Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation

Impact Factor
2023
1.6
CiteScore
2023
2.4

Volume

36, 6 issues

Latest issue

37:1 online 09 January 2024

Next issue

37:2 scheduled for March 2024

Back volumes

From volume 2, 1992

ISSN print

1053-8127

ISSN online

1878-6324

Aims & Scope

The Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation mainly focuses on presenting relevant information about the interdisciplinary approach to musculoskeletal rehabilitation for clinicians who treat patients with back and musculoskeletal pain complaints. It provides readers with both 1) a general fund of knowledge on the assessment and management of back and musculoskeletal disorders and 2) new information considered to be state-of-the-art in the field. The intended audience is multidisciplinary as well as multi-specialty.

In each issue clinicians can find information which they can use in their patient setting the very next day. Manuscripts are provided from a range of health care providers including those in physical medicine, orthopedic surgery, rheumatology, neurosurgery, physical therapy, osteopathy, chiropractic and nursing on topics ranging from chronic pain to sports medicine. Diagnostic decision trees, treatment algorithms, and emerging and state-of-the-art technologies for rehabilitation are encouraged in each manuscript. Controversial topics are discussed in commentaries and rebuttals. Associated areas such as occupational medicine, worker's compensation and practice guidelines are included.

The journal publishes original research data and research synthesis (review papers or meta-analyses). Letters to the editor, commentaries, editorials and suggestions for thematic issues and proposed manuscripts are also welcomed.

Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief

Remko Soer
Pain Center
University Medical Center Groningen
Hanzeplein 1
Groningen, The Netherlands
Email: r.soer@umcg.nl

Scientific Coordinator
mProve Hospitals
Dokter van Heesweg 2
Zwolle, The Netherlands

Editor's Assistant

Dewi de Nijs Bik
Email: bmr@iospress.nl

Founding Editor

Karen Snowden Rucker

Former Editors

Norman Harden
Hermie J. Hermens

Associate Editor

Alessandro de Sire
Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine, Rehabilitation
Associate Professor
University of Catanzaro "Magna Graecia"
Catanzaro, Italy

Editorial Board

Gülseren Akyüz
Marmara University School of Medicine
Istanbul, Turkey

Nadine Attal
University Versailles Saint Quentin
Versailles, France

Laura Beckers
Maastricht University
Maastricht, The Netherlands

Hans Bloo
PMI Rembrandt
Veenendaal, The Netherlands

Donna Bloodworth
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, USA

Juliana Brandão
Rio de Janeiro State Univesity (UERJ)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

John W. Burns
Rush University
Chicago, USA

Jaap H. van Dieën
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Giacomo Farì
University of Bari
Bari, Italy

Ira M. Fiebert
University of Miami Health System
Miami, USA

Sebastian Fudickar
University of Oldenburg
Oldenburg, Germany

Esra Giray
Fatih Sultan Mehmet Research and Training Hospital
University of Health Sciences
Istanbul, Turkey

Ali Gür
Gaziantep University
Gaziantep, Turkey

Ram Haddas
University of Rochester Medical Center
Rochester, USA

Andrew Haig
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, USA

David Hukins
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, United Kingdom

Marco Invernizzi
University of Eastern Piedmont
Novara, Italy

Karen Jacobs
Boston University
Boston, USA

Shaji Kachanathu
King Saud University
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Charles George Kevorkian
Physician Quality Network
Houston, USA

Andreas Klipstein
AEH - Corporate Health Experts
Zurich, Switzerland

Donal McNally
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, United Kingdom

Judith R. Meakin
University of Exeter
Exeter,  United Kingdom

Muhammad Osama
Foundation University Islamabad
Islamabad, Pakistan

Salih Özgöcmen
Istinye University Hospital Medical Park Gaziosmanpaşa
Gaziosmanpaşa, Turkey

Michele Raya
University of Miami
Coral Gables,  USA

Steven H. Sanders
James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital
Tampa, USA

Leif Sandsjö
University of Borås
Borås, Sweden

Hans Timmerman
University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG)
Groningen, The Netherlands

Melek Güneş Yavuzer
Haliç University
Istanbul, Turkey

Author Guidelines

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT

By submitting my article to this journal, I agree to the Author Copyright Agreement, the IOS Press Ethics Policy, and the IOS Press Privacy Policy. 

