About Respiratory Research

What is Respiratory Research?

Respiratory Research is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers manuscripts on all aspects of respiratory function and disease.

The journal welcomes studies on asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, genetics, infectious diseases, interstitial lung diseases, lung development, lung tumors, occupational and environmental factors, pulmonary circulation, pulmonary pharmacology and therapeutics, respiratory critical care, respiratory immunology, respiratory physiology, and sleep. The journal will also welcome state-of-the-art reviews on related topics.

Content overview

Respiratory Research considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research.
• Commentaries: short, focussed and opinionated articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings and are often written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board.
• Review articles : comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually commissioned, but suggestions (in the form of a brief summary and an outline with section headings) are welcome and should be sent to the Editorial Office.
• Letters to the Editor: these can the form of 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.

Peer review policies

• Peer review in Respiratory Research is designed to ensure that the research published is "outstanding science". The journal will consider manuscripts spanning a wide range of scientific interests, as long as the results and conclusions are scientifically justified and not misleading.
• The Editors of Respiratory Research recognize the importance of highlighting articles that contain the most interesting, important or significant research. Peer reviewers are asked to indicate the articles that they consider to be especially interesting or significant - these articles will be given greater prominence within Respiratory Research and greater external publicity.
• Manuscripts submitted to Respiratory Research will generally be reviewed by two external experts. Peer reviewers will have four possible options for each manuscript, these are to recommend:
  • accept without revision
  • accept after minor revisions
  • neither accept nor reject until author(s) make revisions and resubmit
  • reject because scientifically unsound
• In deciding whether to accept or reject a manuscript, a reviewer asks him/herself whether the scientific community is better served by publishing or not publishing the manuscript. The suitability of a research article for publication in Respiratory Research is assessed by peer reviewers, who base their decision primarily on the article's validity and coherence but who also consider its comprehensibility and level of interest to the reader.
• When asking for revisions, reviewers have two possible goals: to ask authors to tighten their arguments based on existing data or to identify areas where more data are needed.
• Respiratory Research normally allows authors a maximum of two revisions per article
• Manuscripts must be clearly written and concise for publication. Manuscripts not clearly written may be returned without review.

Edited by Jan Lötvall and Reynold A Panettieri, Respiratory Research is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Respiratory Research

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

Articles in Respiratory Research 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:

Respir Res 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

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

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Respiratory Research, 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 Respiratory Research using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Respiratory Research 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. Respiratory Research however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Respiratory Research'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 Respiratory Research will be available.

Respiratory Research 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.