Author guidelines

The portal documents human anatomical variation: non-pathological differences in the shape, number, course, position and relationships of body structures. We accept literature reviews, anatomical cases observed in dissection or in theatre, imaging notes, surgical notes, teaching contributions and historical notes.

We do not publish clinical case series about disease, treatment protocols, promotional content for products or services, or material that cannot be traced to an identifiable anatomical structure.

Submitting requires a professional profile verified by the editorial team: physicians, dentists, veterinarians, biologists, physiotherapists, researchers and teachers in morphological disciplines. Verification confirms identity and the declared qualification, and is requested from the registration page.

Documents uploaded for verification are not public, are not reachable at any URL and are read only by the editorial team. The professional registration number never appears on the public profile.

An entry describes a structure and its known variations. It is not an essay: whoever consults it is after a fact, often while doing something else.

• Title: the current name of the structure, with the Latin term in brackets where that is the form in use.
• Abstract: two or three sentences saying what the variation is and why it matters. It is what appears in listings and search results.
• Frequencies: reported as the source gives them, with the series size and the method of observation. “About one kidney in five” is fine if the study says 19.95%; “most” says nothing.
• Hedges: if the original author writes “has been reported” or “occasionally”, that hedge stays. Removing it turns an observation into a fact.
• References: every non-obvious claim carries a reference, with DOI or PMID where they exist.

Figures must be yours or distributed under a licence that allows republication, and the licence must be declared. We do not accept figures of unknown provenance: an image without an established licence is not published, and its absence is preferable to an infringement.

Material derived from identifiable people — clinical photographs, radiological images carrying identifying data — requires every reference to the person to be removed before upload. This is not a formality: a radiograph carries the patient’s name in its metadata even when it is not visible in the image.

The full conditions are in licences and attribution.

The contribution enters a waiting state and is read by the editorial team, which checks structure, sources, licences and required declarations. Where scientific merit calls for assessment, it is assigned to a reviewer competent in the subject. Every step is recorded, and the outcome is communicated to you with its reasons.

The published entry declares the scrutiny it received, and the levels are not equivalent: the difference between editorial checking and peer review is set out in the editorial method. No contribution is marked as peer reviewed unless a review actually took place.

A reported error is corrected, and the correction stays visible: the previous version does not disappear and the page states what changed. A retracted contribution remains reachable with its retraction notice, because whoever cited it must be able to see what happened.

For any question before submitting, write to the editorial team.