Introduction
The Benha International Journal of Physical Therapy publishes original research on advances in the disciplines of physical therapy, rehabilitation, and related sciences, including scientific, clinical, and practical studies on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of physical illnesses.
The journal's mission is to disseminate high-quality research on physical therapy advances, supporting physical therapists in finding, comprehending, and using studies for efficient evidence-based practice. The B.I.J. PT complies with publication and research ethics norms. It adheres to the guidelines provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (publicationethics.org), Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Research (EQUATOR) (www.equator-network.org), and the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts (www.icmje.org).
Types of papers
Before you begin
Ethics in Publishing
Please see the detailed information in the publication ethics section of the journal website.
Disclosure of Conflict of Interest
Any relevant ties or financial conflicts that might affect the authors' choices regarding the article should be disclosed by the authors. In a similar vein, writers who have no conflicts of interest ought to disclose them.
Funding/Support and Role of Sponsor
The research and effort should have a complete and unambiguous disclosure of all material and financial assistance. Giving specifics about the sponsor's or funding source's role is crucial.
Participants’ anonymity:
No personal information, including texts, images, and pedigrees, may be published that would allow for the identification of a participant without written consent.
Human and animal rights:
When conducting a study involving human subjects, it is necessary to disclose that the experiment complies with the Declaration of Helsinki and the ethics standards of the local "Ethics Committee on Clinical Experiments" or agencies that assess the ethics of conducting experiments on human bodies. When doing animal experiments, it is important to make it very obvious that the procedures follow the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals as well as any institutional or national research committee standards pertaining to the breeding and use of laboratory animals.
Authorship:
The journal follows the guidelines for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals that state that authorship credit should only be given for significant contributions to one of the following three areas: (1) conception and design; (2) data acquisition; (3) critical revision of the article for important intellectual content; and (4) final approval of the version to be published. The coauthors decided on the authorship order together. Once the submitted manuscripts have been accepted, the authors' order cannot be altered or added to.
Policies regarding plagiarism:
The author agrees that a submitted manuscript will be checked for plagiarism using iThenticate, a plagiarism checker, against previously published works. Any manuscripts that include plagiarism will be rejected right away.
Registration of clinical trials
Any clinical trials should be registered with a clinical trial registration website that has been approved by the World Health Organization or the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. You can see a comprehensive directory of clinical trial registries at http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/index.html.
Informed consent and ethics committee approval:
Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in the paper.
Reporting Guidelines and Checklists:
Taking the time to make sure your article satisfies the fundamental requirements for reporting will greatly improve your manuscript and increase the likelihood of publication, ensuring a high and consistent quality of research reporting. The editors and reviewers use these checklists as a reference when they assess your work.
The EQUATOR Network (http://www.equator-network.org) is an excellent resource for key reporting guidelines, checklists, and flow diagrams. Below are the most commonly used checklists.
Publication fee:
Publication in this journal is free of charge to authors (i.e., there are no submission or article processing charges)
Open access:
All publications in this journal are freely available online to all readers
Language:
This journal only publishes manuscripts in English. Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted).
Submission:
All submissions must be made using the internet portal for the journal's online submission and review process. You can upload your files and enter the details of your article step-by-step with the help of the system. Following author review, the system immediately creates an electronic (PDF) proof that will be utilized in the peer-review procedure once the submission files have been submitted. Email is used for all correspondence, including requests for modification and notifications of the editor's decision.
File Requirements:
Editable files (e.g., Word, Excel, JPEG files) are required to typeset your article for final publication. Do not submit pdf files.
Peer Reviewers Recommended by Authors
Authors are encouraged to recommend a minimum of two peer reviewers for consideration during the submission process. The recommended peer reviewers should be well-experienced and have published in the topic areas or study design of the manuscript. Further, they should not have any conflicts of interest.
Revision:
For detailed information about the peer review process, please visit peer review process section at the journal site. Revisions to the manuscript are anticipated within 2 weeks after the request to insure rapid processing. The aim is to have total time frame, from submission to final decision, limited to about one month. If there are any questions or if extra time is required, the corresponding author should get in touch with the editor.
Every recommendation must be addressed in the revised draft along with a justification for whether or not the suggested modification was implemented.
A word document including a list of reviewer comments and the itemized changes made to the article to satisfy each revision request must be uploaded by the associated author. Any additions or corrections made to the manuscript must be highlighted within the text so that the editor and reviewers may see where the changes have been made.
Accepted manuscripts:
All manuscripts accepted for publication are subject to editing for presentation, style and grammar. Any major redrafting is agreed with the author.
How to prepare your manuscript and submission files
1- Cover Letter
The cover letter ought to elucidate the reasons for the manuscript's potential readership in the Journal. Kindly highlight the most significant aspects of the submission in brief. Authors should attest to the work's originality in the cover letter.
