© 2022 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Welcome to this newly launched Journal of Disability Research, the first of its kind to be established within the Middle East. The Journal is a product of the King Salman Centre for Disability Research; indeed, the reader is urged to spend time exploring the many activities of this important and highly impactful center, dedicated as it is to seeking amelioration of physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental conditions that can pose a myriad of difficulties in the conduct of daily life. The conditions can impair, interfere with and limit an ability to engage in a range of tasks and actions, including in undertaking typical daily activities. Illnesses of various types, injuries, or conditions can clearly make it difficult to do a number of things that others can more easily do. These are matters that not only need to be more widely appreciated but also acted upon in support of those who endure such conditions. Each of us needs to be mindful of the need to develop a more caring society. The sufferers face a large range of challenges, ones that can be long-term and more often than not permanent. A further aspect to be worked on in addition to investigations of physical, mental, cognitive, and developmental conditions is that of changing attitudes towards disability. Understanding of the restrictions that disability can place upon an individual needs to be much more widely built into our psyche, with a need to develop aids that can help integrate those with disability into enjoying a more rewarding daily life. Urban planning and facilities that can aid social mobility also need to be much improved, actions that are not only restricted to town planning but also within the home.
This journal wishes to play a considerable part in disseminating disability research, in so-doing furthering broader awareness of the issues. At the same time, we wish to encourage and help stimulate novel lines of research. The desire is to point to the progress that is being made in various situations, not least towards helping to ameliorate the effects of life-restricting conditions where and wherever they arise. To place matters in context, in this very first issue we begin by providing examples of research conducted at the biophysical level, augmented by one further article looking at the manifestation of lower back pain. The more fundamental aspects are covered in targeted reviews, the first concerning alterations to the lens of the eye that can arise from disease with gradual impaired vision, the other on cartilage alterations impacting mobility. These reviews focus on an understanding of underpinning cell biology and organized tissue alterations, arising out of disease, inclusive of genetic factors and predispositions, emerging in terms of disability. We invite you, the reader, to come forward with your own research, be it at a fundamental, operational, or policy level, and in doing so contribute towards making this journal the success that we wish and envisage it to be.
D A Bradley
JDR – Editor in Chief
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Title: Journal for Disability Research (JDR)
The Journal of Disability Research seeks to encourage greater understanding of the nature of disability, also in furthering ways and means to promote rehabilitation, identifying steps towards amelioration of the various many factors that can limit greater quality of life. The overarching aim of the journal is to provide an important communication channel in disseminating and exchanging ideas, reaching out to a global audience of interested parties, including, but not limited, to health practitioners and researchers. Accordingly, coverage will aim to include but not be limited to:
Empirical work and theoretical framing, both of which are welcome, should seek to contain discussion of the practical implications of the findings. The journal considers all original manuscripts that report scientifically sound research and provide a substantial amount of significant new information.
Coverage
Although not exhaustive some of the keywords covered by JDR are presented below.
JDR – Humanities
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JDR – Medical
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JDR – Engineering and Technology
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JDR – Education
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Publication types
JDR evaluates and publishes top-quality articles in the enumerated sections. These contributions are welcome in any of the following formats:
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From time to time the Editorial Board will invite particular articles or editorials from experts in various parts of the world and consider the production of a supplement or special issue devoted to a particular subject or theme of major importance. Articles that help to promote education in all aspects of disability are encouraged.
JDR Word cloud
The Journal of Disability Research seeks to encourage greater understanding of the nature of disability, also in furthering ways and means to promote rehabilitation, identifying steps towards amelioration of the various many factors that can limit greater quality of life. The overarching aim of the journal is to provide an important communication channel in disseminating and exchanging ideas, reaching out to a global audience of interested parties, including, but not limited, to health practitioners and researchers. Accordingly, coverage will aim to include but not be limited to:
Empirical work and theoretical framing, both of which are welcome, should seek to contain discussion of the practical implications of the findings.
The journal considers all original manuscripts that report scientifically sound research and provide a substantial amount of significant new information. All material presented must be acquired according to ethical standards and approved by legally appropriate ethical committee(s).