Submission of an article is understood to imply that the article is original and unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. The Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation is committed to the highest ethical standards and best practices in publishing and follows the code of conduct for Committee on Publication Ethics and the ICMJE. Any possible conflict of interest, financial or otherwise, related to the submitted work must be clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Please note that the Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation does not accept studies performed on animals.

Authors are requested to submit their paper through the journal's online submission system.

Publication fee
For articles submitted and accepted after 1 January 2023, authors are required to pay a publication fee of €500/$500.

Waivers are available for corresponding authors from low-income countries as identified by the Hinari Project. A waiver request for the publication fee should be submitted before the initial submission of an article.

Artificial intelligence policy
Text generated from artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, or similar algorithmic tools cannot be the original content in papers submitted to the journal. Nor does the journal accept figures, images, or graphics produced by such tools. However, AI tools can be used in the writing process to improve the readability and language. A disclosure should be added to the paper in case AI tools were used.

AI programs should not be included in the author list, nor should they be cited. The authors are ultimately responsible for the contents of the paper. For more information, see the IOS Press Ethics Policy.

Changes to authorship
Please note that changing the authors list (i.e. adding / removing authors, or changing the order) is not allowed after submission of the manuscript, unless the journal editor and all co-authors are informed and are in agreement with this change. Please see the IOS Press authorship policy for further information.

Submission of manuscripts
Authors are requested to submit their manuscript electronically to the journal's online submission system. Note that the journal does not accept submissions from authors using nondescript, anonymous email addresses (yahoo.comgmail.com163.comrediffmail.com, etc.).

Open Access option
The IOS Press Open Library offers authors an Open Access (OA) option. By selecting the OA option, the article will be freely available from the moment it is published, also in the pre-press module. In the Open Library the article processing charges are paid in the form of an Open Access Fee. Authors will receive an Open Access Order Form upon acceptance of their article. Open Access is entirely optional.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Organization of the paper and style of presentation
Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors whose native language is not English are advised to consult a professional English language editing service or a native English speaker prior to submission.

Manuscripts should be prepared with wide margins and double spacing throughout, including the abstract, footnotes and references. Every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc., should be numbered. However, in the text no reference should be made to page numbers; if necessary, one may refer to sections. Try to avoid the excessive use of italics and bold face.

Manuscripts should be organized in the following order:

  • Title page
  • Body of text (divided by subheadings)
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Tables
  • Figure captions
  • Figures

Headings and subheadings should be numbered and typed on a separate line, without indentation.
SI units should be used, i.e., the units based on the metre, kilogramme, second, etc.

Title page
The title page should provide the following information:

  • Title (should be clear, descriptive and not too long)
  • Name(s) of author(s); please indicate who is the corresponding author
  • Full affiliation(s)
  • Present address of author(s), if different from affiliation
  • Complete address of corresponding author, including the e-mail address
  • Abstract
  • Keywords

Abstract
The abstract should be clear, descriptive, self-explanatory and not longer than 200 words, it should also be suitable for publication in abstracting services.
The abstract for research papers should follow the “structured abstract” format. Section labels should be in bold uppercase letters followed by a colon, and each section will begin on a new line.
BACKGROUND:
OBJECTIVE:
METHODS:
RESULTS:
CONCLUSIONS:

Keywords
Please provide 4-7 keywords. Keywords should be terms from the MeSH database.

