Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation

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. 

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
When an article is accepted for publication, 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
IOS Press has adopted Sage’s ChatGPT and Generative AI Policy. Please go to: Artificial Intelligence Policy | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

Changes to authorship
IOS Press has adopted Sage’s Authorship Policy.  Please go to:  Authorship guidelines | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

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.com, gmail.com, 163.com, rediffmail.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

Policy on Use of Experimental Subjects

IOS Press has adopted Sage’s Publication ethics policies.  Please go to:  
Publication ethics and research integrity: policy guidelines for authors | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

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.

Ethics policies
IOS Press has adopted Sage’s Publication ethics policies.  Please go to:  
Publication ethics and research integrity: policy guidelines for authors | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

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
IOS Press adopted Sage’s Article Sharing Policy from 8^th of July 2024. 
Please go to:  Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines | SAGE Publications Ltd for details. If your manuscript was submitted prior to 8^th of July 2024, please contact editorial@iospress.nl with details of your enquiry.

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.