PT Journal--About Physical Therapy

Mission Statement

Physical Therapy (PTJ) engages and inspires an international readership on topics related to physical therapy. As the leading international journal for research in physical therapy and related fields, PTJ publishes innovative and highly relevant content for both clinicians and scientists and uses a variety of interactive approaches to communicate that content, with the expressed purpose of improving patient care.

PTJ's circulation in 2008 is more than 72,000. Its 2007 impact factor was 2.152. The mean time from submission to first decision is 58 days. Time from acceptance to publication online is less than or equal to 3 months and from acceptance to publication in print is less than or equal to 5 months. The acceptance rate is 30%.

Information for Media

To make new research readily available to APTA members and subscribers, PTJ publishes all accepted manuscripts ahead of print. These manuscripts have undergone full peer review, copyediting, typesetting, and the first round of proofreading. The final versions of these papers will appear in a future print and online issue of PTJ. If you are a media outlet interested in reporting on a PTJ publish-ahead-of-print article, we ask that you observe 3 conditions:

Please specify in your news release that you are reporting on a pre-print version of an article that is scheduled to be published in the [month] issue of PTJ. Note: An article’s publication date is subject to change at any time.

Please include the following statement in your news release: “The pre-print version is currently available by clicking on PTJ’s Online Now! at www.ptjournal.org.”

Please contact Jennifer Rondon when you want to release a news item on a PTJ article. Our Media Communications team will assist you, providing you with the most up-to-date information and complimentary access to full text once the article is posted. When possible, we will try to fast-track production of that article.

Thank you for your interest in PTJ!

What PTJ Online Brings to You

PTJ Online currently contains content from 1990 to the present:

—January 2006 to present: complete issues in PDF and full text
—January 1999 through December 2005: editorials, articles, and letters to the editor in PDF and full text
—January 1980 through December 1998: editorials, articles, and letters to the editor in PDF

Just some of the features of PTJ Online:

• Online Now! Access the latest research 2 months or more before it appears in print!

• Value-Added Information to Help Clinicians and Researchers: Access supplementary material that is not available in the print edition:

—Data files

—The Bottom Line clinical summaries

—Appendixes too large for print

—Podcasts: debates, discussions, author interviews, audio abstracts, and The Bottom Line clinical summaries also are available through iTunes and RSS feeds

—Videos of patients and demonstrations of procedures

• Rapid Responses: Respond to articles immediately online using the “Submit a response” link.

• Content Alerts:

—Receive the latest content from PTJ Online via RSS feeds, including current issues, recent issues, Online Now! articles, section feeds (research reports, case reports, perspectives, technical reports, editorials, book reviews), and podcasts.

—Sign up to receive e-mail alerts of current and future tables of contents (“eTOCs”), publication of new Online Now! articles, and PTJ announcements. You also can manage all of your alerts from other HighWire– hosted journals from a single interface in the HighWire portal.

—Use “CiteTrack” to alert you via e-mail whenever new content is published that matches criteria based on the topics, authors, and articles you want to track. You also can apply your search profile to multiple journals from a single interface in the HighWire portal. PubMed users can be alerted to content newly placed into PubMed.
—use “Email-a-friend” to recommend an article to a colleague. Your colleague receives your recommendation and a URL and citation for the article.

• Get What You're Looking For—Fast:

—Choose Quick Search (simplified author, keyword, and date/vol/page searching) or Advanced Search (additional options include: author, title, abstract, full-text fields; single- and multi-journal searching; any/all/exact phrase searching; limiting by date; relevance/chronological sorting; results formatting).

—Retrieve related articles in PTJ and related articles in PubMed and Google Scholar. You can also retrieve related articles in PubMed or Google Scholar using the first author or last author names as search terms.

—The reference lists in PTJ articles (including editorials and letters) have links that take you directly to the full-text of cited articles in other HighWire–hosted journals. Other hyperlinks in PTJ articles take you directly to articles in other HighWire–hosted journals that have cited that PTJ article, allowing you to see how other investigators have used research that appeared in PTJ.

—Articles link automatically to related corrections, revised appendixes, commentaries, or letters.

—Thomson ISI Web of Science Linking: The Thomson ISI Web of Science is the Web version of Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. PTJ Online offers a number of outbound links: (1) from citations in the reference lists of PTJ articles to the Web of Science record, (2) from PTJ articles to records in the Web of Science that cite the article, and (3) from PTJ articles to related articles in the Web of Science that are based on common cited references. Web of Science also has inbound links to PTJ Online.

If you have any suggestions for improving PTJ Online, please contact Jan Reynolds.

Indexing/Document Delivery

Physical Therapy is indexed and/or abstracted by by Abridged Index Medicus, Abstracts in Health Care Management Studies, AgeLine, AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine Database), Bibliography of Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Current Contents, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Exceptional Child Education Abstracts, Focus on: Sports Science and Medicine, General Science Index (GSI), Health Index, Hospital and Health Administraction Index, Index Medicus, Inpharma Weekly, International Nursing Index, ISR, Medical & Surgical Dermatology, MEDLINE, Neuroscience Citation Index, Personal Alert: Automatic Subject Citation Alert (ASCA), Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes News, Physical Education Index, Reactions Weekly, RECAL Bibliographic Database, Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Sports S.

Article abstracts are available online at www.ptjournal.org (1990 through present) and via DataStar, Dialog, First Search, Information Access, and Ovid Technologies. Ingenta provides online document delivery for Journal articles published since 1988.

Full-text articles are available for free at www.ptjournal.org 12 months after publication date. Full text also is provided through DataStar, Dialog, EBSCOHost Academic Search, Factiva, InfoTrac, ProFound, and ProQuest.

Statement of Nondiscrimination

APTA prohibits preferential or adverse discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, gender, age, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or health status in all areas including, but not limited to, its qualifications for membership, rights of members, policies, programs, activities, and employment practices. APTA is committed to promoting cultural diversity throughout the profession.