About Laparoscopic Surgery

Laparoscopic Surgery

Laparoscopic Surgery is an international, open-access journal published by AME Publishing Company in Hong Kong, devoted to the latest research and techniques in laparoscopic and minimally invasive surgery. Launched in October 2017, it aims to cover new findings in laparoscopic hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery and in any surgery that applies minimally invasive technique, and to provide current and practical information on diagnosis, prevention and clinical investigations. It carries the online ISSN 2616-4221, is abbreviated Laparosc Surg and known as LS, and its official site is ls.amegroups.org. After publishing continuously from September 2017 to December 2019, the journal adopted a quarterly publication model, with issues in January, April, July and October. It is indexed in Scopus, whose measures gave it a 2024 CiteScore of 1.4, and its editor-in-chief is Dr Giovanni Battista Levi Sandri, a general surgeon in Rome, Italy, whose research centres on laparoscopic and robotic hepatopancreatobiliary surgery and liver transplantation. The journal states expressly, and this profile repeats, that it is distinct from Laparoscopic, Endoscopic and Robotic Surgery, a different journal published by KeAi.

Origins and launch in 2017

Laparoscopic Surgery was launched in October 2017 by AME Publishing Company, at a point when minimally invasive approaches had moved from innovation to default across much of abdominal surgery, yet the literature of technique continued to be scattered through general surgery and organ-specific journals. AME's launch announcement, in the form of a report from Dr Giovanni Battista Levi Sandri and the editorial office, greeted readers and thanked the journal's editorial board members, authors and readers, setting the goal of developing the journal with new members through 2018 and beyond. The new title was designed as a technique-defined rather than organ-defined journal: any operation performed laparoscopically — above all in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, where the minimally invasive transition came latest and remains most technically demanding — could belong in its pages, alongside the imaging, multimodality therapy and clinical investigation that surround such operations.

Aims and scope

The journal focuses on the latest research and techniques in laparoscopic surgery. Its aims are to cover new findings in laparoscopic hepatobiliary surgery, pancreatic surgery and any surgery that applies minimally invasive technique, and to provide current and practical information on diagnosis, prevention and clinical investigations. Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to, multimodality therapy, imaging, and technical advances related to hepatobiliary diseases, pancreatic surgery and gastrointestinal surgery. The scope is therefore doubly anchored: in a method — laparoscopy and minimally invasive technique — and in a territory — the hepatobiliary system, pancreas and gastrointestinal tract, the anatomical region where laparoscopic practice is most specialised. Papers on laparoscopic liver resection, pancreatic procedures, splenectomy, hernia repair and the management of hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal liver metastases exemplify the journal's published centre of gravity.

Article types and content character

Published articles include invited articles and submitted papers, editorials, and e-comments on all published articles — a commenting feature that lets readers respond to papers on the journal's site and suits a technique journal, where practitioners commonly wish to compare approaches to a described operation. The journal's published content is rich in narrative reviews and technique-oriented syntheses: recent examples on its site include a literature review of outcomes after laparoscopic and open repair of incisional hernia and a narrative review of laparoscopic hepatic resections for colorectal cancer metastases. Bibliographic listings record a compact recent output; the journal's own 2024 CiteScore announcement places it among 43 AME journals receiving CiteScores that year, and listing services record its Scopus subject rankings in Surgery and in Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging — the latter reflecting the imaging component of its stated scope.

Editorial leadership

The editor-in-chief is Dr Giovanni Battista Levi Sandri. Born in 1983 in Bern, Switzerland, he graduated in medicine and surgery at La Sapienza University of Rome with the highest grade, and he practises in the Department of Surgery at Sant'Eugenio Hospital in Rome. His research is based on laparoscopic and robotic hepatopancreatobiliary surgery and liver transplantation; he has published more than 120 papers in international journals, reviews for many high-impact journals, and served on the European-African Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association committee for 2019–2021. In addition to editing Laparoscopic Surgery he serves on the editorial boards of sister AME titles Annals of Laparoscopic and Endoscopic Surgery, Translational Gastroenterology and Hepatology and AME Medical Journal, and has guest-edited special issues on laparoscopic liver surgery and on hepatocellular cancer in liver transplantation. An editor-in-chief who is himself a practising laparoscopic HPB surgeon gives the journal direct technical credibility with its author community.

