The Journal of Learning General Surgery (JLGS) is a diamond open access, international, online-only, peer-reviewed journal that is dedicated to publishing narrated videos of surgical procedures. Diamond open access means permanent and free access to published scientific works for readers and no publication fees for the authors. This guarantees that surgical knowledge is available to a larger audience, resulting in more citations of published articles.

JLGS is the official journal of the Facebook group "Learning General Surgery". The organisation is dedicated to teaching surgical principles and techniques to surgeons at all stages of their careers, from trainees to senior consultants. The proportion of operations performed by surgical trainees has decreased over time, and it has become clear that the learning curve must be aided by studying outside of the operating theatre. Audio-visual presentations are recognised in the medical industry as essential teaching assets that can be utilised to effectively transmit information to clinicians, patients, and students. Preoperative mental coaching leads to improved performance and surgical trainees could ‘‘warm-up’’ before surgery by watching a video showing a step by-step approach to the surgical procedure they are about to perform. However, the trustworthiness of a large proportion of publicly available files remains questionable.

 JLGS is designed as a thorough "how-to" multimedia journal for peer-reviewed operative procedures, either of classic surgeries or of newer techniques. Consistent review of surgical videos could facilitate understanding of common errors in order to create awareness of potential injury mechanisms by acknowledging error-event patterns. The published articles will also be shared in the Facebook group (that has more than 42000 members comprising mostly of surgeons) and on the group’s YouTube channel allowing informal interactions including peer discussion, which can provide an important component of surgeons’ ongoing development by shared experiential learning and knowledge.