Materials and methods

Ethical considerations
Please include an explicit statement in the materials and methods section that procedures involving experiments on human subjects are done in accord with the ethical standards of the Committee on Human Experimentation of the institution in which the experiments were done or in accord with the Declaration of Helsinki of 1964 and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The approval number of the Ethics Committee or the institutional review board and its affiliation together with the date of approval, or alternative identifiers, must be added as part of the statement. Studies exempt from Institutional Review Board approval should report the reason for exemption, e.g. “This study, as a literature review, is exempt from Institutional Review Board approval”. Editors reserve the right to reject papers if there is doubt whether appropriate procedures have been used.

Informed consent
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable should be shown the manuscript before it is published. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the Methods section.

Data sharing policy
All relevant data that were used or produced for conducting the work presented in a paper is encouraged to be made FAIR and compliant with the PLOS data availability guidelines prior to submission. See in particular the list of recommended data repositories. (We might provide our own data availability guidelines in the future, but we borrow the excellent PLOS guidelines for now.) In a nutshell, data have to be made openly accessible and freely reusable via established institutions and standards, unless privacy concerns forbid such a publication. In any case, metadata have to be made publicly accessible and visible.

Supplementary data can be submitted and should be included within the manuscript after the figures and tables (or after the references). Each supplementary item should have a legend and should not exceed the file size of 10 MB. A short description of the supplementary items should be included under the header Supplementary Material within the manuscript before the References. Large datasets should be hosted on the author's own or institute's website or in an appropriate database, and should be properly cited within the manuscript.

Reporting guidelines
Manuscripts should adhere to the EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines relevant to the research design.

Acknowledgments
Specify the acknowledgements. If there are none, you can still include this section and insert "The authors have no acknowledgments".

Conflict of interest
Statement of any potential conflicts should be clearly identified at the end of the paper. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, you must still include this section and insert the following statement: "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest."

Funding
Specify sources of funding. If there are none, you can still include this section at the end of the paper and insert "The authors report no funding".

Figures
Number figures as Fig. 1, Fig 2, etc. and refer to all of them in the text.
Each figure should be provided on a separate sheet. Figures should not be included in the text.
Color figures can be included in the print version, provided the cost of their reproduction is paid for by the author. The online version has no extra charges for color figures.

For the file formats of the figures please take the following into account:
- line art should be have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi, save as EPS or TIFF
- grayscales (including photos) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (no lettering), or 500 dpi (when there is lettering); save as tiff
- do not save figures as JPEG, this format may lose information in the process
- do not use figures taken from the Internet, the resolution will be too low for printing
- do not use color in your figures if they are to be printed in black & white, as this will reduce the print quality (note that in software often the default is color, you should change the settings)
- for figures that should be printed in color, please send a CMYK encoded EPS or TIFF
Figures should be designed with the format of the page of the journal in mind. They should be of such a size as to allow a reduction of 50%

On maps and other figures where a scale is needed, use bar scales rather than numerical ones, i.e., do not use scales of the type 1:10,000. This avoids problems if the figures need to be reduced.
Each figure should have a self-explanatory caption. The captions to all figures should be typed on a separate sheet of the manuscript.
Photographs are only acceptable if they have good contrast and intensity.

Tables
Number as Table 1, Table 2 etc., and refer to all of them in the text.
Each table should be provided on a separate page of the manuscript. Tables should not be included in the text.
Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title.
Column headings should be brief, but sufficiently explanatory. Standard abbreviations of units of measurement should be added between parentheses.
Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead.
Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table.

REFERENCES

Authors are requested to use the Vancouver citation style. Place citations as numbers in square brackets in the text. All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references at the end of the manuscript. List the references in the order in which they appear in the text. Only articles published or accepted for publication should be listed in the reference list. Submitted articles can be listed as (author(s), unpublished data). If an article has a DOI, this should be provided after the page number details. The number is added after the letters 'doi'. Manuscripts will not be considered if they do not conform to the Vancouver citation guidelines.

