Phlebology
The Journal of Venous DiseaseVascular Medicine
The leading scientific journal devoted entirely to venous disease, Phlebology is the official journal of several international societies devoted to the subject. It publishes the results of high quality studies and reviews on any factor that may influence the outcome of patients with venous disease. This journal provides authoritative information about all aspects of diseases of the veins including up to the minute reviews, original articles, and short reports on the latest treatment procedures and patient outcomes to help medical practitioners, allied health professionals and scientists stay up-to-date on developments.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Phlebology is the only English language journal devoted entirely to venous disease and is officially endorsed by the American Vein and Lymphatic Society. This peer-reviewed journal publishes the results of high quality studies and reviews on any factor that may influence the outcome of patients with venous disease. Readers benefit from authoritative information about all aspects of diseases of the veins and the subject matter is of interest not only to medical practitioners (dermatologists, vascular surgeons and radiologists) but also to nursing staff, allied professionals and scientists. Content includes reviews, full original papers, short reports and letters to the editor.
| Alun Davies | Imperial College London, UK |
| Neil Khilnani | Weill Cornell Medicine - NY Presbyterian Hospital, USA |
| Lowell S Kabnick | Atlantic Health, Morristown Medical Center, Kabnick Vein Center, New Jersey, USA |
| Dr. José Antonio Diaz | Vanderbilt University Medical Center Nashville, TN, USA |
| Sergio Gianesini | University of Ferrara, Italy |
| Dr. Fedor Lurie | Jobst Vascular Institute and University of Michigan, MI, USA |
| Sherry Scovill | Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA |
| Paul Thibault | Central Vein and Cosmetic Medical Centre, Australia |
| Efthimios Avgerinos | Co-Director of the Clinic of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, Athens Medical Center, Athens, Greece |
| John Blebea | Central Michigan University, Saginaw, MI, USA |
| Roshan Bootun | Imperial College London, UK |
| Craig Browne | Vascular Surgery, University of Michigan, MI, USA |
| Yung-Wei Chi | University of California, Davis, Sacramento, CA, USA |
| Ahmed S. Gaweesh | University of Alexandria, Egypt |
| Manj Gohel | Imperial College London, UK |
| Douglas A. Hill, MD, FCFP, FAVLS, DABVLM | Medical Director, The Vein Treatment Centre, Calgary, Canada |
| Mark Iafrati | Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA |
| Houman Jalaie | Associate Professor of Surgery, Aachen, Germany |
| Aleksandra Jaworucka-Kaczorowska | Director, Center of Phlebology and Aesthetic Medicine, Prague, Czech Republic |
| Ravul Jindal | Fortis Healthcare, Chandigarh, India |
| Sanjoy Kundu | The Vein Institute of Toronto, Canada |
| Nicos Labropoulos | Stony Brook University Medical Center, Stony Brook, NY, USA |
| Tristan Lane | Imperial College London, UK |
| B B Lee | George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA |
| Mark Malouf | Australian and New Zealand Society of Phlebology (ANZSP), Australia |
| Sriram Narayanan | Harley Street, Singapore |
| Andrea Nelson | University of Leeds, UK |
| Issac Nyamekye | Worcestershire Royal Hospital, UK |
| Tom O’Donnell | Tufts University, Boston, MA, USA |
| Andrea Obi | Vascular Surgery, University of Michigan, MI, USA |
| Kurosh Parsi | St Vincent’s Hospital, Australia |
| Neil Piller | Flinders University, Australia |
| Joseph Rafetto | VA Boston Healthcare System, MA, USA |
| Mikel Sadek | Vascular Surgery, New York University, NY, USA |
| Dr. Evgeny Shaydakov | Hospital Surgery Clinic Petr State University |
| Maxim E. Shaydakov | University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
| Colette Smith | University College London, UK |
| Gerard Stansby | Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK |
| Tomasz Urbanek | Medical University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland |
| Cees Wittens | Maastricht University Medical Center, Netherlands |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Phlebology
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/phleb to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Phlebology will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Phlebology may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
2.7 Declarations
2.8 Clinical trials
2.9 Reporting guidelines
2.10 Research Data
2.11 Contributorship
2.12 Guarantor - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Phlebology, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Covering Letter
The covering letter is important. To help the Editors in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the paper suitable for publication. If your paper should be considered for fast-track publication, please explain why.
Title page
The first page should contain the full title of the manuscript, a short title, the author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s), and the name, postal and email addresses of the author for correspondence, as well as a full list of declarations. Please also include a list of up to five keywords.
The title should be concise and informative, accurately indicating the content of the article. The short title should be no more than six words long.
Abstract
An abstract of no more than 300 words must accompany all Original Articles, Research Articles and Short Reports. The abstract should follow the following format: Objectives, Method, Results and Conclusions.
