About Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 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

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that aims to promote the exchange of original knowledge and research in any area of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine invites research articles and reviews based on original interdisciplinary studies on the inextricable relationships between human cultures and nature/universe, Traditional Environmental/Ecological Knowledge (TEK), folk and traditional medical knowledge, as well as the relevance of these for environmental and public health policies.

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine invites manuscripts and reviews based on original interdisciplinary research and studies worldwide on the inextricable relationships between human cultures and nature/universe, Traditional Environmental/Ecological Knowledge (TEK), folk and traditional medical knowledge, as well as the relevance of these for primary health care policies in developing countries.

Specifically, the journal will cover the following topics: ethnobotany, ethnomycology, ethnozoology, ethnoecology (including ethnopedology), ethnometereology/ethnoclimatology, ethnoastronomy, ethnopharmacy, ethnomedicine, ethnoveterinary, traditional medicines, traditional healthcare in households and domestic arenas, migrant healthcare/urban ethnobiology, pluralistic healthcare in developing countries, evidence-based community health, visual ethnobiology and ethnomedicine, gender studies and ethnobiology, as well as other related areas in environmental, nutritional, medical and visual anthropology. Botanically-centered manuscripts must clearly indicate voucher specimens and herbaria.

The fields of ethnosciences have greatly increased in "critical mass" over the last few years and have gained growing attention from the media and external stakeholders such as the World Health Organisation and the European Union Commission. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine has created a reference journal for this broad, interdisciplinary scientific area, and addressed the need for a journal devoted to these particular studies, which was seen as a priority by many scholars - especially the youngest and most dynamic members of the scientific ethnobiological/ethnomedical community - as well as by many researchers from developing countries.

Open access

All articles published by Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1115/$1715/€1310 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

All articles published in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine are included in PubMed, the most widely used biomedical bibliographic database service, which is run by the US National Library of Medicine. Other bibliographic databases that index articles published in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine include:

• CABI
• Citebase
• Embase
• EmBiology
• EmCare
• Global Health
• Google Scholar
• Index Copernicus
• MEDLINE
• OAIster

• PubMed
• PubMed Central
• Science Citation Index Expanded
• SCImago
• Scirus
• Scopus
• SOCOLAR
• Zetoc
• Zoological Record

The full text of all research articles is deposited in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and other digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine is tracked by Thomson Reuters (ISI)and has an Impact Factor of 2.39.

Publication and peer review process

Criteria for publication

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine considers the following article types:

Research: reports of data from original research

Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine; these articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.

Peer-review policies

All manuscripts submitted to the journal will be peer-reviewed by at least 2 experts in the specific field(s) featured in the manuscript. The final decision to accept or reject a manuscript will be taken by the Editor-in-Chief.

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

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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

All manuscripts submitted to Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Citing articles in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine

Articles in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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. J Ethnobiology Ethnomedicine [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. J Ethnobiology Ethnomedicine 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine?

High visibility

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine'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

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, BioMed Central and PubMed Central and will also be included in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 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.