Examples of the Vancouver style:

[1] Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002; 935(12): 406.
[2] Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
[3] Berkow R, Fletcher AJ, editors. The Merck manual of diagnosis and therapy. 16th ed. Rahway (NJ): Merck Research Laboratories; 1992.
[4] Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGrawHill; 2002. p. 93113.
[5] Canadian Cancer Society [homepage on the Internet]. Toronto: The Society; 2006 [updated 2006 May 12; cited 2006 Oct 17]. Available from: 
www.cancer.ca/.

Footnotes
Footnotes should only be used if absolutely essential. In most cases it is possible to incorporate the information in the text. If used, they should be numbered in the text, indicated by superscript numbers and kept as short as possible.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright of your article
Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that they have read and agreed to the terms of the IOS Press Author Copyright Agreement.

Article sharing
Authors of journal articles are permitted to self-archive and share their work through institutional repositories, personal websites, and preprint servers. Authors have the right to use excerpts of their article in other works written by the authors themselves, provided that the original work is properly cited. The consent for sharing an article, in whole or in part, depends on the version of the article that is shared, where it is shared, and the copyright license under which the article is published. Please refer to the IOS Press Article Sharing Policy for further information.

Quoting from other publications
Authors, when quoting from someone else's work or when considering reproducing figures or tables from a book or journal article, should make sure that they are not infringing a copyright. Although in general authors may quote from other published works, permission should be obtained from the holder of the copyright if there will be substantial extracts or reproduction of tables, plates, or other figures. If the copyright holder is not the author of the quoted or reproduced material, it is recommended that the permission of the author should also be sought. Material in unpublished letters and manuscripts is also protected and must not be published unless permission has been obtained. Submission of a paper will be interpreted as a statement that the author has obtained all the necessary permission. A suitable acknowledgement of any borrowed material must always be made.

PROOFS AND PRE-PRESS

The corresponding author will receive a PDF proof and is asked to check this proof carefully (the publisher will execute a cursory check only). Corrections other than printer's errors, however, should be avoided. Costs arising from such corrections will be charged to the authors.

The corrected proof is published online in the journal’s pre-press module and indexed by PubMed as [Epub ahead of print] shortly after the proof is created and author corrections are implemented. This is not the final version. As soon as the article is assigned to an issue, the final bibliographic information will be added and the pre-press file will be replaced by the updated, final version. Pre-press articles are fully citable by using their DOI number.

PURCHASES

How to order reprints, a PDF file, journals, or IOS Press books
The corresponding author of a contribution to the journal will receive a complimentary PDF Author’s Copy of the article, unless otherwise stated. This PDF copy is watermarked and for personal use only. A free PDF copy will not be provided for conference proceedings and abstract issues. An order form for a PDF file without watermark, reprints or additional journal copies will be provided along with the PDF proof.

If you wish to order reprints of an earlier published article, please contact the publisher at editorial@iospress.nl for a quotation.

An author is entitled to 25 % discount on IOS Press books. See Author's discount (25%) on all IOS Press book publications.

KUDOS

Authors of published articles (non-prepress, final articles) will be contacted by Kudos. Kudos is a service that helps researchers maximize the impact and visibility of their research. It allows authors to enrich their articles with lay metadata, add links to related materials and promote their articles through the Kudos system to a wider public. Authors will receive no more than three emails: one invitation and a maximum of two reminders to register for the service and link the published article to their profile. Using and registering for Kudos remains entirely optional. For more information, please have a look at our authors section.

HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR WORK

Would you like some pointers on how to help your research achieve a wider reach and greater impact? Please consult our Promotional Toolkit for Authors for tips

Please visit the IOS Press Authors page for further information.

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Open Access

By default, articles published in the Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation are available only to institutions and individuals with access rights. However, the journal offers all authors the option to purchase open access publication for their article as part of the IOS Press Open Library. This means that the final published version will be freely available to anyone worldwide, indefinitely, under a Creative Commons license and without the need to purchase access to the article. This is also referred to as “gold” open access.

