Latest news

Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 37, 2009. Follow link to see newsletter summary.  Register to receive newsletters.    

Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 32, 2009. Register to receive future newsletters.

Read the Editor in Chief's latest call for papers here.

Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 15, 2009.  Register to receive future newsletters. 

The journal has been accepted for indexing in EBSCO Academic Search Complete.

Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 8, 2009. Register to receive future newsletters.

Journal overview

Aims and scope:

The speed of reporting advances in integrative medicine, the open access model, and the highest editorial standards with which Integrative Medicine Insights is produced will have the combined effect of maximizing the benefit to the advance of the field.

Integrative Medicine Insights is a peer-reviewed, open-access research journal where those engaged in integrative medicine can turn for rapid communication of the latest advances in the application of complementary and alternative medicine toward the goal of overall wellness.

Editorial standards and procedures:

Submissions, excluding editorials, letters to the editor and dedications, will be peer reviewed by two reviewers.  Reviewers are required to provide fair, balanced and constructive reports.  

Under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy authors may appeal against reviewers' recommendations which are ill-founded, unobjective or unfair.  Appeals are considered by the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor.

Papers are not sent to peer reviewers following submission of a revised manuscript. Editorial decisions on re-submitted papers are based on the author's response to the initial peer review report.

Indexing:

This journal is indexed by the following services:

• Google Scholar
• CAS
• DOAJ
• OAIster
  

SPARC Europe Seal award winner:

This journal has been awarded a SPARC Europe Seal. The Seal is an initiative of SPARC Europe (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which is awarded to journals applying a Creative Commons CC-BY copyright license and that make journal metadata accessible to DOAJ.  

Amongst other important services DOAJ makes metadata OAI-compliant.  This in turn enhances the visibility of papers and allows OAI-harvesters to include the details of journal articles in their services. We encourage readers to make use of this valuable resource.  The DOAJ search page is available here.

National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy compliant:

As of April 7 2008, the US NIH Public Access Policy requires that all peer reviewed articles resulting from research carried out with NIH funding be deposited in the Pubmed Central archive.

If you are an NIH employee or grantee Libertas Academica will ensure that you comply with the policy by depositing your paper at Pubmed Central on your behalf. 

Information for authors

Call for papers:

Read the Editor in Chief's latest call for papers here.

Submission types accepted:

The Editor in Chief welcomes submissions.  Submissions of the following types are invited:

• Original research articles.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. They may cover basic science and clinical reviews, ethics, pro/con debates, and equipment reviews.
• Commentaries: focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue.
• Hypotheses: articles that present an 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.
• Letters to the Editor: these can be either a re-analysis of a previously published article, or a response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication.
• Methodology articles: these discuss a new experimental method, test or procedure. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The method needs to have been well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.
• Meeting reports: a report pertaining to activity at a meeting or conference Articles published in this journal are immediately available without delay upon publication and enjoy substantial visibility.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction. Case reports must meet appropriate ethical standards.

All submissions are subject to prompt, objective and fair peer review in compliance with our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.  Copyright in published articles remains with the author(s).  Authors are continually informed of the progress of their paper and our staff are friendly and responsive. 

One author recently wrote: "I would like to say that this is the most author-friendly editing process I have experienced in over 150 publications. Thank you most sincerely."

Criteria for publication: 

Publication is dependent on peer reviewers' judgement of papers.  Reviewers are asked to provide thoughtful and unbiased feedback to authors to ensure that the conclusions of papers are valid and manuscripts achieve reasonable standards of scholarliness and intelligibility. 

Previous work in the field must be acknowledged and papers should read without unreasonable difficulty.  Papers should fit comfortably within the scope of the journal.

Reviewers are asked to act in a fair, objective and constructive manner which maintains quality standards and helps authors to communicate their research.  They are instructed that in areas of genuinely novel research issues may be raised which cannot immediately be resolved and that absolutely rigorous validation of data may therefore not be possible. 

More information on the role of peer reviewers is available on the information for reviewers page.  Where authors consider that reviewers have made recommendations which are unreasonable, unobjective or ill-founded they may appeal them to the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.

Articles submitted to other journals:

We are willing to consider papers which have been peer reviewed by other journals but not accepted for publication. 

Services for authors:

Prior to peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper's reference style revised to meet our requirements,
• Have your paper's English revised by specialist English-speaking technical editors.

After peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper revised in accordance with peer reviewer's recommendations and have a summary of responses to the reviewers created by our specialist external substantive editors,
• Provide bound reprints of your article in colour or black and white ,
• Provide online-early rapid publication if your paper prior to typesetting.

What other authors have said:

Libertas Academica actively requests, receives and acts upon feedback from authors, readers and editorial boards.  Here's what some recent authors have said about us:

"Within a couple of days the reviewers had been procured and the manuscript was out."

"The communication between your staff and me has been terrific.  Whenever progress is made with the manuscript, I receive notice.  Quite honestly, I've never had such complete communication with a journal."

