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About

Aims and scope

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (IJBNPA) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal offering high quality articles, rapid publication and wide diffusion in the public domain.

IJBNPA is devoted to furthering the understanding of the behavioral aspects of diet and physical activity and is unique in its inclusion of multiple levels of analysis (including populations, groups and individuals) and its inclusion of epidemiology, behavioral, theoretical and measurement research areas.  IJBNPA prioritises research based on randomised controlled trials (RCTs), systematic reviews (with or without meta-analyses, as appropriate), and observational studies that feature a temporal dimension. IJBNPA will also review other study designs, such as strong or ground-breaking methodological papers, rigorous qualitative studies, debate papers, and commentaries. IJBNPA publishes pilot studies only in exceptional circumstances and it does not publish protocol papers or letters to the editors.

Why publish your article in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity?

  • Highly ranked in both areas of Nutrition & Dietetics and Physiology, we are the official publicaton of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
  • We provide a unique focus on the behavioural psychology of physical activity and healthy eating.
  • We deliver high levels of author satisfaction, with 94% of our published authors reporting that they would definitely or probably publish with us again.

Open access

All articles published by International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 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.

As authors of articles published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs.  International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity therefore levies an article-processing charge of £2190.00/$3070.00/€2520.00 for each article accepted for publication. If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (IJBNPA) is the official journal of The International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA). Starting from 2022, members of the Society will receive a 50% discount on the article-processing charge for articles they publish in IJBNPA. Members of ISBNPA should go to the society website to verify their membership and obtain the submission code before proceeding with submission.

BioMed Central provides a free open access funding support service to help authors discover and apply for article processing charge funding. Visit our OA funding and policy support page to view our list of research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs, and to learn more about our email support service.


Indexing services

All articles published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity are included in:

  • CABI
  • Cinahl
  • Citebase
  • DOAJ
  • Embase
  • EmCare
  • Food Science and Technology Abstracts
  • Global Health
  • MEDLINE
  • OAIster
  • PsycINFO
  • PubMed
  • PubMed Central
  • Science Citation Index Expanded
  • SCImago
  • Scopus
  • SOCOLAR
  • Zetoc

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

IJBNPA accepts research articles that encompass a wide spectrum of scientific areas in behavioral nutrition and physical activity. The common element is that the results and conclusions are scientifically sound and of outstanding quality in methodology and conceptualization.

All decisions about whether to initiate the peer-review process are undertaken based on editorial review of an article in relation three criteria: 1) fit to the journal scope (behavioural nutrition and or physical activity and associated behaviours such as sedentary behaviour); 2) methodological rigour; and 3) novelty. In terms of word-length there is no specific work limit but we ask authors to note that articles should be as concise as possible and we rarely publish articles that exceed 5000 words.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity

Articles in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity  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. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act [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. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 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 will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity gives you 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 articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 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 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

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