Standardisation Reports

Principles behind Standardisation Documents

• Documents will be of the highest quality, contemporary, interesting and a valuable contribution to the academic wealth of the ICS and, if relevant, collaborating societies.
• Definitions must be accurate, concise and, unless there is good reason, consistent.

1. Proposal Stage

• The Working Group (WG) chair must first complete and submit an ICS Content Proposal Form to the ICS Office.
• The content of the report must be new and relevant for the society or an update of a previously but outdated report.
• The proposal form should include the proposed working group members. Guidelines for creating working groups are available here - How to create a working group as well as the general responsibilities of a working group chair. Please note that all working group members need to be ICS Members and a WG should not include more than 12 people.
• The proposal is then sent to the ICS Standardisation Steering Committee (SSC) for approval via the committee forum and SSC (including ICS Board Rep for SSC) approves or rejects the proposal.
• SSC can suggest conditions (i.e., a certain person must be included in the working group or the final draft must be approved by a certain committee). Please note that it is the responsibility of the SSC to ensure that these conditions are followed before the paper is submitted to the ICS Journal Continence or Continence Reports.

2. Preparatory Stage

Once the proposal has been approved by the Standardisation Steering Committee the project can move into the Preparatory Stage:

• At this point, the project will receive a WG-reference number which is needed when submitting the paper to one of the ICS Journals.

• The finalised WG-members should be sent to the ICS Office so the WG-number can be added to the SSC micro-site (e.g. Conservative Management of Male LUT & PF). This will allow the group to access to forums, the document file system and voting functions.

• The ICS Office should not be copied into email discussions about the development of the paper. It is the responsibility of the SSC to provide support to the WG-Chair in leading the development of the paper.

• All authors must contribute significantly to the standardization document.

• The sequence of authors should be as follows: first author: WG-Chair; second author: deputy; WG members in alphabetical order or according to input; last author: SSC chair or predetermined SSC representative.

• All Standardisation reports must include a Summary Table with the following columns:

  • Number of existing ICS Glossary terms (where available)
  • Number of OLD terms
  • Number of proposed NEW terms
  • Number of CHANGED terms
  • Brief logic behind the suggested change
  • Associated citation (where available)

3. Content Review Stage

• Once the working group is happy with the final draft, this document must be sent to the Standardisation Steering Committee for them to review (ICS Office will post the document on the committee forum for review – 2 weeks).
• All feedback will need to be seriously considered by the WG and incorporated into the content where appropriate.

4. Approval Stage

• The Working Group has 1 month to make final revisions and submit the final document to the Standardisation Steering Committee.
• The Board Rep on the SSC must also approve the document before it is signed off, ready for submission.
• SSC-Chair gives the WG-Chair the go ahead when the paper is approved to be submitted.

5. Submission to Journals

• SSC will notify the ICS Office when a report is ready for submission.
• The ICS Office will then notify the Journal Editors of Continence or Continence Reports.
• The WG-chair will need the WG-reference number when they submit.
• Standard text for the report title for submission to the ICS journal:
  • A Standard for Terminology in : A Report From the XXX Working Group of the International Continence Society
  • An International Continence Society (ICS)/ XXX Society joint report on the standard for terminology for……
• Once submitted, the paper will go through the journal’s peer review system to ensure quality.

6. Publication (ICS Office tasks)

• Once published in the ICS Journal, the ICS Office will create a news article to promote the report.
• The paper will be added to the SCC micro-site and the complete list of terminology documents. The report will also be included in the next edition of the ICS Standards Book and NEW or CHANGED terms will be added to the Glossary.