The following contributions will be accepted for publication:
• original papers
• editorials (commissioned by the Editor-in-Chief)
• case reports of special interest
• reports of new instruments or technical innovations
• book reviews
• EACMFS announcements and general announcements.

Submission of Manuscripts

Authors should note that submission and peer review of all papers is now conducted entirely online, increasing efficiency for editors, authors, and reviewers, and enhancing publication speed. Paper and email submissions will no longer be accepted by the Editor-in-Chief. Please register at the online submission site:
http://ees.elsevier.com/jcms

The online system creates a PDF version of the submitted manuscript for peer review, revision and proofing. All correspondence, including the editor s decision and request for revisions, is conducted by e-mail. Authors are guided stepwise through the entire process and are kept abreast of the progress of their paper at each stage.

Authors requesting further information on online submission are strongly encouraged to view the system, including a tutorial, at http://ees.elsevier.com/jcms. A comprehensive Author Support service is also available to answer additional enquiries: authorsupport@elsevier.com.

Uniform Requirements
These guidelines generally follow the Uniform Requirements for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals, published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The complete document appears at http://www.icmje.org.

Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Conflict of Interest
At the end of the text, under a subheading `Conflict of interest statement , all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

Role of the Funding Source
All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Randomised Controlled Trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in the Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. The Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery has adopted the proposal from the ICMJE which requires, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number (ISRCTN) should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at http://www.icmje.org.

Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to the Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki (Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989). The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines. Patients and volunteers names, initials, and hospital numbers should not be used.

Editorial Policy
The Editors reserve the right to make editorial and literary corrections. Any opinions expressed or policies advocated do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the Editors.

Language Editing
Papers will only be accepted when they are written in an acceptable standard of English. Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information.

Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms and Conditions http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/termsconditions.cws_home/termsconditions

Article Structure
Papers should be set out as follows, with each section beginning on a separate page:
• title page
• summary and keywords
• text
• acknowledgements and conflict of interest statement
• list of references
• tables
• captions to illustrations.
Papers should be typed in double spacing with a margin of at least 3 cm all round.

Title page. The title page should give the following information:
(1) title of the article
(2) full name of each author, with highest academic degree(s)
(3) name and address of the department or institution to which the work should be attributed (with name and titles of head of the institution)
(4) name, address, telephone, fax number and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence and to whom requests for offprints should be sent
(5) sources of support in the form of grants.

Summary. This should consist of not more than 200 words summarizing the contents of the article.

Keywords. Three to six keywords or short phrases that will assist indexers in cross-referencing the article should be included. Terms from the medical subject headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus should be used (see http://www.nih.nlm.gov).

Text. Headings should be appropriate to the nature of the paper. In general those for experimental papers should follow the usual conventions (Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion). Other papers can be subdivided as the author desires: the use of headings enhances readability. Normally only two categories of headings should be used: major ones should be typed in capital letters in the centre of the page and underlined; minor ones should be typed in lower case (with an initial capital letter) at the left hand margin and underlined.

Papers should be submitted in journal style. Failure to do so may lead to significant delays in publication. Spelling may follow British or American usage, but not a mixture of the two.

Do not use he, his etc where the sex of the person is unknown; say `the patient , etc. Avoid inelegant alternatives such as he/she. Patients should not be automatically designated as she, and doctors as he .

Proprietary names of drugs, instruments, etc should be indicated by the use of initial capital letters and should include the town and country of their manufacture.

References. The accuracy of references is the responsibility of the author. The journal follows the `author-date system of citation. Give the author s name (in italics), followed by the year of the publication, e.g. (Gundlach, 2006). If two authors, name both (e.g. Muller and Schulze, 1960); if more than two authors, give the name of the first author followed by `et al. (Shaw et al., 2001) If the same author(s) is referred to in text with more than one publication in same year, a lower case letter should be added to the year (e.g. Meier 1970a, 1970b.). The same letter must be added to the year in the corresponding entry in the reference list. When several publications are cited one after the other, begin with the oldest and end with the most recent (not in alphabetical order).

