About Malaria Journal

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Malaria Journal, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer-review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

Malaria Journal is aimed at the scientific community interested in malaria in its broadest sense. It is the only journal that publishes exclusively articles on malaria and, as such, it aims to bring together knowledge from the different specialties involved in this very broad discipline, from the bench to the bedside and to the field. Malaria Journal offers a fast publication schedule while maintaining rigorous peer-review; this is achieved by managing the whole of the publication process electronically, from submission to peer-review.

Content overview

Malaria Journal considers the following types of articles:

• Research: Malaria Journal publishes primary research articles from the full spectrum of malaria research. Subjects covered include any aspects of the biology of malaria parasites and their vectors; clinical features and disease pathophysiology; biochemistry and molecular biology; case management and treatment; drug development and drug resistance; immunology, immunogenetics and vaccine development; genomes and transcriptomes of malaria parasites and their vectors; epidemiology and transmission dynamics; vector control; health system, policy and planning issues relating to prevention and treatment; economic, sociological and anthropological issues; poverty and gender issues, land use and global environmental change; intersectoral issues; intervention studies and operational research; control policy and planning.
• Case Reports: Malaria Journal welcomes well-described reports of cases that can be used for educational purposes or that describe unusual features of the disease, its treatment, transmission or control. When describing clinical cases, the authors are requested to provide written and signed consent to publish the information from the patients or their guardians; case reports may include clinical pictures.
• Case Studies: Malaria Journal welcomes well-described case study articles. These will usually describe a major health care 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.
• 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.
• Methodology articles: Methodology articles should present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method, or compare different methods currently in use.
• Reviews: Malaria Journal aims to provide reviews with an in-depth coverage of all aspects of malaria. Some reviews are commissioned, but unsolicited reviews are welcome and are routinely peer-reviewed. Although reviews need not follow the same format as research articles, and are not limited in their length, they are nevertheless expected to conform to the overall house-style of the journal.
• Opinion articles: These are short, opinionated, narrowly focused articles on issues of contemporary interest, including reports about meetings or viewpoints on recently published articles relevant to the readers of Malaria Journal. Some opinion articles are commissioned by the journal, but unsolicited commentaries are welcome and are routinely peer-reviewed. In addition, readers are encouraged to critically discuss articles published in Malaria Journal by means of 'Comments', which will then remain associated with the article; all 'Comments' are moderated.

Open access

All articles published by Malaria Journal are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in Malaria Journal are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Malaria Journal therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1135/$1795/€1365 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a Member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. A limited number of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editors' discretion, and authors wishing to apply for these waivers should contact the editors.

Indexing services

Following publication in Malaria Journal, the full-text of each article is deposited immediately and permanently archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of electronic publications. Malaria Journal is included in PubMed and all major bibliographic databases. A complete list of indexing web services that include BioMed Central's journals can be found here.

Malaria Journal is tracked by Thomson Reuters (ISI) and has an impact factor of 3.49

Publication and peer-review process

Peer-review policies

• Peer review is designed to ensure that the research published is 'good science'.
• Submitted manuscripts are reviewed by two or more experts. Peer reviewers have four possible options: accept; accept after minor revision; ask author(s) to make revisions and resubmit; reject because scientifically unsound.
• Publication of research articles by Malaria Journal is dependent primarily on their validity and coherence, as judged by peer reviewers, who are also asked whether the writing is comprehensible and how interesting they consider the article to be.
• When asking for revisions, reviewers have three possible goals: to tighten the arguments based on existing data, to identify where more data are needed and to improve the clarity and coherence of the paper.

Edited by Marcel Hommel, Malaria Journal is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Malaria Journal, a personalized section of the site.

Portability of peer-review

In order to support efficient and thorough peer review, we aim to reduce the number of times a manuscript is re-reviewed after rejection from Malaria Journal, thereby speeding up the publication process and reducing the burden on peer reviewers. Therefore, please note that, if a manuscript is not accepted for publication in Malaria Journal and the authors choose to submit a revised version to another BioMed Central journal, we will pass the reviews on to the other journal's editors at the authors' request. We will reveal the reviewers' names to the handling editor for editorial purposes unless reviewers let us know when they return their report that they do not wish us to share their report with another BioMed Central journal.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints, and to enquire about further details, including fees, please contact BioMed Central's reprint service.

Supplements

Malaria Journal will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. All full length articles (proceedings, reviews or research articles) are indexed by PubMed. PubMed displays the title of the supplement only in the case of meeting abstract collections. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

Any manuscript, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Information on duplicate/overlapping publications can be found here. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Correspondence concerning articles published in Malaria Journal is encouraged. A 'post a comment' feature is available on all articles published by Malaria Journal. Comments will be moderated by the editorial office (see our Comment policy for further information) and linked to the full-text version of the article, if suitable.

Editorial standards

BioMed Central is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and endorses the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Policy Statement on Geopolitical Intrusion on Editorial Decisions.

Ethical guidelines

Submission of a manuscript to Malaria Journal implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework, e.g. if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.

For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written and signed consent from each patient to publish must also be made available if requested by the editorial staff.

Malaria Journal's publisher, BioMed Central, has a legal responsibility to ensure that its journals do not publish material that infringes copyright, or that includes libellous or defamatory content. If, on review, your manuscript is perceived to contain potentially libellous content the journal Editors, with assistance from the publisher if required, will work with authors to ensure an appropriate outcome is reached.

The involvement of scientific (medical) writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding, as described in the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) guidelines on the role of medical writers in developing peer-reviewed publications. If medical writers are not listed among the authors, their role should be acknowledged explicitly.

Standards of reporting

Malaria Journal supports initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of biomedical research. We recommend authors refer to the EQUATOR network website for further information on the available reporting guidelines for health research, and the MIBBI Portal for prescriptive checklists for reporting biological and biomedical research where applicable. Authors are requested to make use of these when drafting their manuscript and peer reviewers will also be asked to refer to these checklists when evaluating these studies. Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including randomized controlled trials (CONSORT), systematic reviews (PRISMA), observational studies (STROBE), meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE), diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD) and qualitative studies (RATS). For authors of systematic reviews, an additional file, linked from the Methods section, should reproduce all details concerning the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook.

For mutation nomenclature please use the guidelines suggested by the Human Genome Variation Society, and the recommended gene name by consulting the appropriate genetic nomenclature database, e.g., HUGO for human genes, and the International Committee on Standardized Genetic Nomenclature for Mice. We encourage the use of standardized terms for human phenotypes, such as those proposed by the Elements of Morphology working group (see: http://research.nhgri.nih.gov/morphology/index.cgi).

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, which are designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies.

Malaria Journal also supports initiatives to improve the performance and reporting of trials, part of which includes prospective registering and numbering of clinical trials. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has implemented the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of clinical trials which states that a clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. This definition includes phase I to Phase IV trials.

Authors of protocols or reports of such clinical trials, where the primary purpose of the research is to understand the causes, development and effects of disease or to improve preventative, diagnostic or therapeutic interventions, must register their trials prior to submission in a suitable publicly available registry. In addition to accepting registration in any of the five existing registries (http://www.icmje.org/faq.html), the ICMJE will accept registration of clinical trials in any of the primary registers that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

The trial registration number should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.

Data and materials release

Submission of a manuscript to Malaria Journal implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article.

Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Nucleotide sequences

Nucleotide sequences can be deposited with the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL/EBI) Nucleotide Sequence Database, or GenBank (National Center for Biotechnology Information).

Protein sequences

Protein sequences can be deposited with SwissProt or the Protein Information Resource (PIR).

The accession numbers of any nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided, in square brackets with the corresponding database name; for example, [EMBL:AB026295, EMBL:AC137000, DDBJ:AE000812, GenBank:U49845, PDB:1BFM, Swiss-Prot:Q96KQ7, PIR:S66116].

The databases for which we can provide direct links are: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL), DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), GenBank at the NCBI (GenBank), Protein Data Bank (PDB), Protein Information Resource (PIR) and the Swiss-Prot Protein Database (Swiss-Prot).

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry data should be supplied in the mzML format recommended by the HUPO Protein Standards Initiative Mass Spectrometry Standards Working Group guidelines (http://www.psidev.info/index.php?q=node/80). We also recommend that the data is deposited in the ProteomeExchange (http://proteomexchange.org/) through the PRIDE website (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/), and protein interaction data can be submitted to members of the IMEx consortium (http://disber.net/imexdrupal/).

Structures

Protein structures can be deposited with one of the members of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank. Nucleic Acids structures can be deposited with the Nucleic Acid Database at Rutgers. Crystal structures of organic compounds can be deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.

Chemical structures and assays

Structures of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem Substance. Bioactivity screens of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem BioAssay.

Functional genomics data (such as microarray, RNA-seq or ChIP-seq data)

Where appropriate, authors should adhere to the standards proposed by the Functional Genomics Data Society and must deposit microarray data in MIAME-compliant format in one of the public repositories, such as ArrayExpress or Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Deposition of high-throughput functional genomics sequencing data (such as RNA-Seq or ChIP-Seq data) with ArrayExpress or GEO in compliance with MINSEQE is also required.

Computational modeling

We encourage authors to prepare models of biochemical reaction networks using the Systems Biology Markup Language and to deposit the model with the BioModels database, as well as submitting it as an additional file with the manuscript.

Plasmids

We encourage authors to deposit copies of their plasmids as DNA or bacterial stocks with Addgene, a non-profit repository, or PlasmID, the Plasmid Information Database at Harvard.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should, in the first instance, contact the Editor-in-Chief who will provide details of the journal's complaints procedure.

Competing interests

Malaria Journal requires authors to declare any competing financial or other interest in relation to their work. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

Plagiarism detection

Malaria Journal's publisher, BioMed Central, is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In cases of suspected plagiarism CrossCheck is available to the editors of Malaria Journal to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. CrossCheck is a multi-publisher initiative allowing screening of published and submitted content for originality.

Citing articles in Malaria Journal

Articles in Malaria Journal should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Malar J [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Malar J 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in Malaria Journal?

High visibility

Malaria Journal's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Malaria Journal offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Malaria Journal, BioMed Central and PubMed Central and will also be included in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in Malaria Journal gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Malaria Journal are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Malaria Journal's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in Malaria Journal may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Malaria Journal. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Malaria Journal retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.