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Article types, submission requirements, review process, and open access terms.
Article types
| Type | Word limit | Abstract | References |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original Research | 4,000 | Structured, 300 | 50 |
| Brief Report | 1,800 | Structured, 200 | 25 |
| Systematic Review / Meta-analysis | 5,000 | Structured, 300 | 100 |
| Consensus / Guideline Statement | 6,000 | Unstructured, 250 | 150 |
| Editorial / Invited Commentary | 1,200 | None | 15 |
| Correspondence | 600 | None | 8 |
Submission requirements
- Structured abstract and three to six keywords
- ORCID for all authors; contributions stated per CRediT taxonomy
- Reporting checklist as applicable (CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, STARD, TRIPOD)
- Data availability statement; code availability where relevant
- Ethics approval and consent statements
- Competing interests and full funding disclosure
- Declaration of any generative AI use, per ICMJE guidance
Peer review — open, signed, compensated
IJRM-SSS runs open peer review. Reviews are signed by their author, compensated, and published alongside the accepted article. This is the journal's differentiator: the review record is part of the scientific output, not a private exchange.
A minimum of two independent referees, with statistical review for all analytic manuscripts. Target time to first decision is 21 days; target time from acceptance to online publication is 14 days.
Editors do not handle manuscripts from their own institution. Submissions authored by the Institute's founder or leadership are handled entirely externally — handling them in-house would discredit the open-review claim.
Access and funding
Free to read, in full, for everyone. No subscription, no per-article charge, and no article processing charge — there is no fee to publish and no fee to read.
The journal is funded by licensing a structured, machine-readable corpus of its articles and their open reviews, by philanthropy, and by the Institute's consultancy work. All accepted articles are deposited to permit compliance with major funder mandates.
Copyright and licensing
Authors retain copyright. The journal takes a licence to publish, not an assignment.
Submitting a manuscript also licenses the article into the machine-readable corpus described above. That licence carries an explicit opt-out, and exercising it has no bearing on the editorial decision.