About Cerebrospinal Fluid Research

What is Cerebrospinal Fluid Research?

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers manuscripts on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in health and disease.

The CSF, its composition, circulation and absorption have vital roles for normal and abnormal brain function. CSF is important for chemical signaling, physical and chemical buffering, neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental disorders such as hydrocephalus and neural tube defects, brain inflammation, brain injury and repair, normal pressure hydrocephalus and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. The CSF can be used for the diagnosis of neurological diseases and as a route for drug delivery to the brain. Cerebrospinal Fluid Research aims to provide a dedicated avenue for the dissemination of research into all molecular and physiological aspects of CSF and related disorders.

CSF is a subject area that does not have a specialist platform. To date articles are published in a variety of different journals. This journal will provide the platform, offering quality peer-review of manuscripts on secretory physiology, molecular biology of transporters, peptides and growth factors as they relate to CSF, brain homeostasis and neurological diseases. It will bring together researchers expert in various aspects of the CSF and will promote synthesis and dialogue. The intention is also to publish, as supplements, the proceedings of scientific meetings in relevant subject areas.

Content overview

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research considers the following types of articles:

• Research - reports of data from original research.
• Book reviews - short summaries about the strengths and weaknesses of a book. They should evaluate its overall usefulness to the intended audience.
• Commentaries - short, focussed and opinionated articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue of a recent research finding.
• Reviews - comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.

Peer review policies

Members of the Editorial Board will review manuscripts or, where appropriate, allocate them to external reviewers. Up to three reviews will be sought for each manuscript. Reviewers can choose whether to remain anonymous.

Edited by Hazel C Jones, Cerebrospinal Fluid Research is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Cerebrospinal Fluid Research

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central, CAS and Scopus.

Articles in Cerebrospinal Fluid Research 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:

Cerebrospinal Fluid Res 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Cerebrospinal Fluid Research does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

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

General journal policies

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research 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. Cerebrospinal Fluid Research however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research'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 Cerebrospinal Fluid Research will be available.

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research 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.