About Journal of Inflammation

What is Journal of Inflammation?

Journal of Inflammation is an Open Access, peer-reviewed online journal on all aspects of research into inflammation.

The five classical symptoms of inflammation, namely redness (rubor), swelling (tumour), heat (calor), pain (dolor) and loss of function (functio laesa), are only part of the story. The term inflammation is taken to include the full range of underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms involved, not only in the production of the inflammatory responses but, more importantly in clinical terms, in the healing process as well. Thus the journal covers molecular, cellular, animal and clinical studies, and related aspects of pharmacology, such as anti-inflammatory drug development, trials and therapeutic developments. It also considers publication of negative findings.

Journal of Inflammation aims to become the leading online journal on inflammation and, as online journals replace printed ones over the next decade, the main Open Access inflammation journal. Open Access guarantees a larger audience, and thus impact, than any restricted access equivalent, and increasingly so, as the escalating costs of printed journals puts them outside University budgets.

The unrestricted access to research findings in inflammation aids in promoting dynamic and productive dialogue between industrial and academic members of the inflammation research community, which plays such an important part in the development of future generations of anti-inflammatory therapies.

Content overview

Journal of Inflammation considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings. They focus on specific issues and are about 800 words.
• Hypothesis: short articles presenting an untested original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence. They should outline significant progress in thinking that would also be testable, and be about 1500 words.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. They have an educational aim and are 2000-3000 words.

Peer review policies

The Journal of Inflammation has an open peer review process, aimed at improving the accountability of peer review and giving reviewers credit for the work they do. This means that we ask reviewers to agree to their named report being passed on to the authors. Each article submitted is reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. We aim to review and make decisions as quickly as possible.

Edited by Neville Punchard and Cliff J Whelan, Journal of Inflammation is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Journal of Inflammation

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central, CAS and Embase.

Articles in Journal of Inflammation should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

J Inflamm 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Journal of Inflammation does not have issue numbers either. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Journal of Inflammation, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Journal of Inflammation using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Journal of Inflammation is published by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Journal of Inflammation however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Journal of Inflammation's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Institute for Scientific Information to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Journal of Inflammation will be available.

Journal of Inflammation is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.

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