Aims & Scope
WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation is an interdisciplinary, international journal which publishes high quality peer-reviewed manuscripts covering the entire scope of the occupation of work. The journal's subtitle has been deliberately laid out: The first goal is the prevention of illness, injury, and disability. When this goal is not achievable, the attention focuses on assessment to design client-centered intervention, rehabilitation, treatment, or controls that use scientific evidence to support best practice. WORK occasionally publishes thematic issues, but in general, issues cover a wide range of topics such as ergonomic considerations with children, youth and students, the challenges facing an aging workforce, workplace violence, injury management, performing artists, ergonomic product evaluations, and the awareness of the political, cultural, and environmental determinants of health related to work.
Dr. Karen Jacobs, the founding editor, and her editorial board especially encourage the publication of research studies, clinical practice, case study reports, as well as personal narratives and critical reflections of lived work experiences (autoethnographic/autobiographic scholarship), Sounding Board commentaries and Speaking of Research articles which provide the foundation for better understanding research to facilitate knowledge dissemination. Narrative Reflections on Occupational Transitions, a new column, is for persons who have successfully transitioned into, between, or out of occupations to tell their stories in a narrative form. With an internationally renowned editorial board, WORK maintains high standards in the evaluation and publication of manuscripts. All manuscripts are reviewed expeditiously and published in a timely manner.WORK prides itself on being an author-friendly journal.
WORK celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2020.
WORK is affiliated with the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (CAOT)
WORK is endorsed by the International Ergonomics Association (IEA)
WORK gives out the yearly Cheryl Bennett Best Paper Award
Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Karen Jacobs
Boston University
College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College
Boston, MA 02215
USA
Editor's Assistant
Lindsey Sousa
Email: WorkJournalAssistant@outlook.com
Return to Work Corner Editor
Phillip D. Rumrill, Jr.
Human Development Institute - University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY, USA
Work Transition Narratives
Lynn Shaw
Dalhousie University
Halifax, NS, Canada
Editorial Board
Ademola James Adeyemi
Waziri Umaru Federal Polytechnic
Birnin Kebbi, Nigeria
Mohammad Khursheed Alam
Jouf University
Al-Jawf, Saudi Arabia
Tom J. Albin
High Plains Engineering Services
Minneapolis, USA
Khader Almhdawi
Jordan University of Science and Technology
Irbid, Jordan
Boshra A. Arnout
Zagazig University
Zagazig, Egypt
Antonio López Arquillos
University of Malaga
Malaga, Spain
Andreja Bartolac
University of Applied Health Sciences
Zagreb, Croatia
ConneMara Bazley
CMara Consultants LLC
Carbondale, USA
Herbert C. Biggs
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
Gail Bloom
George Washington University
Washington D.C., USA
Evandro Eduardo Broday
Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR)
Ponta Grossa, Brazil
Jeff Bruno
Bruno Evaluation & Consulting
San Luis Obispo, USA
Ariel Chiang
Fu Jen Catholic University
Taipei, Taiwan
Marina L. Ciccarelli
Curtin University
Perth, Australia
Wendy A. Coduti
Penn State University
Pennsylvania, USA
Bhibha M. Das
East Carolina University
Greenville, USA
Kermit Davis
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, USA
Sara Dockrell
Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland
Nancy Doyle
Boston University
Boston, USA
Asnat Erez
Ono Academic College
Kiryat Ono, Israel
Tomeico Faison
Therapeutic Solutions of NC
Cary, USA
Liat Gafni-Lachter
University of Haifa
Haifa, Israel
Krystyna Gielo-Perczak
University of Connecticut
Storrs, USA
Ali Golabchi
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada
Claudia Giglio de Oliveira Gonçalves
Tuiuti University of Paraná
Curitiba, Brazil
Paul Harrington
Drexel University
Wallingford, USA
Courtenay Harris
Curtin University
Perth, Australia
Alan Hedge
Cornell University
Ithaca, USA
David Hershenson
University of Massachusetts Boston
Boston, USA
Jaejin Hwang
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, USA
Ev Innes
Southern Cross University
Lismore, Australia
Tiago Jesus
Northwestern University
Chicago, USA
Jennifer Kaldenberg
Boston University
Boston, USA
Waldemar Karwowski
University of Central Florida
Orlando, USA
Karsten Kluth
University of Siegen
Siegen, Germany
Jayne Knowlton
Roberts Wesleyan College
Honeoye Falls, USA
Julie Kunisch
Nazareth College
Rochester, USA
Nancy MacRae
University of New England (Emeritus)
Saco, USA
Helen M. Madill
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada
Florian Magnani
Ecole Centrale de Marseille
Marseille, France
Mohsen Mahdinia
Hamadan University of Medical Sciences
Hamadan, Iran
Sreekanth Kumar Mallineni
Majmaah University
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Raquel Martinez
Life Occupational Therapy Limited
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Leonard Matheson
Epic Rehab
Chico, USA
Hugh McLoone
T-Mobile
Bellevue, USA
Symone A. Miguez
Ergosys Consulting
Campinas-SP, Brazil
Linda Leah Miller
EWI Works International Inc.
