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

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Peer reviewers are sought. Click here to apply or to update your details.

Clinical Medicine: Arthritis and Musculoskeletal DIsorders has been accepted for indexing in EMBase

Journal overview

Aims and scope:

Clinical Medicine Insights: Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disorders is an international, open access, peer reviewed journal which considers manuscripts on the rationale and treatment of arthritis, and also autoimmune disease and diseases of the bone and cartilage. The journal welcomes articles on all aspects of the prevention, diagnosis and management of all associated disorders in addition to related genetic, pathophysiological and epidemiological topics.

The following topics are of specific, but not exhaustive, interest:

• Pain management
• Autoantibodies and autoimmunity
• Biotechnology
• Bone and cartilage biology
• Gene therepy
• Immunobiology
• Inflammation
• Molecular pathology and targeting
• Therapeutics
• Pharmacology
• Gene signalling and regulation
• Treatment outcomes and patient management

Former title:

Prior to 1/1/2010 this journal was titled Clinical Medicine: Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disorders (ISSN 1178-1149.)

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
• EMBase
• OAIster

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 Tariq M. Haqqi is a Professor of Medicine at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. He was educated at Aligarh Muslim University, India, and did post-doctoral training at the Centre D'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, Marseille, France, and Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.

He is an author or co-author of over 60 peer reviewed articles, and 18 refereed conference publications and presentations. He has more than 25 years experience of working in the field of immunology and molecular biology applied to inflammatory and degenerative joint diseases. He also has more than two decades experience in the field of arthritis.

>> Dr Haqqi's latest call for papers

Editorial Board

Ahmed M. Abdel-Nasser, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Rheumatology & Rehabilitation, Minia University, Minia, Egypt

Antigone Delantoni, MD
Dentoalveolar Surgery and Radiology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

Alexei von Delwig, PhD
Senior Research Associate, Institute of Cellular Medicine, School of Clinical Medical Sciences, Musculoskeletal Research Group, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom

Axel Finckh, PhD  (Interview)
Scientific Chief Resident, Division of Rheumatology, Departement of Internal Medicine, University Hospital of Geneva, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Ana Maria Gomis Garcia, PhD
Senior Fellow, Division of Cellular and Systems Neurobiology. Institute of Neuroscience, University Miguel Hernández- Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Sant Joan d'Alacant. Alicante, Spain

Anatoliy V. Gladkevich, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Biological Psychiatry, University Medical Center of Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Tibor T. Glant, MD, PhD
Professor, Section of Molecular Medicine, Departments of Orthopedic Surgery, Biochemistry, and Medicine (Section of Rheumatology), Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Ali Gür, MD
Associate Professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitational Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Dicle University, Diyarbakir, Turkey

Karen E. Hansen, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Rheumatology & Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism Sections Faculty, UW Osteoporosis Research Program & Clinical Center University of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Zhengmin Huang, PhD
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Abdullah Ismail Ibrahim Ismail, MD
Consultant and Chief of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, King Fahad Hofuf Hospital, Hofuf Al-Hassa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Sergio A. Jimenez, MD
Director, Division of Connective Tissue Diseases and Professor, Thomas Jefferson University; and Co-Director, Jefferson Institute of Molecular Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Brian Johnston, PhD
President and CEO, Somagenics, Inc. Santa Cruz, and Consulting Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, California, USA

Mariana J. Kaplan, MD
Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

George Kitas, PhD
Professor, Department of Rheumatology, Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust, Dudley, United Kingdom

Alisa Erika Koch, MD
Professor of Rheumatology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Parvaiz A Koul, MD, FACP, FICP
Additional Professor & Head Medical Division I, Department of Internal Medicine, SheriKashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar, Kashmir, India

Dama Laxminarayana, PhD
Assistant Professor, Section on Rheumatology and Immunology/Internal Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine,Winston Salem, North Carolina, USA

Chuanju Liu, PhD
Assistant Professor and Director of Orthopaedic Molecular Biology, Orthopaedic Surgery and Cell Biology, School of Medicine, New York University, New York, New York, USA

Akio Minami, MD
Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan

Abbas Mirshafiey, PhD
Professor in Immunology, School of Public Health, Dept. of Pathobiology, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Andras Perl, PhD
Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, State University of New York, College of Medicine, State University of New York, College of Medicine, Syracuse, New York, USA

Muhammad Farooq Rai, PhD
Post Doctoral Research Associate, Immunology and Molecular Biology, Freie Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Ann K. Rosenthal, MD
Professor of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Israel (Rudi) Rubinstein, MD
Professor, Departments of Medicine and Biopharmaceutical Sciences, Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, USA

Jeffrey H. Ruth, PhD
Reseach Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, Division of Rheumatology, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Thomas Joseph Santoro, MD
Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago, College of Medicine at Peoria, Illinois, USA

Alain Saraux, PhD
Professor, Department of Rheumatology, CHU de la Cavale Blanche, Brest University Medical School, Brest, France

Ami Schattner, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine, Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel

Gundula Schulze-Tanzil, MD
Department of Trauma and Reconstructive Surgery, Charité University of Medicine, Berlin, Germany

Hui Bin (Herb) Sun, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopaedics Name of institution: Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA

Adam Young, PhD
Professor, Department of Rheumatology, City Hospital, West Herts. Hospitals NHS Trust, St Albans, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Jian Zhang, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Zhixin Zhang, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Join an editorial board or update your details:

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