Editorials
Short pieces on topical subjects, usually commissioned by the Editor, of no more than 1,000 words plus up to 10 references.
Original Articles
Original articles should be 2,000–3,000 words and should carry a structured abstract (of about 300 words), which states the main purposes of the study (Objectives), the basic procedures used (Methods), the findings (Results) and the most important conclusions drawn (Conclusions). The rest of the paper should be structured in conventional style: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References.
Short Reports
Short reports should be 500–800 words, and should include an abstract and no more than five references.
Please note that Case Reports will not be accepted by Phlebology, but you may wish to submit it to Sage Open Medical Case Reports. A case report is defined as a clinical case report of one or two patients, usually with an unexpected presentation. The report typically describes the findings and clinical course, often along with a review of other published cases and the entity being described.
Sage Open Medical Case Reports (www.sageopenmedicalcasereports.com) is a peer-reviewed, open access publication that publishes case reports. Papers will be subjected to rigorous peer-review and will be selected based on whether the research is sound and so merits publication.
Review Articles
Review articles should be 4,000–6,000 words and also require an abstract, indicating the scope of the review, the methods used to retrieve the relevant literature, the principal findings and conclusions drawn. Subheadings should be used within the article to highlight the content of different sections.
Letters
Comments on articles previously published in the journal, or communication on topics that are newsworthy but not appropriate for consideration as a paper.
Declarations
Please note all manuscripts should be accompanied by a separate document entitled ‘Declarations’. This should be submitted under the file designation ‘Declarations’. This must include each of the below headings with the corresponding information. Please note that manuscripts which do not include these Declarations will be returned. These headings will be published at the end of every accepted manuscript, where one of these headings is not applicable please indicate as such under the heading. Please see section 2.7 for additional information regarding declarations.
DECLARATIONS
Conflicting interests
Funding
Ethical approval
Guarantor
Contributorship
Acknowledgements
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
-
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
2.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance”).
It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Phlebology requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of Phlebology to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.
2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.
For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.
Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.
Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants.
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published.
Any article containing identifiable patient information must be accompanied by a statement of consent to publication. If there is any doubt about whether or not information is identifiable, the Editors are happy to discuss this before an article is submitted. Reviewers will also be asked to take careful account of issues relating to patient confidentiality when reviewing articles.
Not only should submissions be accompanied by a statement of consent, but the Editors also expect to be informed about the measures that have been taken to anonymise the details that could have led to parties being identified. They also reserve the right to work with the authors to make additional anonymising changes as they or the reviewers see fit. The Editors may also ask authors to remove personal information that, whilst interesting and colourful, does not add to the substance of an article, but does increase the likelihood of parties being identified. The exception to this will be where the patient has indicated in writing that she/he wants to be identified, has read the material, has discussed the consequences of being identified, and has agreed to the disclosure of all the personal information contained in the article.
All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The Journal has adopted the ARRIVE guidelines.
Please include information regarding ethical approval and informed consent within your declarations page.
The following statements should be uploaded under the file type ‘Declarations’ for every manuscript submitted. These will be published at the end of every paper accepted for publication.
DECLARATIONS
Competing interests
Funding
Ethical approval
Guarantor
Contributorship
Acknowledgements
Please see the below example of a completed declarations section:
Competing interests: HG is an employee of Statins Incorp. EF has received grants from Globescape plc. LM provides consultative advice to Lab Tests Ltd.
Funding: This research was funded by the University of York (C-2039857820).
Ethical approval: The ethics committee of Northern Yorkshire approved this study (REC number: GH23335H).
Guarantor: EF.
Contributorship: LM and HG researched literature and conceived the study. EF was involved in protocol development, gaining ethical approval, patient recruitment and data analysis. AB wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Sarah Powells for her assistance and guidance in this research. We would also like to thank Globescape plc for providing reagents at a reduced cost.
Phlebology conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline.
Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Please include a statement of contributorship within your declarations page. For multi-authored papers this statement should outline what each party contributed to the authorship of the paper. Authors should be identified by their initials. An example is shown below.
LM and HG researched literature and conceived the study. EF was involved in protocol development, gaining ethical approval, patient recruitment and data analysis. AB wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Please list the Guarantor for your paper within the declarations page for your manuscript. The Guarantor is the person willing to take full responsibility for the article, including for the accuracy and appropriateness of the reference list. This will often be the most senior member of the research group and is commonly also the author for correspondence. Please state this person’s name as initials.
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Phlebology and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Phlebology offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway. The manuscript should be submitted in single column format.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Phlebology adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver EndNote output file.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Phlebology is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/phleb to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Phlebology editorial office as follows: