About BioPsychoSocial Medicine

What is BioPsychoSocial Medicine?

BioPsychoSocial Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of the interrelationships between the biological, psychological, social, and behavioral factors of health and illness.

BioPsychoSocial Medicine is the official journal of the Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine, and publishes research on psychosomatic disorders and diseases that are characterized by objective organic changes and/or functional changes that could be induced, progressed, aggravated, or exacerbated by psychological, social, and/or behavioral factors and their associated psychosomatic treatments.

The journal emphasizes a bio-psycho-social approach to illness and health, covering the behavioral sciences, social sciences, neuroscience, stress physiology and epidemiology, psycho-neuro-endocrinology/ immunology, and psycho-oncology, all of which are associated with mind-body interactions.

Content overview

BioPsychoSocial Medicine considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research.
• 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.
• Case studies: describe a major healthcare intervention, usually from a public health perspective. Case study articles that include a rigorous assessment of the processes and impact of the intervention as well as recommendations for future interventions will be considered favourably. Note that Case study articles should not describe an individual patient - authors should use the case report format for such descriptions.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. These are usually written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.
• Letters to the Editor: they can take three forms: a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article, or a substantial response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication, or an article that may not cover 'standard research' but that may be relevant to readers.
• Commentaries:short, focused and opinionated articles on subjects within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to contemporary issues, such as recent research findings, and are often written by leaders invited by the Editorial Board.

Peer review policies

All manuscripts submitted to BioPsychoSocial Medicine will be peer reviewed by two experts. Based on the reviewers’ reports, the Editor will aim to make an initial Editorial decision within four weeks, which will be either, accept, accept with revisions, or reject. In the case of conflicting reviews, the Section Editor and the Editor-in-Chief will be responsible for making the final decision.

Edited by Koji Tsuboi, BioPsychoSocial Medicine is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in BioPsychoSocial Medicine

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central and Scopus.

Articles in BioPsychoSocial Medicine 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:

BioPsychoSocial Med 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, BioPsychoSocial Medicine does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from BioPsychoSocial Medicine, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

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

General journal policies

BioPsychoSocial Medicine is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher 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. BioPsychoSocial Medicine however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

BioPsychoSocial Medicine's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, 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.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in BioPsychoSocial Medicine will be available.

BioPsychoSocial Medicine 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.