"LA is different, and hopefully represents a kind of scientific publication machinery that removes the hurdles from free flow of scientific thought."

Article processing fees:

All submissions to this journal are subject to an article processing fee if they are accepted for publication.  Article processing fees are used to fund the processing of your paper and development of the journal.  Article processing fees are the only compulsory charge you will face and do not vary according to word count, page count, colour figures or any other factor.  There is no additional charge for the author(s) to make any use of their article and no charge to readers to access it.

Full fee waivers are available for authors working in undeveloped nations and partial discounts of 20-50% are available to authors in other nations.  Authors must be able to verifiably demonstrate their suitability for a discount or waiver.  Availability of waivers and discounts is subject to monthly availability and is given at the publisher's discretion.  Waivers and discounts must be applied for prior to submission.  Neither are available after submission.

Register as a peer reviewer:

Do you wish to register as a peer reviewer?  Or are you already a registered peer reviewer but you need to update your contact details?   To register or update your details visit the peer reviewer registration form. 

Applicants must be able to demonstrate at least five years of continuous experience in the journal's subject area including at least two in the previous 24 months.

Editor in Chief profile

Dr. Steven Gurgevich is a licensed psychologist specializing in Mind-Body Medicine.  He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona, College of Medicine, and Director of The Mind-Body Clinic within Dr. Andrew Weil’s Arizona Center of Integrative Medicine.  Dr. Gurgevich continues his thirty-six years of private practices at Behavioral Medicine, Ltd, and Sabino Canyon Integrative Medicine, LLC, in Tucson, Arizona.

He is a Fellow, Approved Consultant and faculty of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. Other professional memberships are: Fellow and Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Psychotherapists; Diplomate and Senior Disability Analyst of the American Board of Disability Analysts; the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis; the American Psychological Association, and state and local psychological societies.

Dr. Gurgevich is author of the Sounds True publications: The Self-Hypnosis Home Study Course, Relax Rx, Relieve Anxiety with Medical Hypnosis, Deep Sleep with Medical Self-Hypnosis, The Self-Hypnosis Diet (audio), The Self-Hypnosis Diet (book, co-author Joy Gurgevich), and Heal Yourself with Medical Hypnosis (co-author Andrew Weil, MD). He is also the author of over 60 titles of medical hypnosis applications published by Tranceformation Works’ Healing with Hypnosis Series, numerous textbook chapters and professional papers about medical hypnosis.

Dr. Gurgevich and his wife, Joy, live and practice near Sabino Canyon National Park in Tucson, Arizona.

Editorial Board

Donald I Abrams, MD
Chief, Hematology-Oncology, San Francisco General Hospital, Director of Clinical Programs, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UCSF,Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

Ann Linda Baldwin, PhD
Professor of Physiology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

Marianna K Baum, PhD
Professor, Stempel School of Public Health, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

Bhaskar Behera, PhD
Senior Scientist, Mycology, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Philip F Binkley, MD, PhD
Wilson Professor of Medicine; Professor of Epidemiology; Vice Chairman for Academic Affairs, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Cathryn Booth-LaForce, PhD, FAPS, RYT
Professor and Vice Chair of Family & Child Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Changyi Chen, MD, PhD
Professor of Surgery and Molecular & Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

Yong Q Chen, PhD
Professor of Cancer Biology; Basic Science Director of the Prostate Center of Excellence; Director of DNA Microarray Core, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

Lawrence J Cheskin, MD, FACP
Director, Johns Hopkins Weight Management Centre, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

Ian D Coulter, PhD
Director, Integrative Medicine; Professor, School of Dentistry; Senior Health Policy Analyst; Research Professor, Samueli Institute for Information Biology; University of California, Los Angeles; RAND Corporation, Santa Monico; Southern California University of Health Sciences, CA, USA

Adrian Dobs, MD, MHS
Professor of Medicine and Oncology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

Garry Gordon, MD, DO MD(H.)
Gordon Research Institute, Payson, AZ, USA

Richard H Grimm Jr, MD, PhD
Professor of Cardiology and Epidemiology; Director, Berman Center for Outcomes and Clinical Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Merrijoy Kelner, PhD
Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Kenneth R Pelletier, PhD, MD(hc)
Clinical Professor of Medicine; Director, Corporate Health Improvement Program (CHIP) , Department of Medicine, University of Arizona School of Medicine, Tucson, AZ, USA

Susan Reisine, PhD
Professor, Department of Oral Health and Diagnostic Sciences; Chief, Division of Behavioral Sciences and Community Health, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT, USA

Beverly Rubik, PhD
President/Founder, Institute for Frontier Science, Oakland, CA, USA

Len Wisneski, MD
Rockville, MD, USA

Janice M Zeller, PhD, RN, FAAN
Professor, Department of Adult Health Nursing; Associate Professor, Department of Immunology/Microbiology, Rush University Mecial Center, Chicago, IL, USA

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