Gold open access pricing
Authors who choose gold open access publication will be subject to an article publication charge of €1500 / US$1500 for publication under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license or €2150 / US$2150 for publication under the CC BY 4.0 license. Pricing is exclusive of possible taxes. After an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be informed regarding the open access option during the production stages, and will have the opportunity to purchase open access for their article. It could be that the open access fee of an article is waived completely due an institutional agreement IOS Press has with the corresponding authors' institution. Please check the institutional agreements page for details.

Green open access
Authors who do not make use of the gold open access option may still make their article freely available using self-archiving, also referred to as green open access. Authors may make their final accepted manuscript available for free download from their personal or institutional website or institutional archive. This model is free for the author.

PubMedCentral deposits
This journal deposits all open access articles in PubMedCentral (PMC) as part of the IOS Press Open Library. If an author chooses to publish their paper with open access then the publisher will deposit the article in PMC upon publication.

Peer Review Policy

The Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation is a peer-reviewed journal. Articles submitted to the journal undergo a single blind peer review process. This means that the identity of the authors is known to the reviewers but the identity of the reviewers is not communicated to the authors. Please visit our reviewer guidelines for further information about how to conduct a review.

After automatic plagiarism screening through iThenticate, all submitted manuscripts are subjected to initial appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief and, if found suitable for further consideration, to rigorous peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees. Reasons to reject a paper in the pre-screening process could for example be that the work does not fall within the aims and scope, the writing is of poor quality, the instructions to authors were not followed or the presented work is not novel.

Papers deemed suitable to be reviewed will be assigned to a handling editor. The handling editor will then invite reviewers to comment on the work and might consider inviting the reviewers suggested by the author(s). Editors and reviewers are asked to excuse themselves from reviewing a submission if a conflict of interest makes them unable to make an impartial scientific judgment or evaluation. Conflicts of interest include but are not limited to: collaboration with the authors in the past three years; any professional or financial affiliations that may be perceived as a conflict of interest; a history of personal differences with the author(s).

As a standard policy, decisions are based on three reviews. In some specific circumstances a minimum of two reviews may be deemed sufficient to make a decision on a paper. The Editor-in-Chief strives to ensure a typical turnaround time of four months.

Reviewers are asked to judge a paper on at least:

  • Significance to the field
  • Relevance to the journal
  • Methodology
  • Data analysis
  • Literature review
  • Writing style/clarity

Based on the received reviews the handling editor will propose to the Editor-in-Chief a recommendation:

  1. Accept
  2. Minor revisions required
  3. Major revisions required
  4. Revise and resubmit
  5. Reject

They mean the following:

  1. The manuscript is suitable for publication and only requires minor polishing; thus, no further reviews are requested.
  2. The authors are required to make moderate changes to their manuscript. The manuscript becomes acceptable for publication if the changes proposed by the reviewers and editors are successfully addressed. The revised manuscript will be examined by the Editor-in-Chief and possibly sent back to all (or a selection of) reviewers for a second round of reviews. Authors are requested to provide a letter to the reviewers detailing the improvements made for the resubmission.
  3. The manuscript cannot be accepted for publication in its current form. However, a major revision addressing all issues raised by the reviewers may be acceptable for publication. The revised manuscript will undergo a full second round of review. Authors are requested to provide a letter to the reviewers detailing the improvements made for the resubmission.
  4. In its current form, the manuscript is not suitable for publication. A resubmission would require substantial revisions and is only encouraged in special cases. The resubmitted manuscript will be considered as a new submission.
  5. The manuscript is rejected as it is deemed to be out of scope, not relevant, or not meeting the journal’s quality standards in terms of significance, novelty, and/or presentation.

Authors are notified by the Editorial Assistant (in name of the Editor-in-Chief), whose decision is final.

Sustainable Development Goals

The content of this journal relates to SDG:

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Visit the SDG page for more information.

Supporting Diversity and Inclusion

This journal supports IOS Press' actions relating to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and commits to the Diversity and Inclusion Statement.

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More information will be available in due course. Check the SDGs page for updates.

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