboratory studies. It does not accept letters to the editor (correspondence).

Impact Surgery follows guidance published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Peer review

We aim to provide rapid decisions for authors, as long review times and delayed rejections can harm research. In the first instance, all submissions will be screened by an Editor who will select manuscripts to send for peer review. Editors will desk reject (no peer review) any manuscripts unlikely to be accepted due to being outside of the journal's scope, low-quality methodology, or low-quality reporting. We aim to either send a submission for peer review or desk reject within 48 hours. Manuscripts selected for a full peer review will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. Peer review is single-blind (the reviewers will see the authors). Once the required peer review reports are received they will be discussed by the editorial team and a decision to will be made to accept, invite revision and resubmission, or to reject. We aim to complete the review process and make an initial decision within 7-14 days of submission.

Rapid acceptance peer review

We will also offer an in-house Editor level peer review for papers that are well reported and have a full and complete methods section at the point of submission. This can include papers where a peer review from another journal is included within the submission, and where these points have been addressed. In these cases, we aim to accept the paper within 1.5 days of submission.

Article formatting

To minimise burden on researchers, Impact Surgery accepts non-formatted first submissions, meaning that when you first submit a manuscript you do not have to format your submission according to our article formatting guidance. However, the more closely your submission follows our guidance, the easier the review process will be and the faster we will be able to make a decision. Only papers that are well-formatted will enter our rapid-peer review system. If you are invited to submit a revised manuscript, you will be asked to follow our guidance at that stage.

AI power

Impact Surgery is pioneering the use of a bespoke large language model to assist with different stages of the editorial process, further lifting the burden on authors and editors. We are now embedding a hybrid human-AI peer review process for every article. Final decisions are always made by a real human Editor. We use AI to screen articles, check for plagiarism, improve layouts, and improve clarity of writing. By doing this, we can manage increasing volumes of submissions while maintaining quality control.

Publisher

Impact Health is a bespoke, independent medical publishing house based in Birmingham (UK), founded in 2022 after periods of consultation and expert advice. Impact Surgery is the launch journal, with Impact Health (General Medical), Impact Quality Improvement, and Impact Public Health as new journals to be launched in 2024. 

Copyrights

We are light touch on copyrights, as we believe in fair and open access to science. We also want to support authors to retain the content on their works as their own, and not get bogged down in legal jargon.

How to cite your paper

Nepogodiev D, Bhangu A, Osier-Bordom D, et al. Impact of common surgical and anaesthetic strategies for pain control after elective gastrointestinal surgery: cohort study. Impact Surgery, 2024;1(1): 10-18.

Sponsorship/Advertising

We have opportunities for ethically minded companies and groups (e.g. non-tobacco related). Please contact us for more information.