About Molecular Pain

What is Molecular Pain?

Molecular Pain is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers manuscripts in pain research at the cellular, subcellular and molecular levels.

Molecular Pain is a relatively new and rapidly expanding research field that represents an advanced step from conventional pain research. Molecular pain research addresses physiological and pathological pain at the cellular, subcellular and molecular levels. These studies integrate pain research with molecular biology, genomics, proteomics, modern electrophysiology and neurobiology. The field of molecular pain research has been rapidly expanding in the recent years, and has great promise for the identification of highly specific and effective targets for the treatment of intractable pain.

Although several existing journals publish articles on classical pain research, none are specifically dedicated to molecular pain research. Therefore, a new journal focused on molecular pain research is needed. Molecular Pain will provide a forum for molecular pain scientists to communicate their research findings in a targeted manner to others in this important and growing field.

Content overview

Molecular Pain considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research. We anticipate that a research article will contain no more than 8 figures. Authors should try to limit the Background and Discussion sections to no more than 1000 and 1500 words respectively.
• 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.
• Hypothesis: short articles presenting an untested, original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence. They should outline significant progress in thinking that would also be testable.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research. A complex figure with several panels is encouraged.
• Methodology articles: 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.

Peer review policies

Manuscripts submitted to Molecular Pain are assigned to a Deputy Editor, who appoints two peer reviewers. Based on the reviews, the Deputy Editor will make a recommendation to the Co-Editors-in-Chief for rejection, revision or acceptance. It is expected that the review period will not exceed three weeks. Our electronic submission process is designed to facilitate rapid publication.

Edited by Jianguo Gu and Min Zhuo, Molecular Pain is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Molecular Pain

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, Biosis and Scopus.

Articles in Molecular Pain 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:

Mol Pain 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

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

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

General journal policies

Molecular Pain 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. Molecular Pain however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Molecular Pain'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 Molecular Pain will be available.

Molecular Pain 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.