Instructions for Submitting a Letter to the Editor

Finding the article
Submitting the letter
Conflict-of-interest form
Submitting tables and illustrations
What to expect after submitting a letter

JBJS welcomes readers' comments on published articles. Letters will be accepted and edited at the Editor's discretion and will be published electronically on The Journal's website, www.ejbjs.org. Selected letters and author responses will be published in the print journal on a quarterly basis.

To submit a letter, go to our website, www.ejbjs.org, and use the "Search JBJS" box to locate the article on which you are commenting. When the article citation appears, click on "Full Text" and then on the "Letters to the Editor: Submit a Response" link that appears in the right column. To avoid unnecessary delay, complete all of the required fields.

All Letters to the Editor must meet the following requirements:

1. They must be succinct (approximately 325 words) and address one or two major subjects regarding the article.

2. References must be numbered according to the sequence of citation in the text, not alphabetically. All references must be cited by number in the text.

3. Contributors must reveal any conflict of interest on JBJS's official conflict-of-interest form, which can be obtained by clicking on: "Disclosure of Potential Conflict of Interest form." The corresponding respondent must complete and sign the form, have all coauthors of the letter sign the form (signatures must be original; they cannot be stamped or electronically generated), and return the form via fax (781-449-9787) to the JBJS editorial department as soon as possible. Letters will not be published until a complete conflict-of-interest form has been received.

4. Tables and illustrations, while rarely necessary, must be e-mailed separately to letter{at}jbjs.org. When e-mailing such material, clearly identify the letter with which it should be included by providing the title and authors of the article and the authors of the letter. Electronic illustrations must be in TIFF or EPS format. Do not embed images into other software programs (e.g., a word processing program). Note that you will not be able to submit Excel or PowerPoint files. Image files should be named appropriately, including the number of the figure (e.g., Figure1.tif, Figure2.eps, etc.). Color images must be CMYK (not RGB). We cannot alter or vouch for the quality of the color reproductions. When using a digital camera to create your images, we recommend, if possible, that you set the camera to save in TIFF format (not JPEG), set the resolution to a minimum of 300 ppi (pixels per inch), and set the size of the image to 5 × 7 in (127 × 178 mm). The resolution of your electronic images is critical and is directly linked to how well they will appear when printed. Color and grayscale images, such as radiographs, must have a minimum resolution of 300 ppi, and line-art drawings must have a minimum resolution of 1200 ppi. An original image size of 5 × 7 in (127 × 178 mm) is preferred.

Once we have received the completed conflict-of-interest form (signed by all authors), accepted letters that do not require an author response will be published electronically. Letters that, in the Editor's view, require a response from the authors of the article will be held pending notification of the authors, who will have fifteen business days to respond. On receipt of an author's response, the letter and the author response will be published on our web site at the same time. If we do not receive an author response within fifteen business days, the letter will be published with a note stating, "The author has been invited to respond and has not done so."