Publisher and publishing model

Laparoscopic Surgery is published by AME Publishing Company from Hong Kong — its Hong Kong branch office address is Flat/RM C, 16F, Kings Wing Plaza 1, No. 3 On Kwan Street, Shatin, New Territories — and its editorial office can be contacted at ls@amegroups.com. The journal is open access: for open-access publishing it uses an exclusive licensing agreement under which authors transfer copyright to AME Publishing Company while retaining the right to share their article in the same way permitted to third parties under the relevant user licence, together with certain scholarly usage rights. The entire submission and review process is managed mainly through the OJS system, an electronic system that provides an efficient workflow and rapid turnaround of submitted papers, and articles are published online. The journal states that the quality of its content is assured by a rigorous review process supervised by a strong editorial board.

Editorial standards

Laparoscopic Surgery is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and follows COPE's guidelines and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. Those commitments govern authorship, conflicts of interest, image and data integrity, and the handling of corrections and misconduct across AME's list, and they matter practically for a journal publishing operative research, where patient consent for images and video, trial reporting and device-related conflicts of interest are recurring issues. The journal's author guidelines set out its manuscript categories and its reporting requirements in the standard AME format, updated periodically; the current version should always be taken from the journal's own site at the time of submission.

Indexing and metrics

The journal is indexed in Scopus, with coverage recorded from 2019 in listing services. AME announced that Laparoscopic Surgery achieved a 2024 CiteScore of 1.4, ranking 324th of 568 journals in the Surgery category and 240th of 346 in Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging — third-quartile positions in both categories, in rankings calculated from citations in 2021–2024 to the journal's peer-reviewed documents divided by the number of such documents indexed in Scopus. Earlier listing services likewise place the journal in the third quartile for Surgery. These are the metrics of a small, young, technique-focused title rather than a general surgery flagship, and they should be read together with the journal's age — launched in 2017 — and its deliberately narrow field.

Distinguishing similar titles

Three similarly named journals work in this area, and authors regularly confuse them. This journal, Laparoscopic Surgery (online ISSN 2616-4221, AME Publishing, Hong Kong, launched 2017), is a general laparoscopic-technique journal weighted toward hepatobiliary, pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery. Annals of Laparoscopic and Endoscopic Surgery (ISSN 2518-6973) is a separate, broader AME journal covering minimal-access surgery across many specialties, profiled elsewhere in this directory. Laparoscopic, Endoscopic and Robotic Surgery is a different publisher's journal (KeAi), with its own ISSN and editorial office, and is not an AME title at all. The reliable identifiers are the ISSN, the publisher and the journal's website: ls.amegroups.org for this title. Citations to this journal use the abbreviation Laparosc Surg and DOIs in the 10.21037 family of AME Publishing.

Readership and role

The journal addresses laparoscopic and minimally invasive surgeons — above all hepatobiliary, pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgeons — together with surgical trainees learning minimally invasive technique and researchers studying its outcomes. Its practical-information aim suits that readership: reviews that summarise the evidence for a procedure, technical papers that describe how an operation is done, and imaging and multimodality content that supports operative decision-making. For AME, the title anchors the technique end of a digestive-surgery list that also includes organ- and disease-focused journals; for the international laparoscopic community, it provides an open-access venue edited by a practising European HPB surgeon but published from Hong Kong, a combination that reflects where minimally invasive surgery is actually practised and published — globally, and increasingly in Asia.

Practical information

Laparoscopic Surgery is published by AME Publishing Company, Hong Kong, China. Online ISSN: 2616-4221. Abbreviation: Laparosc Surg (LS). Launched: October 2017. Editor-in-chief: Giovanni Battista Levi Sandri. Publication pattern: continuous from September 2017 to December 2019; quarterly (January, April, July, October) thereafter. The journal is open access and in English, and is indexed in Scopus, with a 2024 CiteScore of 1.4. Its official home is ls.amegroups.org and its editorial office email is ls@amegroups.com. It is distinct from the KeAi journal Laparoscopic, Endoscopic and Robotic Surgery. Current manuscript categories, licensing terms and submission requirements are set out in the journal's guidelines for authors on its own site, which prospective authors should consult before submitting.