Edmonton, Canada
Gemma Milligan
University of Portsmouth
Portsmouth, United Kingdom
Beatriz Minghelli
Instituto Piaget
Lisbon, Portugal
Claudia Mont'Alvão
PUC-Rio
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Beata Mrugalska
Poznan University of Technology
Poznan, Poland
Alessandro Naddeo
University of Salerno
Fisciano, Italy
Matty van Niekerk
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa
Linda Niemeyer
Boston University
Boston, USA
Dan Odell
Google Daydream Virtual Reality
Bay Area, USA
Jiaxi Peng
Chengdu University
Chengdu, China
Susan Peters
Harvard Center for Work, Health and Wellbeing
Boston, USA
Jennifer Phillips
Boston University
Boston, USA
Venerando Rapisarda
University of Catania
Catania, Italy
Navah Ratzon
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel
Valerie Rice
US Army (retired), VitaLife Center
San Antonio, USA
María Martínez Rojas
University of Málaga, Malaga
Spain
Daniel Rortvedt
Elmhurst College
Elmhurst, USA
Martha Sanders
Quinnipiac University
Hamden, USA
Rachel Santarsiero
Stantec Consulting
Edmonton, Canada
Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak
Batterjee Medical College
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Adam Schwartz
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, USA
Ardalan Shariat
Tehran University of Medical Sciences
Tehran, Iran
Thomas Smith
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, USA
Billy C.L. So
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Shaheed Soeker
University of the Western Cape
Cape Town, South Africa
Tanja A. Stamm
Medical University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria
Andreja Švajger
University Rehabilitation Institute
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Thomas Tenkate
Toronto Metropolitan University
Toronto, Canada
Nishu Tyagi
Directorate General of Health Services - Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
Delhi, India
Amy Wagenfeld
Boston University
Boston, USA
Kathryn Wise
McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
Andree Woodcock
Coventry University
Coventry, United Kingdom
Author Guidelines
Instructions to Authors
Submission of an article is understood to imply that the article is original and unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. WORK is committed to the highest ethical standards and best practices in publishing and follows the code of conduct for Committee on Publication Ethics/DOAJ and the ICMJE. Any possible conflict of interest, financial or otherwise, related to the submitted work must be clearly indicated in the manuscript.
By submitting your article to this journal, you agree to the Author Copyright Agreement, IOS Press Ethics Policy, and IOS Press Privacy Policy.
Publication fee
Please note that for articles that are submitted and accepted from 1 March 2021, authors will be required to pay a publication fee of US$250/€210. Publication fees do not apply to feature solicited articles, book reviews, letters to the editor, and COVID-19 articles.
Note: All publication fees are waived for papers submitted via AOTA 2022. To process this waiver, please contact Axana Scherbeijn (a.scherbeijn@iospress.nl) prior to submission.
A waiver request for the publication fee should be submitted before the initial submission of a paper. Please send your title, abstract, keyword list and author list including affiliations to the Editor-in-Chief, Karen Jacobs (kjacobs@bu.edu), along with your motivation for the waiver. Your request will be evaluated. Waivers are available for corresponding authors from low-income countries as identified by the Hinari Project (https://www.research4life.org/access/eligibility/).
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.com, gmail.com, 163.com, rediffmail.com, etc.).
Author information
In order for WORK to continue to review manuscripts with a double blind peer review process, please do not include a title page or author information in your submission. The online submission system (Editorial Manager) will collect that information and generate a title page.
Preparation of manuscripts
1. Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors whose native language is not in English should seek the advice of a native English speaker, before submitting their manuscripts. Please use first person language (i.e. a person with an injury, not an injured person)
2. Typically, the journal only publishes data collected within the past 5 years
3. Manuscript formatting
- Please submit a Word document, not a PDF
- Wide margins – do not use columns
- Double spacing throughout the manuscript
- The preferred length of a manuscript is 20-30 pages double spaced (no more than 7,500 words) not including references, tables or figures
- Do not use page layout software and do not send PostScript files of the text
- Please number all pages
- Avoid excessive use of bold and italics
- Tables and figures should be submitted as separate documents or attachments
- Headings and subheadings should be numbered and typed on a separate line, without indentation
4. Manuscripts should be organized in the following order:
- Abstract
- 3-5 keywords that are not in your title
- Introduction
- Body of text (divided by subheadings)
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Tables
- Figure captions
- Figures
5. Abstract
- Title (should be clear, descriptive and not too long)
- The abstract should be clear, descriptive, self-explanatory
- No longer than 250 words
- The following subheadings should be used: BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVE,
METHODS, RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS
It should also be suitable for publication in abstracting services - Keywords (3-5 words that are not in your title. Keywords should be terms from the MeSH database)
6. 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.
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".