We encourage authors to be aware of standardised reporting guidelines when preparing their manuscripts:
The manuscript should include: Title page (title, authors, affiliations, contact, abstract, keywords (up to 10), conflict of interest statement); Main text (introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, figures with captions, tables with captions) Acknowledgments (Funder), References.
There are no word limits for submissions but manuscripts should be concise and well-written.
Manuscripts may be written in any standard program including Word and LaTeX. Authors will upload a pdf for peer review. Upon submission of revised manuscripts authors will also be requested to submit a pdf version with tracked changes. Only after final acceptance of a manuscript will the author be requested to submit Word or LaTeX files for typesetting.
There are no strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts should follow the basic structure for reporting scientific research above.
References may be in any style, provided that formatting is consistent throughout. It is essential to include full author(s) name(s), journal or book title, article or chapter title, year of publication, volume and issue. DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) for each reference should be added wherever possible. They are not mandatory but strongly encouraged. Bibliography management tools such as EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, Reference Manager are recommended.
Tables should be black and white/greyscale only and formatted as simply as possible for best accessibility. See some guidelines here: https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/tables/
Images should be submitted in high resolution for the typesetter after final acceptance of the manuscript.
To support the visually impaired, this journal includes Alt Text (alternative text), a short piece of text tagged to your figure to describe for readers contents of the image. This text can be used by screen readers to make the object accessible to people that cannot read or see the object. Add Alt Text using Microsoft Word tools or as a separate figure caption. Further information on Alt Text for images can be found here: https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/ .
Authors will be required to fill out a data availability statement when submitting their manuscript. Data should be made available for peer reviewers, preferably in an open repository. Data may be cited with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) in the reference section of the article. See the Data Citation: Guide to Best Practice.
In all cases of publication ethics the journal will refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/
Reporting research that involves human subjects or data requires a declaration that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Approval from the institutional review board (IRB) or other appropriate ethics committee must be obtained before undertaking the research to confirm the study meets national and international guidelines. A statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board must be included as ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ article. For example: “All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code).” The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.
The manuscript should follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and aim for the inclusion of representative human populations (sex, age and ethnicity) according to those recommendations. The terms sex and gender should be used correctly. Additionally, when studies describe groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc., explanation regarding why such categorization was needed should be clearly stated in the article.
Open Access Publishing Agreement
By submitting my manuscript to the Journal of Disability Research published by the King Salman Center for Disability Research (hereafter the ‘Publisher’), I herewith grant permission to the Publisher to publish my article upon editorial acceptance under the following publishing agreement.
I hereby confirm that this is my original work and that
And that the work
I understand that in granting this consent I am granting to the Publisher the Rights to publish under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license the Contribution in the English language in digital form; moral rights will be retained by the original Author/s and copyright will be held by the Author.
I agree to this Publishing Agreement, consent to execution and delivery of the Publishing Agreement electronically, and agree that confirming my consent electronically during the manuscript submission process with an electronic signature shall be given the same legal force as a handwritten signature.
Terms of Use
Retained Rights
The Author retains all proprietary rights in addition to copyright, such as patent rights in any process, procedure, or article of manufacture described in the Contribution.
Author’s Representations
The Author(s) certify that they have participated sufficiently in the intellectual content, conception, and design of this work or the analysis and interpretation of the data (when applicable), as well as the writing of the manuscript, to take public responsibility for it and have agreed to have their name listed as a contributor. The Author(s) believe the manuscript represents valid work. Neither this manuscript nor one with substantially similar content under their authorship has been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere, except as described in the cover letter. The Author(s) certify that all the data collected during the study is presented in this manuscript and no data from the study has been or will be published separately. If requested by the editors, the Author(s) will provide the data/information or will cooperate fully in obtaining and providing the data/information on which the manuscript is based, for examination by the editors or their assignees. Financial interests, direct or indirect, that exist or may be perceived to exist for individual contributors in connection with the content of this paper have been disclosed in the cover letter. Sources of outside support for the project are named in the cover letter.
