Editorial process

Initial screening

After submission, the Journal’s Editorial Office will run the following checks:

• Ensure that the submitted manuscript matches the Journal’s aims and scope
• Check for plagiarism using iThenticate: to ensure that only manuscripts with less than 10% similarity are processed further
• Review the authors’ Consent & Contribution forms
• Ensure all authors have provided ORCID iDs

Peer-review policy

The Journal of Spine Practice is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. It uses a rigorous double-blind peer-review model by at least two independent external reviewers. The double-blind peer-review process means that neither the authors nor the reviewers are aware of each other’s identity during the process. The peer-review process takes place prior to publication and is facilitated by the Journal. The editors mediate all interactions between reviewers and authors. The reviews are owned by the journal and are not published. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the academic quality of the publication process, including final acceptance decisions, approval of Guest Editors and special issue topics, and new Editorial Board members.

The Journal of Spine Practice follows the Ethical Guidelines of Peer Reviewers by the Committee on Publication Ethics. The Journal does not guarantee manuscript acceptance. Although the peer-review process' efficiency is one of the Journal's indicators, there is no guarantee of a specific time for a decision to be made. 

Assignment to reviewers

The Editor-in-Chief will assign the manuscript to one of the Editorial Board members, who will send the manuscript to at least two expert reviewers. The reviewers will view an abstract of the manuscript to decide if they will accept to review the manuscript based on the following criteria:

• They have the expertise to review the manuscript
• They have no conflicts of interest with the manuscript
• They have the time to complete the peer review report within two weeks

If the reviewers agree with the above conditions, then they will be assigned to review the manuscript.

Peer reviewer reports

The reviewers will submit their reports on the manuscripts within two weeks of accepting to review, along with their recommendation of one of the following actions to the Editor:

• Accept submission: submission of the manuscript is recommended as it is
• Minor changes required: the manuscript requires minor revisions
• Major changes required: the manuscript requires major revisions
• Decline submission: rejection of the manuscript is recommended; the reason(s) for rejection must be stated

Editor’s decision

Based on all the peer reviewers’ reports, the Editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations:

• Accept submission: the manuscript is accepted as it is
• Minor changes required: the manuscript requires minor revisions
• Major changes required: the manuscript requires major revisions
• Decline submission: the manuscript is rejected; the reason(s) for rejection must be stated

Editor-in-Chief’s decision

The Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision based on the Editor’s and reviewers’ recommendations.

Authors’ responses

Based on the Editor-in-Chief’s decision, the authors have one of four options:

• If the article is accepted, the authors will receive further instructions after copyediting
• If the article requires revision, the authors will have four weeks to submit the required revisions
• If the article is declined, the authors will need to submit to another journal

Reviewer suggestions

Authors can suggest two potential reviewers with the appropriate expertise to review the manuscript. The editors will not necessarily approach these referees. Please provide detailed contact information (address, homepage, phone, e-mail address).

The proposed referees should neither be current collaborators of the co-authors nor have published with any of the co-authors of the manuscript within the last five years. Proposed reviewers should be from different institutions to the authors. You may identify appropriate Editorial Board members of the journal as potential reviewers.

Authors’ appeal

Authors have the right to appeal any editorial decision. This can be done in the following order:

• Submitting an appeal request to the Editor-in-Chief, quoting the manuscript number and indicating the rationale for their dispute
• If the answer of the Editor-in-Chief is not satisfying to the authors, the authors can email the Ombudsperson of the Journal (ombuds@jspinepractice.org)

Authors may appeal if they feel that the decision to reject was based on one or more of the following elements:

• a conflict of interest by the reviewers, associate editors, or Editor-in-Chief
• a major misunderstanding over a technical aspect of the manuscript
• a failure to understand the scientific advance shown in the manuscript

Appeals requesting a second opinion without sufficient justification will not be considered. Appeals will only be considered from the original submitting author/corresponding author.

Content alerts

Upon publishing, all authors will be automatically registered for content alerts from the publication. To stop receiving the alerts, authors can subsequently unsubscribe through the link provided in the email.

Long-term archiving

To preserve the scholarly literature published in electronic form and ensure that these materials remain available to future generations of scholars and researchers, KnE Publishing content is archived in Portico, a not-for-profit organization with a mission and singular focus to provide a permanent archive of electronic scholarly content.

Portico representative offices are located in New York, New Jersey, and Michigan.

The Journal of Spine Practice does not allow self-archiving of pre-print versions of the manuscripts unless mandated by the funding agency. This can be discussed on a case-by-case basis with the Editor-in-Chief. The Journal of Spine Practice allows the author to self-archive only the Publisher’s version of the manuscript in third-party repositories without embargo. The Journal’s Self-Archiving policy is deposited in the SHERPA/RoMEO database.

Article-processing charges and fees

This journal is a platinum Open Access journal. This means the journal is published Open Access, and if your article is accepted for publication, you will not have to pay an article-processing charge (APC).

Copyright and Open Access policies

This is an Open Access journal. Therefore, all published articles are freely available on the journal website without any charge. 

All of the articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), where authors retain the copyright of their work, and this license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

To provide proper attribution when citing articles in this journal, please include:

• Author names
• Full article title
• Journal title
• Publication year
• Volume and issue numbers
• Pagination