About Journal of Neuroinflammation

What is Journal of Neuroinflammation?

Journal of Neuroinflammation is an Open Access, peer-reviewed online journal that focuses on innate immunological responses of the central nervous system, involving microglia, astrocytes, cytokines, chemokines, and related molecular processes.

'Neuroinflammation' is an encapsulization of the idea that microglial and astrocytic responses and actions in the central nervous system have a fundamentally inflammation-like character, and that these responses are central to the pathogenesis and progression of a wide variety of neurological disorders. This idea has revolutionized our understanding of Alzheimer's disease, where it originated, and now has applications to other neurodegenerative diseases, to ischemic/toxic diseases, and even to normal brain development. Neuroinflammation incorporates a wide spectrum of complex cellular responses that include microglia and astrocytes, cytokines and chemokines, complement proteins, acute phase proteins, oxidative injury, and related molecular processes.

Neuroinflammation is a new and rapidly expanding field that has revolutionized our understanding of chronic neurological diseases. This field has grown to encompass researchers with backgrounds in many diverse fields, including pathology, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, clinical medicine, and epidemiology. Important contributions to this field have come from work with populations, with patients, with postmortem tissues, with animal models, and with in vitro systems. The Journal of Neuroinflammation will bring together work focusing on common pathogenic processes, and provide a forum for integrative reviews and commentaries on this field.

Content overview

Journal of Neuroinflammation considers the following types of articles:

• 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. All case report articles should be accompanied by written and signed consent to publish the information from the patients or their guardians.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings. They focus on specific issues and are about 800 words.
• Hypothesis: short articles presenting an untested 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, and be about 1500 words.
• Research: reports of data from original research.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. They have an educational aim and are 2000-3000 words.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research, usually about 1500 words.

Peer review policies

Submitted manuscripts will be assigned to members of the Editorial Board for review, or to alternative or additional consultants familiar with the subject of the manuscript, as deemed appropriate by the Editors-in-Chief. Peer reviewers' comments will be made available anonymously to authors. The Editors-in-Chief will provide instructions for those manuscripts requiring revision for final consideration. Final decisions on suitability for publication rest with the Editors-in-Chief.

Edited by Sue T Griffin and Robert E Mrak, Journal of Neuroinflammation is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Publishing in Journal of Neuroinflammation

All articles are listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and are covered by PubMed Central, MEDLINE, Thomson Reuters (ISI), Biosis, CAS, CABI and Embase.

Articles in Journal of Neuroinflammation should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

J Neuroinflammation 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Journal of Neuroinflammation does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

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Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Journal of Neuroinflammation using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Journal of Neuroinflammation is published by BioMed Central, part of Springer Science+Business Media. BioMed Central is committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is open access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Journal of Neuroinflammation however, has taken this further by making all its content open access.

Journal of Neuroinflammation's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

Journal of Neuroinflammation is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.