Use of Information
The Author(s) acknowledges that, during the term of this Agreement and thereafter (for as long as necessary), the Publisher and the Journal may process the Author’s data, including storing or transferring data outside of the country of the Contributor’s residence, to communicate with the Author(s) and that the Publisher has a legitimate interest in processing the Author(s)’ personal data. By entering into this Agreement, the Author(s) agree to the processing of personal data (and, where applicable, confirms that the Author has obtained permission from all other authors to process their data). The Publisher and the Journal shall comply with all applicable laws, statutes, and regulations relating to data protection and privacy and shall process such personal data.
By publishing in the journal authors are required to make research data available to editors and reviewers, and to readers upon request. For some research data, deposition in repositories is required and this is encouraged for all research data. For some papers, the decision to publish will be affected by whether or not authors share their research data.
Required
Data sharing via repositories for some research data
Data availability statements
Data sharing on request
Optional / Encouraged
Data citation
Data sharing via repositories for all research data
Prepare and share Data Management Plans
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Definition of research data | This policy applies to the research data that would be required to verify the results of research reported in articles published in the journal. Research data include data produced by the authors (“primary data”) and data from other sources that are analysed by authors in their study (“secondary data”). Research data includes any recorded factual material that are used to produce the results in digital and non-digital form. This includes tabular data, code, images, audio, documents, video, maps, raw and/or processed data. |
Definition of exceptions | Research data that are not required to verify the results reported in articles are not covered by this policy. This policy does not require public sharing of quantitative or qualitative data that could identify a research participant unless participants have consented to data release. The policy also does not require public sharing of other sensitive data, such as the locations of endangered species. Alternatives to public sharing of sensitive or personal data include:
Stating the procedures for accessing your research data in your article and managing data access requests from other researchers. |
Embargoes | Embargoes on data sharing are only permitted with the agreement of the Editors. |
Supplementary materials | Sharing research data as supplementary information files is discouraged. Research data of the types listed in “Mandatory data sharing (specific papers)” must not be uploaded as supplementary information files. The journal will require authors to deposit these in an approved repository as a condition of publication. |
Data repositories | The preferred mechanism for sharing research data is via data repositories. Please see <recommended repository list> or https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org/ for help finding research data repositories. Research data of the types listed in “Mandatory data sharing (specific papers)” must be uploaded to an appropriate repository. The journal will require authors to deposit these in an approved repository as a condition of publication. |
Data citation | The journal encourages authors to cite any publicly available research data in their reference list. References to datasets (data citations) must include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI). Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. |
Data licensing | The journal encourages research data to be made available under open licences that permit reuse freely. The journal does not enforce particular licenses for research data, where research data are deposited in third party repositories. The publisher of the journal does not claim copyright in research data. |
Researcher/ author support | Questions about complying with this policy should be sent to info@scienceopen.com |
Data availability statements | The journal requires authors to include in any articles that report results derived from research data to include a Data Availability Statement as part of the submission process. The provision of a Data availability statement that is compatible with the journal’s research data policy will be verified as a condition of publication. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Where research data are not publicly available, this must be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for accessing the data. Data Availability statements must take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple types of research data):
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name]. |
Data formats and standards | The journal encourages authors to share research data using data formats and standards recognised by their research community. Please see FAIRsharing.org for more information on established data sharing formats and standards. The journal prefers research data to be shared in open file formats – those that do not require proprietary software to access – where possible. For example, tabular data should be shared as CSV files rather than XLS files. |
Mandatory data sharing (specific papers) | For certain types of research data, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. The journal will require authors to deposit data of these types in an approved repository as a condition of publication. |
Research data and peer review | Peer reviewers are encouraged to check the manuscript’s Data Availability statement. Where applicable, they should consider if the authors have complied with the journal’s policy on the availability of research data, and whether reasonable effort has been made to make the data that support the findings of the study available for replication or reuse by other researchers. Peer reviewers are entitled to request access to underlying data (and code) when needed for them to perform their evaluation of a manuscript. |
Data Management Plans | The journal encourages authors to prepare Data Management Plans before conducting their research and encourages authors to make those plans available to editors, reviewers and readers who wish to assess them. |
© 2022 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED