About Orthopaedic Surgery

Orthopaedic Surgery

Overview and identity

Orthopaedic Surgery is an English-language journal of orthopaedics published in association with Beijing, China. It is the official journal of the Chinese Orthopaedic Association (COA) and is published by the association together with John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. The journal is identified by print ISSN 1757-7853 and online ISSN 1757-7861, and its articles carry DOIs in the 10.1111/os series. Volume numbering places its foundation in 2009: the journal was at volume 11 in 2019, indicating an unbroken annual volume sequence from 2009. It publishes peer-reviewed clinical and basic research on musculoskeletal surgery, including Chinese orthopaedic surgical guidelines, and it presents the work of China's very large orthopaedic community to an international readership in English. Copyright lines on its articles read "Orthopaedic Surgery published by Chinese Orthopaedic Association and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.", and many articles are open access under Creative Commons licences.

The Chinese Orthopaedic Association

The journal's sponsoring society gives it its professional weight. The Chinese Orthopaedic Association is one of the specialty societies under the Chinese Medical Association. It was founded in 1980 in Tianjin at its first national meeting, with the aims of promoting scientific exchange, providing orthopaedic education and improving the level of orthopaedic health services in China. The COA has more than 30,000 registered members drawn from some 130,000 orthopaedic surgeons in China, making it the largest and most influential orthopaedic society in the country. It has ten sub-specialty societies covering joint surgery, orthopaedic research, spine surgery, bone tumour, arthroscopy, foot and ankle surgery, osteoporosis, trauma, minimally invasive surgery and nursing. Its annual congress has been held every year since 2006, when the first International Congress of COA was held concurrently. Orthopaedic Surgery is the association's English-language journal, complementing its long-established Chinese-language journal, the Chinese Journal of Orthopedics, whose first issue appeared in 1981.

Scope and article categories

The journal's author guidelines define an unusually detailed set of article categories, reflecting its dual role as a research journal and a professional education organ. It publishes Clinical Articles, Scientific Articles, Review Articles, articles on Traditional Chinese Medicine in Orthopaedics, Surgical Technique articles, Videos of Orthopaedic Technique, Guidelines and Consensus statements, Instructional Course articles, Brief Reports, Case Reports, Letters to the Editor, Commentaries, Editorials, Meeting Reports and Special Issues and Special Sections. Its substantive scope is all aspects of orthopaedic technique and surgery: joint replacement, spine surgery, trauma, sports medicine and arthroscopy, bone tumours, hand, foot and ankle surgery, paediatric orthopaedics, osteoporosis and basic musculoskeletal science including biomaterials and tissue engineering. The inclusion of a dedicated category for traditional Chinese medicine in orthopaedics is a distinctive feature that reflects Chinese clinical practice, in which TCM approaches are integrated into aspects of fracture and musculoskeletal care.

Editorial and peer-review process

Manuscripts submitted to Orthopaedic Surgery are peer reviewed, typically by two anonymous reviewers, and submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted elsewhere. The journal's guidelines cover editorial review and acceptance, ethical considerations, and the practicalities of manuscript and figure preparation under Wiley's author services standards, including Wiley's OnlineOpen open-access option. The journal's editorial organisation follows the structure of its sponsoring association and draws its editors and reviewers from China's major orthopaedic centres, including the large military and university hospitals of Beijing and centres such as Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Changsha, whose researchers are frequent contributors. As an English-language journal for a predominantly Chinese author community, it also performs an editorial development function, helping Chinese orthopaedic surgeons present their work to international standards of reporting.

Content and representative research

The journal's content mirrors the clinical preoccupations of Chinese orthopaedics: the enormous volume of joint replacement and spine surgery in China's ageing population, fracture care, and the integration of new materials and biologics into practice. A representative 2021 article examined the effects of platelet-rich plasma and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells on meniscal repair in the white-white zone of the meniscus, a study from Xiangya Hospital supported by Hunan provincial and national foundations — typical of the journal's mixture of surgical technique and regenerative-medicine research. Its guideline and consensus articles, including Chinese orthopaedic surgical guidelines, give it influence beyond its research readership, since COA guidance published in the journal informs practice across Chinese hospitals. Its special issues and meeting reports connect the journal to the COA's annual congress, the largest gathering of orthopaedic surgeons in China.

Indexing and standing

Orthopaedic Surgery is indexed in the major international databases for medicine and science, including PubMed and the Science Citation Index Expanded, and its articles are available through Wiley Online Library, with many published open access through PubMed Central. Since its launch in 2009 it has grown in volume and frequency in step with the growth of Chinese orthopaedic output, and its impact factor has placed it in the middle ranks of international orthopaedic journals — a significant position for a journal whose primary community is a national association publishing in a second language. Its standing is best understood relative to its function: it is not primarily a competitor to the long-established American and British bone and joint journals, but the recognised international voice of the world's largest national orthopaedic community.

Readership and authorship

The journal's authors are overwhelmingly orthopaedic surgeons and musculoskeletal researchers from Chinese hospitals and medical universities, together with international collaborators and a growing number of authors from other countries attracted by its open-access availability and society backing. Its readers are practising orthopaedic surgeons, trainees and researchers worldwide who follow Chinese surgical innovation, Chinese patient-series data and COA guidance. China's orthopaedic case volumes — in joint arthroplasty, spine surgery and trauma — are among the largest in the world, and the journal is a principal channel through which the resulting clinical experience enters the English-language literature.

Place in Chinese medical publishing

Within China's orthopaedic literature, Orthopaedic Surgery sits alongside the Chinese-language Chinese Journal of Orthopedics (the COA's original journal, from 1981), the China Journal of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, and subspecialty titles in spine, trauma and repair. Its role is distinct: it is the COA's English-language, Wiley-published flagship for international communication. The pattern — a Chinese professional association co-publishing an English journal with Wiley's Australia-based Asia-Pacific operation — is the same model used by several other Chinese society journals, and it reflects the regional structure of Wiley's society publishing business in Asia.

How to cite and identify the journal

The reliable identifiers of Orthopaedic Surgery are its exact title, print ISSN 1757-7853, online ISSN 1757-7861, its status as the official journal of the Chinese Orthopaedic Association, and its publication by the association with John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. It should not be confused with the Chinese Journal of Orthopedics, the association's separate Chinese-language journal, nor with unrelated international titles containing the words "orthopaedic surgery". Cited by title and ISSN, it uniquely identifies the Beijing-associated, COA-owned English-language journal described in this profile.

The journal's growth can also be read from its physical record. By 2021 it had reached volume 13, whose eighth issue alone ran to hundreds of pages of clinical and scientific articles, a scale consistent with a monthly rhythm and with the submission pressure generated by its sponsoring association's tens of thousands of members. Its article DOIs, in the 10.1111/os series, and its presence in PubMed Central under open licences have made its content a standard part of the evidence base consulted in systematic reviews of orthopaedic practice, particularly for questions on which Chinese surgical series are the largest available.