Authorship

List as few author names as possible in the order of magnitude of their contribution to the study/writing.

Submission to the journal implies that all authors have seen and approved the author list. Changes to the author list after manuscript submission – such as the insertion or removal of author names, or a rearrangement of author order – must be approved by all authors and the editor.

Authors are encouraged to consider the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations on ‘Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors’. The ICMJE recommends that authorship is based on four criteria: making a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; approving the final version of the manuscript for publication; and agreeing to be held accountable for all aspects of the work.

Any contributor who has met all four criteria should be an author on the manuscript. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria should not be authors of the manuscript but may be included in the Acknowledgments section instead.

Copyright, Open Access License Policy

Physical Therapy Research moved to be fully Open Access from December 8, 2022, and uses Creative Commons (CC) licensing for articles from this date, as outlined below. The archive published before the date above is freely available online, under the relevant conditions stated on each manuscript.

Authors are required to assign all copyrights in the work to The Japanese Society of Physical Therapy via the copyright agreement; the Society then publishes the work under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). This license allows users to share and adapt an article, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.

Some funding bodies require articles funded by them to be published under a specific Creative Commons license. Before submitting your work to the journal, check with the relevant funding bodies to ensure that you comply with any mandates.

Editorial and Peer Review Policy

Acceptance criteria

If a manuscript satisfies the journal’s requirements and represents a significant contribution to the published literature, the Editorial Board member may recommend acceptance for publication in the journal.

Articles in the journal must be:

1. technically rigorous
2. novel and original
3. important to the field
4. within the subject area of the journal’s scope
5. well-constructed and written
6. of high interest to the journal’s audience

If a manuscript does not meet the journal’s requirements for acceptance or revision, the Editorial Board member may recommend rejection.

Editorial and peer review process

The journal uses double-blind peer review. When a manuscript is submitted to the journal, it is assigned to the Editor-in-Chief, who performs initial screening. Manuscripts that do not fit the journal’s scope or are not deemed suitable for publication are rejected without review. The Editor-in-Chief assigns each of the remaining manuscripts to an Editorial Board member and a reviewer according to the field of the manuscript, who undertake peer review.

Once the Editorial Board and the reviewer have completed the review, the Editorial Board and the Editorial Board Leader of the relevant field hold a discussion and make an initial decision on whether the manuscript requires revision. Authors who are asked to revise their manuscript must do so within two months, otherwise it may be treated as a new submission. The Editorial Board member may send revised manuscripts to peer reviewers for their feedback or may use his or her own judgement to assess how well the authors have responded to the comments on the original manuscript. The Editorial Board member then makes a recommendation to the Editorial Board Leader, who makes the final decision on the manuscript’s suitability for publication in the journal. The Editor-in-Chief acts as an arbitrator when necessary.

Conflicts of Interest

In the interests of transparency, the journal requires all authors to declare any competing or conflicts of interest in relation to their submitted manuscript. A conflict of interest exists when there are actual, perceived or potential circumstances that could influence an author's ability to conduct or report research impartially. Potential conflicts include (but are not limited to) competing commercial or financial interests, commercial affiliations, consulting roles, or ownership of stock or equity. Manuscripts must be compliant with the ICMJE standards on this matter.

Authors should list all funding sources for their work in the Acknowledgments section of their manuscript.

Ethics Policies

Physical Therapy Research upholds the highest standards in scholarly publishing.

Before submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors must ensure that they have read and complied with the journal’s policies. The journal reserves the right to reject without review, or retract, any manuscript that the Editor-in-Chief believes may not comply with these policies.

The responsibilities of the journal’s authors, editors, reviewers and publisher regarding research and publication ethics are described in full below.

Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript has not been previously published (in part or in whole, in any language), is not in press, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Authors must inform the editors if any related manuscripts are under consideration, in press or published elsewhere. The availability of a manuscript on a publicly accessible preprint server does not constitute prior publication.

If authors choose to submit their manuscript elsewhere before a final decision has been made on its suitability for publication in the journal, they should first withdraw it from the journal.