7. Tables
- Tables should be submitted on a separate document from the main text file
- Tables should never be included in the mail text file
- Tables should be numbered according to their sequence in the text. The text should include references to all tables
- Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title
- Each table should have a table caption
- Column headings should be brief, but sufficiently explanatory. Standard abbreviations of units of measurement should be added between parentheses
- Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table
8. Figures
- Figures should be submitted on a separate document or as a separate attachment from the main text file
- Figures should never be included in the main text file
- Figures should be numbered according to their sequence in the text. The text should include references to all 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 (incl. photos) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (no lettering), or 500 dpi (when there is lettering); save as tiff, not 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 colors in your figures if they should be printed in black and white, because this will reduce the print quality (note that in software often the default is color, you should change the settings)
- Color figures can be included in the print files, provided the cost of their reproduction is paid for by the author. For these figures, a CMYK encoded EPS or TIFF is required
- Each figure should be identified by its number. If necessary, indicate top or bottom of figure
- 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
- Photographs are only acceptable if they have good contrast and intensity
- Each illustration should be provided on a separate sheet. Illustrations should not be included in the text. The original drawings (no photocopies) are required. Electronic files of illustrations should preferably be formatted in Encapsulated PostScript format
- Footnotes should be kept to a minimum, and they should be provided all together on a separate sheet
9. References
- Place citations as numbers in square brackets in the text. All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references following the text of the manuscript. Only articles published or accepted for publication should be listed in the reference list. Submitted articles can be listed in the text as (author(s), unpublished data)
- All authors should be listed in the reference list
- References must be listed in 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: http://www.cancer.ca/.
10. 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
11. Pre-press and proofs
- When manuscripts are listed online in “pre-press”, the version that appears is often not the final typeset version with authors corrections. Authors will have the opportunity to make minor corrections during the review of proofs
- The corresponding author is asked to check the galley proofs (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
12. Quoting from other publications
An author, when quoting from someone else's work or when considering reproducing a figure or table from a book or journal article, should make sure that he is not infringing copyright. Although in general an author may quote from other published works, he should obtain permission from the holder of the copyright if he wishes to make substantial extracts or to reproduce 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.
13. How to order offprints, reprints, pdf, extra journals, books
- The corresponding author of a contribution to the journal is entitled to receive 1 watermarked copy of the electronic article pdf free of charge. An order form for offprints, journals or a pdf file without watermark will be provided along with the galley proofs
- If you wish to order reprints of an earlier published article, please contact the publisher for a quote. IOS Press, E-mail: editorial@iospress.nl
- Authors are entitled to a 25% discount on 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.
Abstracted/Indexed in
Advanced Placement Source
Biomedical Reference Collection
Business Source Complete
CSA Illumina
Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Plus
Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature print index
EBSCO Databases
Embase
EMCare
Environment Complete
Ergonomics Abstracts
Health & Safety Science Abstracts
Human Resources Abstracts
Inspec IET
MANTIS
MEDLINE
Microsoft Academic Search
OA @ PubMedCentral
PsycINFO
PubMed
REHABDATA
SciVerse Scopus
Social Scisearch
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory
Web of Science: Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences
Web of Science: Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition
Web of Science: Social Sciences Citation Index
Open Access
By default, articles published in Work 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 € 1250 / US$ 1450 for publication under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license or € 1850 / US$ 2080 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
WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation is a peer-reviewed journal. Articles submitted to the journal undergo a double blind peer review process. This means that the identity of the authors is unknown to the reviewers and the identity of the reviewers is not communicated to the authors.
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 the Editor's Assistant. The Editor's Assistant 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 two reviews, in some specific circumstances one review may be deemed sufficient to make a decision on a paper. The Editor-in-Chief strives to ensure a typical turnaround time (3–5 months).
Reviewers are asked to judge a paper on at least:
- Logical ordering of ideas
- Consistency with purpose and scope of work
- Contribution to the evidence based literature
- Sound research methodology, statistical approach, and interpretation
- Quality of references
- Writing style/clarity in English
Based on the received reviews the handling editor will propose to the Editor-in-Chief a recommendation:
- Accept with no additional edits
- Accept with minor to moderate revisions
- Revise and resubmit
- Reject
They mean the following:
- The manuscript is suitable for publication and only requires minor polishing; thus, no further review is requested
- The authors are required to make minor or moderate changes to their manuscript. The manuscript becomes acceptable for publication if the changes proposed by the reviewers and Editor are successfully addressed. The revised manuscript will be examined by the Editor-in-Chief and a decision is made for official acceptance or the manuscript is sent back to the authors for additional edits. Authors are requested to provide a letter to the reviewers and the Editor detailing the improvements made to the manuscript.
- 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.
- 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 Editor-in-Chief, whose decision is final.
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‘Art at Safe Homes’: A pioneer study among COVID-19 patients and their treatment team
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Safe protocol of resuming routine dental procedures in a tertiary care hospital setting post COVID-19 lockdown
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More information will be available in due course. Check the SDGs page for updates.