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About Journal of Foot and Ankle Research

Aims and scope | Open access | Article-processing charges | Indexing services | Publication and peer review process | Editorial policies | Citing articles in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research | Why publish your article in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research?

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, the official journal of the Australasian Podiatry Council and the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists (UK), is an open access, peer reviewed, online journal that encompasses all aspects of policy, organisation, delivery and clinical practice related to the assessment, diagnosis, prevention and management of foot and ankle disorders.

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research covers a wide range of clinical subject areas, including diabetology, paediatrics, sports medicine, gerontology and geriatrics, foot surgery, physical therapy, dermatology, wound management, radiology, biomechanics and bioengineering, orthotics and prosthetics, as well the broad areas of epidemiology, policy, organisation and delivery of services related to foot and ankle care.

The journal encourages submission from all health professionals who manage lower limb conditions, including podiatrists, nurses, physical therapists and physiotherapists, orthopaedists, manual therapists, medical specialists and general medical practitioners, as well as health service researchers concerned with foot and ankle care.

The Australasian Podiatry Council and the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists (UK) have reserve funds to cover the article-processing charge for manuscripts submitted by its members. Society members can email the appropriate contact at Australasian Podiatry Council or Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists to obtain the corresponding code to enter on submission.

Open access

All articles published by Journal of Foot and Ankle Research are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Journal of Foot and Ankle Research therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1115/$1715/€1310 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a Member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. A limited number of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editors' discretion, and authors wishing to apply for these waivers should contact the editors.

Indexing services

All articles published in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research are included in PubMed, the most widely used biomedical bibliographic database service, which is run by the US National Library of Medicine. Other bibliographic databases that index articles published in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research include:

  • Cinahl
  • Citebase
  • Current contents
  • Google Scholar
  • Index Copernicus
  • OAIster
  • PubMed
  • PubMed Central
  • Science Citation Index Expanded
  • SCImago
  • Scirus
  • Scopus
  • SOCOLAR
  • Zetoc

The full text of all research articles is deposited in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and other digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research is tracked by Thomson Reuters (ISI)and has an Impact Factor of 1.33.

Publication and peer review process

Content overview

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research considers the following types of articles:

  • Research: reports of data from original research.
  • Review: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.
  • Letter to the Editor: can take three forms: a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article, or a substantial response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication, or an article that may not cover 'standard research' but that may be relevant to readers.
  • Methodology: presentations of a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.
  • Study protocol: describes proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study.
  • Commentaries: these are short, narrowly focused articles of contemporary interest are usually commissioned by the journal editors.

Peer-review policy

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research operates an open peer-review process on all manuscripts approved via initial screening by the Editors-in-Chief. Manuscripts that do not fall within the scope of the journal or are of an unacceptably low standard of presentation will not be sent for peer review. Open peer review works on two levels: the authors receive signed reports and, if the manuscript is published, the same reports are available to the readers as well as the manuscript's pre-publication history. The final decision is made on a minimum of two peer reviews. In cases where there is strong disagreement either among peer reviewers or between the authors and peer reviewers, advice will be sought from a member of the journal's Editorial Board. The journal allows a maximum of two revisions per manuscript. The final decision on any manuscript lies with the Editors-in-Chief, to whom any appeals against rejection should be addressed.

Edited by Hylton Menz and Michael Potter, Journal of Foot and Ankle Research is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research operates an 'open peer review' policy meaning reviewers are asked to sign their reviews. The pre-publication history including all submitted versions, reviewers' reports and authors' responses will be linked to from the published article.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, a personalized section of the site.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. All full length articles (proceedings, reviews or research articles) are indexed by PubMed. PubMed displays the title of the supplement only in the case of meeting abstract collections. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Journal of Foot and Ankle Research should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Citing articles in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research

Articles in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. J Foot Ankle Res [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. J Foot Ankle Res 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research?

High visibility

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, BioMed Central and PubMed Central and will also be included in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Journal of Foot and Ankle Research's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Authors of articles published in Journal of Foot and Ankle Research retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.