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EFORT Open Reviews – Vienna Congress: What goes into publishing the special issue
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Each EFORT Annual Congress is an independent project that provides the European orthopaedic and traumatology community with an important deliverable: medical education on clinical practice and research. However, it is challenging to deliver something as complex, intangible and dynamic as education.
Those challenges include providing knowledge and guidance to cover a variety of education, such as best practice and new concepts backed by cutting-edge evidence from mentors with the best experience in the field. Promoting that exchange and ensuring scientific teaching is done in the most effective, attractive interactive way is also challenging.
EFORT is also committed to the presentation of oral and written materials that make the educational experience a solid one, the distribution of a publication with state-of-the-art information and outstanding data and to the promotion of detailed explanations of an array of relevant topics during open discussion of data.
Lastly, EFORT presents this information through periodical updates that keep education in motion. We copy and paste the process every year during the Congress, but not the content. As such, we embrace the rapid and constant evolution of topics in musculoskeletal education.
Official journal
With the 17th EFORT Annual Congress in Geneva in June 2016, the open access journal EFORT Open Reviews (EOR) became the official journal of EFORT.
This year, EFORT decided to compile the most popular sessions of the annual congresses and instructional lectures into a special issue, a print publication that contains the full peer-reviewed manuscripts. This session compilation is now a component of EOR, the aim of which is to strengthen the learning experience in both directions, between EFORT and delegates, using key references that endorse the content of the presentations and raise the level of interactivity to enhance the reading of the manuscripts and enhance the profile of current topics. This concept relies on the EFORT Scientific Committee and the EOR specialty editors, on the selection of the topics and lecturers included in each congress edition of EOR, and how the EOR publishing team handles production of the special issue.
The main role of EOR is to disseminate cutting-edge information on key topics to all orthopaedists and associated musculoskeletal health care professionals for the scientific evolution of orthopaedics and traumatology practice and research. Therefore, each instructional lecture manuscript that is submitted is carefully peer-reviewed.
Peer review process
The work starts via a double-blinded review process that uses the ScholarOne Manuscripts peer review website, which is also used for the regular issues of EOR. Submitted manuscripts undergo one or more rounds of revision following assessment by the expert reviewers and associate editors. The final decision regarding publication rests with EOR Scientific Editor Prof. George Bentley, from the United Kingdom.
After acceptance, each paper is edited for scientific accuracy and English language usage. Then, there is further editing for style and grammar done by The British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery (BESBJS) publishing team. The revised versions are returned to the authors and once all changes have been approved, the BESBJS team proof reads, typesets and prepares the final, printable PDF, as well as online files for each manuscript. In addition, they adjust the design to ensure the corporate identity requirements are retained in the layout of the final publication.
Work begins now for Vienna
The management of the publication is a complex process that begins long before the printed issue arrives in the delegate bags, with topics chosen 14 months before any presentations are made and manuscripts submitted 8 months before the congress is held.
Following production and release of the special EOR 2016 issue in Geneva, the feedback received from authors, as well as readers, was positive. Readers appreciated the high quality of the publication and the ability to access manuscripts online. Authors commented the publishing team was professional and pleasant to work with and they paid close attention to details.
These encouraging initial results from such an ambitious project has inspired the EFORT and EOR to continue to promote education via this combined approach. It will help achieve the objectives of the European orthopaedic and traumatology community, as expressed in the EFORT mission, which is “to restore and secure mobility, musculoskeletal health and quality of life.”