List all references alphabetically at the end of the paper, on a separate page. All authors or groups of authors cited in the article must appear in the list of references and vice versa. For each reference, list all authors, full title of paper, journal name (abbreviated according to Index Medicus, see http://www.nih.nlm.gov), volume, first and last page numbers, year of publication. For example:

Shaw WC, Semb G, Nelson P, Brattstrom V, Molsted K, Prahl-Andersen B, Gundlach KK: The Eurocleft project 1996-2000: overview. J Craniomaxillofac Surg 29:131 142, 2001.

When citing a book chapter, give the author(s), title, editor, title of book, place of publication, publisher, first and last page numbers, year of publication. For example:

Heslop IH, Cawood JI, Stoelinga PJW: Mandibular fractures: treatment by closed reduction and direct skeletal fixation. In: Williams JL (ed.), Rowe and Williams Maxillofacial Injuries, 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 341 386, 1994.

Tables. Tables should be double spaced on separate sheets and contain only horizontal rules. A short descriptive title should appear above each table and any footnotes, suitably identified below. Care must be taken to ensure that all units are included. Ensure that each table is cited in the text.

Figures. Figures of good quality should be submitted online as separate files. For detailed instructions on the preparation of electronic artwork, consult the Artwork Instructions to Authors: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. Permission to reproduce illustrations should always be obtained before submission, and details included with the captions. Figures should be submitted appropriately lettered in capitals. The size of the letters should be appropriate to that of the illustration, taking into account the necessary size reduction.

To help authors submit high-quality artwork early in the process, the Artwork Quality Control Tool automatically checks the submitted artwork and other file types when they are first uploaded against the artwork requirements outlined in the Artwork Instructions to Authors. Each figure/file is checked only once, so further along in the process only new uploaded files will be checked.

Photographs and radiographs should be submitted as clear, lightly contrasting black and white images. Photomicrographs should have a magnification and details of staining techniques shown. The final size of photographs will be: (a) single column width (80 mm), (b) double column width (167 mm), (c) somewhere between these sizes and centred on the page. Photographs should ideally be submitted at the final reproduction size based on the above figures.

Colour illustrations will appear online in colour, free of charge. The decision whether an illustration is accepted for reproduction in colour in the printed journal lies with the editorial office. Authors who wish to include colour figures in the printed version of their article will be advised of cost following acceptance of their article

Captions should be typed, double spaced, on separate pages from the typescript.

Patient confidentiality. Where illustrations include recognisable individuals, living or dead, great care must be taken to ensure that consent for publication has been given. In cases where consent has not been obtained and recognisable features may appear, it will be necessary to mask the eyes or otherwise render the individual officially unrecognisable.

Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a `Journal Publishing Agreement (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a `Journal Publishing Agreement form or a link to the online version of this agreement.

Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions).

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.

Special Subject Repositories
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply with manuscript archiving requirements of the following funding bodies, as specified as conditions of researcher grant awards (please see http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/fundingbodyagreements for full details of the agreements that are in place for these bodies):

• Arthritis Research Campaign (UK)
• British Heart Foundation (UK)
• Cancer Research UK
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
• Medical Research Council (UK)
• National Institutes of Health (US)
• Wellcome Trust (UK)

These agreements and policies enable authors to comply with their funding body s archiving policy without having to violate their publishing agreements with Elsevier. The agreements and policies are intended to support the needs of Elsevier authors, editors, and publishing partners, and protect the quality and integrity of the peer review process. They are examples of Elsevier s ongoing engagement with scientific and academic communities to explore ways to deliver demonstrable and sustainable benefits for the research communities we serve.

Authors who report research by funding bodies not listed above, and who are concerned that their author agreement may be incompatible with archiving requirements specified by a funding body that supports an author s research are strongly encouraged to contact Elsevier s author support team (authorsupport@elsevier.com). Elsevier has a track-record of working on behalf of our authors to ensure authors can always publish in Elsevier journals and still comply with archiving conditions defined in research grant awards.

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, which they are requested to correct and return within 48 hours. Elsevier now sends PDF proofs that can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe website: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win.

If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post.

Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

Accepted Articles Visit http://www.elsevier.com/authors for the facility to track accepted articles and set email alerts to inform you of when an article s status has changed. The website also provides detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those related to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.