Submissions

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Author Guidelines

Prior to submission, all authors are required to access and comply with the journal policies and EQUATOR Network guidelines.

  • Case reports – CARE
  • Clinical trials – CONSORT
  • Clinical practice guidelines - AGREE
  • Diagnostic/prognostic studies – STARD
  • Economic evaluations - CHEERS
  • Instrument validation – COSMIN
  • Observational studies – STROBE
  • Qualitative research – COREQ (interviews and focal groups)/ SRQR (documental)
  • Quality improvement studies – SQUIRE
  • Study protocols – SPIRIT              
  • Systematic reviews – PRISMA

The paper must be submitted in English or Portuguese and the authors are responsible for content, spelling, grammar and punctuation.

The Journal of Physiotherapy Research (JPR) is an Open Access journal published to serve the international scientific community by providing high quality scientifically accurate research reports, therefore it charges no submission nor publication fee of any kind.

Guidelines last updated in April 10th, 2023.

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

  • Formatting: The text must be presented in size 12pt, with 1.5 of spacing in between the lines, in a single column, as to fit a standard A4 vertical sheet. Please, employ the metric system.

  • Tables, figures, charts, graphs, datasets etc: Questionnaire forms, interviews, tables, figures, graphs, charts and datasets must be submitted separately as supplementary files with the proper identification and numbering. Additionally, tables, figures, charts and graphs must also be placed in the manuscript in their proper places.

  • File extensions: Text files must have a .doc extension. Tables may have a .xls or .doc extension. Datasets must have a .xls extension. Figures and graphs must have a .jpg, .png or .tiff extension with 300dpi of resolution. No file may exceed 4Mb of size.

  • Title, abstract and keywords: Providing title, abstract and keywords in Portuguese and in English in the manuscript text file and in the appropriate form fields whenever requested by the submission system is a requirement for it to be considered for peer review. The title must be objective and accurate. The keywords, ranging from 3 to 5, must come from the controlled vocabulary available in the Medical Subject Headings / MeSH database. The abstracts must be structured, no more than 250 words long, and include the following labeled sections: introduction, objectives, methods and materials, results and conclusion.

  • Authorship: Up to ten (10) authors can be listed in a single report, except when it comes to reporting research activities of cooperating research centers, laboratories and institutions, when more authors may be listed. Case reports, experience reports and reviews may list no more than six (06) authors. Providing the following metadata for each listed author in the appropriate form fields when requested by the submission system is a requirement for the paper to be considered for peer review: a) all authors with full name (no abbreviation allowed), b) main affiliation, c) city, state, country, d) email and e) ORCID. E.g.: Jennifer Smith. Federal University of Bahia. Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. jennifersmith@email.edu.br (ORCID XXXX-0000-XX00-X1X5). The system will automatically send out messages to each author with a link for them to authenticate their ORCIDs. The authentication for all authors is a condition for the article to be evaluated by editors and reviewers. The contribution of each author must be listed in a separated text file which must be then submitted as supplementary file, e.g.: Smith KFA and Smith DB designed the experiments. Smith JLW wrote the code. Smith JLW and Smith YW analyzed the data. Smith MC and Smith PP prepared samples for sequencing and performed all sequencing. Smith VS cultured the cell lines. Smith XW contributed with critical intellectual content. Smith KFA, Smith MC, Smith YW, and Smith JLW wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the paper. We comply with the ICMJE criteria for defining authorship.

  • Social media integration: Each author in a submission may supply no more than one social media handle that will be published along with their authorship information in case of acceptance of their submission. This is an opt-in feature only and it is not a condition for text evaluation. The provided social media profile must be aimed at scientific debate and dissemination only.

  • Competing interests: Authors are required to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence their work in the field "Comments for the editor".

  • Financing sources: All funding received by the authors for carrying out the research, including scholarships, grants, courtesies and fees, must be informed in the "Comments to the editor" field.

  • References: The references must be cited and listed according to the Vancouver Style. Up to 25 references can be cited in original articles and in methods & protocols, 15 in case reports and 50 in literature reviews. Exceptions will be evaluated and handled by the editor assigned to the respective submission. The Digital Object Identifiers (doi®) of a published work must be included in the reference whenever the published work have had a doi® assigned to it.

  • Research Ethics: Any research on, related to, or involving human subjects should state that the they had been approved by the ethics committee of the institution where the research was conducted in compliance with the international requirements, standards and procedures, such as stated in the Declaration of Helsinki. The research registration number in the Plataforma Brasil / Brazilian Ministry of Health (Brazilian National System of Research Ethics) database or in the similar international research ethics database must be included in the paper. No form of participant identification, such as disclosure of initials, full name and registration number, is permitted. The ethics on research committee authorization and, whenever applicable, the authorization for use of image and voice for scientific purposes signed by the participant allowing their medical conditions and anonymized clinical records to be made public for the purpose of scientific research reporting must be provided by authors as supplementary files. Any studies on, related to or involving other vertebrates must have had been conducted in compliance with international ethical recommendations for experimentation on animals. They must have had been approved by the proper research committee, and the documentation of that process must be sent as an additional file as well. All registration of clinical trials must be in a public trials registry at or before the time of first participant enrollment. The trial registration number must be provided in the manuscript and at the end of the abstract. The WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), the ClinicalTrials.gov or national similar may be employed for registration. More information about clinical trials registration here.

  • Reproduction of copyrighted material: The first mention of a trademark must include the name of the manufacturer and the country of origin. When reproducing any copyrighted material, the authors must provide the authorization by the respective copyright owners, including but not limited to charts, figures and graphs.

  • Overlapping publications: They are discouraged, except in the situations mentioned by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors - ICMJE. If the prerequisites for second publication described by the ICMJE are met, the authors must upload the permission granted by the first publication rights owner as an additional document. The first publication must be cited in a footnote.

    Uploading papers to preprint servers for peer review is encouraged and it will not be considered as overlapping publication.

  • Reporting integrity: The filled out EQUATOR checklist, informing on which page of the manuscript each mandatory item per study design appears, must be uploaded as a supplementary file at the time of submission.

Checklist last updated July 16th, 2024.

Original Articles

Original articles are scientific reports of the results of experimental or observational original research on physiotherapy and its interfaces. This section will consider for peer review and publication:

  • clinical trials;
  • conceptual and/or methodological studies;
  • development and/or validation of assessment or treatment instruments;
  • diagnostic accuracy studies;
  • economic studies;
  • instrument validation;
  • observational studies (either transversal or longitudinal);
  • pilot studies;
  • scientometric studies about the area;
  • studies on clinical guidelines;
  • studies to assess the quality of care in physiotherapy;
  • qualitative studies.

Supplementary video files submissions are allowed in this section. 

Original articles will be given priority for peer reviewer and publication.

Up to 3000 words in length. 

Methods & Protocols

This section aims to publish studies that support empirical research, before data collection begins. The following designs will be evaluated for this section: (i) research protocols, and/or (ii) theoretical-conceptual rationales aimed at the development of innovative technological processes, procedures, techniques and methods in order to improve clinical reasoning and clinical practice in physiotherapy.

The guiding principles and details of methodological planning before data collection begins should be presented on the basis of relevant, comprehensive and updated literature so that the method can be reproducible.

Research protocols submitted to this section must contain introduction, methods, and any pilot experiments that motivated the research hypothesis and study design.

The manuscript should remark outcome-neutral conditions for ensuring that the proposed methods are capable of testing the stated hypotheses.

Sample size calculation and rigorous statistical plan of analysis must be included in the manuscript as well. 

In the submitted protocol, the following aspects are deemed essential and will be carefully assessed: (1) objective(s), either analytical (explicit hypothesis) or descriptive (what is to be described); (2) sample selection method (ethical compliance and clearance, target population, inclusion and exclusion criteria, recruitment procedures); (3) well-defined primary outcome(s); (4) well-defined secondary outcome(s); (5) data analysis plan (primary and secondary analyses included), detailing how multiple comparisons are going to be prevented/avoided; (6) sample size calculation: assumptions are to be clearly presented; for an analytical study, what is the expected effect size, what is the premise behind the expected behavior of the variables (frequency in the case of categorical variables and expected standard deviation in the case of numerical).

In case of acceptance, the protocol will be published and the journal guarantees publication of a second submission containing the full study if the authors conduct the experiment in accordance with the approved and published protocol. This second submission will be required to include, in the results section, the outcome of the pre-registered analyses.

Deviations from the protocol must be duly justified and must consider ethical aspects and the relevant updated literature on the topic.

Up to 3000 words in lenght.

Case Reports

This section publishes case reports that describe real-life situations in which procedures and techniques were employed or developed as research strategies or therapeutic interventions.

Only rare case studies, unusual observations, and/or technical or technological innovations that serve as a basis for an in-depth discussion to evaluate and understand diagnoses poorly understood by current scientific literature will be considered for publication.

Reports will be pre-evaluated by the journal's editorial committee to ensure compliance with these requirements. They should contain evidence-based reasoning from the current literature, discussion confronting or associating findings with the evidence available in the most current literature, and a conclusion with future perspectives that can inspire subsequent, methodologically robust studies.

In accordance with national and international research ethics standards, all case studies will need to include the Free and Informed Consent Form signed by the patient(s), the authorization number of the Research Ethics Commitee of the parent institution where the research or intervention took place and, when applicable, the Term of Authorization for the Use of Image and Voice for scientific purposes also signed by the patient(s).

Supplementary video file submissions are permitted and encouraged in this section.

Up to 3000 words in length.

Literature Reviews

Studies that perform literature synthesis on a topic in physiotherapy or related areas. Only systematic reviews with meta-analysis and scoping reviews will be considered for evaluation. Pre-registration is mandatory for systematic reviews and it may be done at the PROSPERO database (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/). Systematic reviews without pre-registration will be declined. In the case of reviews without meta-analysis, the manuscript must justify why the meta-analysis was considered unfeasible. The completed PRISMA checklist must be included in the submission as a supplementary file.

Up to 3000 words in lenght.

Privacy Statement

The names, addresses and any other types of personal data inserted into this journal's database will be used solely for the editorial services provided by this publication and will not be made available for other purposes nor to third parties.

Statement last reviewed in September 07th, 2021