Please confirm that the submission has not been published before and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere; that the manuscript has been read and approved by the named authors who fit the authorship criteria; and that there are no other persons who satisfy the criteria for authorship but are not listed. If any of the authors have a conflict of interest, this should be explained in the cover letter. Further confirmation is needed that any aspect of the work covered in the manuscript has been conducted with the ethical approval of all relevant bodies.
2- The title page
Should be prepared as follows:
3- Blinded manuscript file
It should be submitted in a Word document and should begin with the title (without author details), followed by the abstract, keywords, body of the text, references, and figure legends.
Basic Formatting Guidance:
Abstract and key words:
A structured abstract is required (background, objective, methods, results, conclusion) with a maximum of 250 words. The abstract should be concise and factual. It briefly states the purpose of the research, the principal results, and the major conclusions. References and abbreviations should be avoided. Immediately after the abstract, provide 3–6 keywords separated by commas.
Introduction:
Summarize the rationale for the study and state the purpose and/or hypothesis of the article.
Methods:
To enable study replication, the procedures should be well documented. The technical data, participant selection and description, and statistics employed should all be documented in a clear and appropriate manner, adhering to current and pertinent norms. The study's ethical approval and a statement that it was carried out in compliance with the applicable stated guidelines must both be included in the Methods section. Indicate that all participants and/or their legal guardians gave their informed consent for investigations involving human subjects. It is encouraged to make a statement regarding trial registration for clinical studies.
Results:
The text, tables, and figures should convey the results in a logical order. Avoid duplicating results in different contexts (for example, don't use the same data in tables and graphs). Provide a count of the observations. Report losses to observation (clinical trial dropouts, for example).
Discussion:
The significant findings of the study should be highlighted in the discussion. Don't duplicate the results section's detailed data, and don't add any works or information that aren't directly related to the study. When applicable, recommendations may be included (for additional research, etc.). The implications of the results and their limitations should be included in the Discussion section. Link the observations to other pertinent research.
Limitations:
Place the limitation subsection at the end of the discussion section. List and discuss the limitations of the study and possible sources of bias.
Conclusion:
A manuscript's conclusion ought to offer perceptive remarks regarding the significance and applicability of the research while refraining from drawing conclusions that go beyond its findings. This should be a concise and understandable part. References should not be included in the conclusion section. Acknowledgements:
List here those individuals who provided help during the research but did not fulfill the authorship criteria. (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance, proofreading the article, etc.).
Funding sources:
List funding sources in a standard way. If no funding has been provided for the research, it is recommended to include the following sentence: This research did not receive any specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Conflict of interest:
Please declare any relationships or conflicts of interest that may affect the author's decisions or confirm that there is no conflict of interest.
References
Accepted references shall include only material that is retrievable through standard literature searches. Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). The journal uses the Vancouver style.
In the text:
Identify references in text, tables, and legends by superscript Arabic numerals. Use Arabic numbers outside periods and commas, inside colons, and semi-colons. Number references consecutively in the order in which they first appear in the text. The original citation number assigned to a reference should be reused each time the reference is cited in the text, regardless of its previous position in the text: do not assign it another number.
In the reference list:
Journal article:
Example: Liu H, Li J, Du L, Yang M, Yang D, Li J, et al. Short-term effects of core stability training on the balance and ambulation function of individuals with chronic spinal cord injury: a pilot randomized controlled trial. Minerva Med 2019;110:216-23. doi: 10.23736/S0026-4806.19.05952-4.
Books:
Entire Book, written or compiled by the same author(s)
Example: Malamed SF. Handbook of local anesthesia. 7th ed. St. Louis: Elsevier; 2020.
Chapter of the book compiled by an editor with various chapter contributors
Example: Forrest JL, Miller SA. Evidence-based decision making. In: Bowen DM, Pieren JA, editors. Darby and Walsh dental hygiene theory and practice. 5th ed. Maryland Heights: Elsevier; 2020. p. 25-33.
Websites
Example: Marchildon GP, DiMatteo L. Health care cost drivers: the facts [Internet]. Canadian Institute for Health Information; 2011 Oct [cited 2015 Jan 15]. Available from: https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/health_care_cost_drivers_the_facts_en.pdf.
Figure legends and captions:
A list of figure legends should be provided after the reference list, listing each figure in order by number. Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Legends and captions should not be embedded in the figure files themselves.
Tables:
The tables may be submitted at the end of the manuscript file or may be submitted as a separate file. The accepted file format is Word. Number tables are listed consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text. Include a brief title for each table and a short or abbreviated heading for each column. Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the title or column headings. Explain in footnotes all nonstandard abbreviations that are used in each table.
Submission checklist:
You can use this list to carry out a final check on your submission before sending it to the journal for review. Ensure that the following items are present:
Conditions for Submission
The author: