The journal development has continued over
the summer and a new refreshed journal website will be launched later in the
autumn. The new website will include updated author guidelines. We have also
been working hard at increasing our social media presence and now have over 500
Twitter followers. We have an automatic RSS feed that tweets the title and URL
of new papers on the day of publication. We also aim to post a more descriptive
tweet about each paper as soon as possible after publication so if you want to
keep up to date with the best science please follow the journal (@IJBNPA) and
encourage your colleagues and students to do so also. Papers are now published
in just the final form; there are no un-corrected proofs. Therefore, if you see
a tweet or email about a paper, it is in its final form so please download or
view online. Please also be aware that you can set your email preferences so
that you are notified either each time an article is published, weekly,
fortnightly, or monthly. From the home page of (IJBNPA http://www.ijbnpa.org/) click on Sign up for article alerts on the right
hand side. Select your preferences for IJBNPA Article alerts from the two drop
down menus (Format and Frequency). If you do not want all BMC news updates,
unselect the BioMed Central Updates tick
box. You can customise the updates you receive from the rest of this page.
We have had a marked increase in manuscript
submissions since the Edinburgh meeting. While this is great news in terms of
the vibrancy of our society and journal it has meant that we have reached a
point where we have many more papers than we have scope to publish. We have
therefore had to refocus our editorial priorities and make a number of tough decisions.
After extensive discussion within the editing team, we have decided to
prioritise the following: Randomised controlled trials and associated process
evaluations along with well-conducted systematic reviews, meta-analyses and
prospective studies. Thoughtful debate papers that present new concepts or
challenge the existing understanding are also very welcome. Cross-sectional and
qualitative studies are key components of our field but we will publish such
papers only where we feel that the study advances the field. Thus, if you are
submitting a cross-sectional or qualitative study please outline clearly in the
cover letter why you feel the proposed paper is novel and extends current
knowledge. We will now publish pilot trials in only very exceptional
circumstances.
Another change is that we now ask all
authors to upload CONSORT checklist for all trials, PRISMA checklists for all
systematic reviews and STROBE checklists for observational studies. In light of
re-focussed priorities, we also ask all authors to outline in the cover letter
a) why the current study is novel and deserves to be published in IJBNPA, and
b) how the paper differs from any others that have been produced from the same
dataset.
Reviewers are vital to the success of the
journal so please sign up to be a reviewer
by adding your details here (http://www.editorialmanager.com/ and click on Register.) and, very
importantly, remember to select or add key words as that really helps us to
send you relevant papers. If you are already in our database please take a
minute to log in and check that your keywords are complete and up to date (http://www.editorialmanager.com/
and click on Update My Information). This
will really help us, as it means that we can spread the reviewing burden across
a far larger number of reviewers. It also helps reviewers by ensuring that they
are sent relevant manuscripts, and helps the journal by ensuring that reviews
are targeted and processed as quickly as possible.
Finally, please remember that we want the journal to be the home of the best behavioural nutrition and physical activity research but we need your help – we cannot do the job without you! So, please submit your BEST work, review papers when asked, read the articles, and cite and tweet about the fantastic science that is being conducted in our field.
Russ Jago – IJBNPA Editor in Chief
Contact us at: ?[email protected]? Follow us on
Twitter: @IJBNPA
